greetingsfromeruhain - Tumblr blog

[greetingsfromeruhain]

It seems impossible for trees to ever have flourished here.

Their long-blackened, obsidian trunks shoot from the icy ground,

standing like signposts, as if they had never borne leaves.

The sky is dark at an hour past mid-day.

The wind howls, tearing away, fibre-by-fibre, at exposed eardrums.

No shouts, no screams, can be easily heard, but the wailing of the freezing 

storm.

 The nameless village, once lived-in,

nestled behind a jut in the rock,

across the mammoth crack in the sprawling ice sheet

is transformed

into nothing but a soulless encampment.

Devoid, from what Manfred can see, of movement.

Only the village’s small watchtower,

once used to alert locals of bears and other monsters

remains untouched.

 Behind him, the fleet of several hundred all gather.

These knights, these thieves,

these beasts and robots

all united,

all holding him up as their leader. Huh.

It’s a luxury not granted to him these days.

They love me, he thinks.

At least,

some of them do.

  Amid the sea of mercenaries flanking him, he approaches the hellish slit in the floor,

and prepares to take first look into the black cavern below.

He knows what he is going to see, but still, he is not prepared for it.

 His mind flashes back to a time before this, a time on the streets of Enymon, years and years ago.

When he was still young, and liked,

and foolish, and horrible.

Rastus Judd had been deposed as leader of the Enymon Mage’s Guild

after an overzealous undercover reporter leaked the news

that he had commissioned his students to carry out violent, untested, school-exclusive spells,

taught in confidence,

against his rivals, his competitors.

His enemies.

 Manfred had been called to assist the Enymon City Guards

in holding back Judd’s loyal disciples,

and assist in his arrest, were his help required.

The battle that ensued was brutal.

Manfred’s burn marks had not healed properly for years afterwards.

But that is a story for another time.

 What came to Manfred’s mind as he shakily peered over the edge of the cavern,

to come face to face with the horrors inside,

was the brief exchange he’d shared with the master-come-warlord.

 MANFRED: They were your students.

JUDD: They were so much more than that. They made me who I am. They gave me power.

(Beat)

There is this juvenile, twisted notion of strength and independence. I don’t know about you, Manfred Marsden, but I’d rather be lifted up, fed strength by the loyalty of my disciples, than alone.

MANFRED: You’re truly unlike any villain I’ve ever encountered.

  And just like that,

the Guard Captain had whisked Judd away, out of Manfred’s sight and earshot

before he could even parse how this thought could end.

 Staring below into the cavern,

Judd’s words still rang true.

“There’s such a weird notion of strength and independence. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be strong with my buddies then alone.”

“You are truly unlike any other villain I have encountered.”

[greetingsfromeruhain]

The wagon clunks and rocks across the wilds.

Inside the sixth cabin of ten are two hulks of men,

sardined together in a tiny, sweat-drenched cot.

It is dark outside. It is some indeterminate time in the pre-dawn morning.

  The tiny enchanted flame Laurent crafted for them is concealed within a glass jar.

The only significant light,

other than the distant soft glow of the moon

that slowly seeped through the windows

of their tiny wooden cabin,

seeming to illuminate nothing at all.

 Both men can hear one another’s breathing.

One drawing of breath is significantly deeper,

more laboured, tortured.

Seward Olson need not speak, or even whisper,

for one to know he is anguished.

He breathes in, every inhale a chore,

every exhale empty, devoid of relief.

 The other breathes softer, controlled. Calm, but not wholly so.

A tinge of tenseness lingers in his huffing.

Though, nothing compared to the deep, guttural drumbeats

that are his companion’s gasps of desperation.

The palpable sorrow airborne with every echoing exhalation.

  Finally, Absolon has had enough.

Both men are awake, but not speaking,

and Absolon is growing increasingly perplexed by their shared silence.

Seward’s breathing is as loud as the loudest glacial groundswell,

and his silent agony is almost tangible.

Absolon feels he could reach out and touch it.

But first, he must break his way through

the invisible barrier that builds and rebuilds itself

every time his heart hurts for another:

he must, again,

demolish another part of this barricade, constructed by his mind in childhood and

strengthened throughout his teen years and adulthood by every day of silence,

and every

“Absolon,

be a man.”

 After endless droning minutes of hesitance stretched into hours,

flowing like a river with no source and no sea,

going on forever with no end or beginning,

immune to any efforts

to place its start, or facilitate its finish,

Absolon’s internal insecurities are enough defied.

He can, now,

place his metaphorical hand through the tiniest breach in the wall,

the most miniscule crack in the surface,

and slowly scale his way up

to push his mouth and mind out above the gap, into the freedom he craves

and has craved

ever since the light from above the wall shone down on him

as if by accident.

