Do you remember the moment that you saw him? The exact moment, when he burst through the restaurant door, sweat beading off his hair and brow, dark stain already expanding across the front of his gray button-down, and in an instant you knew you would give him your heart? You can still see it - the gold of his hair like sunlight shimmering on ocean waves, the pale bristle of a day's growth on his chin, and his eyes the green of forest shadows. Do you remember the way he gazed at you that night, as though losing himself in the labyrinth of your eyes, while you yourself traced the capering candlelight that danced its way across the surface of his own. There was a slow ache beneath your sternum that crested and crescendoed all through the evening, his words the lucent pull of a full moon crossing the starless night, and cold flames seared your skin when his fingers brushed across yours. It was only with reluctance that you took your hand away from his when it came time to leave him at his doorstep, but his promise that you would see each other again rang like a bell in the crystalline air.
Many nights later, when your bodies entwined after your first fevered lovemaking, sweat coating your skin in a sheath, and he pulled your arms around him while still half-asleep, the overwhelming clarity that might have been happiness bloomed in your chest.
And like a flower, too, was the way that it withered and died.
Oh, how it hurt, that day in the rain. His eyes were a sea green then, restless and churning, but looking everywhere except at you. His fingers tangled into knots on his lap, then unwound and dragged themselves down his pants, seeking to smooth out creases that weren't there, before the process repeated itself. And his words, so quiet and so thunderous at the same time, artillery fire blasting at the foundations of your very being, leaving shattered walls and smoking craters where once you had built a mansion for him upon the hillock of your heart. The months, years, of tending a furtive hope that perhaps the two of you would one day hold each other's wrinkled hands undone in but a few short minutes. He never turned to look at you as he walked away, and though it was all you could do not to run after him, you too turned your back as your feet tried to carry you home again.
And now here we are. Alone in the dark, the pain and loss so treacherous you don't know how to navigate through without dashing yourself on their jagged shoals. The emptiness is a worm that gnaws at your guts, twisting and turning and burrowing ever deeper, hollowing you out from within. It takes away everything - the taste of butter and the golden warmth of the sun, the tenderness of a cool breeze over your skin and the delight of discovering a new path home. It leaves ash-choked fields and flat barrens that burn beneath a sky the color of charcoal, but of course it leaves the pain and the longing untouched. And hope. Hope that the words that can fix this will resolve themselves from the clouds of nebulous possibility. Hope that the phone will ring, and the soft voice on the other end will let you know that he is downstairs, that he is sorry he hurt you, that he has made a mistake. That all he wants and ever wanted is you. The hope drives the barbs further and further under your skin, until all you can think about is how to make it stop.
This, I can do for you.
I can smooth the furrows in your heart and lead you through the precarious reefs. I can unhook the barbs and the nails and the razors that have wormed so deeply into your flesh. I can make the ashen fields of your soul bloom again, and let you taste the warmth of sunlight, the sweetness of a fresh apple, the caress of a gentle wind. I can make you whole.
There is a cost, of course, but nothing in this world will give you what you want and ask so little in return.
Simply take my hand and wish it, and all the pain will go away.
**************
Mostly an exercise in description, this one.
Thursday, September 8, 2016
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
100 Days of Pages, Page 7: Starborn
Sidney Eyon hated being under the stars, but to go through the front door was to lose the element of surprise, so the rooftop it was. Tonight was a particularly clear night, the air crisp and cool and laden with autumn breezes. In spite of the light pollution welling up from the myriad streets and buildings of Philadelphia, it seemed the stars were innumerable overhead. He had gotten used to ignoring them, but on a cloudless night like this one he could feel their light, weak and watery as it was, burning like cold fire across the back of his neck, and hear the faint, mournful notes of lucent song drifting through the ether.
Sidney gave his head a quick shake to clear it. This wasn't the time to dwell upon the past. He knelt down on the rooftop and scribbled a quick diagram with a piece of chalk - an oddly asymmetrical design full of loops and whorls contained within sharp geometries. Ordinarily, he didn't need written foci to help him focus his spellwork, but if his suspicions were correct, he would need to conserve as much energy as possible.
The elegant swirls of chalk began to glow with a soft white light as he completed the glyph. He deliberately left it incomplete for the moment as he reached out with his senses down below. There - the thrum of ritual magic was unmistakable, and on top of it the cold, slick sheen of necromancy. Magic of the darkest sort, and it was approaching a crescendo.
He had been tracking this warlock for days - ever since the murder of the man a block away from his home, although nobody but him would have realized it as such. The man had fallen asleep in his bed and never woke up again. The coroners had deemed it a fluke event - the man's heart had simply stopped. Rare, to be sure, but there was no sign that anything unnatural was the cause. To Sidney's senses, however, the man's body had been virtually soaked in black magic, like a viscous cloud of ink that boiled up from every pore and dripped down to pool underneath the EMT's gurney. He hadn't even needed to look to know that a piece of the man was missing - a nail, in this case, scraped from the bed.
Ordinarily, Sidney might have left the murder for the Watchers, the wizards and witches who acted as lawkeepers of the supernatural. He didn't like to make a habit of involving himself in arcane matters that didn't directly concern him, but something about the man's death didn't sit well with him. A...peculiarity, about the way the black cloud of magic had roiled and writhed about the corpse, which rang an alarm in his head that had been silent for decades, if not centuries. So it was that he began keeping a closer eye, watching for the inevitable second murder.
As it turned out, the second murder hadn't been the second at all. It was the fifth.
Two points were enough to draw him a line, however, and that line led him here. The Mutter Museum, home of the odd, the twisted, and the deformed. Originally a collection of specimens and medical tools used for the advancement of science, the museum had grown since its origins in 1858 to a treasury of over 20,000 pieces. Ranging from tumors and cysts to conjoined twins and malformed fetuses to an entire wall of human skulls, the exhibits at the museum were a monument to the various ways that the human body could turn on itself.
What the museum curators didn't and couldn't know, however, was that each piece donated to the museum carried with it a certain spiritual resonance, a small spark of power left over as a result of the owner's demise. Individually, they were weak, almost trivial, but so many pieces gathered together coalesced the power into something vastly more significant. Someone inside the museum was attempting to tap into that power now, and Sidney had a strong conviction it was for a reason that would end badly for everyone.
Satisfied that the ritual was reaching a critical point, Sidney infused his glyph with a bit of will, allowing the magic to take shape. The stone of the building rippled for a moment as though made of water. Then, with a soft, sibilant hiss, a small hole appeared in the rooftop. It grew steadily and rapidly, expanding until it was roughly the size of a manhole cover, then stopped, leaving a perfectly round entrance into one of the main chambers below. Immediately, the chill of necromantic magic boiled forth, acrid and cloying as a plume of cold smoke.
Sidney peered down into the hole. The exhibit was one of the permanent ones - a large rectangular chamber perhaps fifty or sixty feet by forty feet and split into two levels. The top level was lined with wooden display cases lined with glass, featuring antique medical devices, old documents, and one section affixed with hundreds of human skulls. A velvet carpeted walkway ran the perimeter of the top level, broken at the far end by a staircase that ran down into the ground floor. The displays there, both against the wall and free standing, consisted of malformed bones, misshapen fetuses in jars, and entire articulated skeletons of varying ages. On this floor, a man was kneeling in the aisle between two free standing display cases. Lines and sigils drawn onto the floor ran from him like spider webs, crawling up the stairs and along the second floor walkway. They pulsed with a sickly purple light that cast the room in an eerie light and highlighted the macabre air of the exhibit hall.
Rendering the man unconscious from the rooftop would be a simple matter. Even as Sidney prepared the spellwork, however, he recognized some of the glyphs looping around the room, and he dispersed his casting with a curse. A lattice of magic had been built into the room, shielding the man from direct attack. Moreover, it had been suffused with sufficient energy that if the ritual was disrupted in any way, the resultant explosion would likely obliterate everything with three blocks. The man had clearly anticipated company.
Sidney considered this for a moment. It was a foolish man who charged into a situation when he had not only been expected, but preparations made for his arrival.
"Fortunately," he whispered, "I'm not really a man."
Gathering the edges of his coat, he leapt through the hole, landing with catlike grace onto one of the second floor walkways. Although he made less sound than an owl taking flight, the man looked up the instant he arrived.
"Ah, you," he said. The warlock was young, no more than twenty two or twenty three, with a mop of shaggy black hair and horn-rim glasses. He was dressed in a simple white button-down shirt and khaki pants, his feet bare and stained with a dark liquid. His hands, too, were encrusted with some substance that appeared black by the ghostly purple light of the sigils snaking out from under his feet. He looked haggard, even exhausted, but his eyes glittered like the ocean surface under a full moon.
"Yes, me," Sidney replied. "If you were expecting company it wouldn't have hurt to freshen up a mite, no?"
"They told me you'd come," the warlock replied, swaying slightly as he stared up at Sidney. "They told me that only you would recognize the signs."
Sidney felt a chill run down his spine, but he kept his voice nonchalant as he walked around the perimeter of the room toward the stairs.
"It's so wonderful to have my talents recognized," he said drily, running hand along the railing as he walked. The metal was cold and seemed to buzz underneath his fingers. "If you wanted to play at necromancy, however, shouldn't you have found a nice crowded graveyard? I'll admit the aesthetics of this place is much more pleasing than some mossy tombstones, but you'd have found much stronger resonance."
"But not the resonance they need," the warlock replied. "It's twisted, here. Everything is twisted. Nothing here should ever have been, and that is what they need." Then, unexpectedly, he looked up at the hole in the ceiling. "Does it ever bother you, being watched every night by the corpses of your brothers?"
Sidney almost tripped and fell, so great was his shock. Only a handful of entities on the planet knew his background as something more than just a powerful magician. None of them, he was certain, would have given that information to a twenty-something hipster warlock. Not for any price he would be able to pay. There was only one other source of information the boy could have accessed. If that were true, the boy was less than a pawn - he was a tool and nothing more. The damage to his mind was likely already irreparable.
"Oh, they're no more my actual brothers than the painting of a man is the subject himself," he heard himself saying as he scrambled to recover, "but I suppose the difference is largely academic at this point."
The warlock nodded, as if Sidney had confirmed something he had suspected all along.
"You don't look very much like a star," he said, after a moment.
"I do hate being recognized in the streets," Sidney replied. "Paparazzi, you understand. So annoying."
"What was the word they used?" the warlock mused to himself. "Sidereal. That's what they called you."
"Tell me, what did they offer you?" Sidney asked. "What was the carrot they waved under your nose for you to play obedient little puppet?"
The warlock hesitated, then said, "They said they could bring her back. Death doesn't exist for them. They're not bound by it and never have been. All they would need is...the heart of a star."
"You poor, foolish boy," Sidney said, his voice cold. "Yes, they could give you what they promised, with or without my heart, but you would regret it to the end of your days. Which would be soon, if you were lucky."
"You can't hurt me here," the warlock said. "The neighborhood would burn if you even tried."
"I don't want to hurt you, but I will if I have to. Your little ward can't shield you forever. Stop now and perhaps you can still walk away from this."
"You can't hurt me," the warlock repeated, "but I can hurt you."
He lifted his hands. Dark purple flames danced into life above his outstretched fingers, and the sigils underneath his feet grew incandescent. Violet lightning surged from his fingertips, forking dozens, then hundreds of times, shattering the glass in the display cases as they raked across the walls of the exhibit. Sidney shouted a single word and hurled himself to one side, one arm pointed forward with all five fingers splayed. A transparent hemisphere of pale blue light sprang into existence directly in front of him, and the lightning bolts splashed against it in a cascade of brilliant purple sparks.
Even as Sidney got to his feet, however, it became apparent that the bolts aimed at him were largely a cursory effect. With a clattering noise like a wave of falling dominoes, the bones from the exhibits flew toward the center of the room, skulls and femurs and hip bones tearing themselves from the walls in a chorus of splintering sounds. They coalesced around the warlock, each bone piece adhering to one another as though stuck together by some mysterious gravity, growing rapidly in size until there was a misshapen mound of broken bones twenty feet high in the middle of the room. Purple fire exploded into being around the bone mound, igniting it in an amethyst pyre that sent noxious black smoke boiling up toward the ceiling.
