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nirix5Here's another Feather Thought personified. Steal and I hunt you down and kill you with a meat tenderizer and a piece of celery. Obviously I was in a weird mood when I wrote this the other day, but it's acutally a small part of something bigger. The author is not responsible for run on sentences or bad grammar or metaphors.
“How the Earth Got Her Second Moon”
The earth is more lovely than her eight sisters, the little mermaids of space- and only the third one out from the King of the Solar System desires more than an endless dance, round and round the heavens. Instead of elements and sandstorms, she clothed herself with light, wishing to be like the stars she saw surround her, her relatives from far away.
Though not the smallest, nor the youngest, the earth is the baby; she is treated accordingly. Her sisters -the older ones indulgent, the younger ones worshipful- fashioned gems for her dark hair, though not always dark, it is true. Always blue in color, a shade not unknown in these parts, yet a shade is not a hue, and there was nothing more vibrant in anyone’s eyes than the earth’s hair.
Turned to the outside of their ever set circle, she wore the ornaments of Jupiter and Mars; as she would turn to face her father she would switch them for the jewels Mercury and Venus had made for her, depending on her mood. Loving her gifts, she fixed the sight of them into the deepest recesses of her memory (which had seen much- beginnings and endings both.) In time she forgot about the images inside her head, preoccupied with the twinkling stars far beyond her reach, the remembered likenesses solidifying, becoming diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, topazes- a mere shadow of their shining counterparts, but a beautiful shimmer of shadow nonetheless.
Time does not exist for the earth, yet still it took her millions of years to clothe herself in the light she coveted. The sisters watched, gently amused, envious, and spellbound by turns as the fabric she wove grew and grew, to greater proportions than any of them save its creator could have imagined.
It would never be finished. The earth alone of all she touches seems to realize this, holding this truth- sometimes the only one- to her heart, smiling a soft secret smile as she hears them talk of the last time she will pass the shuttle across her loom, needing only minor adjustments now and then as threads separate due to the wildness of their particular steps. Deep within she laughs at their naiveté, a smile growing on her face, cracking stone with rumbling chuckles.
Now she dances with the others, endlessly around their father the Sun, outshining them ever so slightly with delicacy, if not power. For the work of her hands is the most delicate of all.
Her hair is blue, streaked with white; her eyes are green, her skin is the deep rich brown that all drawn to the soil so love. When she speaks fire rises from the mouth, for although she looks calm she is almost never, and woe to the one who tries to tame her and bend her to their will. She plays with her toy, the moon, tossing it from hand to hand, watching delightedly as it arches before her wondering eyes.
As she dances, her skirts fly about her, illuminating everything she comes near. Had she any visitors she could easily blind them, but she travels in select circles, protected as she is by the planets she calls her sisters. How they love her and hate her, wanting to be her, possess her, kill her, caress her; fortunately their love covers jealousy, and they guard her unceasingly. As well they should, for she is not the only planet with something worth taking in its possession, nor would she be the first to lose it.
She admires the tapestry she wove ceaselessly, fascinated by every fiber of warp and weft. The light she clothed herself in is ever-shifting… look closer, see why.
From a distance it is a spider’s web of light, thicker here than there, spiraling into delirium in some places, leaving nothing to chance, yet random is the word that rules. But nearer and nearer it begins to separate, the threads come together and become distant at the same time, and all of a sudden you see not a bodice, or a skirt, or a hemline or a cuff: but cities, thousands and thousands of roads, buildings caressing the sky like lovers too long apart. Even closer and the lights become windows and street lamps, commonplace to the people who made them, not knowing how they mirror the stars they never see, drowning light in light. Closer still the windows become light fixtures, then bulbs, then tungsten thinly stretched, suspended within a globe of glass. Electrons travel their own highways along the wire, coming and going to cities with names we do not know. In this way the circle is complete, and a piece of metal is as big as the earth herself, with its own dress of light, admiring those far beyond its reach; each is the equal size of the other, when viewed at the right angle.
Somewhere near a shoulder strap, night falls. Buried memories of stars have long ago been unearthed, and are now worn by the people of this place, a never ending stream of polite society making its way ever so slowly into the premiere performace of a new opera. Like their mother, these children also try to mimic and wear the stars. No one in this crowd boasts a city on their sleeve, having failed where their mother the earth and the tungsten wire have succeeded.
