Darkness.
But not darkness like black.
Darkness like nothing.
Darkness like absence—so utterly without, it is asphyxiating. It crowns her in a terminal judgment—thorns and all—and each slow, drag-toed step she takes proves she has been sentenced to go on. Proffered life when she is not sure she wants it. Is not sure she has space for in it in the weeds of her darkened garden—a flower in a place of sunless bramble and the haunting slip of empty, unfamiliar visitors, passing by and picking each petal down to the white bone.
Darkness like, did anything ever exist there before?
Darkness like, can anything ever exist there again?
The wind passes by her in long, lethe exhales. It purls as it does, rustling the scant leaves and needles of healthy trees; plucking the limber, naked limbs of the dead. It carries the scent of autumn—earthy rot, things breaking down and settling; and the swill of swampy redolence, mud and a sticky, sucking kind of musk. With each enervated press of her hoof, the green-brown mud envelops her to the knees, seizing her with damp, tight hands. Pulling.
Pulling downwards.
She finds the insistence alluring. That she can imagine, just as well, her body taken by the morass—given freely to a swam-god, many-headed and lichen-pelted, and if it were kinder than her own gods, perhaps it would take her gently into its muddied elysium. Perhaps it would pull her down and cover her over and the rest would be an insensate process of breaking down.
Settling.
So what compels her to lift, to labour until the viscous moorings tauten and snap and set her free with a sickening kind of reluctance? What urges her, unseeing and unfeeling and unknowing, on a path that promises other-than—other than death, other than settling and breaking down and loosing the mortal coil? The thing that blooms, soft and wan but ever-so on the horizon of her darkness, her absence, her nothing and her without—that thing, like hope but bigger. Like knowing there is light, even if it can’t be seen; that there is sun, even if the clouds have gathered like wet, woollen blankets over the sky, and none of its radiance can reach her. Like know there and wolves in the woods, but finding the courage to fight them.
Like remembering that something existed there before.
That it was a meadow of wildflowers, sun-kissed and honeyed.
That is was perfect, even if only for a few fleeting days as it teetered on the edge of oblivion.
A bird calls overhead. Shrill and shrieking. One small, fluted ear tilts, languidly, in its direction. Measures it. Finds it wanting. Finds it unfamiliar. But rather than gut her all over again, she simply moves on, thrusting with soft, onerous grunts as she feels her way from one mound of semi-firm ground to the next. Coming to rest where the mossy earth gives only slightly, with a flush of dirty water pooling around her toes, as she leans against the rough, grey bark of a tree.
She has always been comfortable in her darkness. Knew it as she knew the lines of her own sturdy, northern body. Was made in it—made to its specifications, because it was her toll; payment exacted for the honour of walking through history, not as through mud, but as through thin air.
But this isn’t her darkness.
This is like knowing there is light. And a sun. And a fight.
But wondering if it even matters, anymore.
But not darkness like black.
Darkness like nothing.
Darkness like absence—so utterly without, it is asphyxiating. It crowns her in a terminal judgment—thorns and all—and each slow, drag-toed step she takes proves she has been sentenced to go on. Proffered life when she is not sure she wants it. Is not sure she has space for in it in the weeds of her darkened garden—a flower in a place of sunless bramble and the haunting slip of empty, unfamiliar visitors, passing by and picking each petal down to the white bone.
Darkness like, did anything ever exist there before?
Darkness like, can anything ever exist there again?
The wind passes by her in long, lethe exhales. It purls as it does, rustling the scant leaves and needles of healthy trees; plucking the limber, naked limbs of the dead. It carries the scent of autumn—earthy rot, things breaking down and settling; and the swill of swampy redolence, mud and a sticky, sucking kind of musk. With each enervated press of her hoof, the green-brown mud envelops her to the knees, seizing her with damp, tight hands. Pulling.
Pulling downwards.
She finds the insistence alluring. That she can imagine, just as well, her body taken by the morass—given freely to a swam-god, many-headed and lichen-pelted, and if it were kinder than her own gods, perhaps it would take her gently into its muddied elysium. Perhaps it would pull her down and cover her over and the rest would be an insensate process of breaking down.
Settling.
So what compels her to lift, to labour until the viscous moorings tauten and snap and set her free with a sickening kind of reluctance? What urges her, unseeing and unfeeling and unknowing, on a path that promises other-than—other than death, other than settling and breaking down and loosing the mortal coil? The thing that blooms, soft and wan but ever-so on the horizon of her darkness, her absence, her nothing and her without—that thing, like hope but bigger. Like knowing there is light, even if it can’t be seen; that there is sun, even if the clouds have gathered like wet, woollen blankets over the sky, and none of its radiance can reach her. Like know there and wolves in the woods, but finding the courage to fight them.
Like remembering that something existed there before.
That it was a meadow of wildflowers, sun-kissed and honeyed.
That is was perfect, even if only for a few fleeting days as it teetered on the edge of oblivion.
A bird calls overhead. Shrill and shrieking. One small, fluted ear tilts, languidly, in its direction. Measures it. Finds it wanting. Finds it unfamiliar. But rather than gut her all over again, she simply moves on, thrusting with soft, onerous grunts as she feels her way from one mound of semi-firm ground to the next. Coming to rest where the mossy earth gives only slightly, with a flush of dirty water pooling around her toes, as she leans against the rough, grey bark of a tree.
She has always been comfortable in her darkness. Knew it as she knew the lines of her own sturdy, northern body. Was made in it—made to its specifications, because it was her toll; payment exacted for the honour of walking through history, not as through mud, but as through thin air.
But this isn’t her darkness.
This is like knowing there is light. And a sun. And a fight.
But wondering if it even matters, anymore.
Voice | @Elena
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