Then, slowly, the burning mound of bone turned toward Sidney and howled.
Sidney stared at the monstrosity for a moment, then sighed.
"Well. Shit."
***********************
Still too long. Still need to use a timer.
Sidney gave his head a quick shake to clear it. This wasn't the time to dwell upon the past. He knelt down on the rooftop and scribbled a quick diagram with a piece of chalk - an oddly asymmetrical design full of loops and whorls contained within sharp geometries. Ordinarily, he didn't need written foci to help him focus his spellwork, but if his suspicions were correct, he would need to conserve as much energy as possible.
The elegant swirls of chalk began to glow with a soft white light as he completed the glyph. He deliberately left it incomplete for the moment as he reached out with his senses down below. There - the thrum of ritual magic was unmistakable, and on top of it the cold, slick sheen of necromancy. Magic of the darkest sort, and it was approaching a crescendo.
He had been tracking this warlock for days - ever since the murder of the man a block away from his home, although nobody but him would have realized it as such. The man had fallen asleep in his bed and never woke up again. The coroners had deemed it a fluke event - the man's heart had simply stopped. Rare, to be sure, but there was no sign that anything unnatural was the cause. To Sidney's senses, however, the man's body had been virtually soaked in black magic, like a viscous cloud of ink that boiled up from every pore and dripped down to pool underneath the EMT's gurney. He hadn't even needed to look to know that a piece of the man was missing - a nail, in this case, scraped from the bed.
Ordinarily, Sidney might have left the murder for the Watchers, the wizards and witches who acted as lawkeepers of the supernatural. He didn't like to make a habit of involving himself in arcane matters that didn't directly concern him, but something about the man's death didn't sit well with him. A...peculiarity, about the way the black cloud of magic had roiled and writhed about the corpse, which rang an alarm in his head that had been silent for decades, if not centuries. So it was that he began keeping a closer eye, watching for the inevitable second murder.
As it turned out, the second murder hadn't been the second at all. It was the fifth.
Two points were enough to draw him a line, however, and that line led him here. The Mutter Museum, home of the odd, the twisted, and the deformed. Originally a collection of specimens and medical tools used for the advancement of science, the museum had grown since its origins in 1858 to a treasury of over 20,000 pieces. Ranging from tumors and cysts to conjoined twins and malformed fetuses to an entire wall of human skulls, the exhibits at the museum were a monument to the various ways that the human body could turn on itself.
What the museum curators didn't and couldn't know, however, was that each piece donated to the museum carried with it a certain spiritual resonance, a small spark of power left over as a result of the owner's demise. Individually, they were weak, almost trivial, but so many pieces gathered together coalesced the power into something vastly more significant. Someone inside the museum was attempting to tap into that power now, and Sidney had a strong conviction it was for a reason that would end badly for everyone.
Satisfied that the ritual was reaching a critical point, Sidney infused his glyph with a bit of will, allowing the magic to take shape. The stone of the building rippled for a moment as though made of water. Then, with a soft, sibilant hiss, a small hole appeared in the rooftop. It grew steadily and rapidly, expanding until it was roughly the size of a manhole cover, then stopped, leaving a perfectly round entrance into one of the main chambers below. Immediately, the chill of necromantic magic boiled forth, acrid and cloying as a plume of cold smoke.
Sidney peered down into the hole. The exhibit was one of the permanent ones - a large rectangular chamber perhaps fifty or sixty feet by forty feet and split into two levels. The top level was lined with wooden display cases lined with glass, featuring antique medical devices, old documents, and one section affixed with hundreds of human skulls. A velvet carpeted walkway ran the perimeter of the top level, broken at the far end by a staircase that ran down into the ground floor. The displays there, both against the wall and free standing, consisted of malformed bones, misshapen fetuses in jars, and entire articulated skeletons of varying ages. On this floor, a man was kneeling in the aisle between two free standing display cases. Lines and sigils drawn onto the floor ran from him like spider webs, crawling up the stairs and along the second floor walkway. They pulsed with a sickly purple light that cast the room in an eerie light and highlighted the macabre air of the exhibit hall.
Rendering the man unconscious from the rooftop would be a simple matter. Even as Sidney prepared the spellwork, however, he recognized some of the glyphs looping around the room, and he dispersed his casting with a curse. A lattice of magic had been built into the room, shielding the man from direct attack. Moreover, it had been suffused with sufficient energy that if the ritual was disrupted in any way, the resultant explosion would likely obliterate everything with three blocks. The man had clearly anticipated company.
Sidney considered this for a moment. It was a foolish man who charged into a situation when he had not only been expected, but preparations made for his arrival.
"Fortunately," he whispered, "I'm not really a man."
Gathering the edges of his coat, he leapt through the hole, landing with catlike grace onto one of the second floor walkways. Although he made less sound than an owl taking flight, the man looked up the instant he arrived.
"Ah, you," he said. The warlock was young, no more than twenty two or twenty three, with a mop of shaggy black hair and horn-rim glasses. He was dressed in a simple white button-down shirt and khaki pants, his feet bare and stained with a dark liquid. His hands, too, were encrusted with some substance that appeared black by the ghostly purple light of the sigils snaking out from under his feet. He looked haggard, even exhausted, but his eyes glittered like the ocean surface under a full moon.
"Yes, me," Sidney replied. "If you were expecting company it wouldn't have hurt to freshen up a mite, no?"
"They told me you'd come," the warlock replied, swaying slightly as he stared up at Sidney. "They told me that only you would recognize the signs."
Sidney felt a chill run down his spine, but he kept his voice nonchalant as he walked around the perimeter of the room toward the stairs.
"It's so wonderful to have my talents recognized," he said drily, running hand along the railing as he walked. The metal was cold and seemed to buzz underneath his fingers. "If you wanted to play at necromancy, however, shouldn't you have found a nice crowded graveyard? I'll admit the aesthetics of this place is much more pleasing than some mossy tombstones, but you'd have found much stronger resonance."
"But not the resonance they need," the warlock replied. "It's twisted, here. Everything is twisted. Nothing here should ever have been, and that is what they need." Then, unexpectedly, he looked up at the hole in the ceiling. "Does it ever bother you, being watched every night by the corpses of your brothers?"
Sidney almost tripped and fell, so great was his shock. Only a handful of entities on the planet knew his background as something more than just a powerful magician. None of them, he was certain, would have given that information to a twenty-something hipster warlock. Not for any price he would be able to pay. There was only one other source of information the boy could have accessed. If that were true, the boy was less than a pawn - he was a tool and nothing more. The damage to his mind was likely already irreparable.
"Oh, they're no more my actual brothers than the painting of a man is the subject himself," he heard himself saying as he scrambled to recover, "but I suppose the difference is largely academic at this point."
The warlock nodded, as if Sidney had confirmed something he had suspected all along.
"You don't look very much like a star," he said, after a moment.
"I do hate being recognized in the streets," Sidney replied. "Paparazzi, you understand. So annoying."
"What was the word they used?" the warlock mused to himself. "Sidereal. That's what they called you."
"Tell me, what did they offer you?" Sidney asked. "What was the carrot they waved under your nose for you to play obedient little puppet?"
The warlock hesitated, then said, "They said they could bring her back. Death doesn't exist for them. They're not bound by it and never have been. All they would need is...the heart of a star."
"You poor, foolish boy," Sidney said, his voice cold. "Yes, they could give you what they promised, with or without my heart, but you would regret it to the end of your days. Which would be soon, if you were lucky."
"You can't hurt me here," the warlock said. "The neighborhood would burn if you even tried."
"I don't want to hurt you, but I will if I have to. Your little ward can't shield you forever. Stop now and perhaps you can still walk away from this."
"You can't hurt me," the warlock repeated, "but I can hurt you."
He lifted his hands. Dark purple flames danced into life above his outstretched fingers, and the sigils underneath his feet grew incandescent. Violet lightning surged from his fingertips, forking dozens, then hundreds of times, shattering the glass in the display cases as they raked across the walls of the exhibit. Sidney shouted a single word and hurled himself to one side, one arm pointed forward with all five fingers splayed. A transparent hemisphere of pale blue light sprang into existence directly in front of him, and the lightning bolts splashed against it in a cascade of brilliant purple sparks.
Even as Sidney got to his feet, however, it became apparent that the bolts aimed at him were largely a cursory effect. With a clattering noise like a wave of falling dominoes, the bones from the exhibits flew toward the center of the room, skulls and femurs and hip bones tearing themselves from the walls in a chorus of splintering sounds. They coalesced around the warlock, each bone piece adhering to one another as though stuck together by some mysterious gravity, growing rapidly in size until there was a misshapen mound of broken bones twenty feet high in the middle of the room. Purple fire exploded into being around the bone mound, igniting it in an amethyst pyre that sent noxious black smoke boiling up toward the ceiling.
Then, slowly, the burning mound of bone turned toward Sidney and howled.
Sidney stared at the monstrosity for a moment, then sighed.
"Well. Shit."
***********************
Still too long. Still need to use a timer.
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
100 Days of Pages, Page 6: Speaker for the Gods
Kanaya dayne Davos sat low in her chair, idly twirling her quill while Loremaster tres Negiri drew several diagrams on the slate board at the front of the classroom. History was not her forte, but Speaker's History particularly drew her ire as a subject matter. For something that by definition should have been grounded in purest fact, the amount of mystery, hearsay, and pure speculation that surrounded the topic made studying history feel utterly unpalatable. Speaker's History only made it worse by adding mythology and theology to the mix, which then made what should have been an evaluation of concrete fact feel like blindly grasping at the shadows of a children's story.
"Kanaya dayne Davos?"
Kanaya snapped to attention as her named was called, suddenly acutely aware that every pair of eyes in the classroom was now turned to her. Loremaster tres Negiri was glaring particularly fiercely at her, gold-bangled arms crossed in front of her chest and eyes like pools of gleaming oil surrounded by the flames of her crimson kohl.
"I beg your pardon, Lorespeaker. What was the question?"
"I asked," Loremaster tres Negiri said slowly, though only the barest hint of impatience leaked from her voice, "why the Allspeaker iman Oshara refused the peace overtures sent by Grand Khalif Uzeph, though it could well have meant decades more of war and suffering on both fronts. This was part of the reading you were supposed to do prior to attending class today."
"Yes. Peace overtures. Of course."
Kanaya cleared her throat nervously as a chorus of tittering came from the opposite end of the room. Ashia zar Mishra, almost certainly, and her band of insufferable toadies. Kanaya desperately scanned her memories of the reading as Loremaster tres Negiri silenced the laughter with a smoldering glare. There had been so many pages, so many pilgrimages and processions and overtures and one Allspeaker after another that she had lost track of them all and finally simply fallen asleep at her desk. She could remember Grand Khalif Uzeph, and the subsequent Lusaran War, but the circumstances surrounding its beginnings completely eluded her. Finally, unable to come up with an answer, she threw out the most probable thing she could imagine had happened.
"The...Allspeaker, Highest among the High, read in omens and portents that Grand Khalif Uzeph was a base and untrustworthy man. She saw that the Allmother was whispering a great truth to her, and though refusing the peace overture meant further conflict, accepting it would only lead to greater tragedy for the children of her children."
Loremaster tres Negiri's mouth twitched at one corner.
"Correct in its fundamentals, if somewhat lacking in specificity." She turned toward the other side of the room. "Ashia zar Mishra. If you are able to laugh while someone else contemplates their answers, perhaps you can elaborate on the other reasons that drove Allspeaker iman Oshara."
