Claude C. Kenni (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tothelight) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
sabra_la_antiqua2011-12-02 06:24 am
tothelight) wrote in sabra_la_antiqua2011-12-02 06:24 am
Entry tags:
Elysium - Endings (1/1)
oh no I started writing a horrible thing and couldn't stop
Title: Endings
Rating: Average Sabra. And by that I guess PG-13?
Characters: Chrysos (main), Allen, Feathers, Red, various references
Genre: AAANGST
Warnings: Gratuitous melodramatic aaaangst. ALL OF IT. Also pretentious abuse of grammar and white space and formatting.
Summary: Post-Elysium. Ten steps.
Notes: Key parts can be blamed on Kururu, and bits of this may in fact be her writing borrowed and super seamlessly blended in.
***
1. funerals.
They no longer called it being taken by the earth; it was stone that came to be, through and through, and though there were those among them who were troubled by the phenomenon for most there was some strange assurance to it, to know that the bones of the beloved departed lay entombed where neither beast nor man could stand to desecrate them. (Remarks made among some, with a morbid touch of humor, that the casket-makers are going out of business.)
He heard that the priestesses and the devout of Rota were among the most perturbed, and there was word that their consults were failing, their rituals lacking in essence, as though the Maiden herself were growing more distant and unreachable. There were also more and more these days who preferred to burn the bodies, and scatter the ashes in a treasured field, or garden, perhaps to sow more living memories.
"I don’t like it." Feramis’s voice, quiet, from the grass a few feet away.
He finishes turning the last of the screws in silence, pries the panel off with careful fingers to prop it against the bulk of the transformer... before turning himself, to watch the procession downslope wend its way to the burial grounds. The noonday light a strange contrast to its black solemnity, he thinks.
"You’ll have to be more specific."
"The renewal of life," a pause, brief, "calls for decay, to furnish the dust from which it springs."
"...I know. It’s a cycle theory I’m familiar with." Laying that screwdriver in the toolbox, taking another. Crosshead, for the underlying layers. "But considering how much of this new world has broken the physical bounds of the old, with thanks to its gods... it surprises me not if more miracles lie in the works to deal with that."
A rustle of grass. The feel of eyes trained on his face. "So... would you rather be---"
"Cremated," he says bluntly, and starts on the next panel.
*
2. the next.
The first loss, though no less painful, he could have accepted as natural. Probabilities. One in a hundred and fifty. It was bound to happen, somewhere, to someone, and the lots fell where they did, for all that medicine and knowledge could--
(and gods would)
---do.
The second...
It was unfortunate, and regretful, that theirs seemed not one of the unions blessed, said the priest, who immediately after had to be escorted out of the building with Skylos’s hand holding his broken jaw in place, Red and Ceres staying behind to calm his assailant down.
She’s awake and waiting for him back in their room, still on the same bed, the traces of what transpired mere hours before already removed. The scent of blood lingers in the air, the curtains still by the open window. He’s barely conscious of Allen’s quiet withdrawal as he takes the empty chair beside her, takes her damp hand in his, warmth against warmth.
How is it, that those eyes still manage to shine, even now?
"Chrys."
Assurance, apology.
"Surely, when we move beyond this place--" grasping tight that hand, so small in his, ever belying their strength-- "surely, these things...."
She smiles, and tries to lean up, and he lowers his head to meet her in the middle.
*
3. haven.
Life goes on, for most. They build, and they maintain, and they have each other, and perhaps that is enough.
Still, as another rumor arrives of the disappearing-- the third such in this quarter, even--- yet to be found by guardsman or seeker...
Beasts on the prowl. From the outside, or among our own people, is the thought. Rational, though no less cause for concern, or caution.
He glances at her, from time to time, catches that familiar faraway look in her eyes, as though listening to something beyond his hearing... the rumors come to mind, from nowhere, and a shadow of irrationality falls over his own heart.
*
4. records.
He sees Mr. Rhodes less and less often, at the times he pays visit to the great library (he, among others, could never call it his temple); paperwork, it was claimed, and how strange to think of the realms of long-venerated mythic beings such as gods involving the same interminable bureaucracy on the earth. Could some of it not be delegated down in the same way? It seemed to him there were still librarians enough among the archives, after all.
