birds again..oh c'mon!

9 - ghosts in daylight

For many days and nights Emerald sulked in her chambers, hovering close to her translucent, nursing it and sleeping long into the afternoons. She had violent fits in her dreams but no one was allowed in to offer succor. The flyers buried Fuz above all the others without her grace, but the ceremony was quick, for there were many to bury, and many many more of the slain enemy to drag away and dump into chasms with no fanfare, unless curses count as blessings. As the translucent recovered, it levitated to the eaves, then allowed Emerald to ride it into the main chamber. There they circled together for many hours until finally she descended into the sparse ranks of flyer warriors and the women, who now outnumbered the men by two or better.

“My loving flyers, all,” Emerald began, dismounting her beast, “For many days I have mourned the man we all followed here, to this...this fool's den.” She looked beyond the faces of the men and women. “Still, I find the journey was worthwhile, even though the end is upon us.” Emerald turned and began to walk away. She had said her last, and had no words.

“What will we do?” they pleaded, but there was nothing more.

Beyond the proclivity of the gods

I linger, possessing no knowledge of Their machinations

until a cessation of fireworks gives me time

and inclination

which I take as an invitation to descend.

The atmosphere is heavy and toxic

but within my electric birdcage I am safe

as safe as ever I was in the plodding surplus of a vacuum.

It takes little time to abstract the drab marble

as I battle the urging of gravity

and make concentric orbits, perceiving more a pain

of suffering than a map of the world,

torn asunder and corroding under a velvet fog

of effluvia. Homing in, I fall into a looping pattern

seeking out a whirlwind of unspoilt currents

and tarry over this final island of respite.

Within is agony

without is death spread over a length

and encroaching is an army to end all

forged by the whispers and whip of Factions

beyond the will of the Sullen.

I've come in time, just,

and so light upon the current and traverse the chute.

Into the last refuge I descend

scraping away a millenia of crust

with my fin of diamond constructs

and ill conceived landing apparatus

until my birdcage, in name only,

settles on the cavern floor, its tendrils snaking

antenna wriggling like some alien nightmare

and the lifeforms within cower under the settling dust.

My sensors indicate the demon I appear to be,

a smoking behemoth of crystal confabulation,

but this vehicle is no more a cage

than it is a lifeline.

Tossed and carried beyond the realm of my existence

in galactic whirlwinds, I'm beyond my element

and my eternal home I deign is here

and for my electric birdcage: the bowels of this planet.

So I emerge.

As one they feel the mountain shake and overhead the ceiling rumbles as centuries old stalactites and chunks of granite plummet to the ground. Flyers scramble to the edges, some out into the open beyond the cavern only to cringe behind boulders as loose scree shifts and tumbles. Emerald screams and flees into a low tunnel while over her head the arch quivers and a wide crack opens. A thrum descends in a spiral of dust, and rotating it falls gingerly into the cavern and then sets heavily onto the floor, scattering particulate from its engines and struts. An electric whir resounds and the unearthly obtrusion winds down to the ground.

Slowly the flyers return, feeling the heat as it emanates, and quickly cools. They stand shivering, deprived of the transient conflagration, then gather close. Emerald is beyond fear, her world has been shaken beyond relevance, and she crawls out from the crumbling tunnel and strides forward to the vibrating contraption, drawing a blade as she walks.

“What new horror is this, that comes unannounced into our tomb?” Emerald stopped only the count of three steps from the intruder. The stink of smog burned, and it dropped from scalding angles like a blackened crust. “Speak, devil, cursed angel from the heavens. If you have come to finish our miserable lives then have it done, start with me.” Emerald plunged the knife into her bicep, then pulled it out and whipped the tip over, spraying thick droplets of blood onto the machine. It sizzled and baked.

Nothing happened, there was silence from the thing and the flyers. She sobbed, then turned from the scene and knelt to the bubbling froth where Emerald cupped a handful and rubbed it onto her wound. It stung painfully for a moment, then the hurting passed and became a hearty throb. She held her arm and sat down, staring into the settling dust.

They heard the whoosh of air, and a pop, as something on the machine moved, then cracks of light formed into a rectangle and a door levered out by an inch. It rotated and lowered vertically to the floor, where it clunked solidly. All noises within ceased, but a steady light flowed, then a shadow as the creature within emerged. It wore a helmet, this they knew from ancient texts and the drawings of scholars long dead. The slowly disintegrating tomes were safe, for now, sealed against the degradations of a dying world, in catacombs high in the peaks of northern ranges. The creature learned of this now, stealing thoughts, and longed for an hour of assimilation. Knowledge was unending and all.

