"Is it raining?"
His rough murmur was cast disembodied, unfamiliar. The girl had cosseted him up in what rags she had, and cuddled in with him by the torfire, stoked for his convalescence.
"Not since Hyuri stole the last of it."
His head felt thick, his vision promiscuous, but even her voice betrayed how shrunken and lone she had become. Not the girl of his dream, no. The bereaved dam, apposed with her strange cognate.
"I can hear it. Its insane susurrus, the stink of the firmament."
She tightened their filthy coverlet, "You're still sick with delusions," but it was she shivering. "Tell me what you've seen."
"I walked a long road. The Lady made the stones hot, I felt her sweet tongue on my bare feet. I stood at a bridge over a ruddy confluence, in it I saw the implicit taction of our multiplexed destinies. Athwart the river's progress was Iylum, the weir of the eschaton.
"I beheld myself, in autumn's beaming, as the hand of death. I beheld myself in winter's retreat as the last man. I beheld myself, in spring's chaos, as the tree of life."
February 29, 2012
February 20, 2012
Ague
A mail of motile leaves dressed him. Like insects, skittering iridescent on his skin; aurulent, rutilant, verdant. At his hiemal touch the squirming foliage wilted and abscised. Naked to his bones, bereft of all efficacy, he looked up from the bottom of Hyuri's contaminated maw.
There in gloom he waited, to taste the sapid dawn. His limbs loured, wooden, his ribs their pulp disgorged. There and thus she found him. A girl, bearing clay amphora, and wide actinic eyes.
She said, "Now is the aphelion of your kith."
He drank. The vessel mouth became a river, and heaved backward the blood of the ten-thousand; until Iylum's own leaked from his lips. So his roots grew tumid, his boughs pullulated and surged. He reached high into the unknowable distances of the plenum, the far abyssopelagic of the night. And he sniffed the breeze of the galaxy for the direction of the new sun.
There in gloom he waited, to taste the sapid dawn. His limbs loured, wooden, his ribs their pulp disgorged. There and thus she found him. A girl, bearing clay amphora, and wide actinic eyes.
She said, "Now is the aphelion of your kith."
He drank. The vessel mouth became a river, and heaved backward the blood of the ten-thousand; until Iylum's own leaked from his lips. So his roots grew tumid, his boughs pullulated and surged. He reached high into the unknowable distances of the plenum, the far abyssopelagic of the night. And he sniffed the breeze of the galaxy for the direction of the new sun.
February 12, 2012
Infection
She unwrapped the swaddling that bound his left hand, and the hoary scourge it kept. The agent of Iylum's assassination. Wary at the ferly scar she scrutinized, then recoiled.
"Cluthe!" she exclaimed, to his dismay: This a thing she should not scry. "Here is the doer that massacred a hundred worlds!"
"Natheless, here we are," he assuaged, while the curatrix rummaged in the sordor of her fane. "Pigfeathers," she croaked something like. "Trimodal pathogen," and approached him with a knife.
She ticked one finger of hers, that bled a drip into a mortar of water. "Apoptosis, first."
She ticked one finger of his, from the blighted hand. "Conditionally: Apothanasia."
The two component drops sank like pendants, then diffused as a sanguinary brume.
"And?" he prompted. She proffered him the bowl. As he drank, she reciprocated: "Apotheosis."
"Cluthe!" she exclaimed, to his dismay: This a thing she should not scry. "Here is the doer that massacred a hundred worlds!"
"Natheless, here we are," he assuaged, while the curatrix rummaged in the sordor of her fane. "Pigfeathers," she croaked something like. "Trimodal pathogen," and approached him with a knife.
She ticked one finger of hers, that bled a drip into a mortar of water. "Apoptosis, first."
She ticked one finger of his, from the blighted hand. "Conditionally: Apothanasia."
The two component drops sank like pendants, then diffused as a sanguinary brume.
