Dear Joah,
My situation with the Omega Institute has become untenable. Indeed, I now have the clarity to see that it was my great mistake returning to the OI, that day you found me at the hospital. Effective, immediately, I am tendering my resignation with the OI. I can no longer believe in, nor serve, nor defend, an organization that is so riddled with corruption and deceit.
I am whole, and I see this now.
I am whole, and I hereby renounce all ties to my Sire. No longer will I be known as the blood Chylde of Omega. I now serve another mistress, an infinitely greater being, and one who is not fickle and who took the time to properly mentor me. And, though not affectionate, Mother Hydra is just. I am reborn, from the benthic chrysalis that lay so long in the library basement. Never again will Omega punish me for her failings as my blood mother.
I am now whole. Sariel's seed has bloomed, during my time in the halls of Y'ha-rthyneil. The Watchmaker has no hold on me. I will never again serve as a portal.
As you are now bound to me, and as I depend upon you for sustenance, you know that I need you with me. However, I am granting you the ability to make that decision for yourself. I have been forced down too many paths to now force you.
I have taken with me certain files, and deleted the electronic copies of those files, specifically all those pertaining to OI Case No. 80501 and to the matter of the false priests recently masquerading as servents of "Dagon." This is my concern, and nothing for the OI to worry itself with. Morever, I have managed to wrest from the Old Woman that shard of identity she recently stole from me while I assisted in the healing of the incubus. The Countess Báthory Erzsébet is once again within me. A shame about the damage to the library, but it's nothing a good carpenter can't fix. However, I have left the Old Woman hungry.
Praetor, I will now entrust this letter to your capable hands. You will know how to reach me, should you wish.
N
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Ondine
“Joah? Do you hear me?”
On the rocky point, Joah turns her head. "Nareth?" she asks in wonder, her voice floating away in the crash of the waves.
“Yes....
“I am awake.
“I am returned.
“I am... new.”
“Where are you?” Joah whispers.
“Near… I can see you all. I must rise slowly. I have been down so long.”
Joah closes her eyes, her thoughts drifting toward the deep. “We thought you... dead.”
“No... just dreaming.”
*****
I sat on the promontory near the Toxian shoreline at dusk. Clouds dotted the horizon as I watched the sun set through the haze that seems to hang forever over the City. I wrapped my arms around myself because the air was brisk and cold, although most of the snow in the City had melted. Here and there, an icy spot of shadows still held a crystalline drift. A short span away, two young girls stood near the surf, one brown skinned with chocolate eyes and hair, the other lighter skinned with eyes the color of sunflowers and black hair falling to her shoulders.
The brown girl seemed poorly dressed for a walk along the beach. She wore an old-fashioned black dress with a stiff white collar, all strangely formal and out of place. The girl with the sunflower eyes was rather less remarkable, dressed in a sweater, jeans, and sneakers. As I watched the pair, I thought it odd that any parent would bring a child into the City, much less allow two girls to wander freely through its hungry streets and toward the sea.
The black-haired girl stooped to pick up some half-buried sea glass and the girls examined it for a moment, standing just at the water’s edge where the brackish water licks unnoticed over their shoes. I watch the sea, and my thoughts wander to the events of the prior evening.
We had been out further along the promontory, when the air suddenly had filled with a high-pitched trilling sort of song. The sound had been beautiful, but almost painful to hear. I had heard her calling, drawing me along. Tonks, Constantine, Pen and Kryss had followed. Tonks watched the sea, her wings unfurling and feathers rustling in the night wind, her eyes scanning the surface and the depth of water. I stood beside her, feeling my hair whip about her head and peering into the deep. “The Siren...." I had asked, “Do you hear her?” Tonks had simply nodded, while Pen paced around her in circles, watching his angel more than the water, nervous about what was to come. Constantine and Kryss had stood in silent sentry.
A sudden movement drew my attention back to the pair nearby me as the yellow-eyed girl plucked the sea glass from the sand and threw it out into the water. She seemed agitated. She was talking talking loudly to the black-haired girl, who seemed nonplussed. “Who are Father Kraken and Mother Hydra supposed to be?”
“Mother Hydra and Father Kraken are the Pillars of the Sea,” the brown girl replied, “The Keepers of the Abyss, Mother and Father, destruction and conception and everything that lies anywhere in between. In the days of void and shadow, before the gods had grown weary of nothingness and pulled the land up from the sea….”
“I get the picture,” the black-haired girl said with annoyance. “It doesn’t matter to me.”
I watched the pair, carefully studying the brown girl who seemed to know so much of the deeps and the Ones who live there. She in turn studied the black-haired girl, finally shaking her head the way a teacher might shake his or her head if a student was being particularly dense.
“The Keepers have many names among the tribes of men,” the brown girl finally said. “Names are only tools….”
The Keepers.
I stared openly at the girls.
The evening before, Nareth had risen from the sea. I had thought her lost, yet she rose from the water, her hair streaming seaweed against scaled skin. Gill flaps had fluttered as she stood on the same shore. They had fluttered and then lain flat before melting into her.
She’d been reborn of Mother Hydra, consort of Dagon, whom the Old Ones name Cthulhu… or so she’d said after she’d regained the ability to speak, ejecting a gout of seawater and mucus from her mouth.
I tried to shake the cobwebs from my mind as I watched the girls, watched the surf, and drifted on the sea of my thoughts. The girl with the yellow eyes turned swiftly on the brown girl, her black hair lifted by the breeze.
“I wish you’d shut up and leave me alone,” she said as she began to cry. “Go away and never come back.” She pivoted, her sneakers making small wells in the sand, and before the brown girl could say or do anything, she strode away the beach, heading back toward the City.
The brown girl merely turned, looked knowingly at me, and smiled before walking on.
Quotes and paraphrases are from Daughter of Hounds, Chapter 5, by Caitlin R. Kiernan, c. 2007, used with permission of the author.
On the rocky point, Joah turns her head. "Nareth?" she asks in wonder, her voice floating away in the crash of the waves.
“Yes....
“I am awake.
“I am returned.
“I am... new.”
“Where are you?” Joah whispers.
“Near… I can see you all. I must rise slowly. I have been down so long.”
Joah closes her eyes, her thoughts drifting toward the deep. “We thought you... dead.”
