...into a corner.
A blanket about your shivering shoulders,
a book in your shaking hands -
I am with you 'cross the re'ranged boulders
an' these recurred lands.
“Ther blanket smells of warmth, of home?”
“Yes, and a tale to take you there.”
The Timeless Tayl -
Two Hunters, Both Prey
Act I - The Saint
The Saint. When she learned of Time’s disappearance, Our-Quanyh gave her command:
“The lakes and then the tower. Go, younger and older. You are swiftest together.”
∞
The wood of their shared bow will not warp nor its string fray. They send a fiery arrow over the rift-lakes in warning and the beacon-calls of birds-extinct whoop from land to land, their kin from that warning spread the old myth a new message come true:
“Time is dead, and we have killed them.”
From that whooping imitation, ghosts hear such dances-ours, and those birds extinct fly once more.
For if Time is dead then shall the old things not return having never left? And shall this not be internecine?
∞
These two Sylithrians we shall follow: two humans to our eyes with one shadow. Human yet their bow-arms are far longer than those they draw with, long to their knee through nature or nurture this mutation gift: what equal need these archers fear in such mounted fare? In this land they have ever known as its keepers?
∞
Giant wolves their steeds a pack-almost through the unruled plains where thunderous the herds of sacral bovine roam. Herds whose horns as crescents.
∞
These two Sylithrians, one old shepherd in the peace of their age, one young veteran of all that once was.
The younger, Two-Hunters-Both-Prey her name.
Her elder, Ho’quay’urn her name.
∞
They cannot sleep for they do not tire no matter how far they wander for answer or clue, warning as they go. They question Timelessness, how the gone have been found.
Dimensions strange they try to navigate: far away nomads they leave behind with accidental ease. They go back, they loop, they repeat. The Summer Moon ever their guide yet too long and longer its static bulb above their earth. A cool night without end as yet, that Autumn may never come again.
∞
Nearing a new rift-lake, Two-Hunters-Both-Prey struck an arrow tip against the granite slab on her thigh into flame, and sent that message from her longbow across the waters, and the extinct with the imitators whooped. This is what Entropy’s arrow aflame shall mean.
∞
Out of habit she with Ho’quay’urn rested on a high bluff overlooking the next lake they sought, having found only mazes of trod-paths they thought were known. In trying to advance down the cliff they would again trot to its peak confused yet certain they had been descending, at some point deceived and turned around.
∞
Under stars the two archers - worried for those of their kin as yet without warning - dismounted not to rest their bodies as they sat in the weedy flowers blue-all under Moonlight. Weary they placed their bow aside. Their great wolves howled together.
∞
The young Two-Hunters tied her braids into one long twine for greater focus in the cold, and about her strong neck spun a scarf with its weave, declaring:
“Then Time truly is dead.”
From the bluff’s vantage she beheld the stars were not twinkling, the firmament one shawl was flickering all a strobe - images replacing instants passing - from Night to Day and mangled Seasons warm then chill. They waited for an end that would not come, for what else could that be, one sky after another giving light’s panic and then dark’s dread to the lands? That titans were peeling back layer after layer.
∞
The elder’s braid, frayed with age, grew only from the base of her neck, her mottled dome rivalling the moon, her braid a thing long spent she wraps close, fiddling as to consult what guidance it may still:
“There is a flood in the wind. Iron stench all this way. The blood of Time. As went our old shaman-stories fireside. Before there were saints. When there were many languages.”
“Before the tower-lost was built.” Two-Hunters added. “One building in all our realm that temple, how can it not be found?” she stood that she might better see the uncertain skies.
What tracks may there be left in one flickering epoch and gone the next, for clue as to whereabouts or happenstance of Sense she scanned, as footprints in mud or snapped twigs may. Did any scenes there repeat?
And in that quiet she thought of those she hunted to their ending: those rabid that could not be brought home.
∞
As she gazed up her elder cradled a weed in her palm, giggling softly. Her ear to its petals:
“With Time so strange, does the temple stand?”
