and at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
when the man comes around
Raymond never had the luxury of choosing the life he would lead when he was young. He fulfilled every expectation set for him, became the warrior his family wanted, kept the dream of better futures alive as only the young can, and none of it made a bit of difference when the chips were down. Despair showed him what he could be, but such despair can only flourish where once there was hope - and once it takes root, it is ever so difficult to shake. It sets you adrift, hungry, dissatisfied, ever hungering for some indescribable missing fraction of yourself like a man dying in the desert hungers for water.
Who he became when the moment called was rarely good, even if he could be just. No matter how much practice you pump into it a broken piano cannot play a perfect sonata.
Do you still see it now when you close your eyes and think of power?
Calliope leaned in, pressed her cheek to his. Raymond was no stranger The faint ozone scent of her that may well have been a product of his own imagination filled his lungs, but in its presence the distant swell of breakers rolling in against the low-tide shore became the became the dull rush of blood in their veins. As if bidden by her words, his eyes too slipped shut.
They were no strangers to touch. Like the ancients Raymond and Calliope spoke as often with their bodies as they did with words, but under the great whale's solemn and skeletal embrace there seemed something more real about the contact, as though after a lifetime of brushing past one another on opposite sides of a curtain the swarthy mare had in a moment of daring nosed the fabric aside. Tentatively he stepped forward, drawing his muzzle along the sculpted, striped neck, lipping instinctively at the crest of her wild mane.
'Numinous' was not a word he ever expected to have to use, but it suited: one does not simply embrace a hurricane.
"I suppose I don't," he murmured into her hair. The bull elephant of his memories retreated now across the Grass Sea of Sharam with a storm at his heels, cowed by roiling iron-grey skies and retribution writ in forked tongues of lightning through the clouds.
"Who are you, Calliope?" In the time they had known each other, the swordsman had never thought to ask. Time seemed to begin in the moment they laid blades to one another's throats, and like obedient schoolchildren they had never bothered to dig deeper. But the dead leviathan felt heavy around them with the weight of the past and, with the weight of the present smoldering red and black within its breast, he seemed almost compelled to finally ask. "Tell me a story."
Who he became when the moment called was rarely good, even if he could be just. No matter how much practice you pump into it a broken piano cannot play a perfect sonata.
Do you still see it now when you close your eyes and think of power?
Calliope leaned in, pressed her cheek to his. Raymond was no stranger The faint ozone scent of her that may well have been a product of his own imagination filled his lungs, but in its presence the distant swell of breakers rolling in against the low-tide shore became the became the dull rush of blood in their veins. As if bidden by her words, his eyes too slipped shut.
They were no strangers to touch. Like the ancients Raymond and Calliope spoke as often with their bodies as they did with words, but under the great whale's solemn and skeletal embrace there seemed something more real about the contact, as though after a lifetime of brushing past one another on opposite sides of a curtain the swarthy mare had in a moment of daring nosed the fabric aside. Tentatively he stepped forward, drawing his muzzle along the sculpted, striped neck, lipping instinctively at the crest of her wild mane.
'Numinous' was not a word he ever expected to have to use, but it suited: one does not simply embrace a hurricane.
"I suppose I don't," he murmured into her hair. The bull elephant of his memories retreated now across the Grass Sea of Sharam with a storm at his heels, cowed by roiling iron-grey skies and retribution writ in forked tongues of lightning through the clouds.
"Who are you, Calliope?" In the time they had known each other, the swordsman had never thought to ask. Time seemed to begin in the moment they laid blades to one another's throats, and like obedient schoolchildren they had never bothered to dig deeper. But the dead leviathan felt heavy around them with the weight of the past and, with the weight of the present smoldering red and black within its breast, he seemed almost compelled to finally ask. "Tell me a story."
when the man comes around
aut viam inveniam aut faciam