 “Why are you crying?” he asks,

his voice quiet, weighed down with

damp concern.

 Seward is silent,

his breathing temporarily halted.

When in one deep and loud exhalation,

his trembling,

soggy,

cracked voice crawls its way out of his raw throat.

Pathetically spluttering his words

like a wounded animal.

 “Because I’m a burden,

and don’t deserve anything in this life.”

Punctuated by a brief pause before adding,

“Let alone you”.

 “Seward”,

Absolon says, his voice softening further.

“We’ve talked about-“

but Absolon stops mid-sentence,

cutting himself off abruptly, attempting to filter out his frustration.

“We… we have spoken about this before, haven’t we?”

 A wet gulp from Seward.

“Yeah”, he croaks,

fighting back the shame and lead-laden guilt

in every corner of his heart and mind.

“I know”.

ABSOLON: “Sorry. I… sorry, I know. I’m sorry.”

 A pregnant pause hangs.

 ABSOLON: “For… what you’re going through, I mean.”

 Silence lingers. The soundscape of stillness stretches into eternity.

 ABSOLON: “You’re a good man.”

 SEWARD: “That’s a lie.”

Seward responds almost instinctively,

as if somehow mindlessly programmed into producing said retort,

as Aerim is programmed to blurt out the time, hour and minute

whenever prompted,

often before the question asker can finish their sentence.

Regardless of context.

 “No it isn’t,” Absolon responds, his heart

heavy with the knowledge

that a man with as much potential as Seward is so deftly

incapable of seeing his own worth.

That one may as well have been better off

asking him to invent a new colour.

 “I mean,”

Absolon falters briefly, before asking the question that has been brewing within him

since Seward first expressed, if only subtly,

the titanic self loathing that punctuated his every breath.

  ABSOLON: “What makes you think that?”

 “Absolon” Seward says,

his words, raw and pulsating in his strained, tear-soaked voice.

SEWARD: “They say there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.

That things will get better.

And I believe that’s true, for most people at least. Everybody, really. Except for, well,

me, I guess. I’m the exception.

Because when you help people there -

to the end of the tunnel, where the light is -

it means you won’t ever find another person,

someone who can take your own role,

to be the one who guides the guide

to that light at end of the tunnel.

I want to help so many others to the end,

but I want to follow them,

and I don’t know how to get there.

And besides,

I haven’t even saved one person.

All I wanted was to help people.

You know that.”

  ABSOLON: “Of course.”

  SEWARD: “And I haven’t even helped one person.

Not even one person!

I came here, with Manfred, with you guys,

to repay my debts

to the world, to the heavens.

To showcase - to everybody

that I plead for forgiveness!

And the world, the heavens, fate - none have provided me with a single opportunity

to redeem myself ,

to absolve myself,

to repent.

Nothing.”

  ABSOLON: “I guess it wouldn’t do you any good if I told you that

there is nothing you need forgiveness for.”

  SEWARD: “No.”

  ABSOLON: “Okay.”

  More silence,

though Seward’s erratic, guttural sobbing breaths

have slowly begun to lessen

in severity.

 ABSOLON: “Are you kept awake often?”

 A gulp from Seward. He does not want to talk,

yet,

simultaneously,

he needs to.

 SEWARD: “Yes.”

 ABSOLON: “What do you think about?”

 Another silence, seemingly everlasting.

 SEWARD: “Him.”

 Absolon quietly nods, expecting this answer.

 ABSOLON: “Don’t you wake Gratien and Laurent?”

 SEWARD: “They’re heavy sleepers.

I’m glad for that.”

 ABSOLON: “I do suppose there’s no worth in my asking, again,

why you feel the need to repent, when it clearly wasn’t your fault?”

 SEWARD: “I wish you would stop asking me that.”

 ABSOLON: “I understand,

but I feel as if you don’t want to face up to the truth.”

 SEWARD: “What?”

 ABSOLON: “You seem to be more comfortable

living in a fantasy world,

where you can choose to overlook the fact that you cannot be blamed

for the actions of another –

even if all signifiers of the imminence of that action

had not been deeply masked, buried, repressed.”

  Silence lingered.

Absolon spoke again.

 ABSOLON: “How could you have noticed the signs if you weren’t looking for them?

They were undetectable.

But It will do you no good to hear the truth,

when your mind is so hell-bent on ignoring its importance.

The answer can’t and won’t come from me.

You think you will be forgiven for something

that I remind you, you need no forgiveness for,

if you push your grief aside,

and expend the emotional labour

that you could be using to help yourself

on others’ problems.

Seward, you are more important right now.

If you really wanted to help others,

you’d understand that you need to mend yourself first.

It doesn’t help anyone in need to receive counsel from someone as pained as them.”