“No... just dreaming.”
*****
I sat on the promontory near the Toxian shoreline at dusk. Clouds dotted the horizon as I watched the sun set through the haze that seems to hang forever over the City. I wrapped my arms around myself because the air was brisk and cold, although most of the snow in the City had melted. Here and there, an icy spot of shadows still held a crystalline drift. A short span away, two young girls stood near the surf, one brown skinned with chocolate eyes and hair, the other lighter skinned with eyes the color of sunflowers and black hair falling to her shoulders.
The brown girl seemed poorly dressed for a walk along the beach. She wore an old-fashioned black dress with a stiff white collar, all strangely formal and out of place. The girl with the sunflower eyes was rather less remarkable, dressed in a sweater, jeans, and sneakers. As I watched the pair, I thought it odd that any parent would bring a child into the City, much less allow two girls to wander freely through its hungry streets and toward the sea.
The black-haired girl stooped to pick up some half-buried sea glass and the girls examined it for a moment, standing just at the water’s edge where the brackish water licks unnoticed over their shoes. I watch the sea, and my thoughts wander to the events of the prior evening.
We had been out further along the promontory, when the air suddenly had filled with a high-pitched trilling sort of song. The sound had been beautiful, but almost painful to hear. I had heard her calling, drawing me along. Tonks, Constantine, Pen and Kryss had followed. Tonks watched the sea, her wings unfurling and feathers rustling in the night wind, her eyes scanning the surface and the depth of water. I stood beside her, feeling my hair whip about her head and peering into the deep. “The Siren...." I had asked, “Do you hear her?” Tonks had simply nodded, while Pen paced around her in circles, watching his angel more than the water, nervous about what was to come. Constantine and Kryss had stood in silent sentry.
A sudden movement drew my attention back to the pair nearby me as the yellow-eyed girl plucked the sea glass from the sand and threw it out into the water. She seemed agitated. She was talking talking loudly to the black-haired girl, who seemed nonplussed. “Who are Father Kraken and Mother Hydra supposed to be?”
“Mother Hydra and Father Kraken are the Pillars of the Sea,” the brown girl replied, “The Keepers of the Abyss, Mother and Father, destruction and conception and everything that lies anywhere in between. In the days of void and shadow, before the gods had grown weary of nothingness and pulled the land up from the sea….”
“I get the picture,” the black-haired girl said with annoyance. “It doesn’t matter to me.”
I watched the pair, carefully studying the brown girl who seemed to know so much of the deeps and the Ones who live there. She in turn studied the black-haired girl, finally shaking her head the way a teacher might shake his or her head if a student was being particularly dense.
“The Keepers have many names among the tribes of men,” the brown girl finally said. “Names are only tools….”
The Keepers.
I stared openly at the girls.
The evening before, Nareth had risen from the sea. I had thought her lost, yet she rose from the water, her hair streaming seaweed against scaled skin. Gill flaps had fluttered as she stood on the same shore. They had fluttered and then lain flat before melting into her.
She’d been reborn of Mother Hydra, consort of Dagon, whom the Old Ones name Cthulhu… or so she’d said after she’d regained the ability to speak, ejecting a gout of seawater and mucus from her mouth.
I tried to shake the cobwebs from my mind as I watched the girls, watched the surf, and drifted on the sea of my thoughts. The girl with the yellow eyes turned swiftly on the brown girl, her black hair lifted by the breeze.
“I wish you’d shut up and leave me alone,” she said as she began to cry. “Go away and never come back.” She pivoted, her sneakers making small wells in the sand, and before the brown girl could say or do anything, she strode away the beach, heading back toward the City.
The brown girl merely turned, looked knowingly at me, and smiled before walking on.
Quotes and paraphrases are from Daughter of Hounds, Chapter 5, by Caitlin R. Kiernan, c. 2007, used with permission of the author.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Sirenum Pocula
The waning Snow Moon casts a mere shimmer on the surface of the Toxian Sea. Joah stands quietly, water lapping her toes, as the remains of a winter storm casts waves upon the shore. The cold wind bites at her pale skin; the sleeveless muslin chemise she wears provides no protection against its salt sting.
Are you listening, Joah?
She shrugs the chemise from her shoulders, unmindful as it falls into the pull of the tide and is drawn, floating, from the shore. Stepping slowly and certainly, she walks into the icy waters, the cold of it all nearly taking her breath away. Briny fingers wrap calves, thighs and hips; still she walks, the waves pushing and pulling at her, drawing her in breast deep, until she stands swaying like a reed.
Joah closes her eyes, tastes the salt spray on her lips and sees legs that aren't her own, curled and sleeping in the cast-off husks of titanic mollusks extinct a hundred million years before the coming of man. She has closed her eyes on darkness, but when she opens them again it is to the selfsame darkness. In sleep there is the memory of light, and the promise of the phosphorescent glow of Y'ha-rthyneil, which still lies out before her.
Do you hear me?
She lifts her arms, gazing on them as they drift, marveling at the delicate bones in her wrists and graceful webbed fingers of another's hands. She grows hungry, but knows the sea will sustain her. Even as great, unseen leviathans have battened themselves for aeons, so she feeds on the eyeless things that creep across the silt and the blind fish. The blood is cold, not like the blood to which she has grown accustomed, but it is nourishing, nonetheless.
"I am become a pilgrim," she often thinks. "This is my Hajj." There are few conscious thoughts left to her mind here in the deep places, but this one, recurring, comforts her.
"You will be prepared," the sea whispers all about her. "You will be made whole, at last."
Joah….
She is in what oceanographers call the Sigsbee Deep now, that black abyssal Grand Canyon of the Gulf of Mexico. She follows the trough ever deeper, thousands of meters down, and down, and down. At the southern end of the Sigsbee lies a city of the Deep Ones, and it is there that Mother Hydra and the children of Cthulhu wait for her. The featureless plains of silt give way to hydrothermal vents and towering forests of giant tube worms, glistening brine pools and sprawling mounds of methane ice. These are, she knows, the borderlands, and so she has left the wilderness behind her.
Past a vale of cold seeps, and threading her way between the high sulfide chimneys of black smokers, she becomes aware, for the first time, of another mind brushing against her own. The one bound to her before her departure from the city and the world Above. And she stops drifting.
