Skip to main content

Reach

 As my father before me, and his before him, I walk the blessed trail. 


The snows whip and slash at exposed skin, the wind threatening to purge flesh into hardened crystal and numbness.


As my father before me, and his before him, I walk the blessed trail. 


My eyes are weak, staring into undulating whiteness, knowing only that I am correct by the ever-dropping temperatures, the ever-screaming squall. 


As my father before me, and his before him, I walk the blessed trail. 


Looming pines and evergreens creak with righteous groans like the instruments of a mighty choir, dancing in place as so much storm threatens to topple their arrogance back down into earth that gave them life. Everything is half formed shapes swallowed up and spat out by the blizzard, by the cold, by the night. There is a moon somewhere in that sky, radiating it’s corpse cold light, and it feeds this chilling assault. 


As my father before me, and his father before him, I follow the blessed path. 


Further. On. On. My feet are lead, my bones made brittle and frigid by piercing cold blades. The storm in my ears is a glorious and painful crescendo, rising, widening until it is all that I know, all that I can feel. The storm is the truth, the storm is the way, and I will walk it, into the oblivion that takes or the ascendancy that gives. 


As my father before me, and his father before him, I walk the blessed path. 


I bear my trophies. Wear the crimson stag antlers, clutch at so many star-metal rosaries clanking and chittering against my throat even as the frozen metal locks my hands in place. The markings painted down each notch in my spine to match the guiding stars. 


As my father before me, and his father before him, I walk the blessed path. 


Silence. 


Squall and snow and white annihilation vanished.


A mountain peak, ancient and endless and black.


The Moon. Close enough to touch.


The voices bless me. The hands of so many come before, the footsteps of those who will have their time. The majesty of silver eternity.


Reach.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Moons that Hunters Must Walk

 The Five Moons claim the sky with blood and cosmic violence. Crimson-saffron light splashes across the huge storm clouds beneath their fierce visages, and turns the world eerie. Dreamlike. Haskes, the Moon of Windfall. Storms curl into whirlwind frenzies across the bone-colored face. It is the place of howling furies and hellish nightmares, where hunters must walk across the Stormchasm to stand strong against endless wind-- or be thrown into bottomless abyss. Ahnios, the Moon of Waves. Hunters know the Tidesong, a deep welling howl of sorrow and exultance, the song to be sung out when those worthy sailed out across tsunamis vast enough to sunder continents into crushing abyss. A moon of an ocean untamed, beautiful, and unforgiving. Khinq, the Moon of Dunes. Those beneath the chaotic sky know the Blood Passage as a time of fear and annihilation, a time when the Moon of Endless Sand has returned from distant void to once again reign among its brethren. Red glows like silent, crawlin...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bobby and the Big Time Swing

 The angry, unfamiliar star gets closer every day. It throws mean light over Cretaceia. Makes the gem-green jewel of Jurassica look sickly under nasty light, blanches the red deserts and crimson badlands around Triassican searing white. Ferns lilt. Fliers chirp ugly possibilities on the wing and it all rains down like so many bad premonitions.  But Bobby ain’t scared.  Bobby is big as a mountain, old as the sea. His people are the backs of the sky and the muscles of this mighty Earth, each one a nation containing multitudes. Starlight seeps down Brachiosaurus scales to drench the world in constellation light. His steps beckon cartographers as each one reforms valleys, reshapes the deltas. The unwelcome star threatens all that. Bad dreams beckoning fire and ash.  But Bobby ain’t scared.  The big-brains on two little feet tell him the Plan. Simple as can be, simple as gentle breezes and succulent plains of ferns for munching, simple as all things natural and corre...
Post a Comment
Read more

This Sovereign Place

 The lines on her arm match the lines on the ground below. She follows them. Sweat on her brow, the taste of salt on her lips and tongue, crystalline blue eyes flicking between intersecting geometry traced into flesh and lengthy, minimalistic pattern across ancient stonework.  The lines are geometric, straight, unfaltering and unbroken. Each one a thin, black-filled canal over white surface. Black lines that pass over saffron, crimson, ivory, and charcoal covered ground. Look to the flesh. Look to the ground. Back and forth. Measure each step with silent contemplation and heavy, thumping heartbeats.  The glow draped across her shoulders has slowed its strange rhythm, and the girl fears it might fade soon, it’s organic green luminescence lowering and lowering until this place is returned back to the darkness she found it in. Long, thin fingers stroke it’s cool glassy surface, warmth to cold, and the green ripples in response, purring at the base of her spine. It will last ...
Post a Comment
Read more