Some of your prompts are a little worrying, especially when I know it'll be a couple of weeks before we get any explanations about them. But, for the moment I shall assume you're not only just sneaking in before some deadline, but in fact using a tightrope to depart the hotel you were staying in when it turned out you didn't need to assassinate anyone. I can picture you James-Bonding your way across to a half-constructed new building in the dark, with the wind howling around you and the tightrope swaying like a drunkard on the third day....
Going down to the wire Scuffles reached out to take Pestilence’s hand, who grabbed a fish swimming past and handed it to him instead. “Not that I don’t want to hold your hand, bro,” said Pestilence, “but you need to get used to the idea that your physical body isn’t you. It’s just what you’re residing in at the moment, and it can change and be changed. Or you’ll be forever climbing hand-over-hand down a rope in a cave in Ezcaray instead of stepping off and enjoying the plummet.” “Right,” said Scuffles, though he sounded a little uncertain. He focused, and a pink tongue tip poked from between his lips. Pestilence smiled, unnoticed, and waited. After a few seconds he felt a mental prod from Scuffles, and he linked his consciousness with the young Incarnate’s, and waited to be shown what he had found. Scuffles reached along the links that the drowned souls had, the umbilical cord of strife and anger that bound them to their submarine home. Each link was like a metal chain; some were made of steel, some of iron. One was platinum, and Scuffles followed that as it was strongest. It turned and twisted, growing barbs and then shrinking them back inwards again as the anger struggled to find a way to manifest itself. He let its activity draw him along, heading towards the binding point and then, as always, there was a roiling murky cloud of silt and boiling water in the way. It was shot through with yellow flashes of light, and there was a sense of patience about it as though it might be conscious in its own right. “This is what’s in the way,” said Scuffles. “The fight is over, these spirits have given up, but they can’t get free because this is blocking their access to the binding point.” “Oh dear,” said Pestilence, and his voice was thin and strained, as though he’d just seen his mother on an internet dating site. “Do you recognize it?” “Oh dear,” said Pestilence again. “That’s raw firmament.” “What’s that then?”
Pestilence seemed to move up next to Scuffles and for a moment there was a sensation like a hug, and then the watery world around them froze into a glittering, splintering icy mass and they were ejected into the non-space of the other world, the realms on the outside of reality. Scuffles looked around, expecting an indication of where they were, but there was only the blank greyness of midwinter fog: what you saw when there was nothing around you to be seen. “This,” said Pestilence. “This greyness; this is firmament. It’s what you get when you come right down to the wire; it’s what everything is made out of, from whence everything comes. There was Xaos, who was a Horseman back in the beginning when Death was just starting out. He did a similar job, but as things got more ordered he retired leaving the Boss to run the show, and Xaos took on almost the opposite role. He now takes raw firmament and builds reality out of it. This is what Clotho comes and harvests and then spins into the threads that Lachesis weaves on to the loom of the Fates. She sails out here in a coracle, a little round wooden boat that shouldn’t stand up to a shower and pulls in handfuls of this stuff to create lives for men. This is anathema to life, and yet the original source from which all life stems. It’s the easiest thing in the world to understand, and the most complicated at the same time. It’s the beginning, the end, and all the bits in between.” “I don’t think I understood that,” said Scuffles. He started to reach out, then caught himself and pulled his hand back to his side. Instead he focused, concentrating on the greyness. “I can’t get hold of this. It’s like oil, it just slips through my grasp.” “Exactly,” said Pestilence. “Very few of us can touch the firmament, let alone use it for anything.” Ice glittered and shattered around them, and they plunged back into the underwater world like dolphins that had just jumped through a hoop. “So what’s it doing here?” “That would be the million dollar question,” said Pestilence. “The hundred-thousand dollar question is ‘who put it here’, and if you get that right, you can probably get the million dollar question right next.”
