I’m so glad they taught me how to tell time.
To slow the fuck down.
***
Ar-Raguel drew an arrow and notched
it as he ran silently behind his shorter and noisier comrades. Dudley’s armor was too heavy to be remotely
quiet and even though Sammy could move as deftly as Ar-Raguel, the halfling was
intentionally making a racket, whooping, whistling and singing nonsense in a
high falsetto. They charged the beast to
the left of the statue while Billy and Rocco turned on the beast to the
right. Ar-Raguel wasn’t sure how much of
Sammy’s bravado was genuine courage, how much a well-honed act and how much a
lamentable lack of care for his own life.
Halflings had it hard in the Northlands and in the short time Ar-Raguel
had known Sammy he had come to understand and even appreciate the bantam bard’s
often cynical and nihilistic attitude towards life. Ar-Raguel understood too well the
disappointment that accompanied being displaced.
It’s
both a sad and true thing that battling unknown horrors in dark dungeons is still
a better lot than so many of your kin suffers…
Ar-Raguel watched Sammy prepare a
similar gambit to the one he had used with Rocco just a minute or so earlier.
…Caravanning
from one not-quite-safe haven to another while trying to avoid any number of
princelings scorching the earth.
As Sammy charged the beast – which was
easily three times his height – he flipped several daggers at the creature’s ankles. The knives leapt from Sammy’s hands too fast
to count.
Just
where does someone so small hide so many knives?
Two hit their mark. Poisons were hard to come by so it was
doubtful Sammy had risked using them on the throwing daggers; misses would be a
waste of a valuable resource and, as any good teller of tall tales worth his
salt knew, eldritch creatures such as this one often possessed powerful
resistance to the simple concoctions of apothecaries.
And
that short gentleman there can tell the tallest tales of anyone I have ever
known.
It wasn’t Sammy’s intention to try
to bring down the beast with a blow from such a small blade, only to get its
attention. In that regard Sammy succeeded
spectacularly. The monster bent over, lowering
its head in order to look between its legs and follow the path of the tiny
attacker.
Dudley followed after Sammy and landed
a mighty blow to the back of the beast’s head with his warhammer. The spiked face of the hammer tore a patch of
feathers and leathery flesh off the mutant’s skull. Dudley let the momentum of the blow carry his
hammer down and behind him and then the dwarf wrestled against the hammer’s aspirations
for orbit, straining to redirect the formidable mass of iron back over his head
in order to strike the monster again. As Dudley displayed equal parts wild ferocity
and learned discipline taming his weapon, the scarlet tuft of the creature’s skin
flew off the face of the warhammer and traced an arc of blood and viscera over Ar-Raguel’s
head, feathers trailing behind, dropping faster than one might expect.
Such
beautiful feathers … they seem so heavy? … but no time for such fawning right
now
He let fly an arrow from his bow as
the scrap of scalp landed behind him with a wet smack. The arrow’s ironwood point pierced the beast’s
flesh with an even wetter sound, driving deep into the monster’s lowered and
exposed neck.
Ar-Raguel cautiously allowed
himself a moment of optimism. The beast was obviously dazed from the blow to
its skull and wounded from blades and arrows.
It raised its head sluggishly and staggered back and forth. Dudley’s warhammer rose up in front of the
great owlish face for another blow.
Sammy had managed to start climbing up the monster’s back, yet another
dagger held in his teeth.
Not
a bad round of fighting gentle-
Suddenly, the freakish thing fell
forward colliding into Dudley before the dwarf could deliver his second
blow. Tackled mid-swing, Dudley lost his
grip on his weapon. Ar-Raguel watched
the hammer fly harmlessly over the beast and smash into the portcullis a dozen
or so yards away. The dwarf went
crashing to the ground and the beast seized Dudley in its massive beak.
Clever
girl.
The monster hadn’t actually fallen
at all, Ar-Raguel realized.
Despite the blow to its head, it still
had wits enough about it to drop to all fours while it recovered its balance. Now, more like a rabid dog than a bear or
owl, it began thrashing Dudley around.
