Hearts in Shadow

"Gabriel... will you not play the lute? It's sitting there, waiting for your touch."

Her raven black hair gently fell around her shoulders, and I reached out to grab it. As my fingers went through it, it was like there was a stuttering in the world. A rip. And my fingers went straight through her as if she was immaterial. A ghost.

"No," I moaned. The slow pulse in my throat was becoming too much, but I didn't want to move. There's something soft beneath me, and yet I can't see it. All I can see is darkness, and her. "I'll play the lute later."

The image shifts.
I'm still floating on softness.

"I want you to live, Gabriel."

Is that a bed I lay on? Yes, and there are the curtains of the house we had in Seahaven, so long ago. When I was still breathing. Yet, I'm not breathing now. I feel no heart in my chest, and again I try to reach for her, only to have that soft hair shimmer from me.

"Lilian... do you really want me to live? Is that what you would call this? I know the Truth, and the Truth torments me. What use is it to know the Truth if they won't have any of it?"

"My love... my love..." Echoes of the past. Echoes of passion, and it hurts. "Play the lute."

"You play the fucking thing, Lilian." The words were like venom dripping from my tongue, and she faded into the darkness only to reappear yet again to say; "Gabriel, I want you to Live."

"WE CAN'T LIVE!!"

"We live forever."

"No, we're dead!"

"Dead until the day we are blessed to life. Dead, and manipulating, and conning. Liars in shadows, monsters in darkness, until that day when we may assume the place once more. Go to your Twisted One. She'll know. Tell her that you don't want to be mortal anymore."

"But I'm not mortal."

"You are young... so young, and so wise yet. You've seen so much, and learned things beyond others of your age, yet your passion is your mortality. Save your passion for when we are truly free, Gabriel. For when there are no enemies left around you. Save your passion for hugs with your Twisted one. Save it for embraces with the Insane Child. Your mortality drives you further and further from the shadows...

In Shadows we are One
In Shadows we are All
Until the fall of the sun
Until we no longer have to run
Until we can live in peace.

Ask your Twisted one, she will know."

And then I realized that the soft thing I lay upon was a cushion, and it was extremely wet.
I also realized... the voice had been my own.

(( I'd like to announce to those of you that do check here (bless your little hearts) that this will probably be the last blog post I will be making for a while. A while, when considering I usually do a few a week. Thank you - Leech ))

Power

Passion and death, wrapped up in one. Love, and then the hatred. The blade into the skin, the blood, and the passion. Without the death.

And is it really an anchor for me, a shelter against insanity, or a sail so that I might drift out amongst the sea of madness?

Is this passion real, are these emotions real, or an echo of mortality. Is it all a manipulation of the world around me?

I might never know.
I don't think I want to know.

The Truth

It was all around me in the beginning, the truth of the world, the answers to everything. In those books, copies of words from Elders before, and before, that were in Lilian's library. Copies that I devoured in night, and then took their meaning to be some metaphoric process of living.

And yet, there's no metaphor.

It didn't take the opening of the Doorway to impart the truth to me. As is perhaps always the way it should be, it took blood, and the words of an Elder, words which spring my mind back to those days in the library with all those books. And in a way, I already knew the truth, I was simply blind to it. Now, it shocks me into sanity. Musical notes reach deep into my mind and tear me away from that which would take me down into nihilism.

I have questions. I've many questions, and the answers will come. But now, I've the Truth, and I've Purpose again, and I am living.

All things are falling into place around me, and there is a veil of darkness going down upon the world. I pity those who don't know the Truth, those who haven't been exposed beyond those paltry lies and services of their Old Gods. They will be exposed to so much bloodshed... needless bloodshed. The demons will see to it. They will tear their skin from their flesh, and blood will pour from the very gutters of the streets. The slums will be painted, silk will be crimson, and Ylessa's fountain will bubble with the life of so many dead. Useless blood.

