Friday. March 20, 2009.
Our life is twofold; Sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality,
And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off waking toils,
They do divide our being; they become
A portion of ourselves as of our time,
And look like heralds of eternity
--The Dream by Lord Byron
They say that fae do not dream, for they are creatures of dreams themselves. Faye had never dreamed, until she made a son, and what she dreamed of was his life, not her own. This was a strange series of circumstances that she could have never predicted to be true. Within her domain, in death, there was order. It was life, she realized, that was chaotic. And every year the living world called to her, lured her out of slumber. This year was no different than any other.
Here and there throughout the living world, bells tolled the hour. When the twelfth and final gong shook the calm and quiet night, she stirred deep beneath the earth, encased within her bed of bones, and sighed silver. Dirt and grime shivered as she shifted. The frosted soil cracked apart in thin and tiny spider web patterns. After three long months of slumber, her waking was a slow and arduous task.
She was a gentle sleeper. She stirred from slumber like a newborn flower. Her petals were made of silver and they unfolded as slow as a yawn and a stretch. Spring was not her season, but with its coming her duties returned. The frozen dead waited to thaw and be claimed by her touch. Entropy only needed to crawl out of her bed and begin the process of decay anew. The cycle of life and death was born again each spring. First was creation, then growth, and then death, and she needed to prepare for her purpose.
But there were distractions. Five years running there had always been distractions. Whispers of memory trickled into her ears and sang her out of slumber. She heard them as he heard them, murmurs and hushed tones a thousand miles away that could never be heard too clearly. Old dreams fading into the subconscious, filed and categorized to be dealt with in their own due time.
They pass like spirits of the past?they speak
Like sibyls of the future; they have power
These held the power of a name, the power to summon, to instill a spirit with a will that was not solely her own. "Tell your mother I said hello," said one. "Uh. I will," said another, uncertainly. He need not have said anything at all. She knew, in those first few seconds, as the dreams of memory ebbed and flowed around her. She knew, as she always knew. There were no secrets between them.
And above, long before the hours tolled and the minutes began to tick away, he waited. Just as the year before. She could feel him waiting. The same anxious energy bled down into the earth to caress her. Nervous as a child who waits in his room for his father to return from work, long after the threat a mother gave of the possibility of a beating. Her child waited, and he was not alone....
Our life is twofold; Sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality,
And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off waking toils,
They do divide our being; they become
A portion of ourselves as of our time,
And look like heralds of eternity
--The Dream by Lord Byron
They say that fae do not dream, for they are creatures of dreams themselves. Faye had never dreamed, until she made a son, and what she dreamed of was his life, not her own. This was a strange series of circumstances that she could have never predicted to be true. Within her domain, in death, there was order. It was life, she realized, that was chaotic. And every year the living world called to her, lured her out of slumber. This year was no different than any other.
Here and there throughout the living world, bells tolled the hour. When the twelfth and final gong shook the calm and quiet night, she stirred deep beneath the earth, encased within her bed of bones, and sighed silver. Dirt and grime shivered as she shifted. The frosted soil cracked apart in thin and tiny spider web patterns. After three long months of slumber, her waking was a slow and arduous task.
She was a gentle sleeper. She stirred from slumber like a newborn flower. Her petals were made of silver and they unfolded as slow as a yawn and a stretch. Spring was not her season, but with its coming her duties returned. The frozen dead waited to thaw and be claimed by her touch. Entropy only needed to crawl out of her bed and begin the process of decay anew. The cycle of life and death was born again each spring. First was creation, then growth, and then death, and she needed to prepare for her purpose.
But there were distractions. Five years running there had always been distractions. Whispers of memory trickled into her ears and sang her out of slumber. She heard them as he heard them, murmurs and hushed tones a thousand miles away that could never be heard too clearly. Old dreams fading into the subconscious, filed and categorized to be dealt with in their own due time.
They pass like spirits of the past?they speak
Like sibyls of the future; they have power
These held the power of a name, the power to summon, to instill a spirit with a will that was not solely her own. "Tell your mother I said hello," said one. "Uh. I will," said another, uncertainly. He need not have said anything at all. She knew, in those first few seconds, as the dreams of memory ebbed and flowed around her. She knew, as she always knew. There were no secrets between them.
And above, long before the hours tolled and the minutes began to tick away, he waited. Just as the year before. She could feel him waiting. The same anxious energy bled down into the earth to caress her. Nervous as a child who waits in his room for his father to return from work, long after the threat a mother gave of the possibility of a beating. Her child waited, and he was not alone....