Ar-Raguel knew that of everyone in the party Dudley possessed the
heaviest and toughest armor, a full suit of dwarven-forged plates. It was one of the few possessions Dudley still
possessed from a youth spent fighting and mining in his homeland. But no armor was impenetrable and each passing
second meant it more likely that the beak’s nail might find passage between
plates, or the powerful saw-like mandibles might, however unlikely, cut or
crack through the dwarf’s adamantine breastplate.
Dudley screamed at the beast as it
repeatedly slammed him against the ground and shook him violently back and forth. “I. Am. Neither. Bear. Nor. Bird. Food.
Demon!” But the dwarf was helpless to
do more than reprimand.
Sammy was stabbing away at the beast’s
back with his dagger to little effect.
“The shafts of the feathers are
tough as nails!” Sammy yelled to Ar-Raguel while clutching a
bunch of said feathers with one hand in order to prevent being bucked off the
beast as it undulated while ravaging Dudley.
“No, really! They’re like little
metal spikes! And its damned hide is thicker
than Rocco’s skull!” With his other hand Sammy had slid a dagger
into the beast up to the quillons. The
beast didn’t seem to notice the eight inches of steel in its lower back.
Honey
bear don’t give a shit, eh? We shall
see.
In one fluid movement Ar-Raguel
fired another arrow at the beast - aiming for fur not feathers per Sammy -
tossed the bow aside and drew his sword while leaping to close the gap between
him and the monster. He landed beside
the beast and plunged his sword into its back.
Unlike Sammy’s knives, Ar-Raguel’s blade had no trouble piercing the
animal’s hide; there was hardly a hide on Gaearth his blade could not
pierce. The full weight of his body bearing
down on the blade insured the sword slid deep into the beast’s massive bulk, up
to its hilt, but despite being near a yard long, the blade’s tip did not emerge
from the other side of the creature’s torso.
It did land deep enough to change
the monster’s strategy.
The beast finally acknowledged it
was facing more than just one attacker.
It reared up on its hind legs again
with Dudley still held firmly in its jaws and when it reached its full height, it
released the dwarf. Dudley was tossed in
an arc backwards over the melee at least some 30 feet high in the air. Ar-Raguel tried to remove his blade from the
monster’s back but before Dudley had even hit the ground, the beast had turned
on Ar-Raguel, still ignoring Sammy clinging to its back. The monster swung its massive right paw at
the elfkin who easily stepped back and out its way but was forced to leave his
sword stuck in the monster’s trunk.
My
sister will never forgive me if I lose that sword.
Ar-Raguel could not counter attack
so instead he back-pedaled a bit more and kept his eyes on the beast’s shining
eyes: perfectly round glassine disks with glowing red irises. Like a normal owl, it did not appear the
beast could move its tourmaline orbs in their sockets and instead had to turn
its whole head in order to see side to side.
Also like an owl, it appeared to have no trouble seeing in the dark.
Good.
It can see my eyes but can’t easily look away.
The beast paused as it met
Ar-Raguel’s stare. It was not a stupid
creature but it was simple. Ar-Raguel
held the beast’s gaze and slowed his own breathing; the beast paused too and
breathed slow and deep.
Dudley had come crashing to the
ground off to Ar-Raguel’s right, deeper in the chamber, near the portcullis to
the left of the secret room from whence the beasts had come. Ar-Raguel wanted to look, to see how badly
Dudley was injured, but to break eye-contact with the beast would end the
enchantment he was attempting. He could
not possibly fight the beast hand to hand.
It out- weighed him by five, maybe 10 times, and was a yard taller if it
was an inch. Ar-Raguel opted to try
casting a simple spell of calm and friendship, a gentle charm. Not powerful, easily broken, but if he could
just buy some time…
And then there was light.
Val’s staff, aglow like half a
dozen torches but with no flame to be seen, clattered on the ground behind
Ar-Raguel near where Rocco and Billy were facing off with the beast’s twin. It
lit up the chamber and instantly shattered the enchantment.