The younger smiled and turned: “Never-yet built at all. Strange and not dead, you say?”
“Do you prefer the sound the hope?”
“I do. What would your old shaman have said to you, before there were saints?”
The elder consulted her wilted braid:
“Hindsight’s comfort can be more nettle than balm. Love our compass over our Reason.”
So they sat together under the wonder of Time’s depart, not its death, as their wolves playfought.
∞
“When did this happen, unsettled sky…” The younger asked, her eyes dry and sore from trying to comprehend oblivion’s strobe. “I see heavy things floating in some of these glimpses, wet.”
“A storm?”
“Not with rain, a flood as you have said.”
The younger watched the lake reflecting the moon and realised: the stars too were static in the waters. None of the incoherent sights and Seasons in the sky it mirrored.
“Into the lake.” She called a howl of her own and her wolf jumped to her.
Ho’quay’urn the same was quick to call, and together they rode away from the cliff inland.
∞
They turned back to see the edge of the bluff burning cool aglow of the moon-bright lake. With faith enough they could clear the steep and fall into the waters there. Two-Hunters-Both-Prey and her steed sped first into the unknown, while Ho’quay’urn a while strayed in reply to the cautious whimper of her wolf:
“If only this Timelessness returned my sight to me, we could share our fright as we plunge, hmm, dear Ma’kesyose?”
∞
Two-Hunters-Both-Prey gripped hard the scruff of her obedient steed, leaping with greatest speed and will from the cliff down to where gentle chop was deep. The great rift-lake a portal campfire-lined, by forests of crag and ranges rimmed. They crashed not into solid water but into the weightless change of gravity spinning, the lake below-before becoming a sky above. The wolf landed on the new ground, a starry shallow they could traverse. Paws for balance patted ripples through the stillness.
∞
Scabby blood-clouds there rolled in nigh beyond, black sand all the landscape crumbling: clumped cliffs reducing into shores flatter and flatter, and there the temple’s-tower untethered, floating on its askew in rubble that will never fall. Who knows any longer what here was considered worship or profane.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
∞
Though Ho’quay’urn had leapt after the younger, she was already there waiting, dozing on her wolf. She startled awake:
“Ma’kesyose reckons a trail.”
She pointed inaccurate to some lower boulders floating their height or less from the ground, beards of sand falling from them smaller and smaller. Above those were larger slabs of stone and bricks all linear, ascending apart.
∞
The wolves went with their masters, jumping from one to another higher always, closer and closer to the rising-fallen tower of their Saint, Sain’ Yeorgya.
Act II - The Shaman
The Shaman. The wolves took to their task as frogs to lily pads, as wanderers over stepping stones through a ford, if such pads and stones played in gravity misbehaved higher and higher.
Closer the archers realised, the tower was in half and slowly apart.
∞
To the closest half our archers advanced and found somewhat-surer ground, on brickwork the like their nomadic kin would never build. The temple a marriage-place between worlds, a union-pyre of sacrificial surrender internecine of Courtdom and Sylithria both, of the one Truth against many Falsehoods, and the enemies of one’s enemies adjoining allied.
∞
“What is all this?” The younger veteran marvelled at roofless halls overgrown with slimy foam irreversible and shattered windows crackling back together.
“A myth come true that Time could be attacked, that its protectors could fail. That it would need or have protectors at all. Not since a girl have I known all this. What Time had banished with its Onwards has returned in Timelessness. It should be here…”
∞
And so it was: Ho’quay’urn pointed at the wrong wall yet Two-Hunters-Both-Prey found it soon. On marble where fresco faded into cave-art, The Divine Twins there depicted, Entropy and Time their names.
A later addition layered over that, of Sain’ Yeorgya with her glaive-bow guarding atop titanic Time, a great whale to the younger’s eyes, to yours and mine.
A later addition still that Entropy wielded a hammer-spear and baleful seemed, the spear more a harpoon when pointed at Time’s black-white flesh.
“The flood bleeding throughout all things.” Two-Hunters steadied her wolf from barking at movement ahead.
