Story: Standing Stones
Sep. 10th, 2008 06:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wolven7They stood on the rim, looking down at the centre, looking down at the heart of the world. There were five of them and they could each see a colour, a spectrum of light and dark, pulsing and turning, singing to them in a rthym, a melody like a finger on a wine glasses and the beat of a heart, dancing around each other, waiting.
Charles heard purple crystaline light, and he was five years old, again, standing in his back yard, in the late August afternoon, waiting for his father to come home. His mother had found the cat, the box, the scissors: his experiement. She couldn't bear to look at him, she said, so she sent him to the yard to stand and wait. She couldn't bear to look at him, but then why was she standing at the kitchen window, with her hand at he mouth? Why was she staring at him, crying?
Claudia felt a dull green bass line, deep in her chest, and it was the last day of the spring semester, the end of her sophomore year. She was looking out the window of their dorm, down into the courtyard. The boxes were on the bed, again; she couldn't decide if they should be on the floor, the bed, the chairs, or the desks. It was important. She would be back, soon, and things needed to be perfect, neeeded to be precisely ready, to leave, to get out, to start over. Absently, she traced the line of her collar bone, with the tip of her middle finger, and waited.
Geoffry listened to the electric blue crackle of static, coming from the amp, and the punk show in 1979, right there at the end of it all. He lunged forward, and felt the crunch of bone and the warm spray of blood as the top of his head connected with the bridge of some motherfucker's nose. He kicked back, catching someone in the kneecap, but he couldn't see what colours the fucker was wearing in the show lights, but he brought his leg forward, again, driving his knee into Broken-Nose's ribcage. He swung him around into the crowd, and stepped down, hard. Everybody could see him dancing.
Shiela watched the orange light coming from the mountain flowers, listened to the alto chimes, somewhere up the slope, and she reminded herself that winter on the south face was treacherous. She could not allow herself to become distracted by the optical process, the combination of light waves into patterns; it was an illusion, as everything was illusion. The pain of process, of pattern and form, this too was illusory, though a more persistent illusion, to be sure. Patternlessness was truth. Tohuvabohu, Nirvana, Formless and Void. Her fingertips brushed the stem of the flower, and she could feel each whorl on each ridge.
Alex felt the wash of silver and black like a wave of force, cold at first, then warm and deep, so deep and close. To open your mouth was to drown, to open your eyes was to have them rupture in the sheer presence of its potential and importance. Alex felt death, coming, felt birth, again, and again, and again, but felt nothing. A dog glimpsed on the side of the road, watching. A blanket in the window of a store, on the crib of a newborn child. A guitar, white and cherry red, caressed by a slim hand. A teddy bear, in the corner of an empty room, rain-soaked and moulding, from the broken window.
Their hands were held, locked together, staring into five separate hearts of an infinte maelstrom. Their feet sunken into the sand at the beginning of the world, as they stood guarding, waiting, creating, continually destroying themselves, sending pieces into the things of which the hearts of stars are mere approximations. Their deepest moments providing fuel, fodder, doorways, windows, sacrifices and communion tolls, the five of them. The fifty of them. The infinty of infinities of them, awake and aware and destroying themselves so that you may create the world around you.
These are the pillars of the world, on which you stand, between which you rest. This is the world, which relies on you.
©Damien Williams. All Rights Reserved.
Not as happy with that ending as I'd like... I don't know. Last three sections seemed to spiral about out of control, but there it is.
Charles heard purple crystaline light, and he was five years old, again, standing in his back yard, in the late August afternoon, waiting for his father to come home. His mother had found the cat, the box, the scissors: his experiement. She couldn't bear to look at him, she said, so she sent him to the yard to stand and wait. She couldn't bear to look at him, but then why was she standing at the kitchen window, with her hand at he mouth? Why was she staring at him, crying?
Claudia felt a dull green bass line, deep in her chest, and it was the last day of the spring semester, the end of her sophomore year. She was looking out the window of their dorm, down into the courtyard. The boxes were on the bed, again; she couldn't decide if they should be on the floor, the bed, the chairs, or the desks. It was important. She would be back, soon, and things needed to be perfect, neeeded to be precisely ready, to leave, to get out, to start over. Absently, she traced the line of her collar bone, with the tip of her middle finger, and waited.
Geoffry listened to the electric blue crackle of static, coming from the amp, and the punk show in 1979, right there at the end of it all. He lunged forward, and felt the crunch of bone and the warm spray of blood as the top of his head connected with the bridge of some motherfucker's nose. He kicked back, catching someone in the kneecap, but he couldn't see what colours the fucker was wearing in the show lights, but he brought his leg forward, again, driving his knee into Broken-Nose's ribcage. He swung him around into the crowd, and stepped down, hard. Everybody could see him dancing.
Shiela watched the orange light coming from the mountain flowers, listened to the alto chimes, somewhere up the slope, and she reminded herself that winter on the south face was treacherous. She could not allow herself to become distracted by the optical process, the combination of light waves into patterns; it was an illusion, as everything was illusion. The pain of process, of pattern and form, this too was illusory, though a more persistent illusion, to be sure. Patternlessness was truth. Tohuvabohu, Nirvana, Formless and Void. Her fingertips brushed the stem of the flower, and she could feel each whorl on each ridge.
Alex felt the wash of silver and black like a wave of force, cold at first, then warm and deep, so deep and close. To open your mouth was to drown, to open your eyes was to have them rupture in the sheer presence of its potential and importance. Alex felt death, coming, felt birth, again, and again, and again, but felt nothing. A dog glimpsed on the side of the road, watching. A blanket in the window of a store, on the crib of a newborn child. A guitar, white and cherry red, caressed by a slim hand. A teddy bear, in the corner of an empty room, rain-soaked and moulding, from the broken window.
Their hands were held, locked together, staring into five separate hearts of an infinte maelstrom. Their feet sunken into the sand at the beginning of the world, as they stood guarding, waiting, creating, continually destroying themselves, sending pieces into the things of which the hearts of stars are mere approximations. Their deepest moments providing fuel, fodder, doorways, windows, sacrifices and communion tolls, the five of them. The fifty of them. The infinty of infinities of them, awake and aware and destroying themselves so that you may create the world around you.
These are the pillars of the world, on which you stand, between which you rest. This is the world, which relies on you.
©Damien Williams. All Rights Reserved.
Not as happy with that ending as I'd like... I don't know. Last three sections seemed to spiral about out of control, but there it is.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-09-10 10:30 pm (UTC)I keep thinking of the circle of angels at the Beginning, in the Books of Magic.
Maybe we should write something together.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-10 11:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-10 11:21 pm (UTC)