“^g-oO hh - ^^, Xxxx.”

“doshu doshu. Cata sasta Q.”

“Hello, I bring you no harm.”

The flyers whispered among themselves, hugging closely, afraid. But Emerald true to her nature felt no fear, her hatred slowly abated, and she reached out to the being. “You come too late. Our world is at the edge of reckoning.” Her knife clattered to the ground and snapped into two pieces. Emerald knelt at the foot of the alien, and she picked up the shards, intent on plunging the sharp fragments into her throat. She longed more than ever now to die, refused to witness the end of the world.

Rise, mother, your world is just beginning

I raised her up and she held forth

suspended above her people

an image of love and her child

who shone out, glowing from her robe

reaching welcoming out of pellucid skin

a new beginning.

From my outstretched arms I formed a bubble

and within we removed safely to a corner

while the electric birdcage hummed

and shat out rotating bits

that displaced the rock with ease

and dug deep into the floor, disappearing from view.

Into the abyss, deep into the cryptic chamber below

where the force of ages lie benign, bubbling in contemplation,

inert but willing.

The vapors sprang forth, released, tensions now insatiable

cascading as a geyser,

towering from the depths into the cavern and to the light of day

a force beyond reckoning into the ether

and shrugging off the mantle of derisive supplication.

Beyond the walls an army halted, its impetus dwarfed,

then turned upon itself in grief.

My electric birdcage lie in ruins, martyred to the cause,

but I smiled anyway, and watched a hole open to the heavens.

Bright sunlight streamed into the cavern, and the bubble that had formed over the flyers quickly fell, leaving nothing behind but a trace of ozone. The translucent dipped low and soared from the cavern, rising assuredly into the air, awash in steaming droplets of cascading dew. They sparkled under the sun light like diamonds falling to the earth. Flyers rushed out into the wind and gathered up the moisture, holding it to their breast and tongue and laughing.

Emerald remained in the cave, with the alien who hid shyly behind a clouded visor. The silvery suit belied any emotion, but she felt the joy, and the anguish. Emerald leaned against the thing, and embraced it, then felt the kick of life from her belly and put her hands down to pat and welcome her baby into a world of peace and plenty.

Your steed awaits, I said to the woman

and I sagged inside my suit

unable to withstand any longer

the caustic environ which my electric birdcage

protected me from,

my long wandering existence.

The lofty creature bowed, she mounted,

taking to the clear sky.

They rode the thermals,

watched as the gloom receded to the edges

and sank into the sea. For one hundred years

the dismal stuffs will swell upon currents

and beat itself into irrelevant fluff.

Much like the heavens and the stars

and the bits that swirl and form into worlds -

and so here I am, wandering still

a ghost among mortals.

The gods have left, flinging motes in another direction

but we remain. What else?

the end

the beginning: part 1

8.2 - drop back and punt, part 2

In the weeks that followed Fuz led many more skirmishes into the wilds without the caverns. They freed another twenty flyers, most of them women, and killed dozens of the Sullen. The enemy was ruthless and stern, but they knew very little about fighting. Perhaps their naked sorrow made dying easy. Easier than living. Fuz refused to feel pity as he struck them down. The skies were fouled by their worship. He didn't understand how he ever lived without beauty, and now Fuz wanted more. Leaving scarlet blood upon the bare rock of this decrepit world was only a beginning.

The Summer solstice came, and they barely knew it. No sunlight penetrated the thick layer of smog. Even shadows began to starve.

Still they celebrated, gathering together as one hundred flyers and fifty. Emerald rode again upon her translucent with flowing streamers and bright leathers. She dipped and curled high in the vast dome under the mountain where currents from the frothing inner chambers swelled. After the day they set guards upon the slopes, though they hummed in the gloom and fought sleep after the pleasantries of an afternoon's festivity.