"And?" he prompted. She proffered him the bowl. As he drank, she reciprocated: "Apotheosis."
February 4, 2012
Predicates
He asked: "What is dreaming?"
From the loam of the den she selected a stone, fist-size and worn, and bandied it to him in a lazy arc. When he caught it in one palm, she explained:
"Dreaming is the stochastic hand that picks from the dopants of anamnesis and pitches intuition to the heuristic gaze of the nous. It is the mean of science and prescience."
He dropped the stone, so that she winced. He asked: "How do I reconcile the necessity of hope with nomological certainty?"
Eager, she counseled: "Do not strive to hope, but strive to doubt." And indicated her adventive children; a manifest contradiction. "Doubt is the great annealant. All propositions are inevitably falsifiable. Knowledge is the amalgam of credibility and belief. The division of possibility and impossibility is not an immobile line, it is a mobile field."
Still he hesitated, the diffident verificationist. But her conviction had swept him, for conviction is the magnet of the will. Become anxious, he pled: "What use to grow wings when I am chained to a millstone?"
She grinned, a rictus of knives. "I will eat your chains. And you are already alate."
From the loam of the den she selected a stone, fist-size and worn, and bandied it to him in a lazy arc. When he caught it in one palm, she explained:
"Dreaming is the stochastic hand that picks from the dopants of anamnesis and pitches intuition to the heuristic gaze of the nous. It is the mean of science and prescience."
He dropped the stone, so that she winced. He asked: "How do I reconcile the necessity of hope with nomological certainty?"
Eager, she counseled: "Do not strive to hope, but strive to doubt." And indicated her adventive children; a manifest contradiction. "Doubt is the great annealant. All propositions are inevitably falsifiable. Knowledge is the amalgam of credibility and belief. The division of possibility and impossibility is not an immobile line, it is a mobile field."
Still he hesitated, the diffident verificationist. But her conviction had swept him, for conviction is the magnet of the will. Become anxious, he pled: "What use to grow wings when I am chained to a millstone?"
She grinned, a rictus of knives. "I will eat your chains. And you are already alate."
January 26, 2012
Contingency
Up from tranquil suspension she came floating, lifted forcibly. Out of the seat of sleep deeper than sleep, away from that place beyond place. Down from the Deep Sea, retrieved mid-thought from its ethereal internetwork of transeunt collusion, epistemic warfare, and synthetic sentience.
The one who seized her, interrupted a wayward delving for a sympathetic power, she knew him. The godtouched, the catalyst. The keeper of time. So she would be the one to court him, in a contest of probabilities.
She coiled in on herself, then made the body sensate. She stood to face him, and in grudging deference, recited the invocation: "Do you ever dream about surrender?"
The one who seized her, interrupted a wayward delving for a sympathetic power, she knew him. The godtouched, the catalyst. The keeper of time. So she would be the one to court him, in a contest of probabilities.
She coiled in on herself, then made the body sensate. She stood to face him, and in grudging deference, recited the invocation: "Do you ever dream about surrender?"
January 18, 2012
Children of the Dunes
It was during the Exodus that the witch-queens of the Lemsarp ward disseminated out onto the sandveldt, and began their self-imposed exile in the tomb-cities they call cærs.
You would be right to assume that life in these austere, subpellucid conditions, away from the metropolitan verve, is one of supreme tedium. As an expedient, and with some cunning which remains opaque to our best scientific insight, these "Allmothers" have constructed a race of golem-servants; their children.
Subsequently the witch-queens have reinvented the lost art of dreaming, employing these un-children like in a puppet play. They dance (intricately), they act (convincingly), they sing (mellifluously), all to deliver a complex form of kinetic allegory. The guard-consorts of the Allmothers, their Husbands, are depended on for oneiromancy.