My
road to Dis is paved with Val’s good intentions.
Seconds after the lights came on he
heard Billy screaming at Rocco behind him to “kill” and wished he could turn in
their direction now to see how they were faring however he still couldn’t take
his eyes of the beast. He no longer
feared the spell would fail – it already had – but rather, he needed to keep
his eyes on the prize because his life was on the line. He was unarmed, knew no spells he could cast
without letting down his guard and so the only chance he had of surviving the imminent
melee were the preternatural senses and reflexes legendary to his race.
As it turned out, the beast didn’t
put him to the test immediately and instead reached behind its head and almost
effortlessly plucked Sammy off its neck (and just as the little man had hacked
and climbed his way up to the beast’s shoulders). The bear-ish thing held Sammy upside down and
shook him violently by one of his little legs. The halfling dropped both of his blades and
hung limp from the monsters paw after a few seconds of being shaken like a
rattle. As the monster began sniffing
and tasting the halfling, Ar-Raguel - who feared Sammy’s neck would snap or his
leg would be torn off if the monster shook the Halfling again - improvised.
With a shockingly (and
supernaturally) loud whistle, he got the beast’s attention. “Hey?!
Hey, yeah, you. Who else would I
be talking to? Over here – you’re a very
confused demon my friend!” Ar-Raguel
waved his arms wildly and screamed at the monster. “But that’s ok, it happens to the best of us.”
The beast, perhaps due to the blow to
its head, which was still bleeding heavily, or the lingering effects from the failed
charm, paused momentarily and decided not to eat Sammy just yet.
“See, a big cursed beast like you
needs more than just flesh and blood.
I’ve got that extra something you want – that’s right, tasty, tasty
magic meat over here! Half-elf, half-human, two great tastes that taste great
together!”
Ar-Raguel needed to confuse the
beast just enough to make a try for his sword, which was now hanging further
out of the beast’s back, dislodged a bit due to the monster’s movements.
But that chance never came. Instead, a large piece of slag hit Ar-Raguel
in the back of the head hard enough to daze him. As he stumbled forward, eyes blurry and
vision greying, he instinctively reached back to the round of his skull and
could feel blood.
Occipital
lobe … vision ... read that in a book I did.
There was glass everywhere, and
metal, and a tremendous crashing sound.
Ar-Raguel couldn’t see well, could hardly stand, but he heard the beast that
Rocco and Billy fought gasping.
That
sounds like a good thing – but all the crashing and my bleeding and the not
seeing so well – not so much.
Ar-Raguel turned around confused towards
where the statue had been and instead saw only the blurry shadow of Rocco lying
on the ground next to an empty pedestal.
Before the eflkin could make
sense of the scene his own beast had its hand around his left leg. Ar-Raguel was jerked into the air with tremendous
force – such painful violence. Indeed,
his neck almost snapped as he was jerked upside down and then swung viciously
towards the chamber wall.
This
is going to leave a mark.
But the creature did not know its
own strength – or did and simply didn’t care.
It swung Ar-Raguel so violently that it tore Ar-Raguel’s leg off,
incidentally tossing the rest of Ar-Raguel towards Dudley. Ar-Raguel sailed through the air several
yards, crashed to the ground and slid on his own blood to a stop a few feet
from the dwarf. Dudley was lying on his
belly in a pool of his own blood which was still dripping from a massive gash
on his back where the armor had failed.
Neither the bleeding stump where
his leg had just been nor the site of Dudley’s potentially mortal wound was
however the most horrifying thing Ar-Raguel would see this day. In fact not even close. He turned away from the dying dwarf and
focused his attention back on the beast.
The elfkin watched in shock and disbelief as the demon continued to
violently shake Sammy with one hand, preventing the rogue from offering any
resistance, and, with its other hand, began feeding itself Ar-Raguel’s purloined limb.
I
am me. That is … was … the rest of
me. I am still me. Just a little less so.