Emerald and Fuz retired to their chamber, and they slept for awhile. Fuz grew restless in the night, though, and dressed in the darkness. He slid a stone knife into his leather swath and strode out to the main cavern. In the center of the chamber a stalagmite bubbled and frothed what was to them a holy water. It fed their souls and sweetened the air. Without it they would have long ago perished. Fuz bent to the fountain and sipped, just as he had many years ago with his father. Would his father understand the path he, Fuz, had chosen? If they could meet again, would they have to fight, and die, upon one another's spear point? He heard a noise, which became a clamor. “Awake!” Fuz shouted loudly, then ran to a large stone column where he seized a wooden club and began to pound at the rock. A huge boom rang out, drowning out hollow echoing drips of the long tunnels. The flyers stirred and half dressed they grabbed up any weapon close to hand and rushed out into the open.

“With me,” shouted Fuz, and a group of fifty at least rushed to the narrow gate. Outside a fierce battle had begun, but the defenses were doomed to failure.

As they had celebrated earlier, forgotten, in a corner, Knot sulked with a cup and watched the flyers play in their haven. He was tolerated, but never accepted. The flyers set him to mundane tasks but more often than not left him to his own pleasures, which were few and mind numbing. He wandered the corridors and scrabbled among the boulders outside. The food he procured was meager and barely kept him alive. Knot seethed in the dark spaces where no one could see, knowing his true purpose, relishing the perversity he would thrust upon these people. Tonight. Knot fingered the blade he had stolen, thought back to that thrust of a knife into the surprised back of the prisoner flyer those many weeks ago now. He conjured a vision of Fuz, and of blood welling up and spouting from his stunned grimace. The image kept him alert. Now was the time to act, as the plan decreed.

Knot, after the flyers had dispersed, slithered out into the rocks among the hidden flyers. He knew exactly where they stationed themselves. Before the Sullen attackers could make the pass, Knot had snuck up upon two and slit their throats, but the third cried out and before he died the others rose up. Knot hefted the knife and sent it catapulting into the chest of an advancing flyer, then grabbed up a fallen spear and hurled it into the eye of another. The dead flyer took a last step and fell against Knot. He pushed off the bloodied man and wrenched out the spear, sending spits of dark ocher into the night, then turned back to the cave as his sullen comrades hurried over the path, shouting and slaying flyers as they jumped out from their holes. “They're coming,” Knot yelled as he flew into the open chamber – Fuz had already gathered a small army and rushed past the pale man.

“Warn the others,” growled Fuz and then disappeared, leading his men into the fray beyond.

“Indeed,” glowered Knot. None had noticed the spear he carried, or the red beads that ran down its length to pollute the floor. They filed out to the fight, and Knot spun about to gain the inner chambers. The main chamber was immense, but smaller rooms lay deeper in. They were still impressive and some rose to dizzying heights. Knot ran through the corridors, they snaked and split into a maze, but he knew them well enough. He took one tunnel specifically and it led to an open cavern that towered into a spacious concavity. The last remaining translucent hovered there, dozing in the eaves. It had traversed overhead passageways and arches to find this dome and rest nightly. Knot reached behind a pillar and gathered a rope into his hands, which he unraveled. At one end was attached a hook, and he swung the rope out into ever widening loops, then hurled it into the air at the floating beast. The hook took hold, biting into the diaphanous flesh of the translucent. It quivered, startled out of sleep, and began to wail. Knot had never heard such a noise before, few had, and the cry echoed in the chamber and throughout the latticework of tunnels and fissures. He started to pull on the rope, hand over hand, hauling it down.

Outside the battle grew fierce. The Sullen were many, but the flyers were better fighters. Soon on the slopes of the mountain a very few remained and standing on a boulder with his spear stuck into the throat of a gurgling soldier, Fuz watched his men kill the last of the enemy. Only ten flyers remained, staggering with fatigue over hundreds of lifeless pallid attackers. He drew a knife and tossed it to a flyer. “Slit the throats of any who still breath,” then he turned and ran back into the cave.

The translucent fought against the pull of the rope, but slowly it sank ever lower into the clutches of Knot, who grinned savagely into the air. His spear leaned against a column, standing ready to pierce the beast and silence forever the echoes of yesterday's heavens.

“You will not live to see this done, stranger,” said Fuz, rumbling deeply as he entered the chamber. He strode up to Knot and released his anger, backhanding the traitor across his face. Knot lost the rope and the translucent escaped to the heights. He staggered back against the pillar as Fuz put his hands up to the Sullen's throat, crushing it savagely. “You did this, you brought death into our home. I should have killed you at the start.”