∞
She and Ho’quay’urn advanced their pace through the gliding halls, the claws of their wolves scratching and halting on the stone. The two steeds growled at a soul kneeling over a battle’s aftermath. Trenches in the bricks where blades or bodies had met.
Her greying braids long across the floor, she turned to face the archers and the wolves whined seeing her antlers giant-more than they. Only a necklace she wore, with ruby and sapphire inlaid. Her aged chin into a thin beard.
These features, this is not the first shaman Two-Hunters-Both-Prey has met.
“I am Delu’il.” Her antlers without rival, her braids draping, her necklace her totem.
∞
The old master shaman asked:
“Are you the one I have been seeking? That in ages past-returned would youth come to me. What is your name, young one?”
Two-Hunters-Both-Prey shared her name and the shaman replied:
“Even your name duality. And you, shadow?”
“Ho’quay’urn.” The younger dismounted answering for the elder, hugging the huge head of her wolf to calm them. “Her sight fails her.”
∞
“You reject Courtdom’s medicine.” The shaman replied, concerned, her eyes softer than they had been.
“It is not our way.” Ho’quay’urn confirmed.
“Change is the way of all things, what human borders would Truth obey. Is it the language you would miss most? Have you ever been able to express in-aloud what only bumps, dents and grooves can offer? The journey only a mind and memory can make…”
Ho’quay’urn smiled in agreement. “The tower-lost was built and there is only one-tongue all-shared.” She fiddled with her braid. “Better is not for all.”
“And yet, what are all responsible for?”
“All.” The younger replied, and Delu’il nodded, her antlers brushing through the blood-cloud stars.
“Simplicity fragments. May I?” she asked or offered and Ho’quay’urn bowed in respect, dismounting from Ma’kesyose.
∞
Two-Hunters-Both-Prey’s nose burned from herb-scent as the antlered one approached and felt the braid of Ho’quay’urn. Her fingers as to a flute, palms hovering then pressing. Within that braid was an old custom for those that cannot see, a story in stone poles and pebbles, those each carved with dots and dashes that to her are as letters, with one’s own hair particular in mind. If removed from her braid or woven into another, only nonsense there would fingers find.
“Yes.” The shaman bowed solemn as she stepped back. “Aloud there would be something lost.” She turned to the younger. “If you have come for the divine glaive-bow of your Saint, it is gone. This is but one place where she duelled to defend Time. It calls to you as to me, as conflict has been written, and the weapons of legend belong not on lakebeds lost. Follow the signs of duel-and-dual through this strange sunken land of black sand, and your Sain’ Yeorgya a ripple I sense there-out, in a living grave she has chosen for herself.”
∞
The younger frowned confused: “Our arrow-arc reaches furthest and our twin-wargs together are fastest, so we were chosen by Our-Quanyh to warn the rest of our kin of Time’s loss. We come for no such weapon.”
“Then there is much I must help you remember. You did not deceive yourself, yet the journey-Timeless has been strange to your senses and yourself.”
Delu’il held out her hand to the waters of the air. The sapphire of her necklace twinkled:
“The untrue has become true, the laws of the universe have collapsed under the weight of Human lores.”
“Which?”
∞
The shaman sat among the nest of her braids. The archers and their wolves with her. Twigs she had been keeping in her hair, she made a place of them. With a touch she gave spark to the dry and familiar fire was welcome in that sundered place of drift and cloud, so the wolves slept and their archers sat in counsel, listening:
“Those of survival you are loyal to without question, those that surround you. Compare yourself to your steed. Human Nature has no fur as shelter against the wind-stroked rains. Or in the desert does the lizard not burrow-small to cooler depths a parched Human could only hope to know? And in the ocean do whales, their own bulwark, not find themselves imitated as ships sail by or under? Birds atop their trees seeing starships hail. The Age of Need all this.”
“And we have left that age behind us.” The younger said. “Greed’s prosper is for all, and the horns of plenty have already begun their eternal song. It will eventually be the only song, and we must be brave for the new world, leaving the old behind.”
