She holds it in her mind’s eye, just long enough—
This mortal coil. This fractured life-thing.
Smoke and stars and senselessness reflected across sable, restless water’s surface. She watches it from the deck of a merchant vessel bound for anywhere by here (again, and again, and again), seaspray and tears upon her slick cheeks. For a moment, the tattered edges of another dying home, the silence, the aching sureness of Edana’s swift demise, it all becomes as one, a formed and hulking mass of flesh, bones, blood, larch, pine, granite, wildflower, cobble and gold. A blood-idol, a totem of bare impermanence, a miscreation of love, lust and life – a thing with breath and heartbeat, final as they may be, tilting grotesque head to the vanquished deities – all is lost. We let you down.
Again.
—and then, she lets it go.
Bows her head to its deep web of roots – Memory – and beseeches it to find cloister in that cage of rib and breastbone where it lives in leaden, forlorn foreverness. It takes her prayer, her offering, and recedes, for now, leaving her empty, but clear-eyed. Heavy, but loosened from that realm of shifting, hungry creature-fear. Free, now, to walk the strange and lovely land, whose borders she had breached, unbeknownst to her, whilst following the compass of new stars by night.
(Quid erit, erit.)
Her deep, blue eyes blink open, revealing the late-summer sun, low on the horizon, bathing the bright, halcyon meadow in a bask of soft, lemony yellow; fingering the red, ruffled edges of poppy and orange butterfly-weed. It folds over her, balmy and beautiful; earthy and bright; unadorned, it is naked and perfect and entirely unencumbered by its own mortality. And yet, easily – too, too easily – she can see it growing yellowed. Listless. Gone to seed. Dark. Nothing. Nothing and then dreamlike, in her mind’s eye, as if it had never really been at all.
She lets that go too, taking a deep breath and shifting her weight, carving trails of parted grass and leaning wildflowers in her slow, pensive wake.
This mortal coil. This fractured life-thing.
Smoke and stars and senselessness reflected across sable, restless water’s surface. She watches it from the deck of a merchant vessel bound for anywhere by here (again, and again, and again), seaspray and tears upon her slick cheeks. For a moment, the tattered edges of another dying home, the silence, the aching sureness of Edana’s swift demise, it all becomes as one, a formed and hulking mass of flesh, bones, blood, larch, pine, granite, wildflower, cobble and gold. A blood-idol, a totem of bare impermanence, a miscreation of love, lust and life – a thing with breath and heartbeat, final as they may be, tilting grotesque head to the vanquished deities – all is lost. We let you down.
Again.
—and then, she lets it go.
Bows her head to its deep web of roots – Memory – and beseeches it to find cloister in that cage of rib and breastbone where it lives in leaden, forlorn foreverness. It takes her prayer, her offering, and recedes, for now, leaving her empty, but clear-eyed. Heavy, but loosened from that realm of shifting, hungry creature-fear. Free, now, to walk the strange and lovely land, whose borders she had breached, unbeknownst to her, whilst following the compass of new stars by night.
(Quid erit, erit.)
Her deep, blue eyes blink open, revealing the late-summer sun, low on the horizon, bathing the bright, halcyon meadow in a bask of soft, lemony yellow; fingering the red, ruffled edges of poppy and orange butterfly-weed. It folds over her, balmy and beautiful; earthy and bright; unadorned, it is naked and perfect and entirely unencumbered by its own mortality. And yet, easily – too, too easily – she can see it growing yellowed. Listless. Gone to seed. Dark. Nothing. Nothing and then dreamlike, in her mind’s eye, as if it had never really been at all.
She lets that go too, taking a deep breath and shifting her weight, carving trails of parted grass and leaning wildflowers in her slow, pensive wake.
Hover to translate! all welcome.
☽