Knot wanted to answer, but no noise would ever leave his lips again. Surely, he agreed, death would have been prudent, but wisdom failed Fuz that day, as it would this day. Knot reached out, his eyes began to bulge and soon he would lose consciousness. He grasped the spear by its haft and brought it around, plunging the weapon deep into Fuz's side. Fuz gasped and blood spattered from his mouth onto Knot's ashen face. For a moment he refused to relax his grip, but then Fuz moaned and his arms dropped, and he fell to his knees. Knot kicked him away like an afterthought and turned back to the rope that dangled down from the spires. He began to reel in the translucent again.

–

“Fuz.” She cradled him in her arms as the life drained from his ruptured side. There was no stopping it now, the end. And there could be no stopping the enemy either, or the growing disparity between life and death. The gloom beyond these rock walls, this haven, was growing. Emerald could never now take her fight to the Sullen, to finish the madness and cleanse their world. They had no choice but to retreat into the darkness and wait for death. “Oh, Fuz. Why didn't I listen to you?”

He opened one eye and gasped against the pain, but the agony was subsiding, quickly, and Fuz knew he was leaving. “What happened?” he managed to ask Emerald, but faded, never hearing her answer.

Emerald had heard a commotion and woke to find Fuz missing. His dressing was gone, and the long stone knife, but his spear remained. She gathered a wrap around her body and grasped the spear as she fled the room. First, Emerald ran into the main chamber, but it was empty and she heard some scattered noises outside. As she neared the entrance the fighting grew more intense. There was little she could accomplish out there, so Emerald turned her attention to the tunnels, intent on gathering any within for defense, if it came to that. She found some children and women gathered in the deep recesses, and told them to stay there. There was no way out, that they had discovered, other than the cave entrance. She remembered the translucent, and Emerald backtracked. Perhaps she could fly them up to the higher ledges, where they would be safe for awhile, until escape was possible.

She was too late. Emerald entered the chamber as Knot was pulling down the translucent, and Fuz lay unconscious on the cave's floor. Knot didn't hear her. He was cursing as the beast bucked against his efforts. Then he felt the jarring blow, and felt the shaft chafing the ribs it was displacing as the spearhead pushed out amid a gush of blood from his torso. His crushed windpipe allowed naught but a rasping cough and a torrent of blood flushed out of his mouth and nose as he loosed the rope and sank into the gravel dead before he hit the ground.

The few flyers that remained gathered in the tunnel and watched as their queen sobbed over the fallen hero. He lived and fought beside them, now they would fight and die alone. The translucent meandered in lazy circles, wispy foam like the steam rising from late summer marshes flowed from its wound, and the hook slowly worked its way out then dropped alongside the looping rope until it clattered onto the stone floor.

part 9

8.1 - drop back and punt, part 1

Their numbers swelled, slowly. Queen Emerald, under the dome that eternally frothed with percolated steam, had built a hodgepodge army. At first they marched reluctantly under the black of night striking fear into the Sullen with sneak attacks. They killed seldom, only in need, and freed any grounded flyers that were held in slavery. Still, they were but a hundred and then some, and of translucents...there was only one.

Fuz lay propped up on one elbow, he was looking into the eyes of his beloved and worrying. They were naked beneath furs and he reached out a hand to touch a strand of Emerald's hair that had strayed, sweaty, over her closed eyes. She shifted, purring under his touch. “Tomorrow I go out from the mountain, we will travel farther than before. It may be days and nights before we can return.” The flyers knew the land better than any, having seen it from above, but Fuz knew the hidden terrain shrouded from their keen eyes. The Sullen, like rats, would never be eradicated from their holes in the jagged earth.

“I wish you wouldn't go,” said Emerald, but she knew his place was out among the rocks, in the shadow of the mountains, protecting his new family. Fuz stroked her hair then dropped his head down onto her breast where he closed his eyes and slept. The dawn, though cold and bereft of light, would come soon.

–

They lay low among the debris and could hear the scrabbling of men long before they saw them. “Now, called out Fuz, and he was first to rise. His long spear found the belly of a dirty ground dweller, one who lived in the open under a stick shelter. Their kind had joined with the Sullen, but they were stunted and stank like the swamps where they rode lazily on logs and chewed on root sponges. Quickly Fuz dropped into the rocks, but not before he defined the group they had run up against. The enemy was maybe eight, or ten men. With them, tied, were tall men who appeared to be prisoners. Perhaps three, and they were held in the center of the group. To Fuz they looked like captive flyers, but he couldn't be certain.