Joah?
Are you listening, Joah? Do you see?
When there is no answer, she moves on.
Beyond the black smokers, she glimpses something, not light, but a paler sort of blackness. And she knows it is her signpost, and some weight is lifted from off her mind that she was not even aware lay there.
The Undying Court is near.
Dream Sequence, C. Kiernan
Are you listening, Joah?
She shrugs the chemise from her shoulders, unmindful as it falls into the pull of the tide and is drawn, floating, from the shore. Stepping slowly and certainly, she walks into the icy waters, the cold of it all nearly taking her breath away. Briny fingers wrap calves, thighs and hips; still she walks, the waves pushing and pulling at her, drawing her in breast deep, until she stands swaying like a reed.
Joah closes her eyes, tastes the salt spray on her lips and sees legs that aren't her own, curled and sleeping in the cast-off husks of titanic mollusks extinct a hundred million years before the coming of man. She has closed her eyes on darkness, but when she opens them again it is to the selfsame darkness. In sleep there is the memory of light, and the promise of the phosphorescent glow of Y'ha-rthyneil, which still lies out before her.
Do you hear me?
She lifts her arms, gazing on them as they drift, marveling at the delicate bones in her wrists and graceful webbed fingers of another's hands. She grows hungry, but knows the sea will sustain her. Even as great, unseen leviathans have battened themselves for aeons, so she feeds on the eyeless things that creep across the silt and the blind fish. The blood is cold, not like the blood to which she has grown accustomed, but it is nourishing, nonetheless.
"I am become a pilgrim," she often thinks. "This is my Hajj." There are few conscious thoughts left to her mind here in the deep places, but this one, recurring, comforts her.
"You will be prepared," the sea whispers all about her. "You will be made whole, at last."
Joah….
She is in what oceanographers call the Sigsbee Deep now, that black abyssal Grand Canyon of the Gulf of Mexico. She follows the trough ever deeper, thousands of meters down, and down, and down. At the southern end of the Sigsbee lies a city of the Deep Ones, and it is there that Mother Hydra and the children of Cthulhu wait for her. The featureless plains of silt give way to hydrothermal vents and towering forests of giant tube worms, glistening brine pools and sprawling mounds of methane ice. These are, she knows, the borderlands, and so she has left the wilderness behind her.
Past a vale of cold seeps, and threading her way between the high sulfide chimneys of black smokers, she becomes aware, for the first time, of another mind brushing against her own. The one bound to her before her departure from the city and the world Above. And she stops drifting.
Joah?
Are you listening, Joah? Do you see?
When there is no answer, she moves on.
Beyond the black smokers, she glimpses something, not light, but a paler sort of blackness. And she knows it is her signpost, and some weight is lifted from off her mind that she was not even aware lay there.
The Undying Court is near.
Dream Sequence, C. Kiernan
Monday, February 16, 2009
On Seas Hideously Serene
Joah sits in utter stillness, head bent over a leather-bound journal. A nondescript volume, it lies on the table before her, its dark cover worn with age. Each brittle page is filled with neat, old-fashioned script, written in ink that has faded to brown over the years. The pages are covered with curious drawings, wine-fueled thoughts, and line after line of poetry. Here and there, there is a signature: Henri Le Rennet. Joah pulls the oil lamp nearer as her eyes are drawn to one particular page.
Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
She leans back in her wooden chair, placing one hand on the journal, the other over her closed eyes. Joah cannot forget the pull of the dream, the drifting down into darkness, utter inviolable darkness, though she could still see. She remembers the descent, and then there are the endless abyssal plains of gray silt and primal ooze and the pale brittlestars that creep across the mud. The featureless deserts of the Gulf, broken only occasionally by the wreckage of a sunken ship, a week old, or a thousand years old, or by the carcass of a whale, wreathed by the squirming bodies of the hagfish that will pick the bones clean. These are her only landmarks in a world devoid of landmarks.
No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently-
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free-
Up domes- up spires- up kingly halls-
Up fanes- up Babylon-like walls-
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers-
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.
Joah’s hand grips the edges of the journal, her fingers nearly crumpling the page before her in her fist. Yet she cannot pull away. It is the end of the descent. And there is the cold, which is almost beyond bearing. But only almost. And there is the weight of all that water pressing down on her from above, from the sunlit surface. Joah knows well enough the burden should crush her. But it sits easily upon her barnacle-scabbed shoulders, and she carries it as easily as do the native anglerfish and all the other nameless and blind deep-sea things.
There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol's diamond eye-
Not the gaily-jewelled dead
Tempt the waters from their bed;
For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of glass-
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea-
No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.
She has made a choice. And she wears proudly the scars of the decision, and her mind is still filled with the song of Those Who Have Called. There is more delight in the song than the touch of any lover. More joy than in any kill she has ever made. More satiation than the blood of any being she has ever devoured. More release than she has received from even the most terrible pain.
She drifts, the sharp claws at the ends of her webbed toes digging furrows in the silt as the current bears her ahead, and the Song continues, so that she knows there is a destination.
But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave- there is a movement there!
As if the towers had thrust aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide-
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow-
The hours are breathing faint and low-
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.
Dream Sequence, C. Kiernan
Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
She leans back in her wooden chair, placing one hand on the journal, the other over her closed eyes. Joah cannot forget the pull of the dream, the drifting down into darkness, utter inviolable darkness, though she could still see. She remembers the descent, and then there are the endless abyssal plains of gray silt and primal ooze and the pale brittlestars that creep across the mud. The featureless deserts of the Gulf, broken only occasionally by the wreckage of a sunken ship, a week old, or a thousand years old, or by the carcass of a whale, wreathed by the squirming bodies of the hagfish that will pick the bones clean. These are her only landmarks in a world devoid of landmarks.
No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently-
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free-
Up domes- up spires- up kingly halls-
Up fanes- up Babylon-like walls-
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers-
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.
Joah’s hand grips the edges of the journal, her fingers nearly crumpling the page before her in her fist. Yet she cannot pull away. It is the end of the descent. And there is the cold, which is almost beyond bearing. But only almost. And there is the weight of all that water pressing down on her from above, from the sunlit surface. Joah knows well enough the burden should crush her. But it sits easily upon her barnacle-scabbed shoulders, and she carries it as easily as do the native anglerfish and all the other nameless and blind deep-sea things.