Follow the trail of dust at their feet, follow it away from the glittering building, down into the streets below where light and darkness coexist in the sort of harmony that kills and resurrects in one breath. Two rights, two miles and a quick left, and you are in a fortress of darkness. Black shadows permeate, yet there is no evil here: the dim is there almost on purpose, the least the earth could do to house the only one of her children who had mastered her own art.
You would not know it to look at her. Although her face is beautiful, she is dressed in rags. Nowhere on her body do the facets of a stone reflect, no pearls hide in her hair, gently dispelling the shadows.
Rather it is in her eyes that the stars shine. Maybe the earth saw not the physical reality but the potential, for it is certainly there. Dime sized green galaxies are both gentle and fierce, just and forgiving, everything that a star should be, for they are the judges of the universe. Thick black hair flutters in the same wind that blows bits and pieces of trash up and down the avenue, the skittering noise of the paper scraping asphalt the only close noise. Far off sirens call to each other, the rise and fall of the tones hypnotic- one could almost forget that they heralded a change at best and death at worst to others.
One of the sirens grows louder, nearing the woman and her star-wrought demeanor. A predatory smile tugs at the corners of her mouth as the police cruiser rounds the turn and starts towards her.
He sees her after only a few seconds. This is not unexpected; in fact he was looking for her, the mysterious lurking girl the residents of the neighborhood had been unnerved by.
Gaze meets gaze: seconds, hours, they’re on planetary time now- meaning, they are currently outside of minutes. The officer is confused, not understanding as yet that the star girl not only moves around time as if it is a mailbox set in her path, but moves around movement as well, reforming her molecules as she goes forward, never looking back, gliding on invisible wheels towards the car.
He knows that this, in his world, is not a natural thing; trembling slightly, he pulls out his gun and gets out of the car. The words are unimportant, they fall at their feet, but the message to stop is clear, and yet goes unheeded. Clicks and clacks echo off the buildings around them, metal tears through flesh, rending sinew and capillaries. Blood trickles gently down from her smiling mouth, marring smooth skin. Laughing, she closes the distance between them, the weapon falling to the ground, forgotten.
Chocolate and jade battle each other, silently warring for supremacy. Brown eyes become vacant, lost in green a thousand times more fathomless than the depths of the sea. The star girl reaches up and wraps her arms around him, knowing that he is too far gone to even remember where he came from, should he think of it; chances are that he would not want to go back had those memories resurfaced. Strong arms reached for her, winding around her waist, the soul animating them knowing only that whatever this was, he wanted to be closer to it.
Their lips met with an ardor that made the stone saints leaning over the street from a church balcony two blocks down blush. Blood swirled over their tongues, dripped down faces, fell to the floor in a cascade of garnet that, had anyone else been watching, would have brought to mind a vampire caught in the middle of a bloodlust. She was draining him of something more essential than blood. Slowly, he slipped away from himself, lost in the ecstacies and agonies that her fiery kiss visited on him. He loved her, hated her, wanted her so badly it was beyond pain. He was screaming for her, for anyone, for something, so overwhelmed he wasn’t even sure what he was asking for. They spiraled out of control, heading for each other in a deadly tailspin, falling everywhere but to the ground. And when he let go, he knew things that he had wanted to know but never discovered before: the great mysteries he had wondered of as a child, before he was aware of reality and homework, little league practice and later on, bills. She laughed when he thanked her, a silvery sound of water over stones.
Loosening her grip, she supported his lifeless body as it slid to the street with a grace it had never before possessed.
In that instant she understood more than she ever had before. Awestruck, she glanced down at her hand, glowing with thin threads of light, the tendrils snaking up and out until she was covered from head to toe in blazing filaments. Cities sprang up on her legs, her stomach, her cheekbones; tiny glittering boats charted the unknown waters of her eyes as the river of her blood was spanned by willowy bridges. The lines of her palms were explored and mapped down to the minutest detail. The suggestive curve of her hip underneath its layer of faded blue denim became a prairie, her breasts mountains, the hollows of her throat, ankles, and elbows valleys. Choirs sang in the cathedrals of her ears as she walked forward to a destination unknown.
In the plaza of the opera house she stopped. The performance had just ended- throngs of the elite surged out into the square, merry chatter suspended as, one after the other, they noticed the star girl, and grew silent. They knew that she did not belong with them. Regardless of the light that emanated from her every pore, she was still dressed for the gutter. They judged her harshly, blinded as much by her beauty as by their own minds. If must be wondered if by some instinct they blinded themselves not out of ignorance, as is supposed, but out of desperation, that they may not see and be taunted by that which they cannot attain.