 SEWARD: “You’re probably right.”

ABSOLON: “Yeah. I think I am.”

 SEWARD: “Logically,

you’re right.”

He says with desperation.

 ABSOLON: “But your mind…

it doesn’t function under logical parameters right now,

does it?”

 SEWARD: “No.”

 ABSOLON: “What can we do to fix that, then?”

 SEWARD: “I…

can’t think of anything”

 ABSOLON: “Or,

is it that your mind doesn’t want you

to be able to think of anything?”

 A pause.

 ABSOLON: “Seward, melancholy’s end goal is to kill you.

It does it by rewiring your mind to disregard truths,

and logical points,

and arguments.

It does it by getting you to ignore reality,

in favour of images and compulsions and behaviours that will, eventually,

snowball, ending in your death.

You ought to know this.”

 SEWARD: “Okay.

I can think of things. I just…”

 ABSOLON: “On some level, you just don’t want to?

Ah, but that’s not you. That’s the melancholy. It’s a really good actor.

Melancholy convinces your mind that it is simply

another,

natural part of itself.

That has always been and always will be.”

 Seward gurgles,

his tears still flowing.

His breathing, however,

turns more into a static, heavy, sinking desperation,

with fewer jerking, convulsing breaths than before.

 ABSOLON: “You really need to sleep. At the very least, you won’t hurt when you sleep.”

 SEWARD: “My thoughts won’t let me.”

 ABSOLON: “Yeah.

I know. Just,

try to focus on the noise of the wheels on the ground.”

 At this, Absolon reached his arm out,

nudging and nestling it around Seward’s neck, pulling the shorter man into a gentle,

supportive,

embrace.

Absolon cradled his neck,

his arm firmly supporting the top of his back,

and Seward nestled his head into Absolon’s body perfectly,

sinking into the muscular curve of his shoulder,

allowing the man’s hand to hold him

as he listened

to the crunching of the wood and metal wheels on

the hard ground.

 The ever sprawling landscape,

was cut through by the tiny train of wagons.

With the tiny occupants inside,

the tiny flame,

and the tiny,

worthless,

insignificant

druidic sorcerer

with the dead husband

and the gargantuan forge of guilt

that had long since melted down his soul

into nothing but darkness and ashes

and consumed his life, his being, his mind and body.

A leviathan, of course, to him,

but invisible,

sub-atomic

in the endless, deserted wasteland.

Dialogue prompt

“… why are you crying?”

“Because I’m a burden and don’t deserve anything in this life, let alone you.”

[greetingsfromeruhain]

Calvin’s Suicide

Calvin Kane’s Suicide

This cavern was as incubator, of all divine life. It killed brutally, mercilessly, granted joy and untainted rebirth, and brewed the primordial cells and primeval tissue that would, one day bring millions to their knees. All had originated here. Here, is where Kanos lived: beneath the ice.

This network of caves is neither natural, nor unnatural. Snaking through the snow desert, shaped as empty roots, blood vessels, organic patterns of winding, labyrinthine tunnels and gargantuan caverns carved effortlessly into the earth. Dripping from The Source, now long lost beneath the ice, is the fluid: burning to the touch to anyone, but a god.

I should have gone centuries ago, he thought. He had trudged through sleet-drenched nights, the road always cruel, the rain and ice, and hail so unthinkably cold, that his pathetic body registered its soggy touch on his skin as false, soulless heat.

He had prayed for his cursed existence to end thousands of years ago. He had long wished for death, as all humans had, as all humans do. God of gods, liar of liars.

By this point in time, Kanos didn’t know if what resided in his head was his actual self, or if this damned vessel was ruled entirely by mental instability. He pleaded daily, nightly, with empty divinity to let him go, to leave, to gather once again some semblance of peace. But, maybe, he liked to suffer. Because no god ever let him die.

He is naked now; though once usually adorned by five layers of interlocking, intricate, ancient armour of platinum, of gold, of dark, shining onyx, its origins lost to history, its design unclassifiable, forged from mystery. The platinum would glow as he raised his head in the dawn sunlight, his bright, flaming rust coloured eyes still youthful, as a child’s, his smile shining. With it, the clocks could keep ticking.

He once wandered the snow deserts, the cities, the mountains, the grasslands, the beaches, the ocean-sides, the fjords, the glens, the moors, the wastelands, the lakes. reminding millions that tomorrow, the world would still be turning. They were safe in the loving embrace of their father. Shielded, yet swaddled, by good hands. The eternal ticking, breathing hands of the clock - the hands of the father of time.

His body was bruised deep purple, his wrists and thighs cut freshly. There had been centuries’ worth of nights of tumult, at the mercy of the unbroken, stirring maelstrom that was his brain. He’d said so many things he’d never meant, had so many ideas he shouldn’t have shared, sung so many sorrowful songs, spun so many tragic yarns and all of them, lies.

