The Elusive 40k And a Teaser
This is so ridiculously fantastic, I can't even tell you. 40k has been my obsession for the past...oh, 10k or so. I seriously canNOT wait for the apotheosis/climax/whathaveyou.
I told myself that I'd post a teaser once I hit 40k, so here goes. It may seem to come out of nowhere, but there's not much to say in way of explanation.
The boy with no name appeared in the woods, completely alone. As he grew out of the air, a strong wind carrying a chill just violent enough to bite swept through the trees, claws with bark stained black like remorse. Against his chest he clutched a fluid thing of bright grey. It was U-shaped, except more graceful, and had what looked like hundreds of black strings strung between its two ends.
Once he realized he was there, his arms loosened around the harp but he didn’t lower it from his chest-not quite yet. He kept it there as if it were a part of him, and maybe it was, for that moment when time and space were yet to gather their bearings in the air around him. He took a wistful step forward. The wind was blowing leaves around him; those that crossed over his body seemed to flicker out of existence for just a moment, then, as they moved closer to the ground, they were visible to mortal eyes once more.
As the universe settled itself around him once more, the boy parted with the harp, held it at not quite an arm’s length, and studied it. It was beautiful. It was familiar to him, but when he tried to draw up memories of it he found himself empty-handed.
The boy looked up the hill. That was where he needed to go. From his current vantage point he could make out the dark shapes of stone towers against the sky. Up there, somewhere, was what he needed…
He glanced at the towers, the harp. The towers, the harp. The harp itself seemed to revolve out of reality as it slid to the corner of his eye when he looked to the towers; it was surreal. The final time he looked at it, his eyes-or his ears-no, his mind-caught on a sense. Not quite a sound, but it was something like it, stowed away in each fine black string, like a hundred million notes lurking within them, one for each leaf in the forest. The strings of notes blurred in his eyes until they all ran together like dark twine absorbing the darkness, and they amassed into something more than he thought he could take. He felt the instrument vibrating in his mind, but when he felt it with his hands it was only as still as he was. The forest around him bent inwards, pressuring. Play, its rustling, falling leaves said.
And then he was playing.
His fingers dipped between the strings and came back to the surface covered in bright, round syllables, the kind that didn’t make words when stacked together because they came from another source entirely, a source arguably much smarter than a mortal’s lips. When the boy with no name brought his fingers back down onto the strings just the right way, he could feel the syllable and the harp fuse for the fraction of a moment, and then a note sprung away in a perfect ring-for a moment he could see it and it was bright, whole, and he could nearly feel the forest Spirits there-he could feel them in the harp, he could touch them with his fingers…
Then it was just a harp. Any visions dancing across his irises died on the spot and his mind sunk
back to the level of reality that was forest, if that was reality. But his fingers didn’t stop. In
fact, their moments were becoming easier and more balanced. They played on, and then his
mind picked up on something beneath them, something that he knew for certain was a sign
from that higher realm; a farewell, maybe. Or a welcome.