It didn’t matter what they thought. Their gems and silks could not begin to compare with the figure in front of them, whose memories had already begun their metamorphosis into crystals, the likes of which they would never imagine, let alone see or wear.
And the earth saw her, this shining button on her dress, and picked her up, holding her close to her gigantic face as she smiled. The people coming from the opera saw only a flash of light as the interloper sped upwards into the sky, hurricane winds blowing elaborate hairstyles out of place at her passing, and felt the ground shake beneath them as the earth smiled with pride.
In the sky a new shape now loomed. Scientists the world over had apoplectic fits, prophets foretold doom for the world and mankind, children stared at the sight with wide delighted eyes before their parents herded them down into the relative safety of basements.
Far above them, removed from fear, the earth placed her daughter beside her, a smaller version of herself, clothed in the same iridescent fabric. The sister planets welcomed her into their timeless dance. Her feet proved agile and quick, much to the delight of her aunts, who (like most relatives) were gossipy and proud and loved a new face.
The people on earth watched this new satellite in their skies, visible by day as well as by night. The strongest telescopes could just make out the tallest of the buildings and the longest of the roads on this neighbor they had just acquired, but no matter how they tried, they would never reach it. The warp drives of science fiction would never carry them there, though they would dream about making that journey. Nor would its people ever try to contact them, for they were as yet untouched by greed and sickness, living in peace on their perfect haven moon. The earth and her daughter knew the consequences should their respective inhabitants meet; the fabric would disentigrate, the dance falter, the planets become despondent and sad, the music stop. To prevent this the earth created a laid a river between them, flowing strong with the channeled currents of time, short enough to bridge with their hands but wide enough to keep their children apart.
Many years passed; the river of time ran strong. The electrons on the two worlds never ceased to create their cities on plains of tungsten. Two worlds, exactly the same and vastly different, close enough to reach yet never to touch, spun together in the Sun King’s dance. Things changed and things stayed the same, bridges rose and fell, creation lived and loved and died and was born over and over and over again: For the reality remains, as it always has, that everything is a circle (one end is another beginning) and that the earth, and her daughter, and the light bulb, and the sun and the moon and the planets and the stars are all one thing; together, there is no such word as separate. And the object that is our universe will end, one day, as it began- in a burst of light, blinding memory but sowing only the divinity that is love.
“How the Earth Got Her Second Moon”
The earth is more lovely than her eight sisters, the little mermaids of space- and only the third one out from the King of the Solar System desires more than an endless dance, round and round the heavens. Instead of elements and sandstorms, she clothed herself with light, wishing to be like the stars she saw surround her, her relatives from far away.
Though not the smallest, nor the youngest, the earth is the baby; she is treated accordingly. Her sisters -the older ones indulgent, the younger ones worshipful- fashioned gems for her dark hair, though not always dark, it is true. Always blue in color, a shade not unknown in these parts, yet a shade is not a hue, and there was nothing more vibrant in anyone’s eyes than the earth’s hair.
Turned to the outside of their ever set circle, she wore the ornaments of Jupiter and Mars; as she would turn to face her father she would switch them for the jewels Mercury and Venus had made for her, depending on her mood. Loving her gifts, she fixed the sight of them into the deepest recesses of her memory (which had seen much- beginnings and endings both.) In time she forgot about the images inside her head, preoccupied with the twinkling stars far beyond her reach, the remembered likenesses solidifying, becoming diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, topazes- a mere shadow of their shining counterparts, but a beautiful shimmer of shadow nonetheless.
Time does not exist for the earth, yet still it took her millions of years to clothe herself in the light she coveted. The sisters watched, gently amused, envious, and spellbound by turns as the fabric she wove grew and grew, to greater proportions than any of them save its creator could have imagined.
It would never be finished. The earth alone of all she touches seems to realize this, holding this truth- sometimes the only one- to her heart, smiling a soft secret smile as she hears them talk of the last time she will pass the shuttle across her loom, needing only minor adjustments now and then as threads separate due to the wildness of their particular steps. Deep within she laughs at their naiveté, a smile growing on her face, cracking stone with rumbling chuckles.
Now she dances with the others, endlessly around their father the Sun, outshining them ever so slightly with delicacy, if not power. For the work of her hands is the most delicate of all.