Day upon droning day of unwelcome visitors, intrusive thoughts, trigger upon trigger internalized evermore, depressive episodes repressed into the dirt of his unconscious. All the while, a smile burned onto his face and empty hope burned into his eyes. He shone with calmness, divinity and peace, exuded it. A being from a realm unknown, eternal. Always present, alive for millennia,. The embodiment of time, of linearity, of the comfort of knowing that the world will keep turning. The sun will keep rising, and the clocks will keep ticking if Kanos keeps breathing.

But – cursed life, take me. It still rings in his mind, a single phrase overcoming the others in wet, heavy desperation to be the loudest in the storm. To be heard above the howling wind. The thought bounced, echoed in the gladiatorial chamber of his head, Just as it did, when in the unending cavity below the snow desert he whispered it. Met with dead silence, except for his own ageless voice, never having spoken aloud with such sincerity in centuries, it wormed back into every crevice and fold of his brain. His human brain. Time’s greatest liar.

Time is thought to slow when approaching a black hole. When one enters the unknown, and steps beyond the veil, you could be gone forever, or be born once again. Nobody yet knows – time’s rules are lost. Kanos’s guilt was like this, too. Over centuries, weighed down by crushing remorse, his mind had broken down, his world slowly drawing to an ever impending halt, seeming to slow to a pause. Tonight, he would enter the black hole. The carousel would not turn again. The guilt had stopped his mind, robbed him of power, ended his “divinity”.

He stood still, walking down Entering into the deepest part of the ancient, obsidian chamber. He sank into a small pool of The Source’s liquid. He touched it, shaping it with his tired, shaking hands, and like he had before, all those centuries ago, began to concentrate. He pushed every cell - every molecule contained within his being - into the liquid. Into its changeable form. He succeeded – the liquid surrounding him began to rise, with overwhelming yet effortless force. The utter potency of the emptiness within him imbued a power – a power never before considered - into the substance. He had not gotten results this quickly When he had shaped and birthed his daughters, entering them into a life of glory built on the unjust, ever-crumbling foundations of a rancid, wretched lie.

Lord, he thinks - Lord, save me. His words are empty; there is no god. Up there, the hordes, the masses are tricked, duped, abused. Who does god pray to for forgiveness? The world was cruel, dangerous, false, because of him. He hadn’t mean to hurt a soul. He had been young, foolish, human too.

To his knees he began to sink, into the wetness, into the black hole. Into the peace, or into the flames, into the night. Into the place his mind had, for millennia, tried to send him. He sat still, as the soothing, vicious liquid undulated, forming tendrils and flagella, transparent and writhing. Alien.

Under Kanos’s own control, the liquid rose further, ascending him to the top of the cavern. He could faintly hear in the back of his head, a dim hum. Relentless, soulless. As if The Source were mocking him. It had always known the truth. He could almost hear it metamorphose into a venomous voice, spitting poison at him. “How dare you use us for your petty little game? How dare you try to feel better? How dare you use us to stroke your fragile ego?”

The tendrils snaked around him, before halting, almost at the top of the towering cavern. Calvin Thomas Kane, the human, the mortal, suspended in their grasp. Calvin had died millennia ago. No one would remember that name, as some of him had feared, and some of him had wanted.

One monstrous, wyrm-like tendril, thick, appearing almost solid, sentient, (though Kanos controlled its fluid movements with his mind, his DNA, and his life force, or, lack thereof) presented itself to the suicidal god.

In a silent acknowledgment of its purpose, Kanos blinked. Once. Twice. He nodded, and the tendril moved and advanced and curled its way around his neck like a snake, the transparent liquid forming a thick, heavy noose. One fit for a god. Fit for God. It rose, further into the air, tugging Kanos violently up - merely a few more teasing feet to the very top of the cavern. And then, nothing.

Calvin Kane waited, maybe hesitant, maybe not, the chaos in his mind shrieking like an swelling mass of hydra. The voices, the compulsions, the intrusive thoughts, the insults and the regrets all clambering, rocking and scraping frantically, as so to reach the front. To screech the loudest, to prove its septic message the most vital, its rancid, diseased, insinuation superior.

In this cavern, devoid of noise, Kanos heard as clearly as he ever had. This desire, present before divinity, constant, before those lies - those godforsaken lies! - attempted to fix him. Save him. Sustain him. Which they did, briefly, of course, but could never sustain him forever. A lie snowballs. A lie builds when left to the wayside. So, the more Kanos allowed his brain to marinate in the knowledge of its own deception, the more it chipped away at his heavy-as-stone brain, until now.

