[ Respond | Andarin: The Mountains ]
Posted by stormcrow on March 29, 2009, 2:50 pm Alkonost sang quietly to herself, calm and content in the shadow of one of Andarin’s anonymous mountains. Uncharacteristic warmth radiated from every syllable, and her customary impeccable whiteness seemed to glow that much more brightly in defiance of the overcast daylight. She sang, and the words didn’t matter (as before). The world around her was changing. Shadows were thicker and more unwelcoming, flowing like tar across the Element and staining it – poisoning it – for eternity. For all her present smiles and brightness, she, too, was one of these shadows. She didn’t care. There is much talk about the End of Days, and what it may mean for our alleged ‘immortal souls.’ Will the rivers run red with the runoff of some romanticized Final Showdown? Will we be devoured by the inevitable death of our own sun? In our infinite arrogance and stupidity, will we manage to kill ourselves and save the universe the trouble? More importantly, when will the end come? For thousands of years people have insisted that it would be soon. Tomorrow, they said, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, like a cheap Shakespearean imitation, full of sound and fury and swindled, tax-exempt money. Ha. I don’t care about the end of the world anymore. What happens next? Will we waste away in our wormy graves while birds sing poo-tee-weet and celebrate our more than timely passing? Will we take them with us and rot in silence? Whatever the case, the end – the real end – is probably a myth. Eventually, on this earth or the next, in one universe or another, across the infinite expanses of time and probability, the birds will return – and so will we. The shard was growing restless. She felt it constantly, like a quiet pressure against the back of her mind. Her mouth was dry with its hunger. They didn’t speak often – Alkonost had little to ask or tell. And throughout their mutual silence, things around and within the mare marched forever forward, to whatever cliff awaited at the end of the trail. No longer were her shining antlers an awkward appendage blossoming from her skull. They felt natural – necessary – and every movement flowed with more cervine purpose than the last. Delicately she drew one of the tines across her inexplicably swelling side and crooned. Mine. Like her twin, like the shard. There was no thought of the unfortunate Mariel (what use is there for the Past?), and some might have scorned her indifference. Alkonost didn’t care. She glowed in her pregnancy like a red-robed Handmaid, sacred and radiant and enviable, secure in her knowledge that everything would be okay this time. It had to be. And, keeping time with the endless March, the unborn child’s arrival crept ever closer. 'Tis true, said I, correcting the proposition—the Bastile is not an evil to be despised; but strip it of its towers, fill the fosse, unbarricade the doors, call it simply a confinement, and suppose it is some tyrant of a distemper, and not a man which holds you in it, the evil vanishes, and you bear the other half without complaint. I was interrupted in the heyday of this soliloquy, with a voice which I took to be of a child, which complained "It could not get out." I looked up and down the passage, and seeing neither man, woman, or child, I went out without further attention. In my return back through the passage, I heard the same words repeated twice over; and looking up, I saw it was a starling, hung in a little cage; "I can't get out, I can't get out," said the starling. I stood looking at the bird; and to every person who came through the passage, it ran fluttering to the side towards which they approached it with the same lamentation of its captivity. "I can't get out," said the starling. "Then I will let you out," said I, "cost what it will;" so I turned about the cage to get at the door—it was twisted and double twisted so fast with wire there was no getting it open without pulling the cage to pieces; I took both hands to it. The bird flew to the place where I was attempting his deliverance, and thrusting his head through the trellis, pressed his breast against it, as if impatient. "I fear, poor creature," said I, "I cannot set thee at liberty." "No," said the starling; "I can't get out, I can't get out," said the starling. I vow, I never had my affections more tenderly awakened; nor do I remember an incident in my life, where the dissipated spirits to which my reason had been a bubble were so suddenly called home. Mechanical as the notes were, yet so true in tune to nature were they chaunted, that in one moment they overthrew all my systematic reasonings upon the Bastile, and I heavily walked up-stairs unsaying every word I had said in going down them. - Laurence Sterne When it came Alkonost was ready, thrumming now with something very near excitement. The world would be put right, just as she had told her sister – just like her sister had told her. Her heart need not be burdened with the stain of a hastily-spoken lie. She toiled, she sweated. She suffered – (oh, how she suffered) – a labor of Love. Why must all beautiful things hurt? It was over. The pale mare laboriously swung her head across a slick shoulder, straining to catch a glimpse of the mess behind her. There was no time to rest – a second time she washed the bundle, each lick automatic and apprehensive, until a copper face jutted out at her from its membranous cocoon. It was perfect (as the natural growth of a tree is perfect) and subtly masculine, and a star like a bullet wound dripped a thin streak of white down its muzzle. It was as unlike Mariel as Alkonost was unlike her sister, in every way but the most important. It lay still and serene, as though enthralled by some exquisite dream. Her heart plummeted. Without a word, without a song, as though gripped by some terrible and overpowering fear Alkonost set fire to the still-wet foal fleeing it as one would escape a hideous disease, heartbroken and blinded by her own disbelief. Everything – even the colt – had been perfect and beautiful and good. Why must all beautiful things cause such incalculable suffering? But deep in the tumult of her mind she knew, as surely as her star-marked throat burned. Far behind her, in the belly of the cradle made funeral pyre, something felt the licking flames with fascination and stirred.
173.57.141.218
"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."
*
"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.
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