"Of course, Loremaster," Ashia responded in honeyed tones, shooting Kanaya a lofty sneer even as she stood to answer. "The premier answer must be that Grand Khalif Uzeph was a man. He was never meant to rule the great City-State of Lusare. His claim to the throne was through his wife, the Grand Khali Rania vash Zuuren, and upon her demise - her very questionable demise, I should add - he was to have held regency as Seneschal only until their daughter was old enough to take the throne. Declaring himself Grand Khalif instead, while not unprecedented, revealed an inherently deceptive and sinister nature, which of course only lent strength to the omens that Allspeaker iman Oshara saw upon the winds and in the trees. Any peace she made with him could not have lasted, and would have been regarded as weakness when he was deposed. Her wisdom proved prescient when the Grand Khalif was removed not two years after, and vash Zuuren's cousin, Suuraya zar Zuuren, succeeded her as Grand Khali."
Ashia gave another disgustingly sweet smile and sat back down. Kanaya fought back the urge to make retching noises.
Loremaster tres Negiri nodded. "Yes. Very good. The combination of the two answers offers a more complete insight into some of the factors that drove Allspeaker iman Oshara. What your text does not mention, however, is that her decision was not made without great deliberation, after many weeks of discussion and even arguments with various advisors and members of her council. The Allspeaker was initially moved to accept peace, but pressure from Hierocracy ultimately led to her final decision. There are some, however, who believe that had Allspeaker iman Oshara accepted the Grand Khalif's offer, the resulting stability would have permitted him to consolidate his rule, and the peace could indeed have been a lasting one. And we must remember that the succession of Suuraya zar Zuuren saw the execution of Uzeph vos Zuuren, the mysterious disappearance of Rania vash Zuuren's infant daughter, and the beginnings of one of the bloodiest conflicts in Telila's history."
The Loremaster paused for a moment, looking out over the classroom. One of her trademark smiles, slight and mysterious, touched her lips as she said, "What do you think? Did Allspeaker iman Oshara make the correct decision?"
"No," Kanaya said immediately. "The decades of war that followed claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands - perhaps even more if you take into account the pestilence and famine that raged for years even after peace was brokered. The Grand Khalif may have been a man, and perhaps he came to his position through questionable means, but what he offered was beneficial for both Lusare and Telila. Rejecting his offer on the basis of his sex was foolish and short-sighted."
Another chorus of tittering came from Ashia's corner.
"Do you speak so passionately for the empowerment of men, Kanaya dayne Davos?" Ashia asked, her voice dripping with mockery. "Is there a milk-faced little slave boy at home with dreams of joining you in the Scriptorium? Or perhaps joining with you?"
Kanaya felt her face flush with heat as the rest of the classroom exploded with laughter. The Flamespeaker's Words sprang unbidden to her lips, hovering there, demanding release, and the golden flames that burned steadily in the oil lamps around the classroom flickered in anticipation. None of the other students appeared to notice, but Kanaya saw Loremaster tres Negiri glance first at the lamps, then at her, and she quickly averted her gaze downward. The Words went unspoken.
"Enough!" Loremaster tres Negiri rapped her rod loudly against her lectern, until the class quieted down. "That is not an appropriate statement to make in the classroom, Ashia zar Mishra,"she said sternly. "If you have something to say that is actually cogent to the discussion, speak it. Otherwise keep your mouth shut."
Fury flashed through Ashia's eyes, but when she spoke her voice was as calm and as sweet as it ever was. "Of course, Loremaster - it was a poor jest. My sincerest apologies. For my part, I believe the Allspeaker was right to have made the decision that she did. Other sources indicate strongly that the Grand Khalif would have fallen regardless of whether there was peace. Also, had the Allspeaker accepted Uzeph's offer, there are documents suggesting that both Natooro and Prospia would have joined Lusare against Telila after the Grand Khalif was removed. And of course that does not even account for the devastation inherent in running counter to the Allmother's will."
"Which was, of course, the argument posed by the Hierocracy," Loremaster tres Negiri replied. "Interpreting the will of the Allmother is not so simple as it seems, but if there is one thing you take away from this course, it is that the Allspeaker's will IS the Allmother's will. Each of the Highspeakers are Chosen precisely because they cleave so strongly to the essence of their God. Their decisions, for good or for ill, are the decisions of the Gods, but that doesn't mean that their decisions are necessarily the best ones. The Gods are not infallible - not even the Allmother - because we are not infallible."
Ashia gasped, her smile finally slipping. "But that is blasphemy!"
"No, although you've clearly been listening to Highspeaker tes m'Pura a little too closely," the Loremaster said blandly. "The Gods invest their power in us, to a greater or lesser degree depending on numerous factors, and in turn we execute their will here on Dunara. Our will and our decisions, however, represent a process of contemplation for each of them. That is why there have been, at times in the past, multiple Highspeakers Chosen by a particular God, sometimes even in different City-States at war. Their disagreement is a conflict in the mind of the God, their ability to come to peace with each other a way of helping the God come to terms with herself. Had the Allspeaker chosen peace with the Grand Khalif, that too would have been the Allmother's will, omens or no."
"Well," Ashia appeared to mull over the statement, then shook her head as her ,"I must defer to your wisdom, Loremaster. Still, I believe the Allspeaker's decision to have been the correct one. Men are creatures crude and base, filled with violent passions and unspeakable desires. There is a reason their ability to Speak for the Gods is so much weaker than that of women, and why in all of Telila's history not one man has ever held the position of Allspeaker. It is improper, perhaps even unholy, for one to hold a position of authority, much less rule a City-State."
"The Words of all men are not weak, Ashia zar Mishra," Kanaya snapped, jumping to her feet, "and not all women Speak for the Gods with strength and clarity. Many renowned men have been highly notable Speakers, even Highspeakers, and men who have no ability to Speak at all have served well as members of the council. Would you claim their authority to be unholy? The ability to utilize the Divine Words does not confer the wisdom to govern."
"Perhaps you're right," Ashia shrugged. "Men do have a place in the service of the Allmother, when they remember their place. But lest you forget, Kanaya dayne Davos, there is one Highspeaker who has always been a man. One God who has only ever chosen males to Speak for him. Would you say he bears wisdom enough to rule?"
Loremaster tres Negiri drew in a sharp breath. "That is enough, Ashia zar Mishra. Highspeaker Valcaryan shoulders a tremendous burden, and you will speak of him with respect."
"Nezereth is the source of all pain, suffering, and woe, Loremaster, and only men have ever Spoken for him. That alone should be a warning against permitting them too much power. Men only speak the language of violence and suffering-"
"I said, that is enough!" The Loremaster traded glares with Ashia zar Mishra for a moment, then sighed. "I have allowed this lesson to digress too far, but it appears we are out of time. Read pages 320 through 394 of your text for tomorrow and be prepared to discuss the finer points of the peace treaty with Lusare."
The class was immediately a bustle of activity as girls rushed to pack up their papers and quills into their satchels. Kanaya angrily stuffed her things into her bag, then slung it over her shoulder and shoved her way out of the classroom. She had not gone ten feet into the hallway, however, when the familiar voice called out, "Oh, Davos!"
Kanaya closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then turned to glare at Ashia zar Mishra and her three flunkies.
"Do accept my apology, Davos," Ashia said sweetly, a smug smile tugging at her lips as she rapped a finger against the side of her face. "Of course this topic would touch you so. It was so silly of me to forget. Highspeaker Treo dorn Davian was your uncle, was he not? A shame, what happened, but it was foolish for him to extend his reach too far. A mud monkey cannot hope to grasp the sun, after all."
"Don't you dare, Mishra," Kanaya hissed. "Don't you dare insult my uncle."
"Or what, Davos?" Ashia asked. "What will you do to defend your poor uncle's honor?"
A small crowd had gathered at this point, surrounding the two of them in a low chorus of giggles and whispers. Ashia barely noticed them in her rage. Heat rose from her chest, the sound of sizzling flames suddenly deafening in her ears, and almost without realizing she Spoke a Word of Fire. Four brilliant orbs of golden light sprang into existence around her head, their heat nearly singing her hair, and at a gesture from her they soared toward Ashia zar Mishra.
The other girl had been prepared for exactly such an attack, however. She Spoke a sonorous word, something Ashia could barely hear, much less understand, and the air between them was suddenly a rippling sheet of water that caught Kanaya's fireballs, extinguishing them in bursts of steam. Then, without missing a beat, the wall of water coalesced into a whip-like tendril that lashed out with lightning speed. Before Kanaya could react, the water whip had wrapped around her ankle and pulled her leg out from underneath her. She fell hard onto the marble floor, knocking the wind from her lungs and cracking the back of her head against the stone. For a moment she could only lie there, struggling to catch her breath as blinding pain pulsed through the back of her skull. Before she even fully realized what had happened, however, something grasped her firmly about the waist and hoisted her into the air.
"Attacking a fellow student," Ashia zar Mishra tsked. "Such behavior is unbefitting a student of the Scriptorium, Davos. Really, somebody should teach you some manners."
And then something was slapping at her behind, whipping it as if she were a babe barely out of her smallclothes. Kanaya roared in outrage and struggled to turn toward Ashia, but other tendrils of water shot out from the other girl and wrapped themselves around her wrist and ankles, while another snaked around her face to prevent her from Speaking. The tendrils held her fast as Ashia beat her again and again with her whip of water. All around them, other students pointed and whispered and laughed. Some looked shocked, perhaps even appalled, but nobody moved to assist her. Heat bloomed again in Kanaya's face, this time from shame, but no matter how much she struggled she could not release herself from Ashia's manacles.
"What is happening here?" a voice shouted from the other end of the hallway.
The tendrils of water abruptly vanished and Kanaya flopped unceremoniously to the ground, adding another few bruises to her already tender knees and elbows. She looked over her shoulder to see Loremaster tres Negiri stalking over, her face dark as thunderclouds as bolts of electricity arced around her head.
"We Speak for the Gods in order to best ensure their will is carried out in this world," the Loremaster hissed, punctuating the sentence with a bolt of lightning that sent sparks crackling up and down the walls. "The Divine Words are not to be used for common brawling in the halls of the Scriptorium."
"I was merely defending myself, Loremaster," Ashia put on an injured expression. "We were discussing our differences of opinion regarding the matter of male Speakers, but Kanaya dayne Davos has such a temper."
Loremaster tres Negiri glared at her, then at Kanaya, then at the crowd that had surrounded them.
"Begone with you, all of you!" she snapped, finally. "Class is over and you have your assignments. It is unseemly to be dallying in the hallways like a pack of wildcats."
The crowd of girls scattered. Ashia zar Mishra gave the Loremaster a deep bow, then turned and swept by Kanaya without a second glance. Her three flunkies giggled under their breaths as they followed, one of them "accidentally" kicking Kanaya in the shoulder as they breezed past. Kanaya stared after them from the floor, pure hatred boiling through her veins like serpent venom, then slowly pulled herself to her feet and reached for her satchel.
"Not you, dayne Davos," Loremaster Negiri said shortly. "You come with me."
Without waiting for an answer, she turned and stalked back toward the classroom, leaving Kanaya to stumble after her.
***************************
I'm almost inclined to count this one as two, it certainly took long enough. I think I'm losing the point of these exercises - I should put a time limit on how long I spend on each of these. The world in this story is one that I'd kinda like to develop into a longer and more-fully formed piece, however.
"Kanaya dayne Davos?"
Kanaya snapped to attention as her named was called, suddenly acutely aware that every pair of eyes in the classroom was now turned to her. Loremaster tres Negiri was glaring particularly fiercely at her, gold-bangled arms crossed in front of her chest and eyes like pools of gleaming oil surrounded by the flames of her crimson kohl.
"I beg your pardon, Lorespeaker. What was the question?"
"I asked," Loremaster tres Negiri said slowly, though only the barest hint of impatience leaked from her voice, "why the Allspeaker iman Oshara refused the peace overtures sent by Grand Khalif Uzeph, though it could well have meant decades more of war and suffering on both fronts. This was part of the reading you were supposed to do prior to attending class today."
"Yes. Peace overtures. Of course."