Ar-Raguel was shocked and slipping
into shock. He began reciting the holy
words of Vejovis, channeling His divine magic to slow the bleeding in his leg
so he would not pass out. The elfkin
struggled to keep the chant going while keeping an eye on the beast.
The monster quickly devoured all
the long, fine, sinewy, elven muscle and tossed the bones and gristle back at
Dudley and him.
For
later? Waste not, want not, eh? Should I be complimented?
Hmmm…
Really, shouldn’t I?
The beast licked its talons clean of
the last bits of Ar-Raguel and then turned to Sammy. Again it sniffed the halfling and apparently
this time rejected him in favor of elf.
The beast hurled Sammy into the stairway past where Billy was
dismantling the sconce at the bottom of the stairs. Sammy’s body slammed into the far wall with a
sickening slapping sound and Ar-Raguel could hear the small body drop to the
floor, lifeless as far as Ar-Raguel could tell.
And now the beast was coming for
him and Dudley.
Rocco’s
on the ground. Dudley’s in a pool of blood. I am half the runner I used to be
and Sammy didn’t even rate as an appetizer.
The beast was but a step away from
the elfkin.
I
think my arrow is finally about to finish flying.
And then the beast walked right past
Ar-Raguel towards Dudley a few yards away.
Whether the beast feared the dwarf was still a threat and assumed a
one-legged elf not to be or it simply had a taste for dwarf, having sampled elf
and rejected halfling, Ar-Raguel neither knew nor care. He simply thanked the gods for their intervention
because as the beast walked past him, Ar-Raguel saw that his sword had almost
completely fallen out of the wound on the creature’s back.
“Saut, grenouille! Saut!”
It was a simple spell and in better
circumstances he could use it to magically leap impressive distances. Here and now it would suffice to launch his
limb-lacking self a few feet towards the blade.
He landed roughly but managed to clumsily grab the blade which slid out
with surprising ease, the force of his momentum helping him in his weakened
state. He allowed the momentum to carry
him to the ground and managed to crash onto his shoulder next to one of the
beast’s feet. The beast had paused in
its march towards Dudley in order to turn around and survey what had just
caused it some considerable pain in its backside.
“Now I take one of your legs,” Ar-Raguel
said aloud with more a sense of satisfaction than vengeance. As best and
quickly as he could, he lifted himself up onto his remaining knee with his left
arm and with his right arm drove the blade through the monsters foot into the
marble floor under them. Ar-Raguel
pierced straight through a bone in the beast’s hind paw and he leaned heavy on
the blade pushing the hilt through the hide and muscle, pressing it inside the
beast’s body, down into one of its metatarsals or cuneiforms, or whatever such
avian-ursine hybrid’s feet were made of.
The elfkin collapsed to the ground having successfully pinned the
monster’s paw to the floor. It was, for
the moment, trapped in place and unable to reach Dudley.
Over the sudden painful howl of the
monster, Ar-Raguel heard a sound that almost gave him hope: Dudley’s voice.
Hoarse and more coughed than spoken
the dwarf said, “I never did guess your blade’s name.”
Ar-Raguel looked in Dudley’s
direction and could see the dwarf’s eyes open and strain towards him under the
shadows of his helm. “Urundil.
A gift from my sis-”
The beast grabbed Ar-Raguel with
both hands, lifted him up to his beak and bit into his remaining leg, tore it from
Ar-Raguel’s body and tossed Ar-Raguel’s remaining torso in Billy’s direction. The
half of a half-elf slid ingloriously into the wall some 10 yards or so from
her, lying on his side, able to watch the monster consume his last leg.
He turned away from the grotesque
only to watch the pool of blood around him grow at a disquieting rate. He had no spells to heal such serious
wounds. He still had use of his arms but
why bother? He let himself fall on his
back.
Where his blood pooled was warm, an
oddly comforting feeling.
Suddenly flames burst from the center of the room and he
turned his head to see what new hell was upon them. But it was Rocco; he was wielding …
…fire?