Her hair is blue, streaked with white; her eyes are green, her skin is the deep rich brown that all drawn to the soil so love. When she speaks fire rises from the mouth, for although she looks calm she is almost never, and woe to the one who tries to tame her and bend her to their will. She plays with her toy, the moon, tossing it from hand to hand, watching delightedly as it arches before her wondering eyes.
As she dances, her skirts fly about her, illuminating everything she comes near. Had she any visitors she could easily blind them, but she travels in select circles, protected as she is by the planets she calls her sisters. How they love her and hate her, wanting to be her, possess her, kill her, caress her; fortunately their love covers jealousy, and they guard her unceasingly. As well they should, for she is not the only planet with something worth taking in its possession, nor would she be the first to lose it.
She admires the tapestry she wove ceaselessly, fascinated by every fiber of warp and weft. The light she clothed herself in is ever-shifting… look closer, see why.
From a distance it is a spider’s web of light, thicker here than there, spiraling into delirium in some places, leaving nothing to chance, yet random is the word that rules. But nearer and nearer it begins to separate, the threads come together and become distant at the same time, and all of a sudden you see not a bodice, or a skirt, or a hemline or a cuff: but cities, thousands and thousands of roads, buildings caressing the sky like lovers too long apart. Even closer and the lights become windows and street lamps, commonplace to the people who made them, not knowing how they mirror the stars they never see, drowning light in light. Closer still the windows become light fixtures, then bulbs, then tungsten thinly stretched, suspended within a globe of glass. Electrons travel their own highways along the wire, coming and going to cities with names we do not know. In this way the circle is complete, and a piece of metal is as big as the earth herself, with its own dress of light, admiring those far beyond its reach; each is the equal size of the other, when viewed at the right angle.
Somewhere near a shoulder strap, night falls. Buried memories of stars have long ago been unearthed, and are now worn by the people of this place, a never ending stream of polite society making its way ever so slowly into the premiere performace of a new opera. Like their mother, these children also try to mimic and wear the stars. No one in this crowd boasts a city on their sleeve, having failed where their mother the earth and the tungsten wire have succeeded.
Follow the trail of dust at their feet, follow it away from the glittering building, down into the streets below where light and darkness coexist in the sort of harmony that kills and resurrects in one breath. Two rights, two miles and a quick left, and you are in a fortress of darkness. Black shadows permeate, yet there is no evil here: the dim is there almost on purpose, the least the earth could do to house the only one of her children who had mastered her own art.
You would not know it to look at her. Although her face is beautiful, she is dressed in rags. Nowhere on her body do the facets of a stone reflect, no pearls hide in her hair, gently dispelling the shadows.
Rather it is in her eyes that the stars shine. Maybe the earth saw not the physical reality but the potential, for it is certainly there. Dime sized green galaxies are both gentle and fierce, just and forgiving, everything that a star should be, for they are the judges of the universe. Thick black hair flutters in the same wind that blows bits and pieces of trash up and down the avenue, the skittering noise of the paper scraping asphalt the only close noise. Far off sirens call to each other, the rise and fall of the tones hypnotic- one could almost forget that they heralded a change at best and death at worst to others.
One of the sirens grows louder, nearing the woman and her star-wrought demeanor. A predatory smile tugs at the corners of her mouth as the police cruiser rounds the turn and starts towards her.
He sees her after only a few seconds. This is not unexpected; in fact he was looking for her, the mysterious lurking girl the residents of the neighborhood had been unnerved by.
Gaze meets gaze: seconds, hours, they’re on planetary time now- meaning, they are currently outside of minutes. The officer is confused, not understanding as yet that the star girl not only moves around time as if it is a mailbox set in her path, but moves around movement as well, reforming her molecules as she goes forward, never looking back, gliding on invisible wheels towards the car.
He knows that this, in his world, is not a natural thing; trembling slightly, he pulls out his gun and gets out of the car. The words are unimportant, they fall at their feet, but the message to stop is clear, and yet goes unheeded. Clicks and clacks echo off the buildings around them, metal tears through flesh, rending sinew and capillaries. Blood trickles gently down from her smiling mouth, marring smooth skin. Laughing, she closes the distance between them, the weapon falling to the ground, forgotten.
Chocolate and jade battle each other, silently warring for supremacy. Brown eyes become vacant, lost in green a thousand times more fathomless than the depths of the sea. The star girl reaches up and wraps her arms around him, knowing that he is too far gone to even remember where he came from, should he think of it; chances are that he would not want to go back had those memories resurfaced. Strong arms reached for her, winding around her waist, the soul animating them knowing only that whatever this was, he wanted to be closer to it.