During my stay in Cær Brachan I witnessed and painstakingly transcribed one-hundred and thirty-eight of these dream-performances, along with their given interpretations as supplied by the Husband. Thus, I began to recognize some common elements that made for a sort of syntax throughout the plays. Imagine my chagrin when, inquiring to the Husband as to the nature of this metalinguistic code, I learned that the dreams are not only highly structured - they are in fact rote!
There are (I was informed) 1587 specific dreams, this number being sacred to the Allmothers. The immediate question is clear: How many of these are intended for military functions?
You would be right to assume that life in these austere, subpellucid conditions, away from the metropolitan verve, is one of supreme tedium. As an expedient, and with some cunning which remains opaque to our best scientific insight, these "Allmothers" have constructed a race of golem-servants; their children.
Subsequently the witch-queens have reinvented the lost art of dreaming, employing these un-children like in a puppet play. They dance (intricately), they act (convincingly), they sing (mellifluously), all to deliver a complex form of kinetic allegory. The guard-consorts of the Allmothers, their Husbands, are depended on for oneiromancy.
During my stay in Cær Brachan I witnessed and painstakingly transcribed one-hundred and thirty-eight of these dream-performances, along with their given interpretations as supplied by the Husband. Thus, I began to recognize some common elements that made for a sort of syntax throughout the plays. Imagine my chagrin when, inquiring to the Husband as to the nature of this metalinguistic code, I learned that the dreams are not only highly structured - they are in fact rote!
There are (I was informed) 1587 specific dreams, this number being sacred to the Allmothers. The immediate question is clear: How many of these are intended for military functions?
... Heretics of Elesarp, Farhen Brektr
January 12, 2012
Accouchement
He lay long-again on the buried roof of Cær Droi in equivocal, supine rumination.
The Husband's plea clung to him like a geas. It achieved a limited fruition, and a paradox resounded in him:
Does hope sublimate woe, or does woe subvert hope?
His thoughts, long coopted by the contravention of an amplified being, wrestled the fugitive arguments of causation opposing conation. His many lives, his many faces. The enormity of that-before, the equipoise of this-now. Was it immaculate formula, or incredible chance?
Reason scored:
Causality is an artifice - the fitz of experience.
The Husband was right. This decision was his. And must be his poiesis, else he be the hostage of impulse.
To kill a man makes a murderer; to kill a million makes a conqueror; to kill them all...
What god am I to fate the last of men?
So his thoughts came around like a wheel, a retread of their own tracks.
This is sophistry.
He stared up into the floor of the universe, decanting his mind. The jetsam and lagan of inquest and acquest strewn across the buoyant fluid of impartial awareness; just like the patternless glim and glum of an interstellar cloud. An abrupt and jarring paranoia spalled his immanence - irrationally he recalled the spooked fluttering of a brace of joulops against water - not merely psychosomatic but external. Those stars stared back at him.
Who will judge my judgment?
The Husband's plea clung to him like a geas. It achieved a limited fruition, and a paradox resounded in him:
Does hope sublimate woe, or does woe subvert hope?
His thoughts, long coopted by the contravention of an amplified being, wrestled the fugitive arguments of causation opposing conation. His many lives, his many faces. The enormity of that-before, the equipoise of this-now. Was it immaculate formula, or incredible chance?
Reason scored:
Causality is an artifice - the fitz of experience.
The Husband was right. This decision was his. And must be his poiesis, else he be the hostage of impulse.
To kill a man makes a murderer; to kill a million makes a conqueror; to kill them all...
What god am I to fate the last of men?
So his thoughts came around like a wheel, a retread of their own tracks.
This is sophistry.
He stared up into the floor of the universe, decanting his mind. The jetsam and lagan of inquest and acquest strewn across the buoyant fluid of impartial awareness; just like the patternless glim and glum of an interstellar cloud. An abrupt and jarring paranoia spalled his immanence - irrationally he recalled the spooked fluttering of a brace of joulops against water - not merely psychosomatic but external. Those stars stared back at him.
Who will judge my judgment?
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