He
looks terrible. Nearly dead himself.
Ar-Raguel’s vision was surprisingly
acute considering that he estimated he had perhaps seconds left to live. Rocco had apparently vanquished his own beast
and now was approaching Dudley and the pinned creature. Rocco hardly looked strong enough for a
battle. Ar-Raguel could see the warrior was
spitting blood. The nigh indefatigable
giant was breathing heavy, his mouth wide open, each laborious breath drawing
pain across his face. Rocco’s normally
kind expression and simple, rugged features had been rendered a fearful visage:
a grate of scratches and cuts accented by shards of glass sticking out of his
skin. The bloodied mess was interrupted only
by wide eyes which, unsurprising to Ar-Raguel, still revealed a desperate
determination. Rocco held the flaming
blade high and feinted at the monster.
Ar-Raguel could read Rocco’s fighting style like no one else, and even
though Rocco fronted a mad berserker, his body was on the verge of collapse. The warrior was trying to make his way to
Dudley who was just out of the beast’s reach but unfortunately, Ar-Raguel now
noticed, the dwarf lay prone just inside an archway where one of the portcullises
blocked a tunnel that went deeper into the dungeon. There was no way to retrieve Dudley from
under the arch without first going through the beast.
The demon swung at Rocco’s red-hot blade
but pulled back its burned paw instantly with a terrible scream.
Rocco almost dropped the blade when
the monster struck it.
He
is so tired.
So
tired. So am I so tired I am so tired so
tired I am so … hungry?
I
smell roast bear … and bird.
Silly
I suppose to worry about that now.
From the beast’s singed wing, Ar-Raguel
could see, even at his distance from the battle, several large feathers
fall. They fell faster than most.
But not too fast to fascinate one
final time.
Ar-Raguel focused on the falling
feathers.
Yes,
let’s all just take a moment to smell the roses … and the bears, and the owls …
mmmmm.
And,
of course, let’s watch the feathers.
The vicissitudes of time, its
temporality, its relativity, its secrets, had all been laid bare to him in the
sylvan woods of his father’s family.
Never quite his family.
Though
they tried. They really did. I’m so glad
they taught me how to tell time.
To
slow the fuck down.
When Ar-Raguel left his forest home
years ago some parts of the forest never left him.
His elven brothers and sisters
could spend whole days watching sunshine glisten off a pond, describing, as the
day went on, each of the new colors that arrived while Apollo’s wheel rolled
across the sky. One particular day spent
this way was impossible to forget, even while legless and bleeding to death on
the floor of this mausoleum’s dungeon or whatever it might turn out to be.
Disappointing
… I’ll never find out just what the hell we found here.
When
you hear the phrase, “The rest of your life” you never really think that could
ever mean just a few seconds…
Oddly, he had plenty of time to
remember his past.
On that life-changing afternoon
decades ago three of his kin watched not Helios painting on their favorite
pond, but a feather – just one eagle’s feather - fall after the bird had taken
flight from the top-most limb of one of the highest trees in their woods.
Ar-Raguel ran into his friends in
the woods as all three were lying naked on the mossy forest floor quietly
speaking to each other, each with their eyes focused on the same fixed point
hundreds of feet in the sky. They spied
something hidden in the forest’s canopy, a weave of tree limbs and leaves so
thick it nearly blotted out the sky.
Being half-blood, his eyesight was not quite as fine as his pureblood
kin and truth be told it was nearly half an hour before he could spy the
falling feather himself. It dropped
almost imperceptibly as breezes tossed it between limbs and trunks during its
slow descent.
He took his clothes off and joined
them, laying naked with them as they almost absent mindedly touched one another
gently. After a few minutes of caresses
he sighed and barely above a whisper asked, “Is it almost a curse to be so
easily distracted my friends?” He joked
but always was a bit unnerved at how easily his near immortal brethren could
occupy themselves for interminable lengths of time observing the simplest and
most common of events.
“Jealous, Ar?” Destine, one of the most beautiful …
beings
…
Being.
