Interlude I - A Beginning

On the first night, the task was begun.

Begun in darkness. The deepest kind.

The kind that creeps over all things. That swallows stone and steel alike, grinds movement to stillness. The kind to swallow the world.

The air hummed with the empty ache of it, but made no sound. All that remained was heavy, weighed with the unspoken groan of shapeless, static souls. Cities. Words. Dreams. The memory of the earth is long, but the darkness was longer. Whatever had been, was gone, and night reigned alone.

But nothing lasts forever. Not even the dark. Something had begun to shift in the gloom. Scratching at the surface of it. The dark creaked, shuddered, struggling to hold, but the something persisted. Flickered. Lurched. A candle, sputtering, lapping greedily at the air, and the darkness fell back hissing, from a gleam of pale stone. Split into a thousand shards of jet.

In the imperfect newness of the candlelight, another shape was moving. The broken darkness watched it, catching glimpses through a narrow window, around the furtive throws of the flickering light. A flash of skin. Heavy, dark robes. Eyes, glinting, made bright with amber flame. But the darkness only watched, and did no more. For a time.

Indifferent to its attention, or perhaps in spite of it, the shape inside the window went about its business with an expressionless, methodical ease. The room around the candle was tiny; there was a desk, beside it, a stool, and both sat quietly beneath the blackness of the narrow window, patient for the touch of ready hands. The shape moved around these things with subtle care, setting the candle in its right place, shifting the low stool with the toe of a well-worn boot.

But eyes flitted nervously, drawn to the desk, to the stack of parchment that lay waiting. That was its purpose. Every story has a beginning, and an end, if you could tell them apart. This, the Scribe knew, and there was no use avoiding it any longer.

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There was a mirror on the desk, beside the parchment, a reflection of imperfect brass contained within its edges. Catching the light of the candle. The flash of eyes in the rippled surface. Not an old face, or a young one, or either. Black hair, gold, red, grey. Cheeks the colour of ivory, midnight, moving like oil on water. Marked with silver, untouched as fresh snow. His eyes. Her eyes. Someone else’s. The surface of the mirror shifted, replacing itself, breath after breath, like a shuffling deck of endless cards. Remembering wasn’t so easy, but looking would help. When the knowing came like sweet honey to half-seen dreams, and waking eyes blurred to blindness.

The faces in the mirror were many, but something remained. Solid, in spite of the endless shifting of its surface. Fragments of memory. Of a dream. Lost in a storm. Falling from the sky. Surrounded by fire.

A story. Half-formed of many pieces. Lying in heavy shadows across a dozen brows. Dancing like lightning in a thousand eyes. It belonged to all of them, as it belonged to others, fiercely, and forever. They had heard the sound of thunder. The call of the blind moon in a night without end. The songs of life-giving, and soul-taking.

The Scribe clamped his eyes shut. His skull was humming, whispering, full of memory. He took a breath. Another. The silence was returning. He exhaled, slowly, brokenly, and opened his eyes. There was a hand on the desk. The edges of it, pale, solid. His hand. The mirror had stopped moving. It was getting harder, to remember its true face, and his time was running short. There were few, left, now, who had seen. Perhaps just one. What would any of it mean, at all, if he took his knowing with him, into the dark? If no one heard their warning. It should not be him. But it was.

Yes, his time was running short, and the parchment was waiting. So, the Scribe took a deep breath, and set nib, at last, to page. Slowly, at first, with nervous hands, but he went on, and, in time, the pen became more certain, alive in the flickering light of the candle. The story had begun to grow, as they often do, given life in the telling, and the Scribe knew again the beginning of things. A quickening heart. The cold lightness in his gut. The distant whisper of unseen storms. The eyes were watching. His eyes. Her eyes. Their eyes. Beyond the window, the darkness remained, and it waited, and the silence filled his ears, heavier than the world.

A soul should always know its purpose. This the Scribe knew, and knowing was his.