“Be careful of the prisoners,” Fuz said in a low tone, trying not to be heard beyond the range of his men. Again he stood and saw now only four standing, two of which were prisoners. He threw a second spear and this one whistled past the head of a crouching flyer and caught the shoulder of a Sullen warrior. Three more shafts plunged deep into his body and he fell, along with the last soldier, dead to the ground. Fuz sprang forward, his last spear raised, and searched among the men lying in the dirt and rubble. “All dead,” Fuz said. He was glad they had make quick work of it. Fuz turned his attention to the prisoners. One of them, he noticed, was lying face down, a knife between his shoulder blades. The other two were frightened, and had white faces. “Do I know you?” asked Fuz. “You are Sullen.”

They turned back to the mountain earlier than expected. The prisoners explained how they were being marched to the mountain of death, and there they would be executed under the shadow. Knot, one of the prisoners, had become a doubter and was an outcast. The other was a criminal, he wore a torn robe. The dead prisoner was a flyer, and they would carry him back to the cave and lay him to rest on the open slopes facing the valley. “Take me in,” begged Knot to Fuz. “I am like you, not these Sullen you have killed. I never wished for this fight, or the deadly skies. My face is white, but I want to breath color, and walk under the Sun.”

“That is not up to me,” said Fuz, though he was sympathetic. “And what of this other man?” He eyed the second pale man, who walked behind them, guarded by some flyers.

Knot snorted. “He is a thief, his garment torn by the elders, cast out for obvious reasons. Kill him. Or send him back.” Fuz turned quickly from the head of the column and walked deliberately back to the prisoner. The procession halted.

“What is your name?” he demanded, raising his bloody spear up to the man's throat.

“Undo, I...” he said no more as Fuz plunged the point through the man's throat.

“Come,” he said, “I would make the mountain before night.”

–

Emerald eyed him warily. She knew Fuz had concerns, but she wasn't the cold blooded killer that he had become. “I do it because there is no other choice,” he said. He face was etched like stone and pale as the chert they shaped spearheads from.

“We have questioned him, repeatedly. I believe his answers. You have changed, why shouldn't he?” Emerald grasped his forearm as she spoke. Her word was the last one, and Fuz had little choice but to follow orders. He wasn't one of the flyers and would never be the true leader, even if Emerald trusted his judgment above all others. “Bring him in, but he is not to be given a weapon. Knot will be watched closely by all, for he will need to gain the approval of all.”

Fuz only nodded. He couldn't see much danger in allowing Knot into the cave; after all, the place was not a secret – it had been known long before Fuz brought the flyers in. It had only one entrance and was well guarded. And the mountain itself had become a symbol of death to the Sullen, a place of fear. “As you say. I will attend to it myself.”

“Yes. But not now. You will be happy to have come back to me.” Emerald pulled Fuz close and kissed him.

part 8.2

7 - the past is practice

In the beginning:

The universe is so large,

reasonably I will never make it back

to the place I started.

However...

in many ways it is all the same.

Revealing for my own piece of mind

the reasons for my undue captivity

my banishment to the electric birdcage

is an unfortunate preoccupation,

a condition relegated to one forever alone

in the deep recesses of space.

The spaces are only in my perception.

While in an electric birdcage one

delves,

introspection is inevitable.

In the beginning

I floundered and expressed my

dismay by flinging to the stars

and into them;

mayhem, my coherent response

to a dearth of representation.

The usual questions recycled and fueled my rage.

Finally what was left

beyond the ruined galaxy

was myself alone in my

birdcage, susurrus against a backdrop

of dark matter.

No problem

where there is one,

there are a million more

and I set a goal of visiting all

if not merely as many as One wills.

Never tho did I come across the sorrow,

or the cause of my dismay:

the lords of the universe

forgetful of far flung corners

and warring now on a galactic level

disturbing the peace.

I find myself no match

and remain clear of Their quarrels

but my caged heart pines for the souls below

grubbing in the dearth of a neverending gloam

like a home spun awry and dropped into the chasm.

I catch glimpses of a world torn in twain

of a people high, cloud dwelling, sucking on the ether

and a second, lowly, setting fire to the future.

O'er the clouds and ozone the One recoils from the soot,

His duty to preserve beauty is broken like the proverbial chain

and minions of desolation hold court on a field of waste.