She’s
still being a being.
Somewhere.
I
won’t be being a being for much longer.
Anywhere?
… that he had ever the joy to
behold lay furthest from him under a blanket of some sky blue flowers she had
been covering herself with while they watched the feather. She pronounced his name from the throat just
as everyone else in the clan did but she purred it in ways others didn’t.
“I’m not sure. It seems a heavy price to pay for the gift of
immortality: to forever be so easily distracted with the mundane; to while away
day after day devising new ways to describe sunsets, and clouds, and the sounds
of the leaves in the trees...” He wasn’t
sure if he was being sarcastic when he had answered her.
“The luxury of time provides for
strange vices– is that what you think, Ar?
To immerse oneself in the poetry of the forest while the world burns
outside our doors – it is a selfish pursuit?”
She had asked. “Should we join
the wars? Build great machines of
destruction? Reveal how awesome our
magic is for surely the side we fight for would claim victory!” She mocked, pretending at a type of pride
that elves hardly ever possessed: The
pride of the victor over the conquered.
My
elven family suffered from a different pride.
They cared not for conquest but they believed quite thoroughly that they
did not need the other races.
“Elves will never bring trouble to
your door but Elves can only be trusted to do what’s right by elves.” Ar-Raguel
had replied to her reciting the words from memory. “These are the types of thing things my human
family says of us.” Ar-Raguel answered.
“Boys, be gone and leave me alone
with Ar-Raguel.” She sat up and the
flowers on her chest rolled to the ground.
Her eyes invited him to join her.
The adolescent elves she had been with lifted themselves up off the ground
lazily and wandered off whispering and smirking.
Her skin was the color of sunlight,
dappled and muted here, sparkling there, and in the evening he swore she took
on a darker almost olive hue. In bright
sunlight Destine was pale and blonde, like most of the clan, but here in the
shifting shadows under the forest’s canopy, she shimmered.
He crawled over to her
smiling. She returned the smile and laid
back down to let him crawl above her on all fours. “Be with me and see as I do,” she said to him
as she raised her hands and gently cradled his face, pulling him gently towards
her.
As he entered her body so he did
her mind.
To the first were waves of ecstasy,
a magical liquid warmth, a second blood, pumping bliss throughout his
body. The forest floor on his knees
disappeared, the wind on his back neither cool nor comforting – the touch of
anything but her flesh to his too subtle to be felt over the coursing ebb and
flow of calm and joy which synced their movements and their heartbeats. They could feel each other’s physical
sensations. Every kiss and lick that
tickled or made her shiver brought him delight.
Every movement of her hips that maddened him moved her closer to losing
her mind.
In this fecund feedback, it was not
just touch that was shared, but all their senses and all their thoughts. To love an elf was to hold no secrets; both
lovers were unavoidably and completely vulnerable to one another. He heard her thoughts and saw her sights and
as she climaxed her head went back and through her eyes he saw the feather
falling still.
So slowly.
It was hardly moving.
It filled his vision; he could make
out every barb on the stem individually.
Such detail from such a distance was not possible.
And yet there it was
There was a breeze, and the barbs on
the feather’s shaft waved in succession and grew so massive, their presence so
impressive. In Ar-Raguel’s mind’s eye
they were as majestic as trees tossed back and forth in a ferocious wind. Colors flickered; grays and whites and blacks
and browns, each hiding and revealing themselves again and again as the wind
blew down the shaft. Another gust
jostled the feather and it rose rather than fell; he was soaring with it,
gliding through the woods like the eagle who’d lost this magic carpet … which
must have happened hours ago now.
He came, and the intensity of the
spell also reached a climax. He could
still hear her thoughts but as he rested his forehead on hers, sweating, lost
breath, he was no longer piloting an eagle’s feather through the woods of his elven
family.
She whispered into his ear, “May
you find the time to be fascinated whenever you see a thing as simple as a
feather’s fall.”
“You just cursed me didn’t
you?” He asked quietly in between deep
breaths.
“Of a sort.”