Kanaya cleared her throat nervously as a chorus of tittering came from the opposite end of the room. Ashia zar Mishra, almost certainly, and her band of insufferable toadies. Kanaya desperately scanned her memories of the reading as Loremaster tres Negiri silenced the laughter with a smoldering glare. There had been so many pages, so many pilgrimages and processions and overtures and one Allspeaker after another that she had lost track of them all and finally simply fallen asleep at her desk. She could remember Grand Khalif Uzeph, and the subsequent Lusaran War, but the circumstances surrounding its beginnings completely eluded her. Finally, unable to come up with an answer, she threw out the most probable thing she could imagine had happened.
"The...Allspeaker, Highest among the High, read in omens and portents that Grand Khalif Uzeph was a base and untrustworthy man. She saw that the Allmother was whispering a great truth to her, and though refusing the peace overture meant further conflict, accepting it would only lead to greater tragedy for the children of her children."
Loremaster tres Negiri's mouth twitched at one corner.
"Correct in its fundamentals, if somewhat lacking in specificity." She turned toward the other side of the room. "Ashia zar Mishra. If you are able to laugh while someone else contemplates their answers, perhaps you can elaborate on the other reasons that drove Allspeaker iman Oshara."
"Of course, Loremaster," Ashia responded in honeyed tones, shooting Kanaya a lofty sneer even as she stood to answer. "The premier answer must be that Grand Khalif Uzeph was a man. He was never meant to rule the great City-State of Lusare. His claim to the throne was through his wife, the Grand Khali Rania vash Zuuren, and upon her demise - her very questionable demise, I should add - he was to have held regency as Seneschal only until their daughter was old enough to take the throne. Declaring himself Grand Khalif instead, while not unprecedented, revealed an inherently deceptive and sinister nature, which of course only lent strength to the omens that Allspeaker iman Oshara saw upon the winds and in the trees. Any peace she made with him could not have lasted, and would have been regarded as weakness when he was deposed. Her wisdom proved prescient when the Grand Khalif was removed not two years after, and vash Zuuren's cousin, Suuraya zar Zuuren, succeeded her as Grand Khali."
Ashia gave another disgustingly sweet smile and sat back down. Kanaya fought back the urge to make retching noises.
Loremaster tres Negiri nodded. "Yes. Very good. The combination of the two answers offers a more complete insight into some of the factors that drove Allspeaker iman Oshara. What your text does not mention, however, is that her decision was not made without great deliberation, after many weeks of discussion and even arguments with various advisors and members of her council. The Allspeaker was initially moved to accept peace, but pressure from Hierocracy ultimately led to her final decision. There are some, however, who believe that had Allspeaker iman Oshara accepted the Grand Khalif's offer, the resulting stability would have permitted him to consolidate his rule, and the peace could indeed have been a lasting one. And we must remember that the succession of Suuraya zar Zuuren saw the execution of Uzeph vos Zuuren, the mysterious disappearance of Rania vash Zuuren's infant daughter, and the beginnings of one of the bloodiest conflicts in Telila's history."
The Loremaster paused for a moment, looking out over the classroom. One of her trademark smiles, slight and mysterious, touched her lips as she said, "What do you think? Did Allspeaker iman Oshara make the correct decision?"
"No," Kanaya said immediately. "The decades of war that followed claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands - perhaps even more if you take into account the pestilence and famine that raged for years even after peace was brokered. The Grand Khalif may have been a man, and perhaps he came to his position through questionable means, but what he offered was beneficial for both Lusare and Telila. Rejecting his offer on the basis of his sex was foolish and short-sighted."
Another chorus of tittering came from Ashia's corner.
"Do you speak so passionately for the empowerment of men, Kanaya dayne Davos?" Ashia asked, her voice dripping with mockery. "Is there a milk-faced little slave boy at home with dreams of joining you in the Scriptorium? Or perhaps joining with you?"
Kanaya felt her face flush with heat as the rest of the classroom exploded with laughter. The Flamespeaker's Words sprang unbidden to her lips, hovering there, demanding release, and the golden flames that burned steadily in the oil lamps around the classroom flickered in anticipation. None of the other students appeared to notice, but Kanaya saw Loremaster tres Negiri glance first at the lamps, then at her, and she quickly averted her gaze downward. The Words went unspoken.
"Enough!" Loremaster tres Negiri rapped her rod loudly against her lectern, until the class quieted down. "That is not an appropriate statement to make in the classroom, Ashia zar Mishra,"she said sternly. "If you have something to say that is actually cogent to the discussion, speak it. Otherwise keep your mouth shut."
Fury flashed through Ashia's eyes, but when she spoke her voice was as calm and as sweet as it ever was. "Of course, Loremaster - it was a poor jest. My sincerest apologies. For my part, I believe the Allspeaker was right to have made the decision that she did. Other sources indicate strongly that the Grand Khalif would have fallen regardless of whether there was peace. Also, had the Allspeaker accepted Uzeph's offer, there are documents suggesting that both Natooro and Prospia would have joined Lusare against Telila after the Grand Khalif was removed. And of course that does not even account for the devastation inherent in running counter to the Allmother's will."
"Which was, of course, the argument posed by the Hierocracy," Loremaster tres Negiri replied. "Interpreting the will of the Allmother is not so simple as it seems, but if there is one thing you take away from this course, it is that the Allspeaker's will IS the Allmother's will. Each of the Highspeakers are Chosen precisely because they cleave so strongly to the essence of their God. Their decisions, for good or for ill, are the decisions of the Gods, but that doesn't mean that their decisions are necessarily the best ones. The Gods are not infallible - not even the Allmother - because we are not infallible."
Ashia gasped, her smile finally slipping. "But that is blasphemy!"
"No, although you've clearly been listening to Highspeaker tes m'Pura a little too closely," the Loremaster said blandly. "The Gods invest their power in us, to a greater or lesser degree depending on numerous factors, and in turn we execute their will here on Dunara. Our will and our decisions, however, represent a process of contemplation for each of them. That is why there have been, at times in the past, multiple Highspeakers Chosen by a particular God, sometimes even in different City-States at war. Their disagreement is a conflict in the mind of the God, their ability to come to peace with each other a way of helping the God come to terms with herself. Had the Allspeaker chosen peace with the Grand Khalif, that too would have been the Allmother's will, omens or no."
"Well," Ashia appeared to mull over the statement, then shook her head as her ,"I must defer to your wisdom, Loremaster. Still, I believe the Allspeaker's decision to have been the correct one. Men are creatures crude and base, filled with violent passions and unspeakable desires. There is a reason their ability to Speak for the Gods is so much weaker than that of women, and why in all of Telila's history not one man has ever held the position of Allspeaker. It is improper, perhaps even unholy, for one to hold a position of authority, much less rule a City-State."
"The Words of all men are not weak, Ashia zar Mishra," Kanaya snapped, jumping to her feet, "and not all women Speak for the Gods with strength and clarity. Many renowned men have been highly notable Speakers, even Highspeakers, and men who have no ability to Speak at all have served well as members of the council. Would you claim their authority to be unholy? The ability to utilize the Divine Words does not confer the wisdom to govern."
"Perhaps you're right," Ashia shrugged. "Men do have a place in the service of the Allmother, when they remember their place. But lest you forget, Kanaya dayne Davos, there is one Highspeaker who has always been a man. One God who has only ever chosen males to Speak for him. Would you say he bears wisdom enough to rule?"
Loremaster tres Negiri drew in a sharp breath. "That is enough, Ashia zar Mishra. Highspeaker Valcaryan shoulders a tremendous burden, and you will speak of him with respect."
"Nezereth is the source of all pain, suffering, and woe, Loremaster, and only men have ever Spoken for him. That alone should be a warning against permitting them too much power. Men only speak the language of violence and suffering-"
"I said, that is enough!" The Loremaster traded glares with Ashia zar Mishra for a moment, then sighed. "I have allowed this lesson to digress too far, but it appears we are out of time. Read pages 320 through 394 of your text for tomorrow and be prepared to discuss the finer points of the peace treaty with Lusare."
The class was immediately a bustle of activity as girls rushed to pack up their papers and quills into their satchels. Kanaya angrily stuffed her things into her bag, then slung it over her shoulder and shoved her way out of the classroom. She had not gone ten feet into the hallway, however, when the familiar voice called out, "Oh, Davos!"
Kanaya closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then turned to glare at Ashia zar Mishra and her three flunkies.
"Do accept my apology, Davos," Ashia said sweetly, a smug smile tugging at her lips as she rapped a finger against the side of her face. "Of course this topic would touch you so. It was so silly of me to forget. Highspeaker Treo dorn Davian was your uncle, was he not? A shame, what happened, but it was foolish for him to extend his reach too far. A mud monkey cannot hope to grasp the sun, after all."
"Don't you dare, Mishra," Kanaya hissed. "Don't you dare insult my uncle."
"Or what, Davos?" Ashia asked. "What will you do to defend your poor uncle's honor?"
A small crowd had gathered at this point, surrounding the two of them in a low chorus of giggles and whispers. Ashia barely noticed them in her rage. Heat rose from her chest, the sound of sizzling flames suddenly deafening in her ears, and almost without realizing she Spoke a Word of Fire. Four brilliant orbs of golden light sprang into existence around her head, their heat nearly singing her hair, and at a gesture from her they soared toward Ashia zar Mishra.
The other girl had been prepared for exactly such an attack, however. She Spoke a sonorous word, something Ashia could barely hear, much less understand, and the air between them was suddenly a rippling sheet of water that caught Kanaya's fireballs, extinguishing them in bursts of steam. Then, without missing a beat, the wall of water coalesced into a whip-like tendril that lashed out with lightning speed. Before Kanaya could react, the water whip had wrapped around her ankle and pulled her leg out from underneath her. She fell hard onto the marble floor, knocking the wind from her lungs and cracking the back of her head against the stone. For a moment she could only lie there, struggling to catch her breath as blinding pain pulsed through the back of her skull. Before she even fully realized what had happened, however, something grasped her firmly about the waist and hoisted her into the air.
"Attacking a fellow student," Ashia zar Mishra tsked. "Such behavior is unbefitting a student of the Scriptorium, Davos. Really, somebody should teach you some manners."
And then something was slapping at her behind, whipping it as if she were a babe barely out of her smallclothes. Kanaya roared in outrage and struggled to turn toward Ashia, but other tendrils of water shot out from the other girl and wrapped themselves around her wrist and ankles, while another snaked around her face to prevent her from Speaking. The tendrils held her fast as Ashia beat her again and again with her whip of water. All around them, other students pointed and whispered and laughed. Some looked shocked, perhaps even appalled, but nobody moved to assist her. Heat bloomed again in Kanaya's face, this time from shame, but no matter how much she struggled she could not release herself from Ashia's manacles.
"What is happening here?" a voice shouted from the other end of the hallway.
The tendrils of water abruptly vanished and Kanaya flopped unceremoniously to the ground, adding another few bruises to her already tender knees and elbows. She looked over her shoulder to see Loremaster tres Negiri stalking over, her face dark as thunderclouds as bolts of electricity arced around her head.
"We Speak for the Gods in order to best ensure their will is carried out in this world," the Loremaster hissed, punctuating the sentence with a bolt of lightning that sent sparks crackling up and down the walls. "The Divine Words are not to be used for common brawling in the halls of the Scriptorium."
"I was merely defending myself, Loremaster," Ashia put on an injured expression. "We were discussing our differences of opinion regarding the matter of male Speakers, but Kanaya dayne Davos has such a temper."
Loremaster tres Negiri glared at her, then at Kanaya, then at the crowd that had surrounded them.
"Begone with you, all of you!" she snapped, finally. "Class is over and you have your assignments. It is unseemly to be dallying in the hallways like a pack of wildcats."
The crowd of girls scattered. Ashia zar Mishra gave the Loremaster a deep bow, then turned and swept by Kanaya without a second glance. Her three flunkies giggled under their breaths as they followed, one of them "accidentally" kicking Kanaya in the shoulder as they breezed past. Kanaya stared after them from the floor, pure hatred boiling through her veins like serpent venom, then slowly pulled herself to her feet and reached for her satchel.