Their lips met with an ardor that made the stone saints leaning over the street from a church balcony two blocks down blush. Blood swirled over their tongues, dripped down faces, fell to the floor in a cascade of garnet that, had anyone else been watching, would have brought to mind a vampire caught in the middle of a bloodlust. She was draining him of something more essential than blood. Slowly, he slipped away from himself, lost in the ecstacies and agonies that her fiery kiss visited on him. He loved her, hated her, wanted her so badly it was beyond pain. He was screaming for her, for anyone, for something, so overwhelmed he wasn’t even sure what he was asking for. They spiraled out of control, heading for each other in a deadly tailspin, falling everywhere but to the ground. And when he let go, he knew things that he had wanted to know but never discovered before: the great mysteries he had wondered of as a child, before he was aware of reality and homework, little league practice and later on, bills. She laughed when he thanked her, a silvery sound of water over stones.
Loosening her grip, she supported his lifeless body as it slid to the street with a grace it had never before possessed.
In that instant she understood more than she ever had before. Awestruck, she glanced down at her hand, glowing with thin threads of light, the tendrils snaking up and out until she was covered from head to toe in blazing filaments. Cities sprang up on her legs, her stomach, her cheekbones; tiny glittering boats charted the unknown waters of her eyes as the river of her blood was spanned by willowy bridges. The lines of her palms were explored and mapped down to the minutest detail. The suggestive curve of her hip underneath its layer of faded blue denim became a prairie, her breasts mountains, the hollows of her throat, ankles, and elbows valleys. Choirs sang in the cathedrals of her ears as she walked forward to a destination unknown.
In the plaza of the opera house she stopped. The performance had just ended- throngs of the elite surged out into the square, merry chatter suspended as, one after the other, they noticed the star girl, and grew silent. They knew that she did not belong with them. Regardless of the light that emanated from her every pore, she was still dressed for the gutter. They judged her harshly, blinded as much by her beauty as by their own minds. If must be wondered if by some instinct they blinded themselves not out of ignorance, as is supposed, but out of desperation, that they may not see and be taunted by that which they cannot attain.
It didn’t matter what they thought. Their gems and silks could not begin to compare with the figure in front of them, whose memories had already begun their metamorphosis into crystals, the likes of which they would never imagine, let alone see or wear.
And the earth saw her, this shining button on her dress, and picked her up, holding her close to her gigantic face as she smiled. The people coming from the opera saw only a flash of light as the interloper sped upwards into the sky, hurricane winds blowing elaborate hairstyles out of place at her passing, and felt the ground shake beneath them as the earth smiled with pride.
In the sky a new shape now loomed. Scientists the world over had apoplectic fits, prophets foretold doom for the world and mankind, children stared at the sight with wide delighted eyes before their parents herded them down into the relative safety of basements.
Far above them, removed from fear, the earth placed her daughter beside her, a smaller version of herself, clothed in the same iridescent fabric. The sister planets welcomed her into their timeless dance. Her feet proved agile and quick, much to the delight of her aunts, who (like most relatives) were gossipy and proud and loved a new face.
The people on earth watched this new satellite in their skies, visible by day as well as by night. The strongest telescopes could just make out the tallest of the buildings and the longest of the roads on this neighbor they had just acquired, but no matter how they tried, they would never reach it. The warp drives of science fiction would never carry them there, though they would dream about making that journey. Nor would its people ever try to contact them, for they were as yet untouched by greed and sickness, living in peace on their perfect haven moon. The earth and her daughter knew the consequences should their respective inhabitants meet; the fabric would disentigrate, the dance falter, the planets become despondent and sad, the music stop. To prevent this the earth created a laid a river between them, flowing strong with the channeled currents of time, short enough to bridge with their hands but wide enough to keep their children apart.
Many years passed; the river of time ran strong. The electrons on the two worlds never ceased to create their cities on plains of tungsten. Two worlds, exactly the same and vastly different, close enough to reach yet never to touch, spun together in the Sun King’s dance. Things changed and things stayed the same, bridges rose and fell, creation lived and loved and died and was born over and over and over again: For the reality remains, as it always has, that everything is a circle (one end is another beginning) and that the earth, and her daughter, and the light bulb, and the sun and the moon and the planets and the stars are all one thing; together, there is no such word as separate. And the object that is our universe will end, one day, as it began- in a burst of light, blinding memory but sowing only the divinity that is love.