“Forgive me,” Kanos whispers to no one. “I’m human too.”

“Cursed life, take me.”

He sees, for the last time a world that was quiet, once, then loud. The tower of tendrils and tubes birthed and shaped from the divine fuel of The Source in an instant, dropped, and fell back into its pool of origin, leaving only the noose remaining suspended in the air.

As if a foregone conclusion from the very dawn of time, instantaneously, Calvin’s body jerked. It writhed, heaved, and let out one last strained, choking breath as the same Source liquid, mixed with an opaque foam dribbled from his agape mouth. His lifeless eyes remained unchanged, the spark behind them long since dead. And the crack could be heard across time.

[greetingsfromeruhain]

I Used to Be

There is no version of me that is beautiful now.

There is no beauty in failure. There is nothing special about guilt. About bottling

everything up. Lying by omission.

They’ve written so much about me.

 They have forgotten all I have written. All I have seen.

They have forgotten the dawn treks across forests, ice deserts, snow-capped, jagged peaks,

the thousand-strong roster of correct predictions - the crops saved, deaths prevented,

the pristine stacks of brand-new books, freshly signed.

My towering, omnipresent columns, surveying benevolently. Watchtowers.

The curving, splendid arches of white-marble guild halls and the tiny wooden training centres,

the free-entry lectures in ancient universities, the queues of babbling excited students --

 I rose over mountains,

summoning clouds

and spending the nights, arms open, smiling and tasting the raindrops with my tongue.

The raindrops I knew would come.

I would laugh raucously as the drops extinguished my fires, and stained the ink in my sketchbooks.

I revelled knowing that nothing is permanent,

that I am merely one small player in the grand legend of this world. This life.

Nothing. Nothing is permanent.

  Manfred wrote this in his diary in the morning before feast of Ithys,

at that pre-dawn moment when the lights from the city below finally begin to dim and die.

His tiny, blue, enchanted flame gently flickered away to nothing.

He seemed to seal closed his eyes,

brutally and desperately pushing his exhausted eyelids against each other.

His heart beat in his chest like a lead weight,

his entire stomach turned upside down and back again.

He tried everything in his limited power not to convulse with tears.

No one could see him. Yet he still could not allow himself to cry.

 The truth will always come out somewhere.

His hands quivering, he shut the leather-bound notebook

the same one that saw him through the good years.

It’s reached its last legs now. It will follow his good name to the grave.

His life is not yet at it its end, technically.

Manfred Marsden’s life is,

however,

over.

 He will be either

a)       left behind

or he will

b)      die in infamy.

He knows this.

He had never been prepared.

He left so many others behind.

He had left so many others forgotten

in his youth, in the unforgiving wake of his bravado.

In the fallout of his infantile nonsense.

 He has so much time, he knows.

With nowhere to spend it,

nowhere to bring himself

without craning necks,

glares of poison,

gossiping whispers,

and worst of all,

just the stares.

The stares he could never parse.

 Once a savant,

a hero,

a role model, for the youth.

The leader they looked up to.

The genius, the gifted public servant.

When he saw his gilded, legendary image

Looking back himself in the mirror,

it was the image of that man – the man they saw.

The man he believed was there.

 He hasn’t looked in a mirror in years,

he is afraid – terrified -

if he steals an unintentional, ghostly glance,

sees a brief reflection,

in a shopfront,

or a puddle,

of what man he will see.

[greetingsfromeruhain]

Clearing

Seward would never admit he did this,

but one autumn evening, ten days after That Day,

he abandoned his bedroom, now a veritable pigsty.

He left his unwashed clothes to furnish the floorboards, like leaves on the forest floor

and let the smell of his body odour continue to infuse with the air

and in only a sweaty tunic, three quarter length bed pants and decades old, worn-out shoes,

he sank down the small wooden staircase outside the door to his tiny, rented apartment

nestled tightly above the tavern, and below the apothecaries’,

his hair brushing the ceiling,

his heart creaking along with every step.

He stumbled out into the wide, airy streets

as the autumn sun descended.

The world around him bathed in orange and pink,

the streets full of young college kids, just out of class, giggling nervously, while

conjuring their very first flickering, luminescent, shimmering

dragonflies, grasshoppers,

moths.

 And Seward slugged past them.

Past the evening light, the sparkling spells,

and the dwindling, yet still raucous laughter of these bright-eyed young wizards.

The sprites, the fireflies.

The tittering, tipsy young couples drinking mead in the open air of the marketplace square.

The setting sun shining dully on the cobblestones, sinking slowly below the forest.

He shoved past it all, teetering, inebriated by nothing

but his wet, slimy grief.

 This day a fortnight ago, they kissed below the slowly tattering awnings of the herb emporium.