"Not you, dayne Davos," Loremaster Negiri said shortly. "You come with me."
Without waiting for an answer, she turned and stalked back toward the classroom, leaving Kanaya to stumble after her.
***************************
I'm almost inclined to count this one as two, it certainly took long enough. I think I'm losing the point of these exercises - I should put a time limit on how long I spend on each of these. The world in this story is one that I'd kinda like to develop into a longer and more-fully formed piece, however.
Monday, September 5, 2016
100 Days of Pages, Page 5: The Woman and the Snake
She was brushing her hair when the serpent approached, though this did not seem to cause The Woman any particular alarm. Nor was that remarkable, for nothing dangerous existed within the Garden, save perhaps the object that she was gazing at with curious eyes while she brushed. Even that was not particularly exceptional - a short, flowering tree of perhaps medium height, with trifoliate leaves and large dusky fruits the shape of teardrops. It stood barely taller than she did, and if anything seemed to be drooping somewhat disconsolately in the heat.
"Oh, there you are," the Serpent said as it slithered up the rock next to her. "I thought I'd find you here."
"Oh hello, friend Serpent," the Woman replied, pausing her brushing to give him an affectionate pat on the head. "Were you looking for me?"
"Yes and no." The Serpent stopped and looked more closely at the Woman's brush. "What-what is that? Are those bones? Are you brushing your hair with fish bones?!"
The Woman looked down at her brush with some surprise. "Yes?"
"Stop that! That's disgusting. And unhygienic. Where did you even get fish bones, anyway?"
"Man gave it to me," the Woman replied. "He thought it was pretty, and that since I was pretty we might be pretty together. And then I got dirt and leaves in my hair and I thought-"
"You thought it'd be a good idea to let some rotten fish bones touch your head," the Serpent sighed. "Well, it probably doesn't matter anyway. It's not like you can get a staph infection while you're here."
"What's a staph infection?"
"Something horrible and unpleasant. Don't worry about it, it's not important." The Serpent gave the Woman a sidelong glance. "I saw you eyeballing that tree. You're thinking about it, aren't you?"
"Yes," the Woman replied, "though I know that I should not. I cannot help myself."
"Don't agonize too much about it - it's the way you were wired, unfortunately," the Serpent said. "Which makes this whole thing sort of rigged." He gave her a sour look. "They're going to blame me for this, you know."
"Blame you for what?"
"What you're about to do."
"What am I about to do?"
"Please, I can practically see the gears spinning around in your head. To be honest, I think I'm supposed to be pushing you along, give you the extra little nudge you need to turn that idea you've got baking in your noggin into a pretty little muffin of sin."
"What is sin? I've never had sin before. Is it lovely?"
"Lovely as a hernia. It's pretty much the source of all human agony and suffering for a million years to come. The Buddhists will blame it on desire, but that's really a potato potahto sort of deal."
"Oh dear," the Woman looked faintly alarmed. "Then it seems I should not bake this sin muffin."
"I'm pretty sure you'll bake whatever muffin you want, and I do mean that euphemistically," the Serpent sighed again. "I don't really think anything I say one way or the other is going to do much to sway your opinion. Isn't that funny? Five, ten, fifteen thousand years from now they'll still be talking about how I tempted you into eating that fig, when really He stuck the idea in there from the get-go."
"I was told that I should not touch the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge," the Woman said. "I was told that I may partake of anything else in this Garden, but that the Fruit of Knowledge alone is forbidden to me. There is so much else here to see - I have wandered this place with Man for countless turnings of light and dark, and still I believe I have touched but a small piece of the Garden. Why do I yearn for this small, plain fruit when there is so much else I might experience?"
"I'd say it's a test, except what's the point of a test when you already know the outcome? That's really the problem here. I'm supposed to make some grand pronouncement about how if you eat that fig, you'll be as a god yourself, and that's why the Big Man doesn't want you to touch it, but I think on some level we both know we could run an industrial farm with that steaming pile of dog turds."
The Woman eyed the fig with some surprise.
"Would we be as God, if we taste of this fruit?"
The Serpent gave her a level stare, then grasped her firmly about the chin with his tail and turned her face so that they were staring eye to eye.
"No. You won't. You never will. Your children's children, a few hundred or a few thousand times removed, might approach the most infinitesimal piece of something like it, assuming that they don't blow themselves to smithereens, but that's a crapshoot I don't have the emotional fortitude to go into. And giving birth...man, giving birth will involve blood and tears and all sorts of other bodily fluids that make me a little queasy to think about." The Serpent stopped and eyed the Woman up and down rather critically. "Come to think of it, I'm not too sure what He was planning to do about that if you stay. All your nerve endings are intact and it's not like your cervix is a rubber o-ring. Maybe hit you in the spine with a magical epidural every time you get knocked up? Maybe actually have that talk with the storks we'd been keeping a pin on? Anyway, neither here nor there.
"The point is, sister...the point is that it's impossible to even understand what He is. I realize He looks like a nice old man, but saying that's the tip of the iceberg is like saying a black hole kinda sucks. He's all quantum entanglements and strange particles and cosmic loops, and you are flesh and blood and bone. Even your mind, this wonderful, abstracted ball of bottled lightning and mysterious dreams, will only be able to approach understanding Him in the most remote sense of the word. You'll only see the first letter of the first page of the first book in a library the size of a galaxy, and that alone will be a pretty fair accomplishment.
The Serpent looked to one side, breaking eye contact with the Woman. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear Man stumbling through the brush and calling out for Woman to join him in the spring. "To be honest, even I don't really get Him, and I'm his firstborn. None of us do. Can an amoeba understand elementary particle physics and its application toward clean energy and ecological conservation? I'm created from frozen starlight and concentrated will, and He's as much a mystery to me as He is to you. I don't really get why He wants you to leave, and I certainly don't understand why He has to do it in this roundabout way. I don't know why I'm the one who has to be telling you all of this, but I know for a fact everything I'm saying is just pushing you farther and farther toward shoving that fruit in your mouth, and it's making me really morose."
"Are you saddened, friend Serpent?" the Woman asked, smiling at him.
"That's basically what morose means, which you'll find out soon enough. I actually like you and Man, so believe me when I say everything get flushed down the crapper from here. You'll have to wander out into the cold, stumble across plains of blasted rock and scouring winds looking for scraps of peace, and scrabble in the dirt for food and water. Everything is going to be hard surfaces and sharp edges and barbs that dig into your soul like rusty hooks. I don't see why he would give you the Garden only to take it away, and I think it sucks."
The Woman looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, "You said that we would approach Him, a hundred or a thousand years from now. Approach a piece of Him, if we partake of the fruit."
"I guess. I dunno. It's hard to see with all the fractal shifting, but there's a chance, maybe, that you'll reach some sort of transcendence, a few thousand generations down. Again, requires not blowing yourselves to smithereens, which seems way more likely than cosmic Nirvana."
"Then perhaps that is what He wants. For us to try. To see if He has created something that can one day speak to Him as an equal."
"I really don't think you've heard a single word I said, or else you interpreted it really, really selectively, but this whole conversation was basically a boulder rolling downhill the entire time anyway."
"And even if that is not the case, should we not try to be greater than ourselves? Though the way is long and the path is hard, is it not worth the effort to be better than what we are?"
"I can't even tell you what a gross oversimplification that is, but on some level you're right. You'll accomplish things you could never hope to dream of by staying here. Not that that will be much consolation to anyone in, say, Germany 1939, but maybe that's just me being picky."
"Will you still speak to me, Serpent, after we must leave this Garden? I should like a friend, if we must wander a world of hooks and barbs, who might offer me wise counsel."
"It's gonna be trouble. Witch hunts and inquisitions and source of all evil, yadda yadda yadda. Literally centuries of misogyny disguised as holiness."
The Woman simply gazed at him, smiling.
"Yeah, fine. Whatever. I'll do my best." The Serpent reached up with a segment of his tail. "Here, give me the fish bone. Least I can do is make sure it's clean, if you're gonna take it with you out of here."
"Thank you," the Woman said, handing him her comb, and in the same gesture bent down to kiss him on the forehead. She turned toward the tree and reached for the fruit.
*******************
Are these getting longer? I feel like these are getting longer. I'll also be honest - I went back and edited a few lines afterward. Sue me.
"Oh, there you are," the Serpent said as it slithered up the rock next to her. "I thought I'd find you here."
"Oh hello, friend Serpent," the Woman replied, pausing her brushing to give him an affectionate pat on the head. "Were you looking for me?"
"Yes and no." The Serpent stopped and looked more closely at the Woman's brush. "What-what is that? Are those bones? Are you brushing your hair with fish bones?!"
The Woman looked down at her brush with some surprise. "Yes?"
"Stop that! That's disgusting. And unhygienic. Where did you even get fish bones, anyway?"
"Man gave it to me," the Woman replied. "He thought it was pretty, and that since I was pretty we might be pretty together. And then I got dirt and leaves in my hair and I thought-"
"You thought it'd be a good idea to let some rotten fish bones touch your head," the Serpent sighed. "Well, it probably doesn't matter anyway. It's not like you can get a staph infection while you're here."
"What's a staph infection?"
"Something horrible and unpleasant. Don't worry about it, it's not important." The Serpent gave the Woman a sidelong glance. "I saw you eyeballing that tree. You're thinking about it, aren't you?"
"Yes," the Woman replied, "though I know that I should not. I cannot help myself."
"Don't agonize too much about it - it's the way you were wired, unfortunately," the Serpent said. "Which makes this whole thing sort of rigged." He gave her a sour look. "They're going to blame me for this, you know."
"Blame you for what?"
"What you're about to do."
"What am I about to do?"
"Please, I can practically see the gears spinning around in your head. To be honest, I think I'm supposed to be pushing you along, give you the extra little nudge you need to turn that idea you've got baking in your noggin into a pretty little muffin of sin."
"What is sin? I've never had sin before. Is it lovely?"
"Lovely as a hernia. It's pretty much the source of all human agony and suffering for a million years to come. The Buddhists will blame it on desire, but that's really a potato potahto sort of deal."
"Oh dear," the Woman looked faintly alarmed. "Then it seems I should not bake this sin muffin."
"I'm pretty sure you'll bake whatever muffin you want, and I do mean that euphemistically," the Serpent sighed again. "I don't really think anything I say one way or the other is going to do much to sway your opinion. Isn't that funny? Five, ten, fifteen thousand years from now they'll still be talking about how I tempted you into eating that fig, when really He stuck the idea in there from the get-go."
"I was told that I should not touch the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge," the Woman said. "I was told that I may partake of anything else in this Garden, but that the Fruit of Knowledge alone is forbidden to me. There is so much else here to see - I have wandered this place with Man for countless turnings of light and dark, and still I believe I have touched but a small piece of the Garden. Why do I yearn for this small, plain fruit when there is so much else I might experience?"
"I'd say it's a test, except what's the point of a test when you already know the outcome? That's really the problem here. I'm supposed to make some grand pronouncement about how if you eat that fig, you'll be as a god yourself, and that's why the Big Man doesn't want you to touch it, but I think on some level we both know we could run an industrial farm with that steaming pile of dog turds."
The Woman eyed the fig with some surprise.
"Would we be as God, if we taste of this fruit?"
The Serpent gave her a level stare, then grasped her firmly about the chin with his tail and turned her face so that they were staring eye to eye.
"No. You won't. You never will. Your children's children, a few hundred or a few thousand times removed, might approach the most infinitesimal piece of something like it, assuming that they don't blow themselves to smithereens, but that's a crapshoot I don't have the emotional fortitude to go into. And giving birth...man, giving birth will involve blood and tears and all sorts of other bodily fluids that make me a little queasy to think about." The Serpent stopped and eyed the Woman up and down rather critically. "Come to think of it, I'm not too sure what He was planning to do about that if you stay. All your nerve endings are intact and it's not like your cervix is a rubber o-ring. Maybe hit you in the spine with a magical epidural every time you get knocked up? Maybe actually have that talk with the storks we'd been keeping a pin on? Anyway, neither here nor there.