3 comments:
Some of your prompts are a little worrying, especially when I know it'll be a couple of weeks before we get any explanations about them. But, for the moment I shall assume you're not only just sneaking in before some deadline, but in fact using a tightrope to depart the hotel you were staying in when it turned out you didn't need to assassinate anyone. I can picture you James-Bonding your way across to a half-constructed new building in the dark, with the wind howling around you and the tightrope swaying like a drunkard on the third day....
Going down to the wire
Scuffles reached out to take Pestilence’s hand, who grabbed a fish swimming past and handed it to him instead.
“Not that I don’t want to hold your hand, bro,” said Pestilence, “but you need to get used to the idea that your physical body isn’t you. It’s just what you’re residing in at the moment, and it can change and be changed. Or you’ll be forever climbing hand-over-hand down a rope in a cave in Ezcaray instead of stepping off and enjoying the plummet.”
“Right,” said Scuffles, though he sounded a little uncertain. He focused, and a pink tongue tip poked from between his lips. Pestilence smiled, unnoticed, and waited. After a few seconds he felt a mental prod from Scuffles, and he linked his consciousness with the young Incarnate’s, and waited to be shown what he had found.
Scuffles reached along the links that the drowned souls had, the umbilical cord of strife and anger that bound them to their submarine home. Each link was like a metal chain; some were made of steel, some of iron. One was platinum, and Scuffles followed that as it was strongest. It turned and twisted, growing barbs and then shrinking them back inwards again as the anger struggled to find a way to manifest itself. He let its activity draw him along, heading towards the binding point and then, as always, there was a roiling murky cloud of silt and boiling water in the way. It was shot through with yellow flashes of light, and there was a sense of patience about it as though it might be conscious in its own right.
“This is what’s in the way,” said Scuffles. “The fight is over, these spirits have given up, but they can’t get free because this is blocking their access to the binding point.”
“Oh dear,” said Pestilence, and his voice was thin and strained, as though he’d just seen his mother on an internet dating site.
“Do you recognize it?”
“Oh dear,” said Pestilence again. “That’s raw firmament.”
“What’s that then?”
Pestilence seemed to move up next to Scuffles and for a moment there was a sensation like a hug, and then the watery world around them froze into a glittering, splintering icy mass and they were ejected into the non-space of the other world, the realms on the outside of reality. Scuffles looked around, expecting an indication of where they were, but there was only the blank greyness of midwinter fog: what you saw when there was nothing around you to be seen.
“This,” said Pestilence. “This greyness; this is firmament. It’s what you get when you come right down to the wire; it’s what everything is made out of, from whence everything comes. There was Xaos, who was a Horseman back in the beginning when Death was just starting out. He did a similar job, but as things got more ordered he retired leaving the Boss to run the show, and Xaos took on almost the opposite role. He now takes raw firmament and builds reality out of it. This is what Clotho comes and harvests and then spins into the threads that Lachesis weaves on to the loom of the Fates. She sails out here in a coracle, a little round wooden boat that shouldn’t stand up to a shower and pulls in handfuls of this stuff to create lives for men. This is anathema to life, and yet the original source from which all life stems. It’s the easiest thing in the world to understand, and the most complicated at the same time. It’s the beginning, the end, and all the bits in between.”
“I don’t think I understood that,” said Scuffles. He started to reach out, then caught himself and pulled his hand back to his side. Instead he focused, concentrating on the greyness. “I can’t get hold of this. It’s like oil, it just slips through my grasp.”
“Exactly,” said Pestilence. “Very few of us can touch the firmament, let alone use it for anything.”
Ice glittered and shattered around them, and they plunged back into the underwater world like dolphins that had just jumped through a hoop.
“So what’s it doing here?”
“That would be the million dollar question,” said Pestilence. “The hundred-thousand dollar question is ‘who put it here’, and if you get that right, you can probably get the million dollar question right next.”
Greg - I like that image. I shall have to try that ag... someday. Yes, some. Day.
Ah, good to get back to reading this. I really need to stop letting the revisits get in the way of comment reading...
Post a Comment