No nearer to the truth of my captivity

I see above and below the consequence

of the universal deity -

as One travels on eclectic byways

giving thought thus birth

reveling in the glory of relevance

and fleeing to unsung infinities to begin again.

This is the way it is what it is where we are

right now.

I have some notion of this

have partaken in the process

history is written in the stars.

It may be time to revisit the past.

part 8.1

6 - Occam's razor dulled

Filth and muck aside, a carnal lust descended upon the Sullen – infused by Factions who strengthened under the cover of a worldwide carnivorous asphyxiation. They went about on two legs putting out the lights, thrusting and stabbing at colors fallen from skies now choked in the detritus of suicide. Translucence bereft of glory, drooping lids and spilling memories onto particulate like blood over an aeon of witness, gave way under the stain of their slain riders. Faithful of the Factions dispatched life with an aloof practice gained only by repetition of their deeds.

Fleeing as from a tempest, they gathered flyers as they went, Fuz and Emerald. The fallen cried over the dying and dead, human as well as the ancient deflating eyewitnesses. Some refused to abandon their translucents and were left behind to fall below the spear. The remainder, hobbled by sick and crippled, stumbled on to the hidden caves Fuz promised them. Under the hollow mountain that climbed above the suffocation, frigid air tunneled into the depths - sucked by forces unseen - and the vexed few who refused to die shivered under a crushing weight, too weary to realize they waited for a sign.

Fuz was introduced to this oasis many years ago as a child, when his father, the Slayer, took a fattened slithering crick troll with his long knife. The two climbed down over fallen rocks, stepping carefully atop the smooth stones into the caves interior, and Slayer cleaned the troll in the clear running water that bubbled up from a compressed stream many lengths below the ledge, hidden and secret from the eyes of men. He showed Fuz, bowing to the foam rushing out from a stalagmite built up over a geological half life, and Fuz mimicked his father, sputtering from a noseful. Slayer laughed and thrust the boy in again until he coughed and drank. 'Not too much now, your belly will burst,' cautioned the man and he knew from experience, for the drink was effervescent and potent. Few knew of this place, and now they feared it - the Sullen - and refused to stray too near, even under the urging, glowering mutter from Factions feared and misunderstood.

The flyers displayed their colors and pranced amid the watery striations, but as they soon took to the gray without the caverns they hid their bodies under a cloak of dearth; and death. Any of the enemy who erred in moving too close were left with a ruddy smile below their chins, and the blood soaked into their skins as they lay drying upon the scree. Skulls littered the valley and the Sullen sought out the enemy in safer places where this reddening water of death refused to flow.

Emerald ruled and her steed bobbed on currents of the echoing dome, threading arches in the cavern and dodging razor sharp stalactites. It recorded new memories, for the cave was akin to galaxies in its beauty and diversity. Fuz straightened under the tutelage of colorful mentors, but his face remained pale like the half moon of that forgotten satellite. They accepted him. Emerald took him as her mate, promised to host a fresh race in the dawn of a new civilization. They grew strong despite their numbers but little did the flyers know that below their feet, in vast reservoirs, churned an answer to their pleas, the salvation of a world choking on its own vomit.

They prayed to the One, and He had led them to the promised land. They needed only to open their souls to hear, instead of relying on wide eyes that were for now shut out from the heavens.

part 7

Sunday wearing Pants

singing telegram

5 - a chill when the dead man smiles

His long stick prodded in the scree. Fuz, son of Slayer, scrabbled in the detritus of a landslide picking out shards of stone for his project. He was of the Sullen, bent in stature and unobtrusive in his gray garb. They lived in the shadow of the mountain among the boulders, hiding, wary of the sky. The Sullen were taught to hate anything of distinction. The galaxies frightened them, the skyriders with their blatant displays of color and frivolity outraged them. In their holes they prayed to a thing they did not understand and some, the elders, relayed a glowering message of nothing. The absence of something.

He came upon her at dawn, with the landscape dimly lit from a shrouded sun. The Sullen never ventured out at night, when the stars were brightest. Emerald held her breath, crouching in a corner of the shelter with her steed, but the translucent wheezed and Fuz jumped at the sound. “Who is there?” he called, jumping back into the open beyond the overhang. He pulled out a polished waxstone and angled it under the leaning boulder, shooting vague illumination into the shadows. First he saw only a bulbous sheen, then he lowered the lamp and a light fell upon her smooth face. Fuz gazed stupidly at her, saw the large eyes and pink lips, parted slightly into a surprised O. Her tanned face, obvious even in the sparse light, furrowed Fuz's brow. “You are one of them, a flyer!” He turned to go, intent on sounding the alarm.