There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol's diamond eye-
Not the gaily-jewelled dead
Tempt the waters from their bed;
For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of glass-
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea-
No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.
She has made a choice. And she wears proudly the scars of the decision, and her mind is still filled with the song of Those Who Have Called. There is more delight in the song than the touch of any lover. More joy than in any kill she has ever made. More satiation than the blood of any being she has ever devoured. More release than she has received from even the most terrible pain.
She drifts, the sharp claws at the ends of her webbed toes digging furrows in the silt as the current bears her ahead, and the Song continues, so that she knows there is a destination.
But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave- there is a movement there!
As if the towers had thrust aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide-
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow-
The hours are breathing faint and low-
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.
Dream Sequence, C. Kiernan
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
"From space, the world is blue."
I rose early and dressed. The moon was still up when I closed and locked the door to my little room, heading down the stairs to the hearth in the Library. Grrbrool crouched by the fire, its flames creating a halo behind him.
“Hello, Spirit Gal,” he grinned. “Rested and renewed? I kept tha…well, tha OTHER wolves from tha door.”
“Other wolves?” I laughed. I brushed my hair back over my shoulder, and went to his side, bending to kiss the top of his head.
Grr grinned again. “Keepin’ tha wolves from tha door, er, whilst ya slept. Watchin'.” I settled in beside him on the floor while he spoke. “I Watch, whilst ya sleep, I guard tha dark places whilst ya work… I am tha Watcher, tha Ferryman… tha Guide, but fer you, I just like ta Watch.” He leaned in and sniffed me all over, scenting me, and licking my hands.
“Beloved,” I smiled. I leaned back, enjoying the feel of his canine tongue against my skin, raising my hand to stroke the side of his face. “I had the strangest dream last night.” I bent my head to rub my cheek against his ruff, taking in the intense new scents that I slowly now was growing accustomed to.
“Dream?” Grr asked. “Was it a good dream? Or just strange?”
“It was... so vivid,” I replied. I pulled back slightly from him, my hand going to the silver flask held on its chain about my waist.
“Dream Walkin'? Was it like bein' -in- Dream? Or just a vivid dream?” Grr lowered his eyes to the flask and then touched it with one claw. “New power, new understandin’, can do things… not bad, but scary, if ya ain’t ready, or aware.”
I shook my head. “I was drifting... just ... drifting in a void of utter, perfect, boundless blue. It wasn't like being in Dream... but then again, it was... I mean... it was peaceful.”
“Floatin’ in tha sea? Or tha sky? Blue like that?”
I closed my eyes, remembering. “Shafts of light shone down on me from somewhere overhead.... more like the sea, I think. I could barely remember the surface... but I felt buoyed and surrounded... yet pulled deeper.” I smiled at him. “I wasn't afraid.”
Grr looked at me with a wary expression. “I like tha bay, but deep scares me if I can’t see bottom.”
“This was different, Grr,” I replied. “Deep, but... no fear. I felt myself descending willingly, settling with infinite slowness.” I laid one hand on his thigh and began stroking it absently. “You'd think I would have been afraid... but the pull... even when the light began to fade... I could feel the pressure of all the water around me, pressing me down... threatening to crush me from every imaginable point of contact, but…. “ I shook my head again. It puzzled me. “Somehow, Beloved, somehow I knew that wouldn't happen. That it wouldn’t be allowed to happen.”
“Ah.” Grr nodded as his eyes began to widen with understanding. “It is a vision from Nareth, maybe. She sleeps in tha deep.”
I glanced at the outer wall of the secret room behind the lab. “I'm not sure where she lies, anymore... nor with whom.” I felt a sudden, surprising stab of longing for Nareth. When I turned to look at Grr again, I could see in his face that he’d read me plainly.
I cleared my throat. “The thing is, Beloved... I knew I was safe.” I tried to meet his golden gaze.
“Do ya wanna go look over her restin’ spot?” Grr asked gently, laying one paw atop my hand. “I don’t mind. I keep ya both safe, when I can, when ya sleep.”
“Yes, please,” I whispered. With great warmth, Grr offered his paw to me. I took it in return and rose slowly, following him to the shelves that concealed the lab. I watched as he manipulated the books on the shelf randomly, opening the secret doorway. Hand in paw, we walked down the two stone steps into the darkness.
The stench was overpowering. As we drew nearer Nareth's resting place, the smell of rotting fish, a bone yard of crab skeletons, and the spray of turbid seawater assaulted us. Grr wrinkled his nose. “Fishy….”
We knelt on the floor beside the pit that was Nareth’s resting place. A dark, glistening membrane could be seen pulsing just beneath the surface of the hole.
“Beloved?”
“Mmm?” Grr murmured, swirling the water gently with a claw.
“I felt something... in my dream.” I grew quiet, lost in the memory of that place for a moment. When I looked up, I saw Grr studying me intently.
“You and Nareth,” Grr began hesitantly, “Yer bonded, aintcha? Tha smell… and taste….”
I had known this moment would come and I feared it. “Bonded,” I whispered, meeting his gaze. “Yes.” My eyes spoke the question to him that I could not.
Grr nodded slowly and smiled faintly, a little softly sad. “By blood and Family, Sister-Lover. Kin, Pack, Blood.”
I lay one hand upon his chest. “But Beloved, I am bonded to you... always. Always.”
Grr took my hand and held it close. “I ain’t jealous or nothin’, just wanna make sure yer safe, and free ta be you, how ever ya need, or wanna, be.”
I reached up to hold his face lightly. “Once together,” I said quietly, then closed my eyes, drew near to him, and touched my forehead against his.
Grr bumped his forehead against mine and smiled in the gloom and reek. “Always together.”
I burrowed into him, laying my head on his chest and gazing at the hole, watching the membrane pulse in the darkness.
“Whatever path ya walk,” he said, claw tips tracing through my hair. “I meant that, I still do.”
*****
From below (a direction that seemed to the girl even more infinite than above), cold tendrils of blackness rose to embrace her. Her long, white hair drifted about her as eel-like shadows caressed her pale body. She knew she was welcomed there, called down, and all the fear and pain and rejection that haunted her above began to dissolve like salt in the sea.
