[A placeless space in-between the cracks of darkness]
The falling was not so much a descent, I suppose.
It could not be said that I was falling down, nor up, nor any specific which way. In fact, direction had lost its meaning. Was it falling? Drifting, perhaps. Fading away even. All was circumference with no centre, which is no circumference at all.
What may be called my โI-nessโ began to break apart and there was no solid ground on which I could take firm mental footing. Of the self-forgetting I had previously experienced this sensation was now an intensification thereof. A whole world-crafting incarnation of an amnesiac inner-egragore.
I walked now as a ghost, an airy thing, or no-thing at all.
Around me gathered stone giants. Not living stone were they, as the menhir who once communed at sunset hours with the wizened folk of yore. Nor as the ancient rock folk of forest and desert and seashore, but something wholly other, as though manufactured, they were, given a kind of life, in imitation only, from the bones of those aforementioned stalwart and steadfast sage-stones.
Their crowns were adorned with sharpened javelins that reached the very sky. They did not reach out in order to seek communion with the heavens, however. And not for the sake of dreaming rest did they lay their heads amongst the clouds, but they wore them as a conquering folk takes trophies of the conquered. As certain hunters might fashion a cap of fox-skin, not for warmth but as a mark of dominion. As they might crown their living space with the heads of their fallen prey.
Many-eyed, each of them, though behind glazed soul-windows there was, in fact, no soul only desolate chambers, empty yet filled with boredom and oppression. Hard-breasted titans, subduers and usurpers, they invaded the firmament as ones hell-bent on storming the heavens and taking it by violence. Amassed as one, they were the grinding and gnashing teeth of a colossal and gaping monstrous mouth seeking to satiate an eternal hunger for all that is good and true and beautiful; seeking to consume the very sky in scorn of the earth.
And upon her face they spread blankets deathly grey and more and more of her beauteous face did they cover so that nevermore could she look upon that bright lord of the sky, her ancient companion and lover, and feel his warmth. That deathly grey they lay down was as an ugly and inverse scattering of rose petals at the feet of royalty. Rather it was the procession of mad tyrants they heralded.
They would not walk upon the earth. Always they desired to avoid the soil under their feet, these hulking behemoths, for they knew that the Black Maidenโs waters would crumble them to rubble.
Ungodly beast from the abysmal pit! And I, a noxious and putrid gas swirling about the depths of its belly.
Others there were also, ghosts the same, passing by, this way and that, unrecognizable as anything human, except as a turbid haze. A grimy, sullied aura. A light polluted with an air of anguish and unrest. Ever swept along by a foul wind. Ever did they suffer it in revulsion. Ever did their revulsion add to the putridity.
If only they had faces the despair that would be upon them. If only they had eyes they would be weeping. If only teeth, gnashing. Insanity was their lot. The lunacy of a dark moon-spell.
There is a chaos that must be, as part of a greater order. This was not that chaos. This was a chaos and only chaos. For not all purity is good and this was pure chaos. This was the dispersion and confusion of all things into more things, and more things into no things. I felt myself being pulled apart unto a myriad of directionless directions. And yet โฆ
No. Not pure chaos. Such a thing will not be allowed. For she was there. Small in the shadow of giants, unnoticed by the whirling insanity, she sat weeping. Not the faceless weeping of a confused and demented soul in a pitiless self-pity, pitiful to behold. Her sorrow was tears shed for the hellishness around her. A penance for the souls here. Not ugly but beautiful it was, such that you could not conceive of anything more beautiful save that, hope upon hope, one day her tears would be wiped away and she would smile. A smile that would surely make lilies grow in the desert and water break from stone. Turn winter into spring and make all of heaven stop to catch stolen breath.
I desired more than anything to know her name. I thought perhaps that I could be that one who wipes away her tears, but I could not reach her. The whirlwind had me, tearing, dissolving. All here would fade. I prayed desperately that she be spared such a fate.
Behold! Men arrayed for battle. Spartan-Esque. All wearing armour of bronze chest plates over crimson tunics. Spear and shield in hand and atop the head, feather-crested helmets.
No.
Not helmets. Their feathered crests sat atop bird heads! Piercing the whirlwind chaos as if they were themselves the tips of the spears they were armed with. They came from all around, these birdmen. In a moment they were upon me, jabbing and jousting. Or was it the pain of perpetually pecking battle-hardened nose-peaks? Beacons of hopelessness. A grim gospel delivered from mouths far less genial than the previous aviangelists of the forest.
Little matter.
Despite the brief struggle I put up I was soon overcome. They took hold of me and now growing large wings from their backs they took flight unto the four winds, the seven planets and the twelve celestial kingdoms, and I, indeed was torn asunder.
With one last desperate gaze in her direction, I could see before her and from out the desolate grey around her, the green of a sprouting shoot growing, clambering up through the fabric of that unending death blanket. Its tiny form being nourished and strengthened by the light of her eyes and its thirst quenched by her tears. Its spiralling growth a dance to the song of her silent prayer.
