Wind and needle-sharp snowdust blew something coughing and swearing through Gate 32B. They had opened the door but a crack so that Mark and the other guards would have an easier time of pushing it back into the closed position after their “guest” had entered. The servos were nightfroze again and no one had wanted to open the gate in the first place, but you just did not leave folks out in the cold on a night like this.
(more…)
The bus was running late, as usual. The only sensible thing to do in such conditions is to smoke a cigarette, as far as Paul was concerned. So he did.
“I’ve run out of fucks to give,” he said, dropping a pinch of tobacco into the cigarette paper. He shifted the distribution of the tan, shredded leaf, pushing it to the edges of the paper. The amount was still unsatisfactory by whatever criteria he had, so another pinch was added shifted about until he was satisfied and his fingers started their practiced rolling to transform the package into a serviceable cigarette.
(more…)
Drip drop, water in the well. She peers down between the moss stones and half-shadows to the water’s tenebrious surface casing ripples with each drop of dew gathering in the chill of the dark before it casts itself downward, a suicide plunge to rejoin the well of spirits gathered below.
(more…)
It began as a fracture, the kind that forms on the thin ice when the breaking point is reached from much too much weight put upon it from above.
Though it was our memory and not ice, there was still the audible crack that could be heard over the firestorm as it raged over us, consuming with words meant to puncture our flesh like arrows full drawn on a great bow. Name calling like thrown stones and razor spite in a cutting rain that fell upon our heads. It was not that long ago that we embraced Mr. Wendell, but the rains came (as they eventually will) and he was given over to the middens for the sake of survival. So much for cohabitation and burning the white sheets…
And so, our memory cracked in spiderweb, the baby screamed, and we saw the cascade of a dream crumble to the dirt in the name of filthy lucre and the pale. You get what you give, they said, and you gave hate.
Perhaps, but we were loving in how we hated.
I wrapped my blind eyes in linen, hung my head, feeling the fracture claw at my own brittle past begin to sunder. I walked away and grew old, unable to hold onto the younger days.
“Can you hear it? The wind is calling to carry.”
She stood away from me, turned away from the buildings, the trees and me, her black hair blowing on the gathering breeze as the skies grew flint to match the color of her eyes she wore before the turning away. I did not doubt her eyes could change colors to match her mood, I had seen it happen many time before. Her mood was that of the coming storms, unsettled, roiling and only barely constrained — and so she now wore flint and heather where most people wore mere eyes.
(more…)
The floor’s gone out.
I just thought you should know.
(more…)
I travel long distances without leaving my home.
This is truth.
I pull the hood over my head, cover my eyes and I am back on the road, blacktop beneath my soles, blackthorn in my hand, tall pines doused in their pungent cologne, rising tall and casting everything shadow.
This is truth
Blacktop fades to gravel fades to black dirt stained grey and the birch draw closer, birds talking from the broad reeds, powder puff cattails and rushes green. Giving directions. Giving meaning.
This is truth.
Feeling gravities pull to gloaming space, I ramble on.
This is truth.
Wandering the daydream, with all the accompanying mists and the fey voices just out of earshot in those mists; a forest of lingering like a wraith waiting for the gloaming of nightfell — such is the path I flow.
Weary of trying to find connection, I feel the tug of something less even than byways. And, giving in, twin feet shamble towards the briar and thorns to follow on the stones to sacrifice of both eyes. The words are liars, near all, so we toss them to the underbrush and let them return to mud.
This is my lonely and I feel possessive of it in the way the chill of fresh-fallen snow stings skin to pleasure as two bare hands mould it into shape. I do not think I can share it, and I would never dare to give it away. It is far too precious.
Turn away, just as the guitar peals the last banshee cries into night. We are like as not, unforgiven.
We are already of the barrow.
A turn of the chamber followed the roar of the gun is all that divides. Or the obsidian’s edge, if you prefer, for that line is silent and cuts the threads fine. Or that final chest rattle in the nadir of night, while kin look on.
Gasping revenants clutching at vapors threading their path through the mists and ways, our hands wither to dust. And for what? The illusion of the infinite when we are but dirt and dust.
We color ourselves with the shadow of our own ash gathered from down there, in the pit. Try to give ourselves light from the shadow, by way of contrast. But few seem to see.
We are already of the barrow.
You’ll find me at moorwanders, following smalltrails and playing at touchstone for the only thing that is real. Here, elder ways draw to base: flame crosses chill, rain mists slick the stone, and the growl of winds between the ways. Here, the animals sing underhill, a call to slumber.
I know you tire at the mention of Raven, but they are here too.
The best magic is that which seems not to be magic at all, and it lingers here like it did in the old, doing a lot of nothing much at all: wind waves barley, skies trading slate for blue and then back again, small birds ducking in and out of the tall grass and the lone tree upon the hill. Them, big oak and me as all acorn, resting underneath and waiting.
For what? you ask.
Well, if you must need know… for you.