Her lips were no longer red, but blue as the light began to fade, as the light shifted, as all red vanished from the world and from her mind. She began whispering wordless prayers to Mother Hydra and Father Kraken, to Dagon and Great Cthulhu and nameless beings from Paleozoic depths, to the Urdines, and to the Nereids...
In reply, a greeting chant rose from below...
"There gathered round her every goddess, every Nereid that was in the deep salt sea. Glauce was there and Thaleia and Cymodoce; Nesaea, Speio, Thoe and ox-eyed Halie; Cymothoe, Actaee and Limnoreia; Melite, Iaera, Amphithoe and Agaue; Doto, Proto, Pherusa and Dynamene; Dexamene, Amphinome and Callianeira; Doris, Panope and far-sung Galatea; Nemertes, Apseudes and Callianassa. Clymene came too, with Ianeira, Ianassa, Maera, Oreithuia, Amatheia of the lovely locks, and other Nereids of the salt sea depths."
The girl sank, answering.
Dream Sequence, C. Kiernan
“Hello, Spirit Gal,” he grinned. “Rested and renewed? I kept tha…well, tha OTHER wolves from tha door.”
“Other wolves?” I laughed. I brushed my hair back over my shoulder, and went to his side, bending to kiss the top of his head.
Grr grinned again. “Keepin’ tha wolves from tha door, er, whilst ya slept. Watchin'.” I settled in beside him on the floor while he spoke. “I Watch, whilst ya sleep, I guard tha dark places whilst ya work… I am tha Watcher, tha Ferryman… tha Guide, but fer you, I just like ta Watch.” He leaned in and sniffed me all over, scenting me, and licking my hands.
“Beloved,” I smiled. I leaned back, enjoying the feel of his canine tongue against my skin, raising my hand to stroke the side of his face. “I had the strangest dream last night.” I bent my head to rub my cheek against his ruff, taking in the intense new scents that I slowly now was growing accustomed to.
“Dream?” Grr asked. “Was it a good dream? Or just strange?”
“It was... so vivid,” I replied. I pulled back slightly from him, my hand going to the silver flask held on its chain about my waist.
“Dream Walkin'? Was it like bein' -in- Dream? Or just a vivid dream?” Grr lowered his eyes to the flask and then touched it with one claw. “New power, new understandin’, can do things… not bad, but scary, if ya ain’t ready, or aware.”
I shook my head. “I was drifting... just ... drifting in a void of utter, perfect, boundless blue. It wasn't like being in Dream... but then again, it was... I mean... it was peaceful.”
“Floatin’ in tha sea? Or tha sky? Blue like that?”
I closed my eyes, remembering. “Shafts of light shone down on me from somewhere overhead.... more like the sea, I think. I could barely remember the surface... but I felt buoyed and surrounded... yet pulled deeper.” I smiled at him. “I wasn't afraid.”
Grr looked at me with a wary expression. “I like tha bay, but deep scares me if I can’t see bottom.”
“This was different, Grr,” I replied. “Deep, but... no fear. I felt myself descending willingly, settling with infinite slowness.” I laid one hand on his thigh and began stroking it absently. “You'd think I would have been afraid... but the pull... even when the light began to fade... I could feel the pressure of all the water around me, pressing me down... threatening to crush me from every imaginable point of contact, but…. “ I shook my head again. It puzzled me. “Somehow, Beloved, somehow I knew that wouldn't happen. That it wouldn’t be allowed to happen.”
“Ah.” Grr nodded as his eyes began to widen with understanding. “It is a vision from Nareth, maybe. She sleeps in tha deep.”
I glanced at the outer wall of the secret room behind the lab. “I'm not sure where she lies, anymore... nor with whom.” I felt a sudden, surprising stab of longing for Nareth. When I turned to look at Grr again, I could see in his face that he’d read me plainly.
I cleared my throat. “The thing is, Beloved... I knew I was safe.” I tried to meet his golden gaze.
“Do ya wanna go look over her restin’ spot?” Grr asked gently, laying one paw atop my hand. “I don’t mind. I keep ya both safe, when I can, when ya sleep.”
“Yes, please,” I whispered. With great warmth, Grr offered his paw to me. I took it in return and rose slowly, following him to the shelves that concealed the lab. I watched as he manipulated the books on the shelf randomly, opening the secret doorway. Hand in paw, we walked down the two stone steps into the darkness.
The stench was overpowering. As we drew nearer Nareth's resting place, the smell of rotting fish, a bone yard of crab skeletons, and the spray of turbid seawater assaulted us. Grr wrinkled his nose. “Fishy….”
We knelt on the floor beside the pit that was Nareth’s resting place. A dark, glistening membrane could be seen pulsing just beneath the surface of the hole.
“Beloved?”
“Mmm?” Grr murmured, swirling the water gently with a claw.
“I felt something... in my dream.” I grew quiet, lost in the memory of that place for a moment. When I looked up, I saw Grr studying me intently.
“You and Nareth,” Grr began hesitantly, “Yer bonded, aintcha? Tha smell… and taste….”
I had known this moment would come and I feared it. “Bonded,” I whispered, meeting his gaze. “Yes.” My eyes spoke the question to him that I could not.
Grr nodded slowly and smiled faintly, a little softly sad. “By blood and Family, Sister-Lover. Kin, Pack, Blood.”
I lay one hand upon his chest. “But Beloved, I am bonded to you... always. Always.”
Grr took my hand and held it close. “I ain’t jealous or nothin’, just wanna make sure yer safe, and free ta be you, how ever ya need, or wanna, be.”
I reached up to hold his face lightly. “Once together,” I said quietly, then closed my eyes, drew near to him, and touched my forehead against his.
Grr bumped his forehead against mine and smiled in the gloom and reek. “Always together.”
I burrowed into him, laying my head on his chest and gazing at the hole, watching the membrane pulse in the darkness.
“Whatever path ya walk,” he said, claw tips tracing through my hair. “I meant that, I still do.”
