(Author's Note: This is where I left off four years ago: Echthos. )
Must be your skin that I'm sinking in Must be for real 'cause now I can feel And I didn't mind It's not my kind It's not my time to wonder why Everything's gone white And everything's grey Now you're here now you're away I don't want this Remember that I'll never forget where you're at - Bush
Ascension was the only thing that kept her out of the dark. The thought became a cocoon she might crawl into, keep safe from the ghosts the tugged her neither here nor there, the spirits of old that called down cold cases to her, the inanimate that spilled the secrets and stories of the last soul who might have touched them, held them"
She felt a kinship to the latter, for the last soul that touched her own left an imprint which teased and tormented. The seer wondered after love, what made it ebb and flow and then dry up altogether. Sometimes, she saw their faces, her friends and foes, some dead, some alive, some lost and long gone.
Ascension was an obsession once Kai had left, and Unhome was lost. She wondered if the Sandman had moved the abode, or stole the memory of its location.
No matter. There was one other place she had left, and in the smallest heat of a cold summer, she met her goal head on. It was easy to find the way for one like her, to close the eyes (inner and outer) and let slip the skin of the form she wore and wove together. Light erupted, inward and outward. There was nothing like ascension, and no emotion so wild, so lofty, could possibly compare. Excitedly sick might seem close, the kind of sick a lover stirs, the kind of excitement an adventure brings...But not quite.
Yet this time was different. This time, she slowed in the thermosphere, felt heavy and weighted by the grasp of gravity, as if she still had feet rooted to the soil.
No matter how she tried, she could not rise above it. It was as if her invitation was rescinded, and she could only linger in the threshold, wrapped about the tail end of an aurora.
So linger she did. Years passed below, but she neither felt nor knew it. At times, she slept, hitching rides where the aurora trailed, a kaleidoscope of color reminiscent of her long lost patchwork skirts.
And then, one night, a voice broke her trance, stirred her to rouse and wrestle in the in-between. Sky and sea, sea and sky. She met an ocean at its horizon, road the spray of sea foam in the height of morning light.
Fallen. She had fallen again.
To the casual observer, if there had been any, it might have looked as if a meteor had fallen to the earth, as there was a burst of brilliance, fire and flame alight. But the girl emerged from simple embankment, untouched by any celestial violation, wet and freezing.
She made her way to her last sanctuary, a place known to take in a lost youth, or at least, one who might look lost and young. The seer was neither, but the place served her purpose. They would clothe her, and feed her, and in turn, she might sing to them, spin them stories as she waited.
As she waited for the one that called her down?
Must be your skin that I'm sinking in Must be for real 'cause now I can feel And I didn't mind It's not my kind It's not my time to wonder why Everything's gone white And everything's grey Now you're here now you're away I don't want this Remember that I'll never forget where you're at - Bush
Ascension was the only thing that kept her out of the dark. The thought became a cocoon she might crawl into, keep safe from the ghosts the tugged her neither here nor there, the spirits of old that called down cold cases to her, the inanimate that spilled the secrets and stories of the last soul who might have touched them, held them"
She felt a kinship to the latter, for the last soul that touched her own left an imprint which teased and tormented. The seer wondered after love, what made it ebb and flow and then dry up altogether. Sometimes, she saw their faces, her friends and foes, some dead, some alive, some lost and long gone.
Ascension was an obsession once Kai had left, and Unhome was lost. She wondered if the Sandman had moved the abode, or stole the memory of its location.
No matter. There was one other place she had left, and in the smallest heat of a cold summer, she met her goal head on. It was easy to find the way for one like her, to close the eyes (inner and outer) and let slip the skin of the form she wore and wove together. Light erupted, inward and outward. There was nothing like ascension, and no emotion so wild, so lofty, could possibly compare. Excitedly sick might seem close, the kind of sick a lover stirs, the kind of excitement an adventure brings...But not quite.
Yet this time was different. This time, she slowed in the thermosphere, felt heavy and weighted by the grasp of gravity, as if she still had feet rooted to the soil.
No matter how she tried, she could not rise above it. It was as if her invitation was rescinded, and she could only linger in the threshold, wrapped about the tail end of an aurora.
So linger she did. Years passed below, but she neither felt nor knew it. At times, she slept, hitching rides where the aurora trailed, a kaleidoscope of color reminiscent of her long lost patchwork skirts.
And then, one night, a voice broke her trance, stirred her to rouse and wrestle in the in-between. Sky and sea, sea and sky. She met an ocean at its horizon, road the spray of sea foam in the height of morning light.
Fallen. She had fallen again.
To the casual observer, if there had been any, it might have looked as if a meteor had fallen to the earth, as there was a burst of brilliance, fire and flame alight. But the girl emerged from simple embankment, untouched by any celestial violation, wet and freezing.
She made her way to her last sanctuary, a place known to take in a lost youth, or at least, one who might look lost and young. The seer was neither, but the place served her purpose. They would clothe her, and feed her, and in turn, she might sing to them, spin them stories as she waited.
As she waited for the one that called her down?