 She comes on a draught of cool air with winter hanging like sharp tipped icicles between the molecules of wind. Darkness hums between the cells of the autumn chill and the bright blood sheen of her skin. Each inch of blackness that pools like ink the the harsh lines of her cheeks whithers and dies when she opens her eyes and light pours out like frost.
She blinks, slow and aimless, and white-light from the center of the sun makes strange all the bits of sand rising in her wake in great clouds of dust. Every granule of sand seems to creep and float like flies freezing in the air. And through that strobe of her eyes, as they blink, blink, blink back the grit of a hundred universes, she moves closer and closer to the gates.
The stone feels hot beneath her when she pauses and lays her cheek against the red-limestone in a queer caress. It whispers to her of fire, of hate and she can taste ash in the grout holding each stone to the next. It coos to her (like a lamb) of holiness and light duller than the bright universe churning inside her belly.
This wall makes that universe (and all the others) churn like a whirlpool in the deep in the bottom of creation. It rolls around and around itself and she hums to the pulse of it. It sounds not unlike a heartbeat thrumming and clanging in her bones. Her lips tingle and her teeth ache in her smile like forty swollen, ivory bee-stings.
She walks along the wall for what seems like miles. It stretches out before her like a spine and her shoulder brushes it with each step like a contracted muscle. In the places where the darkness gathers deeper, and where it tastes more like snow, she lingers. There each spider and fly crawl out to meet her and they all linger together, in the light of her, for a single blink of her eyes. Still she continues moving-- shoulder to stone, light to darkness, frost to adoration.
Finally the gates break up that spine of wall and she smiles at the old, knotted wood and the rust lingering in the places where the hinges are peeking through like bones through a wound. Her left hoof strikes out at that knotted, ancient wood.
She knocks.
Knock, knock, knock.
eshek
“a fathomless chaos of eternal night.”
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