[ Respond | Andarin: The Mountains ]
Posted by alkonost on March 3, 2009, 1:02 am The world is a very heavy thing. She felt its weight – in her skull, in her spine, in her neck – like it was a living thing, twisting and shifting and changing at a whim – and it was. Her body hurt in ways (and places) with which she was completely unfamiliar. Her forehead itched like fire so she scratched it against the bark of a tree. The fire (not a thing of light and licking tongues, but of needles and tiny insects) grew. It grew and grew until her head split open with the force of her itching, burning and tingling and becoming heavier all the while. It bled; thick streaks of blood ran like rivers down the natural channels of her cheeks, her eyelids, her lips. She was not beautiful now – perhaps not ever – and the itching wouldn’t stop. With the itching came something new. Like bloody knives they pierced her forehead, curving and branching together in perfect and scarlet harmony until there was nowhere left to go. Each end tapered off to a curved and wicked point. Alkonost couldn’t see this. She could only wonder at the sensation and agonize over the now-incurable itch that burned at the pedicles of her newfound antlers. Change, she understood with a sigh. And she did understand, because the crown arcing above her brow did nothing to soften the ache in her core, the ache that existed only because of the inevitable evils attracted to the cold thing in her throat. The white shadow bounded deeper into the bowels of the sleeping forest and, for once, looked as cervine as her movements. “Joh,” she said breathlessly, the word a sigh of relief in itself. What could she say? She’d been attacked. She’d had a revelation. She grew antlers. She thought there was something inside her, growing like a cancer in her womb. Nothing there was good – not even the antlers. This time, at least, she had washed away the blood, but her forehead was scabbed and ugly and raw from her scratching (and, defiantly, still itched). A moment of absurdity reminded Alkonost of her first flame, of the taste of bark in her mouth and the shock of light and the singular challenge of explaining such a magnificent headdress with nothing more than wood and words. It almost made her burst out in the laughter that comes when the world seems to reach its lowest point, and the squirming in your gut tells you that it’s only going to get worse from here. At length, Alkonost settled with: “Something happened.” Because she didn’t want to say what happened, not really. She was as she had been on the day of her birth, staring out beyond the reaches of their mother’s protective winter and wishing that she could take all of Jörmungandr’s suffering for herself. Now she believed she had, and would never give it back.
173.57.141.218
“ Some are born posthumously. ”
- Friedrich Nietzsche, 1888
these are the clouds about the fallen sun,
the majesty that shuts his burning eye.
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