*****
From below (a direction that seemed to the girl even more infinite than above), cold tendrils of blackness rose to embrace her. Her long, white hair drifted about her as eel-like shadows caressed her pale body. She knew she was welcomed there, called down, and all the fear and pain and rejection that haunted her above began to dissolve like salt in the sea.
Her lips were no longer red, but blue as the light began to fade, as the light shifted, as all red vanished from the world and from her mind. She began whispering wordless prayers to Mother Hydra and Father Kraken, to Dagon and Great Cthulhu and nameless beings from Paleozoic depths, to the Urdines, and to the Nereids...
In reply, a greeting chant rose from below...
"There gathered round her every goddess, every Nereid that was in the deep salt sea. Glauce was there and Thaleia and Cymodoce; Nesaea, Speio, Thoe and ox-eyed Halie; Cymothoe, Actaee and Limnoreia; Melite, Iaera, Amphithoe and Agaue; Doto, Proto, Pherusa and Dynamene; Dexamene, Amphinome and Callianeira; Doris, Panope and far-sung Galatea; Nemertes, Apseudes and Callianassa. Clymene came too, with Ianeira, Ianassa, Maera, Oreithuia, Amatheia of the lovely locks, and other Nereids of the salt sea depths."
The girl sank, answering.
Dream Sequence, C. Kiernan
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
But Death Mars All, Which We Cannot Mend
“Larissa...she's gone…I cannot now find her.” Nareth sat gazing at the fire, a study in grief and loss, her back against a chair of Indian reed, her porcelain fingers resting on its wheels beside her. The drawing room of the Library was full; it’s hearth provided some comfort against the raging winter storm.
I rose from Grr’s arms, where he and I had settled, warm fur against flesh, upon one of the large brocade pillows that ringed the fireplace. Rhaven and Kryss read quietly, both pouring over open books in their laps. “She was never really in there, you know,” I said as I drew close and began rubbing Nareth's shoulder. "What's troubling you?"
“I don't know what I know, anymore, Joah. But...Dryl,” Nareth sighed. I could feel her shivering under my touch. Still cold, I thought. “Dryl gave me this blanket, but... I think no one else can see it.” Nareth pulled at something that wasn't there, wrapping it around her.
“The ghost girl?” asked Kryss, looking up from her book. She gazed at Nareth with unblinking, unclosing eyes.
Nareth nodded. “When I saw her...day before yesterday...there were parts of her...simply missing. Parts of Dryl...missing.” Grr listened, stirring slightly by the fire, and giving growls and yips in low tones to a strange lycan pup that had wandered in from the snow.
I began to work my thumbs in small deep circles between Nareth’s shoulder blades, intending to examine her wounds but hoping to touch the invisible covering. “Do you think the blanket is part of her?”
Grr quirked to attention. “Wha’? Wait? Missin’? Spook's got parts missin’?”
“I think it must be, Grr,” Nareth nodded. “She said...she had placed parts of herself into…me...the missing parts.” Nareth shivered again. “And...she made me sleep.” She shook her head, trying to clear it.
Grr looked slowly up at Nareth, his golden eyes unfocusing and looking Within. Grr, the Watcher. “When, yes, when she did,” he replied, “She…she bore your wounds, stigmata. She didn’t feel it, but I saw it in her, I saw you…in her….”
“We need to research her,” Rhaven spoke up. Her tone was harsh, her voice full of irritation. “Y’all don’t understand. She wants us to and what I just heard from y’all, we might be running out of time.”
“Rhaven...no one ever runs out…of time…time always keeps up.” Nareth gave a humorless laugh.
My fingertips moved up Nareth’s spine into the base of her head and then down to the small of her back, still seeking, as she leaned forward allowing access, her lips parting slightly. “Dryl may have placed herself within you, Nareth, to heal your injuries,” I said, remembering the night of Pontifex’s vicious attack. We had worked furiously over Nareth’s prone form as she lay dying in the street. I’d asked Dryl to touch her, to reach in, to try to repair the knife wound that had very nearly severed Nareth’s head from her body.
Kryss turned her head toward Rhaven. “What do you mean... out of time?”
Rhaven didn’t respond, but instead pointed to Grr as if he had proven her point. “You can speak in levels and planes that you know well.” She turned to Nareth, pushing aside philosophies for the time, her sense of urgency overwhelming her. “But I will be heard this time. She wants us to study her, to know her connection to us, to the Library, Herself.”
“Yup, Raven's Song, we have been studyin’ her, but do ya have a better way? Cause if ya do, it'd be welcome, too,” Grr replied diplomatically.
“She is in need...yes,” Nareth murmured. “She is so beautiful. And now…she is…in me.” Nareth look back at me and whispered, “Very small pieces. Quanta.”
I gazed at Nareth for a moment, pausing in my ministrations, before turning to face the dark witch in reply. “Dryl is a convocation of Spirits, Rhaven,” I said, “And while she is connected to the Old Woman in the Walls... she isn't Her.” I opened my hand to use the heel of my palm against Nareth’s hips when suddenly I felt it: a cold, moving blanket of something pulsing as though alive.
“Go deeper, Joah,” Rhaven insisted, her brows furrowing. “Pretty is pretty, but.... There’s more that she wants us to know. We need to look deeper.” Sighing heavily, Rhaven flopped back into her chair, her expression darkening as thick lashes shuttered her eyes.
Grr shook his head, golden fur glinting in the firelight. “Tha Library Spirit, came from elsewhere, tha Other. Dryl, she's made from tha bits and pieces of folks and critters that never made it over tha Wide River from tha Disaster.”
“Rhaven, we will not force anything from Dryl.” Nareth voice dropped an octave or two, becoming more commanding. “Not ever. She is precious.” She shuddered slightly and went back to watching the fire.
“Glad ta hear that sentiment, Nareth-Realmwalker,” Grr said as he refocused his eyes on Nareth-in-the-World. He nodded as if confirming something to himself. “I really bloody am.”
I continued to explore while listening, my fingers drifting to Nareth's sides and swimming through the cold wrapper, until I leaned over her, resting my chin on her shoulder and folded my arms lightly around her waist. She leaned back slightly, savoring my touch.