“Wait.” It was a tiny voice, thin from fear; and fatigue. “Wait. Come back.”

In the communal cave his mother was pale and bent, crouching over a stone mashing seeds into a tasteless pulp. Or she was working on an animal hide, pounding it into cloth, weaving stiff cords in and around the rough holes the men punched out. Her face was always downcast, she was nameless and alone in a family of men and infants. Daughters never stayed beyond their tenth year. This, flyer...was a woman.

“What is your name?” she asked. “I am Emerald.” Emerald leaned from her corner and held out a hand with a finger and a thumb extended. Fuz began to make out the shape of her grounded beast. It was spreading out along the dirt as it tired. He moved in closer and felt along the base of the thing with his stick. “Gently,” said the woman, “your hand would be better.”

The girl was beautiful, much more so than any of the women he had seen before. She was not dirty; her face was not crippled by desperation or odium. He sat on the ground, laying the stick over his knee and tentatively lay a hand on the quivering mass. Even so, Fuz could hardly keep his gaze from Emerald's bright face.

“It is a translucent. It sees. But we, my kind, we ride them.” Emerald was hungry and wanted to ask for food, for her and the translucent. Not yet. Soon.

“I have seen it,” Fuz answered. “I am Fuz.” He wondered what 'Emerald' could mean.

“Fuz.” Emerald repeated. They sat looking across the translucent at each other. Out in the open Emerald heard a scrambling noise and falling rocks. She shivered and fell back into shadow.

A low voice growled. “Who is in there? Fuz, come out.”

He stood and backed from the overhang. “It is just I. I have found nothing here of use.” The older man brushed Fuz aside and peered under the boulder, seeing the girl and her woebegone beast.

“You lie, boy. Say nothing, these creatures belong to me.” The man who was slightly larger than Fuz, but decrepit and askew, pushed aside his Sullen brother and moved closer to Emerald. The translucent trembled and blanched as the man waved a spear at it and Emerald cried out.

“It is dying, do not harry it further!” She jumped up and covered the thing with her body. The Man lowered his weapon and leered at the girl. He stepped closer and put a grimy hand on her shoulder. Emerald screamed as a stick cut the air, skimming the rock over their heads and sending sparks into the chasm. Fuz thrashed heavily across the intruder's cranium, spattering blood into the crevice and the man's neck snapped throwing him limply across the translucent and knocking Emerald sideways into the black. She breathed heavily.

Fuz shoved the dead man aside and pulled her up. “Come Emerald, will your beast follow? It is not safe here. I know a better place.”

part 6

4 - cloaked in a blinding flash of the obvious

Emerald rode upon her frippery, her knees were tightly clenched, and the pigments spread mutely from the dimples of compression. The colors on her leather straps competed madly with the galaxies that shone overhead, or below depending upon her acrobatics. Temple leaders in their clutches among the pallid crags cursed her people, those who rode the effervescing airbags in the sky. The translucents, once translucence, evolved alongside skyriders, shimmered in the sunlight and were glowing underneath stars. Her reins bit into nothing, seemingly, and the translucent spun, flowing languidly against the skin of another, and Emerald laughed. “Follow me,” she called, and the skyriders floated higher, blotting out the sun.

The sullen gathered below the diamond dust of starstuff as it filtered under the sparse cloud cover, creating prisms in the sky. Sparkling as it fell, on the ground it lay without timbre and mounded in defeated heaps until the faithful stirred the dust into a wan paste to seal their rock walls. They hid from the deafening skies, fearing the gods who warred above. It was sacrilegious to wear the colors, to gaze on the brilliance of the One.

Nighty battles commenced and the skyriders gathered over valleys to cavort, diving and playing under the spectacle. The One grew displeased with those who shunned His displays, but adversaries drew His eye from the cringing vermin. Once a receptacle for His wonders, the translucents glistened, mirroring flaming scaffolds in the heavens, they witnessed and stored creations from the beginnings of time. But now, Factions from the unnamed, unsullied, corners of the universe spoke in whispers, like turgid fogs, to the fell people who shrank in gray crevices. They coveted the dark spaces above, longed to fill the bright constellations with charcoal, spill an inkiness over the canvas to spread and cover the gaps with an eternal void.

