AMETHYST 5.8: SECRETS
“Beneath it all – beneath the surface facades, the artificial mask of impermanent flesh, there is the unchanging substrate wherein all are one and the same. You do not want to be the same as everyone else. You want to be differentiated but no matter how you fight it, no matter how you clutch and claw for life, the terrible truth remains. You are the same. You are dead already, even if you still claim to breathe, still cling to the light like a fledgling to the branch. You will spend far longer as bone than as flesh. You must take wing. How better to take wing willingly, than to be flung. How better to fly than to fall.”
– from ‘Grandfather’s Open Arms’
The faerie queen said something in response, something fearful. She no longer wanted to die – I could tell. But I didn’t listen to her words.
I closed my eyes, biting my lip against the onset of excruciating torture that was wracking what little remained of me.
They hadn’t been able to damage the arm inside the sphere.
I pulled.
And for less than a moment, less than the flutter of a glowing butterfly’s wings, less than a caught breath, something pushed.
Pushed with the kind of power that might move mountains, flick them to the horizon with the negligent wave of a single finger.
Less than a moment was enough, too much. My poor mortal frame was the conduit for the might of something I could barely even comprehend.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
I swooned, overwhelmed.
I fell forwards, but I didn’t seem to hit the stone. Instead a flood of icy green light, bright even through my eyelids, carried my body forwards on a river of warmth, even as it carried my mind backwards.
* * *
The grass under my feet is blue, as blue and soft as the cloudless night sky. The tree, the only feature breaking the empty expanse, is a silver rod with seven branches. The wind blows like warm laughter, but the tree does not bend: upon the tip of each of the branches is a star.
The constellation of the unicorn, reflected in the pool beside the tree. Its surface is without ripple. The wind cannot stir that water.
Her eyes are golden orbs, aglow.
The maiden wears a blue gown of grass-blades, its hem indistinguishable, perhaps inseparable, from the ground. Her skin and hair are the same shade of gold as her eyes but softer, muted. Upon her brow, beneath her horns of flawless ivory, is a white circlet, inset with emeralds.
Her blue lips smile. Smile down on me.
In her hands, a goblet, carved from a single emerald.
She stoops beside the pool and dips a cup of water from it. Not a drop spills over the edge of the vessel as she rises back to her full height.
I do not realise the extent of that height until she begins her approach, begins flowing towards me, a hill, a mountain, a landscape of grass.
I am standing a thousand miles from her, from the tree, the mere. The tree is taller than a million Maginoxes. The pool is a lake, a sea, an ocean.
This plain is an infinite place – a plane…
Nentheleme stoops before me, and she’s but a maiden in a gown of blue grass once more.
I take the offered goblet. The water smells of autumn rain.
I drink greedily. I drink deep. I close my eyes in bliss.
Blue lips kiss me on the brow. My mask is no impediment to her.
A breeze of floral breath. A voice warm like the wind.
“You can go back now, kestrel.”
* * *