There comes a time when his face ceases to sit behind the keeper’s desk altogether. Though Red continues to visit, as always, coming back each time with the same clouds over his face.
"Maybe the next time." After a while, the words ring somewhat hollow to his own ears.
*
5. light.
And then--
--hands grab at him and pull him back and his arms tear themselves from those and lash wildly out at anything, everything in his way, everything keeping him from reaching her, screaming her name over and over the fire burning through his throat nothing compared to the agony in his head, in his chest, they were mouthing things at him but he couldn’t hear them for the roaring of his own blood in his ears, things he might later recognize for too late and no use and other words, words, words were it not for the reality they centred on blinding him to all else---
--Chrys please brother you can’t--
---Red’s voice---
---a blow against his neck, and the world tilts to darkness, the outstretched hand of stone still seared onto the back of his eyelids.
He manages to slip out, eventually, for all their guard and watch.
He goes back.
The chisel slips, scrapes across her skin. He freezes, staring at the wound, a flash of guilt---
--and it's only
rock, beneath, nothing but
rock, through and through---
--stabs the tools into the ground over and over until they fall out of his numbing grip---
(why her, why her, not him, of all people why her, more than anyone with that she held inside)
---and he rips at it instead with those hands, over and over until blood and oil smear over the cracks in equal measure---
---take me, take me instead, give her back---
It stays solid and silent beneath him, for a long, long time.
*
6. sanity.
They say the Old Man hungers, it is whispered, and over shadowed tables and in quiet corners there is talk of those secret few (not the speakers themselves, no, never them) who claim that to feed him is to appease him. Those who weary, those who near the end, those who would soon give up that fading spark within them.
Idle rumors, is the official stance, yet the guardsmen keep their watch more diligently than ever, and more people walk the streets in these days with forced smiles, eager to laugh at the smallest of things, go at their pursuits with more vigor than necessary, mindful of the shadows around them.
He waits, but they never come for him. Perhaps because even they can tell there’s little left in him to give.
He picks himself up, eventually, and keeps moving, for the others.
*
7. blue.
He’s there among the gathered multitude the day the sky vanishes, the air instantly filling with murmurs, bewildered, uncertain.
"I do wish I didn’t have to do this." The voice of Regelus himself, disembodied, dripping with irony to his ears. "But well, this is why we can’t have nice things."
Dull thumps against the ground, and the acrid smell of seared flesh. He is close enough to turn, to see, and they are---
--bodies, clothes, unrecognizable, save a Hydran staff falling to ash---
"Thou art a Blank."
---and there’s no time to run before--
*
8. memory.
---each morning he studies the dark scars of one palm, and the smooth metal of another, and wonders how they came to be.
*
9. conscience.
They play the Games, so it goes, in the promise of freedom and their heart’s desires.
He’s not sure what the last are, anymore, only that they must have been. Once.
“I’ll make it up to the rest of your team.”
“I know.”
The fingers of his iron hand have never moved quite as fine as the other, but they remain of considerable strength, a soft throat easily crushed between them.
He draws his dagger instead and slits his own.
And so it goes.
*
10. time.
Till a day, later and later and later still.
Tired.
So tired.
(that strange mechanical hand long immobile and useless, with none among them to restore it)
He hears things, lately. Something like a voice, a girl's voice
(a voice forgotten, a voice without name)
calling him from far, far away.
He leaves the others.
It’s been a long time (years) since he's ventured so deep beyond the living areas; and it takes far more time and effort to scale those ridges, bones aching with even the shortest drops, and he has to pause, more than ever, just to breathe.
(there was a time once when a gap like that would've been crossed in a bound, without pause, momentum carrying him through the depths of
of a place, some long-ago place, alive with sound and movement and heat and
when?)
He presses on, after each time.
Because the answers are there. Where he's going, as long as he keeps going, just keeps putting one foot in front of the other, following the call.
There’s a cavern at the end.
He stands there for a long time, the faint sound of water drops at the edge of his hearing.
Looks between his feet.
Tiny splashes on the stone. The source of the sound.
A hand, dreamlike, raised to his own face. It comes away wet.