To those who feared the light, it seemed a blessing. The translucents, as they soared scoring the airs with filaments of reciprocation, danced, oblivious of the convolution below. The vermin ground stone into iron and pulled viscous droughts from the bowels beneath fractured plains. They soured the sky with effluvia and stilled the voice of God, preferring the dearth of black, and nothing.

They began to die, the translucence, suffering every memory from the beginning on to the thankless filth, as they lay rotting; desiccate, empty. The One cried out, flaring madly, flailing, in the heavens, as the lights dimmed, then bloated in a last attempt to remain lit. The universe was shrouded in a blinding cover of white, blotting out every swirl and vast cloud, down to the tiniest of speck of lonely journeying star.

Emerald saw only the clotting shrouds shimmer briefly in the cold, as she stroked her translucent and fed it warm thoughts of the hidden, dying, vault of heaven.

–

part 5

3 - counterintuitive

The atmospheres over the evening skies flowed with shifting shapes and colors, a palette now insatiably coerced from the gods who strain against their fetters to battle and froth in the heavens, throwing sparks into the void to feed their ever growing need of admiration. Indeed, as the One managed His aggregation it groped rabidly at the endless confines of space springboarding into the dankest recesses and dusty corners. The One clutched the growing tendrils of dissipation but streamers of pinks and those illusive grays filtered out between the gaps and swirled until the dense matter imploded, fractured, and fled to thinks beyond thought.

There, they expanded, mingled and enveloped, and grew some more. Battles upon an immense canvas ensued, and below the galactic tides the lidless evolved in taste and girth, filling the voids, not as the One intended, their seed implanted upon vessels that flit among the stars furtively.

part 4

2 - from wounds to wisdom

Tantamount to sorrow, living on the brink, the translucence wafts in mid thought, oblique as it is opaque, knowing little but fixing its one great ocular scope on the upward bend of space. Below as it bounces on the firmament creatures of more substance but less opinion nibble at the fresh train it weaves, chafing on the surface of a new world. The translucence exists only to see, and in its great clouded mass it stores each image as the One has decreed. Heaven is a canvas and the stars are the brushes that swirl and coalesce into Klimpts of vast sagacity, blotches of light and dark, a chiaroscuro portion of soup to feed the soul of an unimaginative creature.

Each night when the celestial,wobbling orb completes its dance of revolution, darkness unfolds and the scrabbling being, ethereal in its impotency, unfurls a great lid and partakes of the beauty that permeates the spreading dome above. Elucidation envelopes its being and cellular elocution sparkles along synaptic chords. Tonight still hovers upon the cusp of a notion, and creation is rampant, fertile, overwhelming. Even as the vermin below cling to its scarred underbelly, feeding on the bulk it daily grows to compensate for a bulging memory core, the strain begins to rend and play havoc, until the translucence buckles from within and resolves to capitulate – it divides and surrenders precious memories to a second half. But in doing so, there is more beauty to behold, and to debate.

So the masses are fed, from on high to the lowliest, and presence is maintained.

part 3

1 - an aggressive return

From emptiness a pinprick responds, coerced by the voice of One, a sparse mote like an itch that sprang out of nothing, a concept in itself novel, and intriguing.

In and of itself an absence is merely the existence of less than something, and upon that notion a conversation begins which welcomes a banquet of soliloquy spanning distances unclaimed and forming tendrils of communication that mount a foray of platforms, and then: divergence.

Patterns swirl, become motion portraits stretching to infinity, uncatalogued, immense, untouched, seen and loved by One, adored by none. Existing in all planes and references, the One laments creation, but loathes to cede control to any but Oneself... a myriad of conundrums play out like moves on the chessboard, equations proceed, theorems construe like tattoos on the heavens and the dam is burst, a galactic finger pulled and rending the tender veins of Jericho, damning all that is and will be with a cancer that is God's answer to loneliness: life, eternal chaos.

part 2

intimate journey

Halfwit in old shoes

seen the wicked ways of this world

from the soles up

trod on his slice of life

the odd worm and errant flea

who refused to budge

from a delectable bite

of frosted leaf

softened by tooth

and mandible

He likened his life

to that of an ant

steadfast and replete

with purpose

he ventures forth anon

smiling like a shaman

or a dolt

on quests untold

unfolding before his great white shoes

collecting dust like clues for the clueless