Tales from the Wishing Well: In Extremis
Jul. 18th, 2008 11:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
talkstowolvesWelcome to the first installment of Tales from the Wishing Well, inspired by you! I am surprised (yet pleased) to tell you that the first story has actually gone over my word limit and will be split into two posts. You get the first half of "In Extremis" today and the second half on Monday.
Read, enjoy, tip if you're moved, and comments are welcome!
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In Extremis
Part I
by Deborah J. Brannon
Marshall tossed a coin into the well, and upon this coin was inscribed: Abaddon.
They only come in winter or summer. In extremis, by extremes. In summer, my door opens upon Baghdad alleys, in dunes southwest of Mut, upon the infernal wastes of Ifrin and the trackless breadth of Death Valley. In winter, penitents must come through Moscow sewers, walk leagues north of Helsinki, dig through snows in the Ice Queen's realm, or steer fifth star to the right and straight on till morning toward the Antarctic.
They always know the ordeals, the way. They find the broken-latched door in shadows and water and snows and collapsing waves of heat. Though iron or wood, banded in silver or leather, it always bears my sigil: the staring hollow eye and the insatiable locust splayed across the pupil. The sigil is a chain, burned into my flesh as well, an invisible connection that means the door will always lead to me.
No matter where I run to, in this world or any other, they will always find me with their blazing eyes and their scrabbling hands. So full of burning guilt and freezing desire, they will never let me forget why it must be me.
Abaddon. Title, name, and purpose.
If they come to me with their blood frozen, they must walk down a corridor of fire: walls of flame and floor of coals. If in summer with the heat rising in waves from their skin, they must swim a freezing and unfathomable pool. The corridor is twenty cubits and there are no short cuts. The entrance to my temple abuses flesh beyond endurance, burning with bitter cold or unforgiving heat.
Yet after such rigorous travel, my penitents beg not for release but punishment. For age after age, I have provided. I have flayed skin already cracked beyond recognition. I have broken bodies to match the fractured foundations of their souls. I have done this and more until my fingernails are crimson with blood that will never fully wash away.
And always are they talking: not screaming or praying but pouring forth what has brought them to seek my ministrations, their sins and mistakes, horrors witnessed, dreams undone. At the last, they rattle their gratitude at being remade. Their words do not cease until I have punctured and cracked and peeled away their flesh and forms from them, so slowly: unfolding their bodies to the secret heart, their incessant tongues at last stilling as I regard what our labors have revealed. A delicate creature, small and new, with staring, hollow eyes. Their quiet and glowing beauty emerging from the wreck of blood and bone no longer moves me. I leave it on my doorstep for the Malakhim.
They come to the Lady of Locusts to be made hollow, deconstructed and made new. But I am full, so full, and I am tired of obliging them.
To be concluded on Monday, July 21st.
Read, enjoy, tip if you're moved, and comments are welcome!
Part I
by Deborah J. Brannon
Marshall tossed a coin into the well, and upon this coin was inscribed: Abaddon.
They only come in winter or summer. In extremis, by extremes. In summer, my door opens upon Baghdad alleys, in dunes southwest of Mut, upon the infernal wastes of Ifrin and the trackless breadth of Death Valley. In winter, penitents must come through Moscow sewers, walk leagues north of Helsinki, dig through snows in the Ice Queen's realm, or steer fifth star to the right and straight on till morning toward the Antarctic.
They always know the ordeals, the way. They find the broken-latched door in shadows and water and snows and collapsing waves of heat. Though iron or wood, banded in silver or leather, it always bears my sigil: the staring hollow eye and the insatiable locust splayed across the pupil. The sigil is a chain, burned into my flesh as well, an invisible connection that means the door will always lead to me.
No matter where I run to, in this world or any other, they will always find me with their blazing eyes and their scrabbling hands. So full of burning guilt and freezing desire, they will never let me forget why it must be me.
Abaddon. Title, name, and purpose.
If they come to me with their blood frozen, they must walk down a corridor of fire: walls of flame and floor of coals. If in summer with the heat rising in waves from their skin, they must swim a freezing and unfathomable pool. The corridor is twenty cubits and there are no short cuts. The entrance to my temple abuses flesh beyond endurance, burning with bitter cold or unforgiving heat.
Yet after such rigorous travel, my penitents beg not for release but punishment. For age after age, I have provided. I have flayed skin already cracked beyond recognition. I have broken bodies to match the fractured foundations of their souls. I have done this and more until my fingernails are crimson with blood that will never fully wash away.
And always are they talking: not screaming or praying but pouring forth what has brought them to seek my ministrations, their sins and mistakes, horrors witnessed, dreams undone. At the last, they rattle their gratitude at being remade. Their words do not cease until I have punctured and cracked and peeled away their flesh and forms from them, so slowly: unfolding their bodies to the secret heart, their incessant tongues at last stilling as I regard what our labors have revealed. A delicate creature, small and new, with staring, hollow eyes. Their quiet and glowing beauty emerging from the wreck of blood and bone no longer moves me. I leave it on my doorstep for the Malakhim.
They come to the Lady of Locusts to be made hollow, deconstructed and made new. But I am full, so full, and I am tired of obliging them.
To be concluded on Monday, July 21st.
Re: Feedback
Date: 2008-07-21 05:55 am (UTC)