It's only later that the cavern will have pools of its own; only after generations that the walls will crowd close. A pillar of living stone, to be found time and again.
Title: Endings
Rating: Average Sabra. And by that I guess PG-13?
Characters: Chrysos (main), Allen, Feathers, Red, various references
Genre: AAANGST
Warnings: Gratuitous melodramatic aaaangst. ALL OF IT. Also pretentious abuse of grammar and white space and formatting.
Summary: Post-Elysium. Ten steps.
Notes: Key parts can be blamed on Kururu, and bits of this may in fact be her writing borrowed and super seamlessly blended in.
***
1. funerals.
They no longer called it being taken by the earth; it was stone that came to be, through and through, and though there were those among them who were troubled by the phenomenon for most there was some strange assurance to it, to know that the bones of the beloved departed lay entombed where neither beast nor man could stand to desecrate them. (Remarks made among some, with a morbid touch of humor, that the casket-makers are going out of business.)
He heard that the priestesses and the devout of Rota were among the most perturbed, and there was word that their consults were failing, their rituals lacking in essence, as though the Maiden herself were growing more distant and unreachable. There were also more and more these days who preferred to burn the bodies, and scatter the ashes in a treasured field, or garden, perhaps to sow more living memories.
"I don’t like it." Feramis’s voice, quiet, from the grass a few feet away.
He finishes turning the last of the screws in silence, pries the panel off with careful fingers to prop it against the bulk of the transformer... before turning himself, to watch the procession downslope wend its way to the burial grounds. The noonday light a strange contrast to its black solemnity, he thinks.
"You’ll have to be more specific."
"The renewal of life," a pause, brief, "calls for decay, to furnish the dust from which it springs."
"...I know. It’s a cycle theory I’m familiar with." Laying that screwdriver in the toolbox, taking another. Crosshead, for the underlying layers. "But considering how much of this new world has broken the physical bounds of the old, with thanks to its gods... it surprises me not if more miracles lie in the works to deal with that."
A rustle of grass. The feel of eyes trained on his face. "So... would you rather be---"
"Cremated," he says bluntly, and starts on the next panel.
*
2. the next.
The first loss, though no less painful, he could have accepted as natural. Probabilities. One in a hundred and fifty. It was bound to happen, somewhere, to someone, and the lots fell where they did, for all that medicine and knowledge could--
(and gods would)
---do.
The second...
It was unfortunate, and regretful, that theirs seemed not one of the unions blessed, said the priest, who immediately after had to be escorted out of the building with Skylos’s hand holding his broken jaw in place, Red and Ceres staying behind to calm his assailant down.
She’s awake and waiting for him back in their room, still on the same bed, the traces of what transpired mere hours before already removed. The scent of blood lingers in the air, the curtains still by the open window. He’s barely conscious of Allen’s quiet withdrawal as he takes the empty chair beside her, takes her damp hand in his, warmth against warmth.
How is it, that those eyes still manage to shine, even now?
"Chrys."
Assurance, apology.
"Surely, when we move beyond this place--" grasping tight that hand, so small in his, ever belying their strength-- "surely, these things...."
She smiles, and tries to lean up, and he lowers his head to meet her in the middle.
*
3. haven.
Life goes on, for most. They build, and they maintain, and they have each other, and perhaps that is enough.
Still, as another rumor arrives of the disappearing-- the third such in this quarter, even--- yet to be found by guardsman or seeker...
Beasts on the prowl. From the outside, or among our own people, is the thought. Rational, though no less cause for concern, or caution.
He glances at her, from time to time, catches that familiar faraway look in her eyes, as though listening to something beyond his hearing... the rumors come to mind, from nowhere, and a shadow of irrationality falls over his own heart.
*
4. records.
He sees Mr. Rhodes less and less often, at the times he pays visit to the great library (he, among others, could never call it his temple); paperwork, it was claimed, and how strange to think of the realms of long-venerated mythic beings such as gods involving the same interminable bureaucracy on the earth. Could some of it not be delegated down in the same way? It seemed to him there were still librarians enough among the archives, after all.
There comes a time when his face ceases to sit behind the keeper’s desk altogether. Though Red continues to visit, as always, coming back each time with the same clouds over his face.