Destine’s parting gift, the bit of
the forest Ar-Raguel never left behind, allowed his mind and senses to perceive the world as if
it all moved with the lackadaisical floating cool of a feather.
But only while he witnessed a feather fall.
And thankfully, only if he wished it.
Oh
what a distraction that would have been – had she truly cursed me so that every
feather falling I might spy anywhere should slow the spinning of the world ‘til
the plume’s plummet ceased.
Bad
poetry?
Yes,
each word I make means I’m not dead yet.
Verbosity
for victory.
During those rare moments in his
life when there was both feather and fancy, the details of the world around
him, oft lost in the fray of experiencing the world as a mortal, became clear
and complex; the patterns of life were replicated everywhere and became so
obvious and yet awe inspiring. He
possessed no special capacity to move or act in any way faster than others; he
simply uncovered more time to think, to witness, to behold in great detail all
things around him until the feather’s flight had come to an end.
Which, while making love to elves
or smoking olferb and discussing the colors of sunsets this blessed curse was
all fine and good.
But now?
Two fantastic feathers from the
beast still fell.
His eyes turned to Dudley across
the chamber, who, lying bleeding and broken in his rugged armor with his mislaid
warhammer lying only yards away looked every bit the classic dwarven warrior, fallen
while fighting against an unholy foe from the deep dark. A familiar simple story, a heroic end.
If only Dudley’s life had been so
simple. If only he would be remembered
as a hero to those he missed most.
Dudley,
you ran away from home too.
Or
you were kicked out?
That’s
just splitting hairs about now though, ain’t it?
The Dwarven Kingdoms had seen their
fair share of fighting in the civil wars since the fall of the King on the
Lake.
The Dwarves had rarely faced human
lords and princelings. Dwarven kingdoms were
too deep in the mountains and too well secured for the beleaguered princelings of
the Northlands to even consider as a prize.
Rather, with the fall of the King on the Lake came the rise of orcs,
goblins and so many others who had dwelled deep in the caves that littered the
Ekvatora Mountains. The Lake King had
managed a complicated accord between the Island Kingdoms, the Mountain Peoples
and the Duchies of the North and Southlands.
Together they had succeeded for centuries in keeping the inhuman races
almost entirely confined to the most desolate parts of the Western Range.
There had not been such an accord
in generations.
The Inhuman races were no longer
confined. There was now even the first
confederacy of dragons in as long as even the eldest elf’s memory. And so the Dwarves now had their own battles,
schisms, losses.
Such things had lead Dudley to this
moment.
One feather still fell.
Ooooh
… this last one has green and blue flecks in it. It would make a good cock feather.
I’ll
never fletch again.
Vejovis, are you right?
Are we no more than arrows in
flight?
Destinations predetermined
At the moment we’re let
loose?
Are the gods marksmen?
Do you even try to aim well
when you send a life into flight?
Do you already know before
you let us go where we will land?
Can you predict the breeze
with certainty?
Is every imperfection in
head, shaft, nock and fletching, already known and figured so, before you
launch us from your bow?
While for us mortals, no such
divine sight.
Always afraid of the future,
for eventually it means only one thing.
So we focus instead on where
we’ve been.
Which always fades into the
distance as we inexorably advance.
We fly towards inevitability
at incomprehensible speed and powerless to act against it.
And even if we could take aim
ourselves, the flight would still end too soon.
But perhaps it’s where we
land that matters.
Who among us is a
bull’s-eye?
In this chamber?
None.
Someone tickled the Gods.
We have been shot wildly my
friends and I think even the divine aren’t sure where the likes of us will make
our mark.
The last feather hit the floor
Mortal time retook Ar-Raguel and his sight began to fade. His thoughts began to slow and quiet. Faintly he heard Billy shouting.
 |
slow the fuck down ... it's just generally good advice
Image taken from one of a bazillion anonymous results from GIS.
Wanted to make an animated GIF of a feather falling from this image.
Didn't have time.
|
No comments :
Post a Comment