Sentrovasi Rising

Blocks

2009-03-21T06:36:00.000-07:00

They stood in a neat semicircle in a clearing in the wood, itself extraordinary in that there had not been a clearing before, their unnatural patterns a miasma of colours which swirled and beckoned enigmatically. The aura they emanated was one which the boy found entirely foreign - alien enough, indeed, to have turned away all other life for miles.

But not him.

He approached the strange boxes, each of them as tall as his waist and just as wide: giant cubes which hummed as he approached, as though acknowledging his presence. The blue bird shivered in apprehension.

"These... do not belong in this forest, do they?"

The implication was obvious. The boy had known, and the animals had known, and the blue bird had known, but they had not comprehended before; passed it off as a passing suspicion; of lurking dreams half-fulfilled in the nighttime day that was the twilight of their memories.

"You brought them here," the voices seemed to say; to - falsely... or correctly? - accuse, "and only you can rid us of them."

The trees swayed, flurried a little now by a wind that did not exist; by the crowds who pressed in and shoved and rushed around in the fragility of their lives in another world.

"I... need time."

But his voice was weak in the pressing in of emotions and suspicions and understandings and the asphyxiating grip of life: a reality which he had always eluded, and which he knew now had caught up with him.

"Time was all you had."

2009-03-07T00:22:00.000-08:00

Everyone agreed that Ephedrilestemus Vangardrilorian was a long, unwieldy and unsuitably imposing name for the infant, aged but the two or three hours the Elrundar Council had taken to convene following his birth: thus it was that in the fifth year of the Sundering War, in the small village of Maruf, under the Star of Tides, he was christened as such and borne into a world that he would forever change - for better or for worse.

Realization

2009-03-02T04:00:00.001-08:00

He had seldom found as much of the comrade-in-arms in the next man from him than when he found himself standing against the wall, shoulders almost brushing the two males abreast of him, as the soft tinkling of water, audible almost as to make him self-conscious, indeed, in the public urinal.

JTS

2009-03-01T05:09:00.000-08:00

Sometimes a compulsion takes you in a thought; other times you have scarce the time to think before you find yourself plunging headlong into... what? It is a wild thrill and yet feral, perhaps dangerous.

But others would not see it so.

There are words on the pages, and they are an invitation: a gathering in the forest, they see now, for friends they have not met and have met, a long time ago. The signature is an unfamiliar one, but it is definitely a signature; a scribbled word with greater significance for its attribution to a mind and a being.

"One of us?" the bluebird questions the boy, but in the lonely silence it sounds more like a statement.

So they went: backwards and through - through the rain in the forest, typical and yet atypical in its persistence through the canopy, bringing both fresh respite and bitter wet. The other animals along the way helped show them a path the scribbling in the book could not: a pastiche of past experiences that brought both reminiscence and understanding.

There is no fanfare, no amazing welcome, but an immediate induction which assimilates them beautifully into the crowd. It is a particular disinterest that just borders on being unfriendly or overbearing, but avoids being either at the same time. There is food and games and just the insouciant chitchat and warm chitterchatter of acquaintances and soon-to-be-friends. There is, however, no direction but the time of the day, and the wetness of the brewing storm which finally breaks the party.

"For whom was the gathering held?" the boy inquired to the multitudes of creatures from all walks of life, all strangely beautiful in the light of night.

"For you, and ourselves, and for everyone who was," was the reply from one and many, or perhaps none, which was no simpler than the question, yet satiating in a self-fulfilling way. There was to be nothing else to be said: a finality which emphasized its emphasis.

A flash of light, sudden, and then nothing. Lightning came, and tore the land in two divides; even those who could fly could go no further across the gulf of darkness that was night and what it stood for: lethargy, solitude and the unfamiliar. As the calls sounded, those few retreated to the sanctity of their homes: those left, unable to find a compromise between the divides, went on their separate ways: the ones who had moved on thus finding themselves at rather a loss at what to do.

"Whom is this gathering now for?" the blue bird asked the boy, for no one else would respond.

But he who had no reply could find no other recourse against such a doubt, either. He saw it in the moods of those around them as they progressed through the desolate wetness for want of something to take shelter under until the light came: when they felt themselves fulfilled enough to return.

But what they did they did together, even then; uncertainties and misgivings plagued their route, through which sinuous bends through moonlit paths and across undefined shapes which lay underfoot, and yet there was humour, and some strange understanding which came to grow between them so that when they finally found themselves afterwards, it was to realize that they were already fulfilling what each of them had come out to find.

"I know," he breathed.

And for all the vastness and darkness and dampness and loneliness of the forest, it seemed for a time that it was not so empty after all.

Upon these Pages

2009-03-01T03:18:00.000-08:00

Strange words are to be written. A story oft-told but never once remembered for its insignificance, that which is insouciant is to begin again.

"What is this thing?" the bluebird asked the boy, and for he who had no reply, there was only the truth.

"A book," he responded, at the same time flipping through its pages to believe, or try not to believe, that that was all it was. "There is writing, and thus, meaning."

The writing was but meaningless scribbling to the boy who knew not the pen and the bird who was not a man, but for all that, it was a placeholder; a bookmark; something that had been filled in, even if it had been with the point of a pen... or of a knife.

"Even if it is meaning we cannot yet understand."