Write about: the omission.
Had a really nice time at the fair today. The whole farm family was there, so Max and Natalie got to go on the rides together again while Kat's parents helped with keeping an eye on Miles.
Max went horse riding again and did great:
We were all pretty tired as we headed for home, but we caught a break with Miles napping for most of the drive.
It was a good tired though.
Still not looking forward to getting up tomorrow morning to go to work.
Mine:
He claims it was an error of omission but I know he's just wishing I don't look too closely because I won't like what I see. A bit of unintentional forgetting, nothing too upsetting, that's what he'd have me believe.
Well forget THAT. I'm going on the attack. I'm grabbing my microscope, my telescope, hell even my periscope. I'll use my magnifying glass to examine his ass. No lies will escape my eyes.
His coronation will not survive the devastation of my investigation.
Max looks pretty happy on the horse there! Looking at this picture and last year's, I think next year his feet should fit in the stirrups properly, and then he might just get the horse up to a gallop.
ReplyDeleteGood luck on getting up for work :)
As always I like your subtle rhyming prose and the rhythm of the piece as you build to your cresecendo. Not quite sure what to make of your narrator examining the King's ass with a magnifying glass, but I'll leave the imagery to you on that one :) There's a lot of humour and upbeatness in this today, and I really enjoyed it. Thank-you!
The omission
Parque Lage is to the south of Rio and it's where the Cristo Redentor stands. It was a hazy afternoon, the distant hilltops shrouded with clouds, and tropically humid to the point that everything I touched seemed wet. I knew something was wrong immediately: the plaza around the base of the statue was absolutely empty, with all the tourists that should have been there conspicuously absent. Despite that warning sign I carried on, strolling casually along the approach, my hand trailing on the stone railing, as though I were just another -- well, the only -- tourist come to see the views and stare up at the statue. I had a rendezvous here with Miguel though, as I looked around and enjoyed the unexpected peace and serenity, I doubted that he'd turn up. This would be far too exposed for him.
The statue, Cristo himself, is 30m tall, and it was the kind of heart-stopping shock that ends lives prematurely when it shifted its weight on the pedestal and lowered its arms. The grinding of stone against stone as joints that were never carved in place forced their way into existence was like being in a quarry without ear-protectors, and the dust and stone shrapnel that billowed outward like a cloud was bitter to the taste and stinging on the skin. I backed away, my waist hitting the stone balcony, thinking that Miguel would never show up if the statue was actively admiring the view as well.
"Blessed be," said Cristo, a note of contemplation in his voice. The stone seemed to glow slightly and I recognised the luminescence of the Seraphim. It's claimed that they can't hide for any length of time on Earth, and I think it's the glow that does it. They don't seem able to suppress it, or they don't want to. The Shedim have no issues like that, but they always manifest some disease or other after a while. The timeless ones are just... gauche. They stand out like a toe in the middle of fingers, not exactly wrong but definitely out of place.
"Hi," I said. Eloquent, that's me.
"How did you get here?"
"Walked," I said. I considered telling him that I got a taxi to the Parque, but decided that that might be a bit chatty for someone I'd not met before.
"Funny little man," said Cristo. There was a noise like a mountain having hiccoughs and it somehow managed to sit down, dangling its skirt off the side of the pedestal. I was pretty sure there were no legs inside there. "I restricted this area. You ought to be Seraphim or Shedim to just wander in here like that, but you're neither. So, how did you get in here?"
I frowned. I genuinely didn't know, and I was mentally running through everything I had on me, wondering if there was something I hadn't looked at closely enough. Cristo waited, giving me time, though he was probably reading my thoughts to amuse himself. Finally I realised that there was something I knew very little about that I was carrying, so I pulled it out of my pocket.
"This?" I asked.
It was the reason for the rendezvous with Miguel; it was an artefact taken from a tiny, private Museum that I was returning. It was an orb, the kind of thing you saw old Kings and Queens holding in one hand while there was a sceptre in the other, some kind of symbol of the right to judge. It was made of some dull brown metal that wouldn't polish up, and was incised with symbols that were probably Enochian -- the language of the Seraphim -- but getting a Seraph to even talk about Enochian requires a good deal of persuasion and a bottle of Ambrosia so I had no idea what it might say. It was also, when I took it out of my pocket and held it up, shining with a familiar seraphic luminescence.
ReplyDeleteCristo looked, impossible for a statue, I know, nervous.
"You can put it away," it said after fifteen seconds of silence. I couldn't; my hand wouldn't obey my thoughts. I was definitely trying to lower it, but it wasn't moving anywhere. I opened my mouth to explain this, but something took over my voice at that point, and I heard myself say, with reverb, extra bass and every prog-rock effects-pedal ever, "Take it."
I've been told about the Metatron. That's the closest I think I've come to meeting it, and I'm conflicted as to whether I'd have to say I've been unnecessarily intimate with it.
Cristo reached out an arm and took the orb, and for a moment nothing happened. Then there was a light so bright that I squeezed my eyes shut so hard it hurt and buried my head in my armpit like a budgerigar and it was still too bright. A hot breeze sandpapered my skin with the stone dust showered by the statue earlier and there was a noise that might have been a scream or might have been eight thousand kettles boiling and whistling at the same time.
When I finally opened my eyes it still took three panicky minutes before I got any sight back, and it was blotchy and stained for at least two hours later. Cristo was standing back on his pedestal; the orb was on the floor at my feet, and... a dead angel was lying on its back on the stone balcony.
I pushed it off to fall down the mountain and evaporate somewhere below.
As I finished this tale the Seraph was nodding and the Shedim was frowning but looking convinced. Joachim looked bored. And I kept to myself, carefully not thinking about it, the omission.
The angel told me what the script on the orb said after I told it to take it.
Greg - yeah, it's like he keeps growing or something :(
ReplyDeleteYes, well, let us not take that line too literally, shall we? :P
Gah, such fascinating stuff. Terribly pleased that you keep choosing to continue this. To the point that I'd forgotten what the prompt was that you were writing on until you brought us back around to it at the end there.
Great work :)