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