Four days later he was dead, hanging naked from the tree they’d been married under the shade of.

 And Seward rushed now, into the forest, from the marketplace,

leaving behind the charmed, playful nightlife of Elgorthain on a Thursday night.

No longer seeing the university towering over the comparably tiny, picture-postcard buildings,

seeing only the trees, and leaves, and plants, and insects. Hearing Iannis’s voice calling him.

 He still loved him now, he always did.

In a blur of desperation, confusion, self-blame,

the certainty that the fault lay solely with him,

Seward set foot on the dirt path into the centuries-old forest.

 He climbed over the ruins of the ancient elven settlements,

penetrating deeper into the timeworn woods,

stumbling blindly through the world he’d loved so much,

Far from where he had gained and lost his husband.

Tripping through the bushes, the flowers, the fungi and the luminescent insects,

brushing past the beauty of nature as if it were nothing but an afterthought.

Iannis had been nature’s masterpiece. Its greatest gift. And he had,

somehow, by some dreadful machination,

that even he couldn’t truly comprehend,

denied himself the blessed future nature’s gift had bestowed upon him.

 What did I do wrong?

What didn’t I intuit?

Why didn’t I know?

Why couldn’t I tell?

Amael and Kala, his God and Goddess, were absent.

They felt further and further away with each passing moment.

 Seward sank into a clearing, far from where he had begun.

Brown, crushed leaves on the ground, lit by a solitary enchanted flame, glowing blue.

As the forest itself metamorphosed

from the soft glow of the orange evening

into the dim indigo of night.

  He knelt by the flame

and pressed shut his eyes,

whispering a prayer to a long-forgotten God.

“Let me sleep forever, Octave. Allow me peace.

Let me sleep forever, if Thorael should not.”

 And Seward Olson pressed his head onto the forest floor, face stained with ugly, writhing tears

that he had not remembered crying,

desperately wishing he could once again hear the woods’ heartbeat.

He had to be sure it lived.

That something he loved

lived.

[greetingsfromeruhain]

Something Blind

“Something Blind”

 Cooped up, packed tightly away from society.

Sprawled out on his tiny cot,

in his twenty by sixteen foot corner room.

Seward is still waiting for something.

Something Thorael can never return to him.

Something Omeon never warned him of.

Something he never thought to ask if Tallus could see.

Something not even Amael, not even Kala, could ever regrow.

When a sapling dies,

it’s dead.

 He did this to himself. He did this to Iannis.

He did this to Iannis.

Should he have read the clues? Something was happening.

Could it have been his fault

for not knowing what was happening?

What was happening?

 He woke to a beam of light.

The skylight perfectly directing it, to

focus its shine on his naked body.

In his empty bed

he woke up sunburned.

The blackout blinds broken. No way to fix them.

Never something he would call his forte.

He could tell the age of the tree that made the wooden frames

from its rings, arranged concentrically, portals to the past,

to the millennia this world had still turned without a living, joyous Iannis.

A world without him had, Seward understood, existed and thrived.

A world without him was normality. Their intertwined states of being had been,

Seward figured,

outliers.

 He can only stare at the sheets. Awake but static, marinating in sweat and sun. Cooking.

Too pathetic to hire a blinds guy. Too useless to fix the blinds himself.

Too blind to see what was in front of his eyes.

He should have read

the writing on the wall.

But the wall is sun-bleached,

and the writing is gone.

[greetingsfromeruhain]

Still

Thorael, the God of Death.

He lies in the cavern.

Ready to give birth to his second son.

The divine membrane seeps from the floor

originating from nowhere, called by his presence.

Encasing him, cradling him.

He is naked

and he was lost.

His eyes, open yet closed, empty but full

stare into the semi-darkness.

Lit by algae, luminescent mushrooms, sparkling dimly off of the slime around his eyes.

He has always had flashbacks.

He can always see again, when he closes his eyes.

His boy. Both of them. Living, and not yet alive, living only in his mind.

 And he drafts,

and wills every cell in his body to work.

The slimy, clear liquid rises, keeping him safe,

dead to the world that he serves, and always will serve.

Their loyal knight. The last line. The ferryman.

He slouches, shielded, over the floor of the cave

and balls his fist, pushing against nothing.

And feels, forming,

the first clump of cells. He imbues each one, one by one,

with the divine gift and curse of mastery over death.

Once freed from the membrane,

this will be his son,

eventually.

He drops it, with fatherly gentleness,

tenderness,

into the centre of the cavern.

It is now almost full with the mysterious, slimy, viscous substance, necessary for creating divinity.

He shapes the next divine clump of skin.

He sculpts them into the shapes he sees in his dreams.

He can see those golden eyes.

 It has been three weeks.