"The point is, sister...the point is that it's impossible to even understand what He is. I realize He looks like a nice old man, but saying that's the tip of the iceberg is like saying a black hole kinda sucks. He's all quantum entanglements and strange particles and cosmic loops, and you are flesh and blood and bone. Even your mind, this wonderful, abstracted ball of bottled lightning and mysterious dreams, will only be able to approach understanding Him in the most remote sense of the word. You'll only see the first letter of the first page of the first book in a library the size of a galaxy, and that alone will be a pretty fair accomplishment.
The Serpent looked to one side, breaking eye contact with the Woman. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear Man stumbling through the brush and calling out for Woman to join him in the spring. "To be honest, even I don't really get Him, and I'm his firstborn. None of us do. Can an amoeba understand elementary particle physics and its application toward clean energy and ecological conservation? I'm created from frozen starlight and concentrated will, and He's as much a mystery to me as He is to you. I don't really get why He wants you to leave, and I certainly don't understand why He has to do it in this roundabout way. I don't know why I'm the one who has to be telling you all of this, but I know for a fact everything I'm saying is just pushing you farther and farther toward shoving that fruit in your mouth, and it's making me really morose."
"Are you saddened, friend Serpent?" the Woman asked, smiling at him.
"That's basically what morose means, which you'll find out soon enough. I actually like you and Man, so believe me when I say everything get flushed down the crapper from here. You'll have to wander out into the cold, stumble across plains of blasted rock and scouring winds looking for scraps of peace, and scrabble in the dirt for food and water. Everything is going to be hard surfaces and sharp edges and barbs that dig into your soul like rusty hooks. I don't see why he would give you the Garden only to take it away, and I think it sucks."
The Woman looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, "You said that we would approach Him, a hundred or a thousand years from now. Approach a piece of Him, if we partake of the fruit."
"I guess. I dunno. It's hard to see with all the fractal shifting, but there's a chance, maybe, that you'll reach some sort of transcendence, a few thousand generations down. Again, requires not blowing yourselves to smithereens, which seems way more likely than cosmic Nirvana."
"Then perhaps that is what He wants. For us to try. To see if He has created something that can one day speak to Him as an equal."
"I really don't think you've heard a single word I said, or else you interpreted it really, really selectively, but this whole conversation was basically a boulder rolling downhill the entire time anyway."
"And even if that is not the case, should we not try to be greater than ourselves? Though the way is long and the path is hard, is it not worth the effort to be better than what we are?"
"I can't even tell you what a gross oversimplification that is, but on some level you're right. You'll accomplish things you could never hope to dream of by staying here. Not that that will be much consolation to anyone in, say, Germany 1939, but maybe that's just me being picky."
"Will you still speak to me, Serpent, after we must leave this Garden? I should like a friend, if we must wander a world of hooks and barbs, who might offer me wise counsel."
"It's gonna be trouble. Witch hunts and inquisitions and source of all evil, yadda yadda yadda. Literally centuries of misogyny disguised as holiness."
The Woman simply gazed at him, smiling.
"Yeah, fine. Whatever. I'll do my best." The Serpent reached up with a segment of his tail. "Here, give me the fish bone. Least I can do is make sure it's clean, if you're gonna take it with you out of here."
"Thank you," the Woman said, handing him her comb, and in the same gesture bent down to kiss him on the forehead. She turned toward the tree and reached for the fruit.
*******************
Are these getting longer? I feel like these are getting longer. I'll also be honest - I went back and edited a few lines afterward. Sue me.
Sunday, September 4, 2016
100 Days of Pages, Page 4: The Chaos Contingency
"It simply surprises me, the depth of your emotions on the matter," Gregorovich said as he sipped his martini. Leaning back in his chair, he gave a crisp snap of his fingers, causing a small bloom of blue fire to appear in midair above his hand. He watched it for a moment as it danced and flickered in the midair, then snapped his fingers again and extinguished the flames.
"You never even liked Vorchev," he continued, turning his attention back to Dorokhov. "You considered him, and here I quote, 'a stodgy, myopic bureaucrat who wouldn't know inspiration from a boot up his rear end.'"
"That doesn't mean I wished him dead!" Dorokhov replied as Gregorovich snapped another flame into life. "Well, all right, sometimes I wished him dead, but only in a metaphorical sense! I wanted his career in shambles, a flaming ruin upon which nothing of beauty would ever grow or bloom again, but it was only because of my love for the art, Leonid! The art! And to be honest, I think I had finally gotten through to him on 'Man on Stallion at Sunrise.' Now there's no telling how long it will be before they appoint a new director who can give me approval for the exhibit."
"Aha! And here we reach the truth of the matter," Gregorovich extinguished the flame with another snap of his fingers. "Yes, horrible inconvenience that. And undoubtedly 'Man on Stallion at Sunrise' is one of your better works. Vorchev would have been foolish indeed not to at least consider putting that on display. Still, your...shall we say, fiery antagonism with our esteemed Executive Creative Director was perhaps even more widely renowned than your artwork."
"I hope that is a joke, Leonid," Dorokhov replied, turning a deep shade of puce. "He was a difficult man to work with and a poor employer, but my feelings toward him in this regard were entirely professional."
"Do calm down, Antoine," Gregorovich replied, snapping another flame into existence. "I meant nothing by the comment, other than that you should be prepared. There's little to suggest that Vorchev's death was anything but natural, but his station requires an inquiry from the Commissary."
"I have nothing to fear from the Commissary, Leonid. Vorchev's death was an unfortunate accident. If they wish to speak to me of our professional relationship, I will be honest in my testimony."
"As you say," Gregorovich nodded, then extinguished the flame with a final clench of his fist. "Come, enough of this heavy talk. We were to be having an enjoyable brunch."
Later, after they had parted ways and Gregorovich had returned to his home and sanctum, he considered what the two of them had discussed. More importantly, he considered what he had recorded with his Listening Flame. It was an obscure magick, its origins dating back to the early 11th century, but he'd managed to piece it together with hints from various esoteric paintings they had hanging in storage. People thought the flickering blue fire was a habit, a twitch like bouncing one's feet, and Gregorovich was happy to let them keep thinking that.
Walking over to a basin filled with clean, distilled water, Gregorovich threw a small pinch of sparkling blue powder into the mix. Moments later, the image of an imposing man with colorless eyes and a bristling brown mop of a mustache appeared in the water. He gazed critically at Gregorovich, giving the appearance of an aggravated walrus.
"You're late," he said.
"My apologies, Commissar Yezhov," Gregorovich nodded his head respectfully. "I was having brunch with Dorokhov."
"Indeed? Report."
"Dorokhov clearly believes himself innocent, and while I don't believe he was intentionally involved in Vorchev's demise, something is amiss. There are traces of thaumaturgy lingering in his personal aura, which may be indicative of dominion magic. I also read hints of...something else. Too little residue for me to say for certain, but perhaps some form of entropy or chaos ritual." Gregorovich mused for a moment. "I think Dorokhov may have been manipulated into killing Vorchev, and chaos magic was the tool."
"You think someone else wanted Vorchev dead? For what reason?"
"I cannot say. They have gone to great lengths to conceal what they have done. Chaos magic is squirrely in the best of circumstances. Attempting it through a dominated patsy borders on insanity. Clearly it was important for Vorchev to be removed, but equally important that it be done quietly, with no possibility for the act to be traced back to its true originator. I would be surprised if anyone could definitively implicate Dorokhov himself, to be honest."
"I see." Yezhov was silent as he considered this, then said, "We will, of course, be officially investigating the matter. Assist the detectives, but do not appear overly involved. You must remain under cover, but your new assignment, Operative Gregorovich, is to determine the true hand behind this heinous crime. The Commissary will be sending another Operative to assist you."
"Very good, Commissar Yezhov. I shall prepare a dossier and debrief him when he arrives. How shall I recognize him? What shall his cover role be?"
"I do not think you will have any trouble recognizing her, Operative Gregorovich," Yezhov's voice took on an amused tone. "And as for her cover role, well...it is natural, is it not, that a mother should wish to visit her son from time to time?"
Gregorovich froze at this.
"I trust you will work excellently together," Yezhov shot him a rare smile, then cut the channel.
Gregorovich stared at the empty pan for a moment, seized by a most irrational urge to hurl it through the nearest window. Never let it be said that the Ministry didn't have a sense of humor, though it perhaps best resembled the humor of devils before they pushed their unfortunate charges back into the flame. He had moved to Svetlanagrad partially for its rich art history, partially for the opportunities that its endless political intrigues offered a young Ministry Operative, but mostly he had moved across the Federation to escape the shadow of his mother. No other operative had been as richly decorated in her time; it was all the more impressive considering her identity as an Operative remained a Vault secret, known only to select other Operatives and the ranking members of the Commissary. Gregorovich suspected that had it not been for their relationship, the knowledge would have been kept hidden even from him. Certainly his mother had never even hinted at it - a matter that he understood, though it still pricked at him with bitterness.
Wandering to a nearby cabinet, Gregorovich poured himself a vodka, neat, before taking a seat into a padded recliner and downing the whole drink in one shot.
Mother.
He sighed, then stood up and went back to the cabinet for the whole bottle.
***************************
Whoops! Wrote yesterday, but neglected to publish it. Super back-dating this!
"I have nothing to fear from the Commissary, Leonid. Vorchev's death was an unfortunate accident. If they wish to speak to me of our professional relationship, I will be honest in my testimony."
"As you say," Gregorovich nodded, then extinguished the flame with a final clench of his fist. "Come, enough of this heavy talk. We were to be having an enjoyable brunch."
Later, after they had parted ways and Gregorovich had returned to his home and sanctum, he considered what the two of them had discussed. More importantly, he considered what he had recorded with his Listening Flame. It was an obscure magick, its origins dating back to the early 11th century, but he'd managed to piece it together with hints from various esoteric paintings they had hanging in storage. People thought the flickering blue fire was a habit, a twitch like bouncing one's feet, and Gregorovich was happy to let them keep thinking that.
Walking over to a basin filled with clean, distilled water, Gregorovich threw a small pinch of sparkling blue powder into the mix. Moments later, the image of an imposing man with colorless eyes and a bristling brown mop of a mustache appeared in the water. He gazed critically at Gregorovich, giving the appearance of an aggravated walrus.
"You're late," he said.
"My apologies, Commissar Yezhov," Gregorovich nodded his head respectfully. "I was having brunch with Dorokhov."
"Indeed? Report."
"Dorokhov clearly believes himself innocent, and while I don't believe he was intentionally involved in Vorchev's demise, something is amiss. There are traces of thaumaturgy lingering in his personal aura, which may be indicative of dominion magic. I also read hints of...something else. Too little residue for me to say for certain, but perhaps some form of entropy or chaos ritual." Gregorovich mused for a moment. "I think Dorokhov may have been manipulated into killing Vorchev, and chaos magic was the tool."
"You think someone else wanted Vorchev dead? For what reason?"
"I cannot say. They have gone to great lengths to conceal what they have done. Chaos magic is squirrely in the best of circumstances. Attempting it through a dominated patsy borders on insanity. Clearly it was important for Vorchev to be removed, but equally important that it be done quietly, with no possibility for the act to be traced back to its true originator. I would be surprised if anyone could definitively implicate Dorokhov himself, to be honest."
"I see." Yezhov was silent as he considered this, then said, "We will, of course, be officially investigating the matter. Assist the detectives, but do not appear overly involved. You must remain under cover, but your new assignment, Operative Gregorovich, is to determine the true hand behind this heinous crime. The Commissary will be sending another Operative to assist you."
"Very good, Commissar Yezhov. I shall prepare a dossier and debrief him when he arrives. How shall I recognize him? What shall his cover role be?"
