The Bonds That Bleed, Part IV

The red cloud hung over the sky like a bleeding mist, perpetuating the groaning torment of the eons all drawn into one semi-solid form. The lies and misdeeds swelling like a womb.

I stood there, black as black, a shadow cast in iron doubt. I was the warrior whisper, armored by those whispers I had lain with.

I stood there on a barren field of empty rock and dirt, dust still hovering where my feet had touched, but I left no prints. The echo of my passage nothing, as I had made myself to be.

How I knew this, I did not understand.

Then in the fold of my brains, wisps of others melded together in a sinewy tendril like intestines, I heard a voice of touch instead of sound. I felt the speech in my mind.

It made me filthy. Yet this was for my own acts reaccounted through my eyelessness, feeling every thought I ever had absorbed.

On the pebbles and rock, atop the dust and bones, a man of shadow, a memory, walked with company. His inky wings folded behind his back. He walked companionably with a fox at his side, a thing with the tail of a scorpion.

The winged one saw me, though he never looked my way. Coy eyes only light and feathery, a look for another, not I.

The fox raised his head, a powerful beast cut and bruised, always freshly bleeding, always his tail lashing at his own body.

"Master," said this fox, his voice pained and subdued yet laced with violence. "Prophet, See. Shall I void him now, this knight of Doubts?"

A smile barely perceived, a hint of a memory, graced the lips of this winged prophet. He said: "Do you see the memories inside him, of him? They, like you, are lost within their own suffering. Do you see?"

"I do not See like you, Prophet, this you know."

"You both know each other well, from a time before Time, in a different memory."

I was stunned silent. I could feel those words toiling around, making me real, making me gag on its congestion.

The prophet looked at me then, his eyes alight and dead and real, when everything else were but smoky hazes of a reverie. "I know you, Walaffai; you once knew Djetul. Forget and be rejoined, for you were once brothers."

This last part was to the fox.

The fox lowered its head, inching it forward. "Walaffai; the Whisper Shaker, Shadow Gout; I have heard you in my dreams. A foul wind blows around you."

I spoke, then, with the words from the memories of others, "I feel toiled and broke. Why am I here? I know Depth of Heart I see, Prophet; the Ebon Man, the Black Devil, for I know your names as well, cursed fox. I am not here to bandy words, for I am confused. Where am I?"

"I have found you, Walaffai. When we knew each other in the other Memory Time, now we do not. I have come to offer you council, for you are a broken, pieced together by nothing and more. Never but Ever."

What the Prophet said was true and honest; it shook my soul with a vice-like grip. Yes, he did know me and well, and truly he was a Prophet and the rejected Son of the Gods.

"Council me, then, Prophet." And I lay there prostrated.

"I tell you that there is disease as Old taking heart and will. You must refuel them, feed them. Be their father but do not coddle them. You must need let go of your pain and do, for your hand as never seen is your sword and shield, the shadows your armor. Use them wisely, for shorn them and they will choke you."

I heeded the words of the prophet. The clink and clatter of my armor loud and rauckus. My body talking always in whispers. There was no silence to me, for I was, as the prophet had touched in my mind, nothing but the doubt that I had twisted so readily over the years.

Then, the prophet said unto me: "Go now, for the longer you dwell here, Walaffai, the more likely you are to awake in Annwn. Find yourself, and may we never see one another again. For you now, I rekindle the sun of your light, for it creates your darkness. You must need be both. Fortune be with you, lest I have need of reaping what you have sewn."

The Bonds That Bleed, Part III

Within the confines of the tent, there was a sense of death and rot to the place that made me recoil, and as I did, I saw her. The shell of of my love. Nothing more than a barren husk that jerked and spasmed and screamed with hollow, hollow eyes.

My entire body went rigid.

The sun of my light snuffed, lit, and exploded out in a destructive sphere.

I remember skinned knees, blank eyes, and a touch that quit. On my knees before her, I tried to connect, sliding my fingers down her face in that very common way for me to communicate my adoration for her. She snapped back like a wounded animal; her eyes tore into me, accusing me as her tormentor.

My body spasmed and cursed itself, a poison that soared through my veins like cold water. A sweat broke out as I watched the ground tear out from between us. The quaking earth burst and rent in a frenzied madness, sending showers of boulders through the air. I stared in disbelief as she shrunk back, growing smaller and smaller in my view. The walls fell away and left me there on my small island of despair while the darkness around my lover cruelly offered her the world. All within the confines of the tent.

I tried to connect, to establish some form of contact that would awaken her, yet she howled enraged and frightened and clawed at me as if I were the cause of this pain.

The realization was a slap in the face, the damage ten-fold, as I fought the Darkness in her with rapier and dagger, only to be thrown aside by the cleave of the claymore.

Others came, shutting out the space within the voided tent and spewed foul rot from their mouths, burning my skin. Burning.

Information shot up around me like pieces of flint shun from a blade. Lost ever more in the air as one part of me shot greedy hands out to shove the words into my mouth, but it did no good as the chips melted into gas and smoke. The other part of me reached out across the abyss for my love, and I knew nothing but the fact that I am not...capable.

How could they not see the condition my love was in? How could they be so fucking thoughtless and senseless and hateful and--

In a flurry of angry tears, I screamed and jerked around, blade drawn and re-sheathed into the blonde woman's throat. I watched as she tried to talk. It reminded me of someone talking under water, the way the words bubbled. She mewled and I sneered, twisting and ripping my dagger from her. The man I know. I saw him. I felt him like a renegade thought laughing playfully, like my son used to. His shock stayed his hand; my foot shot out, took his knee from him. Completely. To the stones of the dead fire he crawled, and I did the one thing that would please me the most. I took his head, opened his mouth, put it on the edge of the rock, and STOMPED on the back of his head.

The lesson is to curb yourself or someone else will do it for you.

I sat there before my lost love unfound. I could hear the two talk behind me. Man and woman.

I cried her name with mine tears.

I reached back out for her, the distance growing exponentially now as she shoved me away, scrambled over and burst towards the exit. Suddenly wild and feral, she lashed out, restrained.

I looked around; uncontrollable animal held by whore, blockaded in by mutt, and the monster gorging on words and emotions.

The sun of my darkness bore my secret name, mocking me.

Always mocking me.