"Maybe the next time." After a while, the words ring somewhat hollow to his own ears.
*
5. light.
And then--
--hands grab at him and pull him back and his arms tear themselves from those and lash wildly out at anything, everything in his way, everything keeping him from reaching her, screaming her name over and over the fire burning through his throat nothing compared to the agony in his head, in his chest, they were mouthing things at him but he couldn’t hear them for the roaring of his own blood in his ears, things he might later recognize for too late and no use and other words, words, words were it not for the reality they centred on blinding him to all else---
--Chrys please brother you can’t--
---Red’s voice---
---a blow against his neck, and the world tilts to darkness, the outstretched hand of stone still seared onto the back of his eyelids.
He manages to slip out, eventually, for all their guard and watch.
He goes back.
The chisel slips, scrapes across her skin. He freezes, staring at the wound, a flash of guilt---
--and it's only
rock, beneath, nothing but
rock, through and through---
--stabs the tools into the ground over and over until they fall out of his numbing grip---
(why her, why her, not him, of all people why her, more than anyone with that she held inside)
---and he rips at it instead with those hands, over and over until blood and oil smear over the cracks in equal measure---
---take me, take me instead, give her back---
It stays solid and silent beneath him, for a long, long time.
*
6. sanity.
They say the Old Man hungers, it is whispered, and over shadowed tables and in quiet corners there is talk of those secret few (not the speakers themselves, no, never them) who claim that to feed him is to appease him. Those who weary, those who near the end, those who would soon give up that fading spark within them.
Idle rumors, is the official stance, yet the guardsmen keep their watch more diligently than ever, and more people walk the streets in these days with forced smiles, eager to laugh at the smallest of things, go at their pursuits with more vigor than necessary, mindful of the shadows around them.
He waits, but they never come for him. Perhaps because even they can tell there’s little left in him to give.
He picks himself up, eventually, and keeps moving, for the others.
*
7. blue.
He’s there among the gathered multitude the day the sky vanishes, the air instantly filling with murmurs, bewildered, uncertain.
"I do wish I didn’t have to do this." The voice of Regelus himself, disembodied, dripping with irony to his ears. "But well, this is why we can’t have nice things."
Dull thumps against the ground, and the acrid smell of seared flesh. He is close enough to turn, to see, and they are---
--bodies, clothes, unrecognizable, save a Hydran staff falling to ash---
"Thou art a Blank."
---and there’s no time to run before--
*
8. memory.
---each morning he studies the dark scars of one palm, and the smooth metal of another, and wonders how they came to be.
*
9. conscience.
They play the Games, so it goes, in the promise of freedom and their heart’s desires.
He’s not sure what the last are, anymore, only that they must have been. Once.
“I’ll make it up to the rest of your team.”
“I know.”
The fingers of his iron hand have never moved quite as fine as the other, but they remain of considerable strength, a soft throat easily crushed between them.
He draws his dagger instead and slits his own.
And so it goes.
*
10. time.
Till a day, later and later and later still.
Tired.
So tired.
(that strange mechanical hand long immobile and useless, with none among them to restore it)
He hears things, lately. Something like a voice, a girl's voice
(a voice forgotten, a voice without name)
calling him from far, far away.
He leaves the others.
It’s been a long time (years) since he's ventured so deep beyond the living areas; and it takes far more time and effort to scale those ridges, bones aching with even the shortest drops, and he has to pause, more than ever, just to breathe.
(there was a time once when a gap like that would've been crossed in a bound, without pause, momentum carrying him through the depths of
of a place, some long-ago place, alive with sound and movement and heat and
when?)
He presses on, after each time.
Because the answers are there. Where he's going, as long as he keeps going, just keeps putting one foot in front of the other, following the call.
There’s a cavern at the end.
He stands there for a long time, the faint sound of water drops at the edge of his hearing.
Looks between his feet.
Tiny splashes on the stone. The source of the sound.
A hand, dreamlike, raised to his own face. It comes away wet.
It's only later that the cavern will have pools of its own; only after generations that the walls will crowd close. A pillar of living stone, to be found time and again.
no subject
no subject
too sensitive '-'
no subject
no subject
no subject