|
There Was Nothing He Could Do |
|
|
|
|
|
|
((Hmm...back again, with another installment to that 'And No One Ever Knew' thing I have going. A bit of a different perspective this time.))
There Was Nothing he Could Do
If he stayed there, Mother would come to get him. It was a very beautiful clearing, with the huge tree, and the lake formed by its roots, and the bark he sat wasn't particularly uncomfortable, but he couldn't stay. Mother would come, and she would be angry with him for running again. He couldn't help it if he liked it here, anywhere that wasn't home.
He leapt off the root before the shadows could touch him, and ran around the edge of the lake. He could feel the cold whispers along his back as the trailing edges of shadowy fingers grasped for him, like lovers begging him back. Mother welcomed their touch. He didn't like them. They could listen to him, would follow orders when power was used, but couldn't feel when he confided in them. They had no loyalties.
His feet barely touched the ground as he ran, the chill behind him chasing him forward. He crested the edge of the great tree's roots, looked down to the land before him. It stretched as far as he could see- forests, lakes, rivers, towns, mountains. The land was changing, though. Mother had told him that, and no he could see it. Slowly, coming from the South, the forests were dying. It was obvious to see, looking out from the great tree.
But he'd stopped moving. Shadows caught up to him, licked at his feet, touched down his back. Mother would know where he was, now. It only took seconds for the landscape to darken, almost imperceptibly, then lighten again. The shadows began disappearing, one by one, until the tree was one color, the roots and the lake the same shade. The shadows stopped just touching him and began clinging, in terror. He turned slowly, faced her as she descended. The only one of her race that moved gracefully, she touched down onto the ground with small feet and folded her strange, gray wings. He looked up at Mother, hating her. Her eyes- desolate, filled with some kind of mockery of love, adoring him, even though he only had half her race's blood. He hated her, her kind, what they were. He hated how the shadows ran and the land wept. He hated how what they touched died. They did not laugh at the despair, but they did not try to stop it They were incapable of feeling emotion, only had a will to survive.
She held out her arms, in a disturbingly human gesture. The shadows flinched away, but he knew better than that now. HE endured the embrace, in the hope of avoiding some of her anger. She took him in her arms, spread her dead wings, and flew from the tree. They flew on the winds, the blood of the sky, far until they reached home. Home, the place where Mother made her kingdom, the place where all the shadows used to sleep. Used to, because they dared not go there anymore. Mother didn't like the shadows staying with her- she scared them off so she didn't have to deal with them.
Mother's kingdom used to be darkness, but not it was nothing. Nothing at all. There wasn't any light or dark- somewhere between the two. There were no shadows, so there could be no light. Just gray. There were people here, only if Mother's kind counted as people. There was a castle, only if a twisted spire like that counted as a castle. And this was a kingdom, only if a wasteland could be a kingdom.
He was brought back to Mother's castle with little resistance, but must despair. He missed the tree, the shadows. But there was nothing he could do.
 Markition Necrovius · Thu Oct 19, 2006 @ 11:11pm · 0 Comments |
|
|
|
|
|
