The Wheel of Time turns, and ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth returns again
( Read more... )
There are songbirds here, still, furtive and fluttering. Such a thread would make a fine addition to a nest, would work to fill in the gaps that leave creatures bare to the elements.
One particularly daring bird, small and brown, darts toward it, buffeted aside by--
kaw
--the heavy wings of a hungry black bird.
The little thread twirls higher, borne skyward by the updraft of beating wings.
It is no butterfly, but perhaps it will serve well enough.
A particularly hard gust ruffles midnight-black feathers before the wind eases its grasp on the fragile strands and turns elsewhere, as if losing interest... or letting go.
Recognition, of a sort, and the spark flares brighter and dims at once as scattered pieces pull together, coalescing into the shape of a whole and the whole of a shape at once.
I am-- I can't be--
-- am I?
A sense of confusion swirls almost tangibly around-between-through the space that is no place at all save for all of the ones that it lies between.
One particularly daring bird, small and brown, darts toward it, buffeted aside by--
kaw
--the heavy wings of a hungry black bird.
The little thread twirls higher, borne skyward by the updraft of beating wings.
It is no butterfly, but perhaps it will serve well enough.
The cousins often do.
Reply
(a haven - outside the Pattern)
Unfettered by any restraint or earthbound pull, the wisp of thread hangs in midair, seeming almost to float for a timeless, impossible span.
Reply
It is even less like reaching out to catch hold of a speck of dust, a grain of sand.
And yet there is a hand, and a wrist, and a tangle of bedraggled threads hanging from a timeworn sleeve.
And then there is nothing save the sky, and the stars, the harsh ringing cry of a black-feathered bird--
and the absence of a weight almost too great to bear.
The rest is silence, and the space between.
Reply
Except--
--no, nothing.
Only a spark; the smallest flicker of light.
Reply
Time always passes.
Save when it does not.
And in the dark and the silence, a whisper slowly grows louder. One voice, then five, then half a hundred.
And that selfsame spark flickers in a wind heralded by the rustle of feathers.
Flickers, and catches alight, though there is, in this lack-of-place, no wood to burn.
Reply
She has been here before, she thinks; what there is of her to think, that is.
--danger; there is danger in the Ways when the Black Wind blows--
A soft not-quite-a-sigh, a soundless shift, and a formless figure seems to stir.
Reply
Something shifts, stirs, and resolves into the figure of a man.
Stretching behind him, soft-edged and deeper than the surrounding darkness, is his own shadow.
It has wings.
And when he tilts his head, the angle awkward and too-sharp, the voices fall silent.
It will not last.
It never does.
Reply
I am-- I can't be--
-- am I?
A sense of confusion swirls almost tangibly around-between-through the space that is no place at all save for all of the ones that it lies between.
"But I did not bring the feather."
Reply
Time fails to pass.
Posture unchanging, Raven laughs.
The sound, bright and warm and--for this one moment, one moment out of all the others--free.
It fades but slowly. There is power in echoes.
"I am, I think, not so easily tricked as that, yes?"
Reply
She looks
(does not look)
down
(up sideways nowhere everywhere here)
at her hands, then at him.
"I did what I meant to do."
She sounds certain of this, even as the timbre of her voice makes it a question at the end.
Reply
"There are, I think, always tricks. Mostly they are not so much from you. Still."
The wind that fails to blow carries the sound of the sea with it.
The whispers return.
failed failed go down into the dust and ashes and forgot
"What you meant and what was done are not so much different. That, perhaps, is why you are for being."
He doesn't say 'here', and not just because it would be redundant.
Reply
"Everything. All of me. What was taught was taken and what was given was woven -- "
Reply
He tilts his head in the other direction, watching her carefully.
The rest of him remains very still. Even the shadows.
Especially the shadows.
"There are always prices. Choices, too."
His smile is small, and crooked, and true.
"It is, I think, what I am for."
In part. The whole of it is another story.
A longer one.
Reply
Silence, then; long silence, broken only by the distant whispers.
"I cannot go back without undoing what was done."
Can I?
Spoken or unspoken, heard or merely thought-- the question is, all the same.
Reply
the beginning beginning beginnings are endings the end the end it ends
"Or possibly it is a different kind of forward. "
He fails to blink.
"And there is death. That, too, is not so difficult."
Reply
Her nod toward his winged shadow is the only movement in the stillness.
"It is lighter than a feather, or so it is said; it is duty that is hard. To hold, despite everything."
The faintest hint of a smile flickers.
"When ever have I sought that which was easy?"
Reply
Leave a comment