"I do not think you will have any trouble recognizing her, Operative Gregorovich," Yezhov's voice took on an amused tone. "And as for her cover role, well...it is natural, is it not, that a mother should wish to visit her son from time to time?"
Gregorovich froze at this.
"I trust you will work excellently together," Yezhov shot him a rare smile, then cut the channel.
Gregorovich stared at the empty pan for a moment, seized by a most irrational urge to hurl it through the nearest window. Never let it be said that the Ministry didn't have a sense of humor, though it perhaps best resembled the humor of devils before they pushed their unfortunate charges back into the flame. He had moved to Svetlanagrad partially for its rich art history, partially for the opportunities that its endless political intrigues offered a young Ministry Operative, but mostly he had moved across the Federation to escape the shadow of his mother. No other operative had been as richly decorated in her time; it was all the more impressive considering her identity as an Operative remained a Vault secret, known only to select other Operatives and the ranking members of the Commissary. Gregorovich suspected that had it not been for their relationship, the knowledge would have been kept hidden even from him. Certainly his mother had never even hinted at it - a matter that he understood, though it still pricked at him with bitterness.
Wandering to a nearby cabinet, Gregorovich poured himself a vodka, neat, before taking a seat into a padded recliner and downing the whole drink in one shot.
Mother.
He sighed, then stood up and went back to the cabinet for the whole bottle.
***************************
Whoops! Wrote yesterday, but neglected to publish it. Super back-dating this!
Saturday, September 3, 2016
100 Days of Pages, Page 3: Food for the Winter
The woods were deep and cold, although the full moon spread a sheet of silver over the snow coating the forest floor. The winds had finally settled, leaving the air crisp as fallen leaves, with tiny flickers of white that still drifted like embers across the night sky. Somewhere in the distance a wolf howled, its low keen filled with loneliness and loss, fading slowly into the dark.
Erik stepped lightly across the snow-covered ground, the sound of his footsteps muffled by the snow shoes he was wearing. His breath blew in plumes that glowed white in the moonlight, tiny icicles sparkling like jewelry from his brow and his beard. Frost brushed the surface of the thick coat he wore, clung to his gloves and his boots in a thin crust of rime. Still, though the cold penetrated like an ache deep into his bones, the hunter showed no discomfort. His eyes were pinned to the ground, following a trail of hoof prints that broke the pristine surface of the snow, examining the small splashes of red that ran in a polka dot trail to the right of the prints.
The deer had bled heavily at first, but the blood drops had been appearing farther and farther apart for the last fifteen minutes. It couldn't have much fight left in it and Erik was eager to bring this chase to an end. He was tired and hungry and he wanted to go home, but he couldn't bear the thought of going back empty handed yet again. Ilya would bear her hunger with a staunchness befitting a daughter of the woods, but for days, maybe even weeks, she had been rationing out her own portion of their winter stores to the children. Stubborn or not, she had too little strength left in her. Without food to fuel her inner flame, she would too easily fall to illness, and that was a weakness that would not survive winter in the forest.
Erik exhaled deeply, calling forth his reserves of strength to banish his exhaustion, or to at least hold it at bay until he could capture his prize. No, there would be no returning home without the spoils of this hunt. There had been little enough game this winter, and he'd had to drive deeper and deeper into the forest to find fresh meat for his family. Coming across the deer, lean and starved-looking as it was, had been a stroke of pure good luck. Less lucky was the wind that arose the moment he took his shot, casting snow into his eyes and nudging his aim. He'd only managed a wounding shot, although he had faith that the wound would eventually be a mortal one. Erik had no intention of allowing this prize to slip through his fingers.
He continued forward, lightly placing one foot in front of the other, his every sense scanning the air for signs of his quarry. The wind rose again, sharp as a mountain lion's claws as it sent a spray of silver dust into the air, but it brought with it a faint, coppery scent. Not far, then.
Erik picked up his face, hustling as quickly as he could while still remaining silent. The deer had fallen - he was fairly certain of that - but too much noise attracted other things, and the last thing the he wanted was to end up struggling over his spoils with some other predator. The wolf that howled had sounded relatively far away, and Erik's instincts whispered that the howl had been a lone wolf calling for his brethren. If there was even a chance that a wolf pack lurked near by, Erik wanted to claim his prey and be gone as quickly as possible.
Then he crested a small hill, and there it was, only a few hundred feet distant. The deer had finally succumbed to exhaustion and blood loss - it was still breathing, but shallowly, and it was clear that death approached on swift wings. Erik started forward, then stopped. He had been so focused upon the deer that he never even noticed the figure walking toward it from the opposite direction. It was tall and slender, its features almost entirely masked by a pale cloak that covered it from head to toe. The cloak was lined with soft fur of the palest white, which glittered in the moonlight as the figure approached the deer.
"Oy there!" Erik shouted, fighting down a sense of unease. She - and he was certain the figure was a woman - was clearly not a hunter, and besides what sort of woman would wander the forest alone at night? "I have claim upon that deer!"
The figure stopped, watching him from across the distance. She did not respond, though Erik could feel her gaze as though it had solid force.
"If you are hungry, however, I am willing to part with a portion of it for fair trade," he said as he approached. "Perhaps we can come to an equitable agreement."
The woman hesitated, then in one smooth motion removed the hood of her cloak. A cascade of fine silver hair spilled out, framing a face pale and smooth as ivory, with features as sharp and as chiseled as the mountains. Around her head sat a thin band of silver, and underneath them her eyes burned with violet fire.
Erik gasped. Colder than the harshest winter night, more beautiful than a snowstorm at dawn, she could only be Jezeriah, the Lady of the Mountain. The cold that surrounded Erik suddenly seemed to wrap him in choking bands that threatened to crush the breath out of his chest. The Lady of the Mountain was only spoken of in muted whispers and hushed prayer, for it was said that no man could see her face and live.
"Do you claim this kill, hunter?" Jezeriah asked. Her voice was the splintering of the glaciers, the howl of a blizzard in the heart of winter, the roar of an avalanche from frosty peaks. "You have wandered too far from your home. These are my lands, and all things here belong to me."
"Forgive me, my Lady," Erik replied, dropping to his knees and bringing his forehead to touch the snow before him. "I meant no trespass. I did not realize how far I had wandered. I had only meant to find food for my family."
"There is nothing here that lives or dies but by my will, hunter," Jezeriah replied, "yet you dare claim a life for your own. This is a transgression that cannot be overlooked."
"Please, Lady Jezeriah. My family starves. My wife and children grow weak, and the spectre of illness knocks on our door. I can only plead for your mercy and your forbearance."
There was silence for a moment as Erik felt Lady Jezeriah scrutinizing him. Then, unexpectedly, she laughed - an icy, silvered laugh that held within it all the chill of the distant stars.
"Nothing happens here without my knowledge, hunter. I know of your family's plight, and you will be glad to know that it does not leave me unmoved. This deer is not for you, but there is something else I can offer your family. Food in abundance. Food enough to last through the winter, and the next, and the one after that. Food enough that your family shall never want for food again. Would you like that?"
Erik looked up at Jezeriah, hardly daring to hope.
"That would be a miracle of miracles, Great Lady of the Mountain," he cried. "You would have my eternal gratitude."
"Eternal, you say?" Jezeriah asked, her smile very white in the moonlight. "Well, never let it be said that I am not merciful. Never let any claim that Jezeriah cares nothing for the mortalkind who dwell upon her mountains."
Erik had only a moment to consider that statement before Jezeriah's hand shot out and touched him on the cheek. There was a moment of horrible, blinding pain, wet tearing sounds and streaks of liquid crimson that stained the pristine white of the snow. When it was over, Erik found himself lying on his side in the snow. Jezeriah was nowhere to be seen, nor was there any sign of the deer that he had felled. The night seemed different - crisper, clearer, somehow, and everywhere he could hear the sounds of the winter forest.
He felt different as well. His head seemed strangely heavy, and though he was lying in the snow he barely felt the cold. Erik raised his head to look himself over, and was stunned to discover smooth brown fur instead of a winter coat, and hooves in the place of his hands and feet. He struggled upright, his grunting and shouts clearly the sound of a terrified animal.
And he knew, in an instant of blazing terror, how Jezeriah intended him to feed his family.
You may return to them each winter, hunter, her voice suddenly whispered in his ears, cold and cruel and filled with a savage amusement. Death shall be no obstacle for you. It shall be your choice how well your family is fed.
As Jezeriah's mocking laughter slowly faded away, Erik rose to his feet and began the long trek home. As he knew he would each and every winter, until the end of his days.
*****************************
Bleh. Another fucking rush job. I really should consider doing these earlier in the day.
Erik stepped lightly across the snow-covered ground, the sound of his footsteps muffled by the snow shoes he was wearing. His breath blew in plumes that glowed white in the moonlight, tiny icicles sparkling like jewelry from his brow and his beard. Frost brushed the surface of the thick coat he wore, clung to his gloves and his boots in a thin crust of rime. Still, though the cold penetrated like an ache deep into his bones, the hunter showed no discomfort. His eyes were pinned to the ground, following a trail of hoof prints that broke the pristine surface of the snow, examining the small splashes of red that ran in a polka dot trail to the right of the prints.
The deer had bled heavily at first, but the blood drops had been appearing farther and farther apart for the last fifteen minutes. It couldn't have much fight left in it and Erik was eager to bring this chase to an end. He was tired and hungry and he wanted to go home, but he couldn't bear the thought of going back empty handed yet again. Ilya would bear her hunger with a staunchness befitting a daughter of the woods, but for days, maybe even weeks, she had been rationing out her own portion of their winter stores to the children. Stubborn or not, she had too little strength left in her. Without food to fuel her inner flame, she would too easily fall to illness, and that was a weakness that would not survive winter in the forest.
Erik exhaled deeply, calling forth his reserves of strength to banish his exhaustion, or to at least hold it at bay until he could capture his prize. No, there would be no returning home without the spoils of this hunt. There had been little enough game this winter, and he'd had to drive deeper and deeper into the forest to find fresh meat for his family. Coming across the deer, lean and starved-looking as it was, had been a stroke of pure good luck. Less lucky was the wind that arose the moment he took his shot, casting snow into his eyes and nudging his aim. He'd only managed a wounding shot, although he had faith that the wound would eventually be a mortal one. Erik had no intention of allowing this prize to slip through his fingers.
He continued forward, lightly placing one foot in front of the other, his every sense scanning the air for signs of his quarry. The wind rose again, sharp as a mountain lion's claws as it sent a spray of silver dust into the air, but it brought with it a faint, coppery scent. Not far, then.
Erik picked up his face, hustling as quickly as he could while still remaining silent. The deer had fallen - he was fairly certain of that - but too much noise attracted other things, and the last thing the he wanted was to end up struggling over his spoils with some other predator. The wolf that howled had sounded relatively far away, and Erik's instincts whispered that the howl had been a lone wolf calling for his brethren. If there was even a chance that a wolf pack lurked near by, Erik wanted to claim his prey and be gone as quickly as possible.
Then he crested a small hill, and there it was, only a few hundred feet distant. The deer had finally succumbed to exhaustion and blood loss - it was still breathing, but shallowly, and it was clear that death approached on swift wings. Erik started forward, then stopped. He had been so focused upon the deer that he never even noticed the figure walking toward it from the opposite direction. It was tall and slender, its features almost entirely masked by a pale cloak that covered it from head to toe. The cloak was lined with soft fur of the palest white, which glittered in the moonlight as the figure approached the deer.
"Oy there!" Erik shouted, fighting down a sense of unease. She - and he was certain the figure was a woman - was clearly not a hunter, and besides what sort of woman would wander the forest alone at night? "I have claim upon that deer!"
The figure stopped, watching him from across the distance. She did not respond, though Erik could feel her gaze as though it had solid force.
"If you are hungry, however, I am willing to part with a portion of it for fair trade," he said as he approached. "Perhaps we can come to an equitable agreement."