Suspended animation, eyes open,

covered in the dense, suffocating liquid.

Still encased, cradled by it,

now the tendrils are simply an extension of himself.

The wetness permeates his body. He is nothing but liquid.

And he is almost complete. If this works.

He can hear only wetness, squelches, and his own, laboured, gurgling breath

and the distant hum of the river that runs through here. Real water.

And Thorael continues,

vision perfect, yet blurred.

He rises, as he always does.

Or does the liquid raise him up?

Regardless, he rises from the bottom of the chamber.

And it lifts him to the top.

To the centre of this claustrophobic and flooded,

yet, divine, cavern.

And he sees his son. Perfect, as he’d always imagined.

Imbued with every little cell, every specific gene.

Everything he wanted. Everything he needed.

Thorael falls, the liquid bending and moving at his body’s slightest shift.

He dives down, watching his son in utero.

And he runs a hand across the slimy membrane.

And he smiles, and he thinks.

This could work.

His son’s unborn face lit by the light blue greens of the luminescent fungi and the algae.

Expressionless. Not alive, not yet.

 Thorael looked upon his near complete work,

his face already saturated from the membrane’s embrace.

But growing wetter with tears,

sadness, love, regret.

Erakath had never been this beautiful.

They say when you have a kid, you grow to love them immediately.

Though, this hadn’t happened with Erakath,

but now, and Tallus not even born, not yet even touched by the spark of life,

Thorael understood.

 Rushedly now, Thorael generates another cluster of cells

and rubs them across his son’s torso.

Just a tiny bit more.

Even out the chest area.

Yes, he thinks;

even, satisfactory,

beautiful. And in record time. Three weeks.

He thinks, despite how egotistical this might be,

maybe I was right.

 And he rubs and he rubs

the last few clusters of cells, born from his hand,

across the body of his new son.

Evening him out,

a perfectionist, always.

 “Give him life”,

Thorael speaks, willing the protection away.

And he holds his son,

Tallus, meaning lifeline.

His limp head laying on his hand,

and Thorael’s body,

slouched,

encased in the membrane, still, for only a few more moments.

 This cocoon dissolves away,

slowly but surely sliding into the nothingness.

Into the void, into the previous life.

Back into the darkness of the cave.

It drains into the cracks,

into the unexplored shadows of the chamber,

into the endless abyss underneath.

The light in the cave dims

with no liquid to reflect off.

 And it takes only a minute,

(when it should take hours)

as Thorael banishes the ritual.

Hastening it tenfold

to save more from unjust death.

 And now, he thinks,

I can pass on the torch.

I can pass on the candle to my son.

He gazes into Tallus’s eyes,

waiting for the spark of life to flicker within them,

(the spark that should be triggered by the safety of the holy membrane having left him

and the first breath of fresh air to enter his divine lungs.)

 He stares into the screens that are his son’s eyes,

and waits

and waits

and waits

and waits

and waits.

[greetingsfromeruhain]

Terminal

He teeters down the hallway, past valets, past cleaners.

Snaking down the maze of lavish corridors.

Of the Brunston Arms Hotel.

His body is light as a ghost’s. Floating.

His heart pounds, threatening to burst from his chest,

or force its way up his throat.

His feet barely skim across the floor. He glides over the carpet.

Through the foyers, lined every few strides, with portraits

of men and women who once lived.

Who will have lived longer than he will.

And who have, perchance achieved more

than he, now, ever can.

 They blur past him.

He runs faster than he knows is safe,

to avoid staring into their dead eyes. They’re mocking him.

These valets, these cleaners.

They laugh at him too.

They see, in his face,

and they know,

the awful truth.

 He climbs the stairs, legs screaming with the last few steps.

Is this new?

How can one’s body feel so light, so empty,

yet so painful, and so, so tired?

 He’s reached the penthouse floor.

And he stumbles to the door.

Reaching into his pockets, he sifts through his miscellaneous junk blindly,

cutting himself on some young mage’s business card. Christ.

He feels the tiniest drop of blood, as he grips the room key

and shoves it in the lock.

The blood smears across the key’s stem, already drying.

Laurent cannot look at it.

 The door clicks open, and he collapses inside.

He unconsciously slams it behind him,

before he crumples,

with a strength he didn’t think his light body had.

 And he heaves.

And he shakes.

And he curls up, folding and contorting himself into the position he began in.

Begging, eyes closed, to awaken in utero. Not wanting to open his eyes,

and see the world he grew to know too well,

facing him again.

All liquids released. Urine.

Blood.

Sweat.

Tears.

[greetingsfromeruhain]

John and Manfred

It’s morning.

He can hear the distant bustle of the city gaining in volume from outside his windows.

He sees odds and ends, piling on his windowsill.