Rhaven suddenly opened her eyes, snapping her head up to look at Nareth full on and unflinching. “She asked Us to research,” the dark-skinned witch intoned, her voice growing harmonic. “It was her behest and you were there. You heard not what We have said. Listen beyond your own ears.” Rhaven’s eyes began to glow as the voice of Omen overtook her. “You think you speak what We know not?” Rhaven’s black curls shook in negative. “It was Her request and, as such, it should be honored... or We shall take it upon Ourselves.”
Nareth straightened in her chair and blinked, confused at what seemed like a sudden deluge of voices. “You think you could stand against me?” she warned. I unwrapped my arms and stood back.
“You would raise to me?” Rhaven replied in a multitude of layered voices.
Grr flattened his ears. “Godlings…everywhere, godlings,” he muttered.
“You'd be unwise to try that Rhaven,” I frowned, meeting Rhaven’s eyes before returning my focus to Nareth. “Besides...You may not have understood the question that Dryl truly asked.” I moved my hands up Nareth’s arms in deep strokes, then over her shoulders, ‘til my fingertips touched her collarbone. She shifted slightly in her chair, accommodating my examination.
“We do want to study tha Spook,” Grr placated. “But…she ain’t here.”
Rhaven turned her glowing gaze to Grr, her expression softening as her chin lifted proudly. She appeared unmoved in the least by any threat spoken or implied.
“Have all tha looks ya like, Omen,” Grr chided, “But we can’t study what we don’t have in front of us.”
Nareth seemed to drift into a world of her own. “I was in Dryl, and Dryl is in me,” she chanted, laughing again and closing her eyes.
I lowered my lids slightly and dreamed a shimmer of flame, which began to spread from my fingertips, pulsing from gold to pink, then purple and violet. I moved slightly to Nareth’s side, never lifting my touch. As I lay fingertips to breastbone, a comfortable warmth flowed from my hands. My eyes widened as a felt the draw of something familiar, yet something I could not yet discern. “I wonder....” I whispered.
“Ask it of her.” Rhaven responded in soft melody. She expects it. She wishes it. She has much to tell us but wishes us to look.”
I ignored Rhaven; my thoughts were no longer on Dryl. All my focus was on Nareth as she closed her eyes tightly, her shivering easing as warm hands touched cold skin. As she relaxed my palms began to tingle. Then the room seemed to shift, going in and out of phase, as my fingers began to move of their own accord, first hovering lightly upon Nareth’s chest, softy grazing her breast, and seeking her bodice just above her heart.
My whole body gave an involuntary jerk.
I rose from Grr’s arms, where he and I had settled, warm fur against flesh, upon one of the large brocade pillows that ringed the fireplace. Rhaven and Kryss read quietly, both pouring over open books in their laps. “She was never really in there, you know,” I said as I drew close and began rubbing Nareth's shoulder. "What's troubling you?"
“I don't know what I know, anymore, Joah. But...Dryl,” Nareth sighed. I could feel her shivering under my touch. Still cold, I thought. “Dryl gave me this blanket, but... I think no one else can see it.” Nareth pulled at something that wasn't there, wrapping it around her.
“The ghost girl?” asked Kryss, looking up from her book. She gazed at Nareth with unblinking, unclosing eyes.
Nareth nodded. “When I saw her...day before yesterday...there were parts of her...simply missing. Parts of Dryl...missing.” Grr listened, stirring slightly by the fire, and giving growls and yips in low tones to a strange lycan pup that had wandered in from the snow.
I began to work my thumbs in small deep circles between Nareth’s shoulder blades, intending to examine her wounds but hoping to touch the invisible covering. “Do you think the blanket is part of her?”
Grr quirked to attention. “Wha’? Wait? Missin’? Spook's got parts missin’?”
“I think it must be, Grr,” Nareth nodded. “She said...she had placed parts of herself into…me...the missing parts.” Nareth shivered again. “And...she made me sleep.” She shook her head, trying to clear it.
Grr looked slowly up at Nareth, his golden eyes unfocusing and looking Within. Grr, the Watcher. “When, yes, when she did,” he replied, “She…she bore your wounds, stigmata. She didn’t feel it, but I saw it in her, I saw you…in her….”
“We need to research her,” Rhaven spoke up. Her tone was harsh, her voice full of irritation. “Y’all don’t understand. She wants us to and what I just heard from y’all, we might be running out of time.”
“Rhaven...no one ever runs out…of time…time always keeps up.” Nareth gave a humorless laugh.
My fingertips moved up Nareth’s spine into the base of her head and then down to the small of her back, still seeking, as she leaned forward allowing access, her lips parting slightly. “Dryl may have placed herself within you, Nareth, to heal your injuries,” I said, remembering the night of Pontifex’s vicious attack. We had worked furiously over Nareth’s prone form as she lay dying in the street. I’d asked Dryl to touch her, to reach in, to try to repair the knife wound that had very nearly severed Nareth’s head from her body.
Kryss turned her head toward Rhaven. “What do you mean... out of time?”
Rhaven didn’t respond, but instead pointed to Grr as if he had proven her point. “You can speak in levels and planes that you know well.” She turned to Nareth, pushing aside philosophies for the time, her sense of urgency overwhelming her. “But I will be heard this time. She wants us to study her, to know her connection to us, to the Library, Herself.”
“Yup, Raven's Song, we have been studyin’ her, but do ya have a better way? Cause if ya do, it'd be welcome, too,” Grr replied diplomatically.
“She is in need...yes,” Nareth murmured. “She is so beautiful. And now…she is…in me.” Nareth look back at me and whispered, “Very small pieces. Quanta.”
I gazed at Nareth for a moment, pausing in my ministrations, before turning to face the dark witch in reply. “Dryl is a convocation of Spirits, Rhaven,” I said, “And while she is connected to the Old Woman in the Walls... she isn't Her.” I opened my hand to use the heel of my palm against Nareth’s hips when suddenly I felt it: a cold, moving blanket of something pulsing as though alive.
“Go deeper, Joah,” Rhaven insisted, her brows furrowing. “Pretty is pretty, but.... There’s more that she wants us to know. We need to look deeper.” Sighing heavily, Rhaven flopped back into her chair, her expression darkening as thick lashes shuttered her eyes.
Grr shook his head, golden fur glinting in the firelight. “Tha Library Spirit, came from elsewhere, tha Other. Dryl, she's made from tha bits and pieces of folks and critters that never made it over tha Wide River from tha Disaster.”