“And yet Need-insatiable, full of cakes, still has an open mouth. It was once the task of shamans to remind Courtdom, though an eternal song has been blowing and we could not be heard.”
The younger waited and the shaman spoke on:
“It was too great a task for us all to remember Truth: for how long was our peace with Evil in the gallows? And few-Humanity went seeking the last foe of all while most were content.”
“Last foe… Tragedy?”
∞
Delu’il held fleeting sand and sprayed the flames with it, and the flames with different colours hissed:
“Yes, young one. And to make Tragedy one’s foe, does one’s thought not tend toward Entropy and Time?”
“My thoughts do.” The younger nodded, while Ho’quay’urn had fallen asleep with Ma’kesyose.
“So yours, so others. The cave-art you saw, of Entropy harpooning into Time’s flesh, fell was few-Humanity’s guidance to that mark. I have not moved from my home in the wilderness and yet I am here: is a tower-forgotten not as a hut-secluded? Flat circles and fractals all, with nuance null and context crippled. Only the will can navigate Timelessness. The glaive-bow of Yeorgya, as the sword ʎ’lsavhyér of Artorias from the lake, bequeaths to worth alone and your Saint has fallen from Hope into Despair, heartless and mere for a mortal wound has been dealt to immortal Time. Time is uncertain ‘now’, so too the Hope for greatest things and fade away all prosper we have achieved. With triumvirate spatial dimensions unwoven from their monarch-fourth-and-forth, Despair becomes a place in our hearts, a realm out in Timeless space, The Writhing Nightmare its mantle. The Volleyed-Veil of Sylithrian Arrows will be called again to answer this question, for was your martial culture not an ally Courtdom welcomed under its empire to help see Evil’s ending with Falsehood’s fall? As they came to you for aid ‘before’, now you must go to them in their disarray. Let them know Time may be missing, yet duality, our firmament and foundation is not.”
“There is no shelter against Entropy and Time, and yet if you are true, my kin have searched for such shelter from Tragedy, and so Time has fallen?”
“Your Courtdom-kin. No Sylithrian was on that dread-journey to the centre of all things.”
“So theirs, so mine could well have been: all are responsible for all. Do you believe I am one to lead The Volleyed-Veil?”
“Your-Quanyh sees you are. She knows the old ways: that the unwilling have the greatest will.”
“Why not her, when her name is passed to her through virtue since The First Quanyh, shedding her old name?”
“Ah, for how strange is Time, that you are not yet her. When the tower-lost was built, the old words were made simple, and Quanyh was into Courtdom’s one-tongue: Two-Hunters-Both-Prey. This is the weakness of our Enemy: Time they have harmed to bring about an Endless Spring, and so released not only horror from the future and the past, but also lost-grace and greatness. Can you be with youth’s strength and belief aligned of age’s wisdom? The wisdom with which you older, brought yourself to me. To remake your myth and memory become truth-again.”
“Brought… become…” Two-Hunters-Both-Prey looked over to Ho’quay’urn asleep, and reached out.
∞
She blinked and it was only her there with Delu’il firelit. In one sole eye was Two-Hunter’s sight still far. The wolf Ma’kesyose with two heads and two tails was fierce yet asleep by her side.
∞
She had leapt through water seeing the stars with the moon motionless while all the skies were frightful, fraught with all states and Seasons at once. Now in the fires of Delu’il doused with black sand from the shaman’s pinch, Two-Hunters-Both-Prey saw what her fiery arrows had done. One Truth was brighter than all the dark.
∞∞∞∞
The fire showed in octagonal-prismatic-dream nomads all from the rift-lakes following the righteous thunder of sacral herds. Where Human Nature fled from the fiery arrows, Nature knew such flames can be extinguished and wounds can be healed.
The nomads followed thunderous-all to their rift-lakes, and there the flames shined aloud: arrayed on their elks in bellow-one and wolves all howling, pack and herd alike all-sung, that ghosts will hear their fireside dances. The campfires of her kin burned lakeside a ring of stars awakened.
∞∞∞∞