The woman hesitated, then in one smooth motion removed the hood of her cloak. A cascade of fine silver hair spilled out, framing a face pale and smooth as ivory, with features as sharp and as chiseled as the mountains. Around her head sat a thin band of silver, and underneath them her eyes burned with violet fire.
Erik gasped. Colder than the harshest winter night, more beautiful than a snowstorm at dawn, she could only be Jezeriah, the Lady of the Mountain. The cold that surrounded Erik suddenly seemed to wrap him in choking bands that threatened to crush the breath out of his chest. The Lady of the Mountain was only spoken of in muted whispers and hushed prayer, for it was said that no man could see her face and live.
"Do you claim this kill, hunter?" Jezeriah asked. Her voice was the splintering of the glaciers, the howl of a blizzard in the heart of winter, the roar of an avalanche from frosty peaks. "You have wandered too far from your home. These are my lands, and all things here belong to me."
"Forgive me, my Lady," Erik replied, dropping to his knees and bringing his forehead to touch the snow before him. "I meant no trespass. I did not realize how far I had wandered. I had only meant to find food for my family."
"There is nothing here that lives or dies but by my will, hunter," Jezeriah replied, "yet you dare claim a life for your own. This is a transgression that cannot be overlooked."
"Please, Lady Jezeriah. My family starves. My wife and children grow weak, and the spectre of illness knocks on our door. I can only plead for your mercy and your forbearance."
There was silence for a moment as Erik felt Lady Jezeriah scrutinizing him. Then, unexpectedly, she laughed - an icy, silvered laugh that held within it all the chill of the distant stars.
"Nothing happens here without my knowledge, hunter. I know of your family's plight, and you will be glad to know that it does not leave me unmoved. This deer is not for you, but there is something else I can offer your family. Food in abundance. Food enough to last through the winter, and the next, and the one after that. Food enough that your family shall never want for food again. Would you like that?"
Erik looked up at Jezeriah, hardly daring to hope.
"That would be a miracle of miracles, Great Lady of the Mountain," he cried. "You would have my eternal gratitude."
"Eternal, you say?" Jezeriah asked, her smile very white in the moonlight. "Well, never let it be said that I am not merciful. Never let any claim that Jezeriah cares nothing for the mortalkind who dwell upon her mountains."
Erik had only a moment to consider that statement before Jezeriah's hand shot out and touched him on the cheek. There was a moment of horrible, blinding pain, wet tearing sounds and streaks of liquid crimson that stained the pristine white of the snow. When it was over, Erik found himself lying on his side in the snow. Jezeriah was nowhere to be seen, nor was there any sign of the deer that he had felled. The night seemed different - crisper, clearer, somehow, and everywhere he could hear the sounds of the winter forest.
He felt different as well. His head seemed strangely heavy, and though he was lying in the snow he barely felt the cold. Erik raised his head to look himself over, and was stunned to discover smooth brown fur instead of a winter coat, and hooves in the place of his hands and feet. He struggled upright, his grunting and shouts clearly the sound of a terrified animal.
And he knew, in an instant of blazing terror, how Jezeriah intended him to feed his family.
You may return to them each winter, hunter, her voice suddenly whispered in his ears, cold and cruel and filled with a savage amusement. Death shall be no obstacle for you. It shall be your choice how well your family is fed.
As Jezeriah's mocking laughter slowly faded away, Erik rose to his feet and began the long trek home. As he knew he would each and every winter, until the end of his days.
*****************************
Bleh. Another fucking rush job. I really should consider doing these earlier in the day.
Friday, September 2, 2016
100 Days of Pages, Page 2: The Man in the Black Suit
The man standing in the rain had always been there, as far as Ellie knew. She remembered first seeing him when she was barely four years old, on a particularly stormy summer's day. She had been jumping from puddle to puddle, running ahead of her parents down the long, steep road that led to their house while pretending to be a frog. The road ran between thickets of trees, straight as a ruler for nearly two miles, and halfway down that path she saw the man standing in the middle of the road. He was tall and pale, plainly dressed in well-fitted black suit that seemed untouched by the rain. She couldn't quite make out his features underneath his shaggy mop of black hair, but she got the distinct impression that he was looking at her, waiting.
Ellie had never been particularly afraid of strangers - a quality her parents had tried hard and failed to change - but something about the man arrested her. She stopped her play jumping and stared back at him, curious and quizzical but unwilling to move any farther. The man simply stood, watching. Then her parents caught up to her, and between the moment that she ran back to embrace her father's knees and the moment that she turned to point out the stranger in the road, he had vanished. Her parents claimed that they hadn't seen anyone at all, which elicited such instant distress that they immediately admitted that they weren't paying attention, but in the years to come it gradually became clear that they had been telling the truth the first time.
The man always appeared when it rained, and only when it rained. Sometimes on a hilltop four or five miles distant, sometimes just down the street, half-hidden behind a neighbor's car or peering out from behind a tall fence. His suit, his hair, and his demeanor never changed, nor did the way he would vanish if Ellie called for someone else to verify what she was seeing. Nobody ever did. In time, he simply became another piece of her life, another pillar that held up the ceiling of her world. Just as the sky was blue and the grass was green and the sun rose in the east, so did the Man in the Black Suit appear each time that it rained.
In some ways, she felt a closeness to him that she didn't feel with any of her friends, nor the few boyfriends that she flirted with in high school and college. His existence felt like a special secret, a wonder whispered from the world to her alone, and that secret connected them through the years with a bond as mysterious as it was peculiar. And though how much attention she gave him waxed and waned as she aged, she always sought him out when the rain began to fall.
When Andy, her first true love, broke her heart, the skies that evening had split with white fire, and the subsequent downpour caused record flooding in three counties. He had been there then, standing on a rooftop three streets away, barely visible save as a silhouette against the violent arcs of lightning slicing across the horizon. Though it was impossible that he might hear her across the distance, Ellie told him about her pain and sorrow, confided things in him that she hadn't told either her parents or any of her friends. That night, half a mile away, impossible as it was, she thought she could see a change come over him. Something different in the way that he stood, perhaps, that seemed to indicate that maybe he had heard her after all.
She never told anyone else about him. Not George, who loved her dearly and whom, in her way, she loved back. Not any of her children, though they were each worth the world to her. And if, on the gray drizzly day after George died, she spent the entire day gazing wordlessly out the window, no one attributed it to anything but the depth of her loss.
So it was that, after a long fight with breast cancer that left her bedridden, Ellie found herself curiously unsurprised when the Man in the Black Suit appeared at her side. Between one blink of the eye and then next, there he was. Outside her hospital window, a light rain pitter-pattered against the glass.
"Well, it's about time," she whispered. "I always rather suspected, to tell the truth."
"It wasn't truly meant to be any particular mystery," he replied. His voice was soft and delicate, a warm tenor that seemed barely a whisper and yet clear as morning dew.
"You should have come closer," Ellie said with a chuckle. "You're quite the looker. Way better looking than George."
The man smiled. "Not everyone would agree."
"Can I ask you something?"
"Of course."
"Why me? Why only in the rain?"
The man looked rueful for a moment. "If I may be honest, everyone sees me, but few people know what they're looking for. I suspect the answer to your first question has more to do with your particular brand of uniqueness than it has to do with me. Though I won't deny I've enjoyed your company these past few decades. As for your second question...it's mostly because you love the rain, but there are nuances that will take a bit of time to explain."
"Explain it to me, then?" Ellie asked, though her eyelids were growing heavy. "It's not like I have anything better to do. Besides...I've been talking to you my whole life. It's nice to hear you talk back."
"If that's what you'd like," he replied. "Here, take my hand. I'll explain on the way."
"Is it far?" Ellie asked, gently taking his fingers into her own as she rose out of bed. "I'd hate for your story to get cut short."
"It's as far as you want it to be, Ellie," the man replied. "And we have as much time as you'd like."
Together, they walked out into the gently falling rain.
********************
I actually was planning to write a different premise altogether, involving gay warlocks, but it got late and I'm super tired and this random thing is what I came up with on the fly. If the ending feels rushed, that's because IT FUCKING IS!
Ellie had never been particularly afraid of strangers - a quality her parents had tried hard and failed to change - but something about the man arrested her. She stopped her play jumping and stared back at him, curious and quizzical but unwilling to move any farther. The man simply stood, watching. Then her parents caught up to her, and between the moment that she ran back to embrace her father's knees and the moment that she turned to point out the stranger in the road, he had vanished. Her parents claimed that they hadn't seen anyone at all, which elicited such instant distress that they immediately admitted that they weren't paying attention, but in the years to come it gradually became clear that they had been telling the truth the first time.
The man always appeared when it rained, and only when it rained. Sometimes on a hilltop four or five miles distant, sometimes just down the street, half-hidden behind a neighbor's car or peering out from behind a tall fence. His suit, his hair, and his demeanor never changed, nor did the way he would vanish if Ellie called for someone else to verify what she was seeing. Nobody ever did. In time, he simply became another piece of her life, another pillar that held up the ceiling of her world. Just as the sky was blue and the grass was green and the sun rose in the east, so did the Man in the Black Suit appear each time that it rained.
In some ways, she felt a closeness to him that she didn't feel with any of her friends, nor the few boyfriends that she flirted with in high school and college. His existence felt like a special secret, a wonder whispered from the world to her alone, and that secret connected them through the years with a bond as mysterious as it was peculiar. And though how much attention she gave him waxed and waned as she aged, she always sought him out when the rain began to fall.
When Andy, her first true love, broke her heart, the skies that evening had split with white fire, and the subsequent downpour caused record flooding in three counties. He had been there then, standing on a rooftop three streets away, barely visible save as a silhouette against the violent arcs of lightning slicing across the horizon. Though it was impossible that he might hear her across the distance, Ellie told him about her pain and sorrow, confided things in him that she hadn't told either her parents or any of her friends. That night, half a mile away, impossible as it was, she thought she could see a change come over him. Something different in the way that he stood, perhaps, that seemed to indicate that maybe he had heard her after all.
She never told anyone else about him. Not George, who loved her dearly and whom, in her way, she loved back. Not any of her children, though they were each worth the world to her. And if, on the gray drizzly day after George died, she spent the entire day gazing wordlessly out the window, no one attributed it to anything but the depth of her loss.
So it was that, after a long fight with breast cancer that left her bedridden, Ellie found herself curiously unsurprised when the Man in the Black Suit appeared at her side. Between one blink of the eye and then next, there he was. Outside her hospital window, a light rain pitter-pattered against the glass.
"Well, it's about time," she whispered. "I always rather suspected, to tell the truth."
"It wasn't truly meant to be any particular mystery," he replied. His voice was soft and delicate, a warm tenor that seemed barely a whisper and yet clear as morning dew.
"You should have come closer," Ellie said with a chuckle. "You're quite the looker. Way better looking than George."
The man smiled. "Not everyone would agree."
"Can I ask you something?"
"Of course."
"Why me? Why only in the rain?"
The man looked rueful for a moment. "If I may be honest, everyone sees me, but few people know what they're looking for. I suspect the answer to your first question has more to do with your particular brand of uniqueness than it has to do with me. Though I won't deny I've enjoyed your company these past few decades. As for your second question...it's mostly because you love the rain, but there are nuances that will take a bit of time to explain."
"Explain it to me, then?" Ellie asked, though her eyelids were growing heavy. "It's not like I have anything better to do. Besides...I've been talking to you my whole life. It's nice to hear you talk back."
"If that's what you'd like," he replied. "Here, take my hand. I'll explain on the way."
"Is it far?" Ellie asked, gently taking his fingers into her own as she rose out of bed. "I'd hate for your story to get cut short."
"It's as far as you want it to be, Ellie," the man replied. "And we have as much time as you'd like."
Together, they walked out into the gently falling rain.
********************
I actually was planning to write a different premise altogether, involving gay warlocks, but it got late and I'm super tired and this random thing is what I came up with on the fly. If the ending feels rushed, that's because IT FUCKING IS!
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