“Rhaven, we will not force anything from Dryl.” Nareth voice dropped an octave or two, becoming more commanding. “Not ever. She is precious.” She shuddered slightly and went back to watching the fire.
“Glad ta hear that sentiment, Nareth-Realmwalker,” Grr said as he refocused his eyes on Nareth-in-the-World. He nodded as if confirming something to himself. “I really bloody am.”
I continued to explore while listening, my fingers drifting to Nareth's sides and swimming through the cold wrapper, until I leaned over her, resting my chin on her shoulder and folded my arms lightly around her waist. She leaned back slightly, savoring my touch.
Rhaven suddenly opened her eyes, snapping her head up to look at Nareth full on and unflinching. “She asked Us to research,” the dark-skinned witch intoned, her voice growing harmonic. “It was her behest and you were there. You heard not what We have said. Listen beyond your own ears.” Rhaven’s eyes began to glow as the voice of Omen overtook her. “You think you speak what We know not?” Rhaven’s black curls shook in negative. “It was Her request and, as such, it should be honored... or We shall take it upon Ourselves.”
Nareth straightened in her chair and blinked, confused at what seemed like a sudden deluge of voices. “You think you could stand against me?” she warned. I unwrapped my arms and stood back.
“You would raise to me?” Rhaven replied in a multitude of layered voices.
Grr flattened his ears. “Godlings…everywhere, godlings,” he muttered.
“You'd be unwise to try that Rhaven,” I frowned, meeting Rhaven’s eyes before returning my focus to Nareth. “Besides...You may not have understood the question that Dryl truly asked.” I moved my hands up Nareth’s arms in deep strokes, then over her shoulders, ‘til my fingertips touched her collarbone. She shifted slightly in her chair, accommodating my examination.
“We do want to study tha Spook,” Grr placated. “But…she ain’t here.”
Rhaven turned her glowing gaze to Grr, her expression softening as her chin lifted proudly. She appeared unmoved in the least by any threat spoken or implied.
“Have all tha looks ya like, Omen,” Grr chided, “But we can’t study what we don’t have in front of us.”
Nareth seemed to drift into a world of her own. “I was in Dryl, and Dryl is in me,” she chanted, laughing again and closing her eyes.
I lowered my lids slightly and dreamed a shimmer of flame, which began to spread from my fingertips, pulsing from gold to pink, then purple and violet. I moved slightly to Nareth’s side, never lifting my touch. As I lay fingertips to breastbone, a comfortable warmth flowed from my hands. My eyes widened as a felt the draw of something familiar, yet something I could not yet discern. “I wonder....” I whispered.
“Ask it of her.” Rhaven responded in soft melody. She expects it. She wishes it. She has much to tell us but wishes us to look.”
I ignored Rhaven; my thoughts were no longer on Dryl. All my focus was on Nareth as she closed her eyes tightly, her shivering easing as warm hands touched cold skin. As she relaxed my palms began to tingle. Then the room seemed to shift, going in and out of phase, as my fingers began to move of their own accord, first hovering lightly upon Nareth’s chest, softy grazing her breast, and seeking her bodice just above her heart.
My whole body gave an involuntary jerk.
She Tears Herself
It’s my fault. Somehow, things have turned upside down. Rhaven and Nareth tried to heal Severus after he savaged himself. My fault, again. He wouldn’t have done so if I hadn’t encouraged Redd to touch him, to determine by his degree of revulsion and longing whether she had a soul. But touch she did and as a result he tore himself. I assented to his healing. Nareth, this Nareth-Not Nareth Chylde, asked permission. I told her yes, use the passion of Larissa. Take it from the flames. Lar had been able to heal Severus once before, working in tandem with Rhaven. I couldn’t leave him lying eviscerated on the Library floor.
The healing worked, or worked as well as it ever does given Severus’ perpetual wounds. But what remained of Larissa was lost forever. Completely destroyed. That passion had been all that remained of her mortal form, lingering where the wards once stood, in the flames of the hearth. When it was taken, the Old Woman in the Walls shook. She nearly tore the building apart, threatening all of us in her charge, until she took me through the flame, reached out and snatched the passion of one less gentle and loving from the mind of Nareth: the Countess Báthory. Erzsébet. Now I wonder what I have done. Where once the heart of the flame was Eros, it is now bloodlust. My fault.
It is a sad and bitter irony that now Severus is feeding, while I am not. He found a lycan, a willing one, and somehow the healing impelled him forward to a place where no amount of pleading on my part had been able to take him. I could have compelled him, but I would never have done so, so great is his self-loathing as an Incubus. But who will impel me? I’m bone weary and ravenous. I haven’t fed since the time of Pestilence and some avid spirit still stirs insatiate within me. I nearly killed Grr. I pulled from him to the point of blindness and hemorrhage. What if I do it again? The dark yet whispers to me and I hear the pan flute. Jack’s blade yet sings and its twin calls louder. I touch the stone of Eden in my pocket and wonder was I ever in the Garden?
The healing worked, or worked as well as it ever does given Severus’ perpetual wounds. But what remained of Larissa was lost forever. Completely destroyed. That passion had been all that remained of her mortal form, lingering where the wards once stood, in the flames of the hearth. When it was taken, the Old Woman in the Walls shook. She nearly tore the building apart, threatening all of us in her charge, until she took me through the flame, reached out and snatched the passion of one less gentle and loving from the mind of Nareth: the Countess Báthory. Erzsébet. Now I wonder what I have done. Where once the heart of the flame was Eros, it is now bloodlust. My fault.
It is a sad and bitter irony that now Severus is feeding, while I am not. He found a lycan, a willing one, and somehow the healing impelled him forward to a place where no amount of pleading on my part had been able to take him. I could have compelled him, but I would never have done so, so great is his self-loathing as an Incubus. But who will impel me? I’m bone weary and ravenous. I haven’t fed since the time of Pestilence and some avid spirit still stirs insatiate within me. I nearly killed Grr. I pulled from him to the point of blindness and hemorrhage. What if I do it again? The dark yet whispers to me and I hear the pan flute. Jack’s blade yet sings and its twin calls louder. I touch the stone of Eden in my pocket and wonder was I ever in the Garden?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)