malins
Stumbling Seeker
«Noemi»
They marched in lockstep as the deep pulsing throb of great drums was thrown back from the walls of the ancient caldera. Carrying their load down the rocky path that zigzagged down to the center of the extinct crater. There, the ceremony would find its completion. A ceremony none present had ever witnessed before.
The pounding drums forcing their rhythm upon a timid chest. Fear in the throat.
The drums would pause when it was time to hear the pounding of hammers; the rhythm would resume with the raising, heave-ho, the offering to the pure high air, and it would continue into the pale, pearly dawn as clouds rolled in and the heart gave out.
Still it was night though, still it was before, and she’d have to go through every step of it -- every beat, every blow, every cry, every breath drawn into drowning lungs, to the last; time is the one master that can't be bribed, seduced or betrayed -- she'd had to live it, die it, every slice of suffering as it was served.
Why can I not be unknowing? - she asked.
Why must I understand.
If I am made to accept all, if that's woven into the fabric of my she-self, then why cannot I succumb and revert to dull clay, why must I have the breath in me.
What is it when a tiny creature stumbles into the ant-lion's pit, is it a pit of despair or is it just the crunch of mandibles and an indifferent end?
From the wooden frame she was bound to, the sacrifice gazed up mesmerized at the star-strewn sky as she was borne down to her destiny. The constellations shifting to and fro.
Had her wrists not been bound to the beam, she could have pointed up again, any time, to that point of light where she had been made.
But she was beyond help, the powers of the sky had withdrawn upon themselves, brooding, sullen, contemplating her failure with the disdain she deserved.
The Instructors had told stories sometimes, in the life before, the curious unfolding before the certainty of ending; and in one of them, told soon after her Awakening, she’d had a sister in the sky, whose soul had been poured into an invincible suit of armor. It was especially Instructor Lys who had often told stories that challenged her understanding; it had taken her much time and pain to understand that there were things to learn from stories even if they weren’t true.
But the stars were distant, impassionate, hard and hateful diamonds with their taunting twinkle, cold as the clenching claws of dread, the closing jaws of fate. Turn away.
Her head rolling sideways she saw painted faces in profile, illuminated by flickering torchlight. A pair of men on either side of the strong, rough-hewn beam her arms were roped to; more all around, men and women too; chanting, their voices rising and falling, interwoven melodies rising from the depth of their souls.
They all sang, their voices sometimes departing from the chorus into wild ululations or archaic lustful cries, but she was silent.
They all marched but she was bound immobile; their feet sank into the earth of the sacred place, the coarse black volcanic sand, but hers would not touch.
It was not her earth, none of this.
They -- they had the blood of one tribe running in their veins.
She -- blood to be spilled.
They were all, she was one.
They were to live, she was to die.
Abandoned by her makers and rejected by her hosts.
Alien, the ultimate non-self.
Still she was precious in her own way, what would be done to her could only be done once, so she too had been lavishly decorated. Spiral patterns tracing the contours of her body, flowers, garlands, gemstones, a necklace of finely wrought chain, the weight of its pain-promising pendants settled between her breasts. And richly covered in the outpourings of ecstasy, she was.
Perhaps it’s embedded into the fabric of all being that when such a thing occurs, the most fitting words must be, ‘forgive them for they know not what they do’.
Because all of it is wasted on me, she thought.
All the effort, from this Ceremony all the way back to the Instructors and the Awakening, it's all been wasted. What I would give to never have been!
They marched in lockstep as the deep pulsing throb of great drums was thrown back from the walls of the ancient caldera. Carrying their load down the rocky path that zigzagged down to the center of the extinct crater. There, the ceremony would find its completion. A ceremony none present had ever witnessed before.
The pounding drums forcing their rhythm upon a timid chest. Fear in the throat.
The drums would pause when it was time to hear the pounding of hammers; the rhythm would resume with the raising, heave-ho, the offering to the pure high air, and it would continue into the pale, pearly dawn as clouds rolled in and the heart gave out.
Still it was night though, still it was before, and she’d have to go through every step of it -- every beat, every blow, every cry, every breath drawn into drowning lungs, to the last; time is the one master that can't be bribed, seduced or betrayed -- she'd had to live it, die it, every slice of suffering as it was served.
Why can I not be unknowing? - she asked.
Why must I understand.
If I am made to accept all, if that's woven into the fabric of my she-self, then why cannot I succumb and revert to dull clay, why must I have the breath in me.
What is it when a tiny creature stumbles into the ant-lion's pit, is it a pit of despair or is it just the crunch of mandibles and an indifferent end?
From the wooden frame she was bound to, the sacrifice gazed up mesmerized at the star-strewn sky as she was borne down to her destiny. The constellations shifting to and fro.
Had her wrists not been bound to the beam, she could have pointed up again, any time, to that point of light where she had been made.
But she was beyond help, the powers of the sky had withdrawn upon themselves, brooding, sullen, contemplating her failure with the disdain she deserved.
The Instructors had told stories sometimes, in the life before, the curious unfolding before the certainty of ending; and in one of them, told soon after her Awakening, she’d had a sister in the sky, whose soul had been poured into an invincible suit of armor. It was especially Instructor Lys who had often told stories that challenged her understanding; it had taken her much time and pain to understand that there were things to learn from stories even if they weren’t true.
But the stars were distant, impassionate, hard and hateful diamonds with their taunting twinkle, cold as the clenching claws of dread, the closing jaws of fate. Turn away.
Her head rolling sideways she saw painted faces in profile, illuminated by flickering torchlight. A pair of men on either side of the strong, rough-hewn beam her arms were roped to; more all around, men and women too; chanting, their voices rising and falling, interwoven melodies rising from the depth of their souls.
They all sang, their voices sometimes departing from the chorus into wild ululations or archaic lustful cries, but she was silent.
They all marched but she was bound immobile; their feet sank into the earth of the sacred place, the coarse black volcanic sand, but hers would not touch.
It was not her earth, none of this.
They -- they had the blood of one tribe running in their veins.
She -- blood to be spilled.
They were all, she was one.
They were to live, she was to die.
Abandoned by her makers and rejected by her hosts.
Alien, the ultimate non-self.
Still she was precious in her own way, what would be done to her could only be done once, so she too had been lavishly decorated. Spiral patterns tracing the contours of her body, flowers, garlands, gemstones, a necklace of finely wrought chain, the weight of its pain-promising pendants settled between her breasts. And richly covered in the outpourings of ecstasy, she was.
Perhaps it’s embedded into the fabric of all being that when such a thing occurs, the most fitting words must be, ‘forgive them for they know not what they do’.
Because all of it is wasted on me, she thought.
All the effort, from this Ceremony all the way back to the Instructors and the Awakening, it's all been wasted. What I would give to never have been!