Happy Friday! For those of you to whom reality provides an insufficient amount of psychedelic, grave-robbing shenanigans amongst the rusting hulks and inhuman powers of the fallen future, I have another slice of Vim! ...Poor Grit the Quill is out of the snake-siege and into even greater insanities. If you'd like to start the narrative of our brain-damaged-eunuch-scribe-turned-tomb-raider/something-less-than-reliable-narrator from the beginning, you can find the first two chapters here:
And now, without further ado, Part 3! PREPARE YOURSELVES FOR WEIRD.
The stone is sharp. They bring the infants up by helix steps to cast them down upon its point, and in that fall they read the fate and future.
Such was my dream that I dreamt as we lay below the moon-glowing mirk and waited to be killed.
The old wound hurts greater than the new.
These are not my thoughts. They were germs on the edge of the knife that ruined my mind and gave me life, growing now into dreams.
I know it was done for the Prince.
It is devilishly hot. It is devilishly hot beneath the unseen sun. The fire in my wounded arm prevents more sleep from coming. We must be past midday, and yet the fog has held. The strength of the sun at its strongest cannot burn it away. We must already stand within the Prince's shadow.
I have curiously no desire for food, which is well, for we left most of what we had in the cavern with the snakes. I am certain Paradise could snare us local game, if we dare to eat a creature touched by the mountain's breath, but I am loath to rouse her. Night must fall soon, I think. Perhaps a watch or a little more. Well do I remember the terror of our flight. We should move before it comes again, though I am also loath to give up this defense; the Lupari walk both day and night, though all the wood is silent now. The women must need their sleep if still they rest, and I have no need for Honest's company.
Perhaps, with time, I too may sleep, and one of them may rise and find the death of Gill-called-Stave. There is a bounty surely for his head, though I would not dare to take it.
My arm burns, and there is only light for so much longer. I will sleep when darkness comes. The ink must flow while the sun still shines, as our master scribe would growl, whipping the slower boys for the candles that they burned. My great regret is that I only maimed him.
Our depression is curiously dished, though I did not feel it when we collapsed in our exhaustion. The ground on which we lay is noticeably slanted. I had a thought we cast ourselves into its deepest shelter, but that cannot be the case. Standing up right now, I feel the ground fall inch by inch beneath my feet as gravity leads me to some unseen epicenter.
The fog is paler than my paper and so thick that all these words are just the faintest hint of gray. I write them still, for have no other way to think. There is water pooled in the center of this pit.
What an interesting thing.
___
I remember a time before my father's knife, when every scrap of life was a source of joy and fascination: how clothing changed color beneath each city light, the winding map of veins beneath my skin, the beating of a lizard's throat as it stretched out on the rust and ate the worms I offered it on tiny wooden skewers, the sound of cicadas in a jar. Every passing atom was a wonderment.
That is how it felt to stand before what rested in the pool's center, if I could say that such a vibrancy did rest. Its stillness seemed more bursting than a thousand dancing acrobats.
The burning of my arm, which is near to madness as I write this now, vanished utterly and instantly, and with it every pain and panic and concern. I pushed aside the bones that lined the bank and sat down to better gaze upon the marvel.
The cave, as Honest calls it, where we currently hide from the weather and the worms is little more than a guano smeared overhang. The rain drips down in filth-tinted rivlets to fall on my infected arm. I have given up trying to favor it. The incline pools water at our feet and prevents fire and warmth.
How very different was the shore at the center of our crater. It is a great comfort now to write of it and remember the joy and wonderment that would have been my death.
It was flat on all sides, though I could see no angles that joined them or for that matter, curves of any kind. If I were to try to draw as an artist draws, my pen would have no place to start, but when I close my eyes, I can feel its void against my lids. Perhaps it exists primarily in another sense, and the sight of it was merely an afterthought. One can hardly see a scent, yet is not confused by this.
Yet it was sight that was first captivated, for myself at least, though the bones that lined the shore belonged to many creatures, some famous for their blindness. A faint light seemed to play across the surface of the thing, a muddy amber that shone on nothing else. I cannot say that it ever grew or diminished in its intensity, yet I became aware of a pattern to its vibrancy, a driving rhythm, though the light itself never changed. I had begun to tremble, and I trembled to this beat.
I do not know how long it was before it spoke. Time had fallen away before I first sat down.
It was at the voice that I realized that I had been ensnared by an enemy.
I could almost hate Gill for pulling me away from it.
Comments