Here I am, writing this page, underneath the light of the Red Mother's moon, and I feel sorrow for them... and anger at those who would blare this 'enlightenment' this 'falseness' onto them, keep them shrouded in the dogma of the Failing Ones.

"If you have been saved, and seen the White Queen, the Father must have some plan for you," the words echo in my mind, words that my Twisted one said to me. Words which in some way... I resent. I've known him for sixty-two years, and it's only now do I understand all that I've heard, and my understanding is growing... and yet there are so many more who are more deserving. Many more who are so much more perfect, and refined.

I'm becoming rather embroiled in it all. I must not make the mistake of losing perspective. No, never that. Then I would have truly failed Lilian. And now, to bury this parchment into the earth, where it will forever lay. My mortal thoughts, buried deep.

A Stutter

I really fell apart at the seams, and rather quickly too. No matter that the Dryth still lives - the point was to make my escape and not have to worry about her calling Doraster, or the whole pack of Wolkin on me, and I believe I did that amiably.

But everything happened so quickly... even I, who is quickly losing his concept of time, felt it. I, who's mind is so sane, actions so rational, felt the insanity of the moment.

I couldn't even ask that woman for answers, the girl who looked like she had seen as many lifetimes as Lilian herself. She was so connected to the Father, I felt it, and yet I asked her nothing. Perhaps it was politeness, or that inane foolishness at the rate at which things were progressing. And then, it hit me. Promises of the truth.

The truth! Answers! All beyond a fifty ton metal doorway which I could hardly push open even if it was unlocked!

My mind is ravaged, my thoughts insane. I am not myself. Demons and blood, demons and blood... I have said I am different from them, Lilian raised me to be different. I don't enjoy it! The killing, the rape. Tits for ears - it isn't funny! Why did I laugh inside, why?

Why must this come when I've found her...? That lovely somebody who would fill the void inside of me?

Perhaps she can console me, and turn my mind back to what it was. Maybe I'm just pissed because in attacking the Mind Fuck, I lost my violin...

This will pass. It must. I will live.
For You, Father. Things will come into perspective once I see the Truth.

Falling Leaves

By far, autumn is my favorite season over any other, even the Darkfall. The air, laden with the smell of dry leaves, moist leaves, earth, and chill is invigorating. I can blow my breath in a tube and have it appear to me in the form of a white ghost. I can crumple a leaf between my fingertips, and feel the texture of the dead thing on my skin - excitingly itchy and brittle.

To be in such a state of mind, in such a golden time, is more than I could have prayed for. I truly am blessed by Him for this, to be able to experience this novelty, over and over again. Seeing the various preparations for the harvest festivals, to be so invigorated by the four senses is an experience I'm not wishing to pass. To think I would have dulled this out, that I would have stowed away myself underneath layers and layers of reservations, in turn with wide smiles of the toothy kind, is madness.

My only regret is that I am alone. As I look at the vague changes of color, as I sit and watch them even as they change, for hours on end, I feel it acutely. When I stare into the sky, my mind drifts back to years ago when I used to stare at the same sky with a kindred spirit. We would sit on a rock, and I would profess a young affectation for her, and she would sit next to me.

How many women did I do that with when I was young? How many of them did I confess love to, only to have love replaced with disenchanted glances and a canyon of ambiguous emotions as my manner dissuaded them from me? I recall a few, though perhaps it was a fair number more. I can hardly recall those individual situations, and even now I don't know why I recall those in particular. It's only somebody to talk to, somebody with whom I can look upon things, that I feel a longing for, not a lover. In my loneliness, why would I not wistfully ponder back to my mother, and to her image? After all, she knew me better than anyone aside from Lilian.

And now, as I write the words, it strikes me. It's because I can't remember her. That's alright with me, oddly enough... I've no feelings of corrupt morality on it. Maybe I've no morality to speak of, or it's been so starkly convoluted from what Lilian left it as.

The raindrops are starting to speckle through the climbing roses, now. Perhaps I should stop writing.