Little charms, tokens. A toothpick model of a guild hall he designed once.

Once.

The sunlight creeps in, slowly. If you can call it sunlight.

It’s just light.

You can’t see the sun here. The skyscrapers blot it out.

But, Manfred feels the world outside growing slightly hotter.

 He rolls over in bed, and looks beyond the windowpane.

It’s early. Earlier than usual.

He hasn’t seen the city lightening for weeks.

By the time he usually wakes, it’s already started to grow dark again.

A tinge of something briefly passes through him.

He misses…

something.

 The knock on the door dully reverberates throughout the house again.

That’s what woke him up. A visitor.

A visitor.

Probably a door-to-door salesman,

or a prank caller,

or someone who found out his address

just to throw shit at him

or hire a bard to sing an insult to his face.

No need to answer.

But it still woke him up. Dammit.

 He pulls the sheets off his body.

They’re sweaty. Somewhat sticky.

Maybe once, he’d have thought it gross.

But that’s what sleepless nights will do.

It seems as if he’d only just finally managed to fall asleep.

 The knocking again.

There is always someone bothering him.

Except, this time, it isn’t himself.

God.

 He stands up, and grabs his dressing gown off the floor.

Silk. Embroidered with “MM”.

A relic of a different time.

A silly purchase. Not his purchase. But silly of him to accept it.

He pulls it on, it sticks to his skin. The sweat makes it uncomfortable to wear.

 Another knock.

They’re not leaving.

And it’s become, if anything, more pronounced. Louder.

Someone really wants to bother him.

 He descends the wooden stairs, on autopilot.

He knows what will await him on the other side.

Some little, extra heartache to start the day with.

He does not know why he does it, but he does.

As if he has resigned himself to proving, daily, to himself,

that he isn’t worth it. That he deserves no peace.

He fumbles, half-awake, stiffly, toward the door, bracing himself.

 The hallway is strange and new in the dim morning light.

He has not seen this for months, not noticed it for years.

And he realizes now that he has missed it.

Old books, yellowing piles of papers, dioramas, and half-dead plants line the hall from floor to ceiling.

One plant, a withered, yet living Sabal Sinensis, glows only in morning light.

Its soft orange, shimmering petals catch his eye, soothing him, for perhaps a millisecond.

He creaks open the wooden the door, bracing himself for the tirade.

 And it’s only John.

Older, unfamiliar now.

But still John.

His hair greying, thinner than he was in school.

Posture even worse than before, bright blue eyes still twinkling.

He is the same age as Manfred, but looks older. So much wiser.

The spark shining in his eyes no longer boyish, but weathered.

Yet still, joyous.

He wears clothes that look too modest for his income.

He’s beaming.

 John was just his classmate.

Never his friend.

Just another acquaintance from school.

Same class, same year.

Both famed. One rose,

one fell.

“Manfred,”

He says, stretching out his hand.

“Remember me?”

Manfred nods. Of course he does.

“I need to chat.”

 “Remember that favour you promised?”

[greetingsfromeruhain]

Fangirl

there used to be a girl

few dates here and there,

a few nights out

gratien really liked her.

she was short, a bit plump

her body made him feel good about his body.

if someone so beautiful could look like him

then maybe he was beautiful too.

 but she did mention akiva. a lot.

gratien understood at first,

akiva moved her.

she used to only mention him a little.

here and there - a little hum of one of his ditties

- a little sliver of one of his poems -

it's a part of life, you know.

akiva is bound to get mentioned.

everyone loves him.

 he loved her smile, she shared his.

and the way his eyebrows would rise

above his dumb pink glasses

he was always blown away by the gentleness of her singing voice.

she knew verses, music from centuries ago.

gratien just guzzled down on fast food and drank soda, while

she'd read ancient melodies from so long ago.

gifting them a music his mind could never fathom.

 but there is always something, isn't there?

akiva would slip into other conversations.

small at first, but always growing in intensity.

he was her idol.

she aimed to compose, to move crowds as he did.

soon, his mangled, handsome, transplanted face would enter every sentence.

ripping up the syntax, bursting from nowhere, infecting every conversation.

present in every private moment.

tearing her further away from him.

 and then gratien had a little gig,

down in the alehouse. a lute, mandolin, accordion.

twenty-one attendees.

she came to it.

he had endured the whole carriage ride over,

talk of how akiva was in town, across the river.

 and then, later on,

after the last strained polkas,

and the final rap verse, voice raw,

when the moon hung bright above the town square,

after gratien smiled and waved at the crowd,

and bowed, his frame aching with nothing but pride,

gazing at the twenty-one faces,

fulfilled

 he turned

and he saw her by the side of the stage

an akiva einhorn t-shirt in hand,

signed.

fresh ink.