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Stephen Spender died on this day in 1995.
"I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns
Endless and singing..."
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns
Endless and singing..."
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{"Imagination is the eye of the soul."
-Mark Twain.}
Fallen, the last Sidhe, awakens in a British insane asylum with no memory of how she came to be there.
Earth has been invaded.
But the good are too busy pointing their missiles at one another to notice.
It is up to Evil to defend this world's shores against alien invaders.
Why?
Evil considers Man their toy. And Evil does not share.
Here is the beginning of that tale told through the eyes of Fallen:
The spark of an anguished soul flew past me in the night. I shivered as her light drew back the curtains of my mind.
I would have cursed her had she lingered. But Death was impatient. Words breathed through the mists of my awareness.
"Darkness yet in light. To live half dead, a living death. And buried but yet more miserable. My self. My sepulcher."
My mind roughly brushed aside the dry leaves of Milton's broodings. No time for self-pity.
Yet too much time for all eternity. Enough! I was here for a reason.
And as always that reason was death. Always death. The why was unimportant. There was always a logical why for Abbadon.
The where, however, was another matter. And when might illuminate the present darkness of my mind as well.
Keeping my eyes closed, though tempting, would but delay the inevitable. I opened them.
Only a peek through slit eyes. After all, my ears told me that I was not alone. I frowned. A hospital room?
I reached out with more than my ears. My spirit shuddered as the ragged claws of madness raked it from down the hall.
An asylum. A Sidhe inprisoned within a madhouse. How utterly fitting.
I ran my long fingers along the rough sheet beneath me. A state asylum obviously. Even better.
But what state? My awakening consciousness was stubborn in its ignorance.
I bunched up the sheet in my fist in hot frustration. A sharp intake of breath from the next bed. Her scent came to me.
I smiled. And the air in the room grew chill. Only a human.
And I?
What was I?
From the corner of my eye I saw the human in the next bed begin to shiver. No matter. The human was not important. Time and place. They were.
I flicked my eyes to the barred window. The glass. Thick, dense. Like the humans who made it.
I studied the face reflected in the barred window.
High cheekbones, seemingly intent on bursting up and out of flesh that shimmered as if coated with stardust.
A living waterfall of honey-wheat hair, looking more like a lion's mane than any other earthly word I could use.
My eyes.
I shivered looking at them though they were my own.
Large, slanted fae eyes chilling even me with their lack of warmth or mercy. Their color the burnt-out ends of ancient days.
Under my fingertips a pebble. I nodded. A mere speck of stone. But it would do.
The pebble shot from between my thumb and forefinger like a bullet. An electric circuit died, wailing its death song in tones higher than humans could hear.
I smiled like a wolf. We would have visitors soon.
More the pity for them.
I drew in a breath from the cold breeze bleeding from the wounded window. The sharp tang of Autumn.
Oak. Ash. Thorn. Decay.
Rotting leaves, mottled in bright hues of strangled life. The dark and bloody soil beneath them breathed out its lineage.
An aching sadness hollowed out my chest. The Misty Isles. Albion. England.
I whispered, the words feeling like dewdrops of blood on a wounded doe, "The lonely season in lonely lands."
***
When a star is born, what song does it sing?
I think it may sing this one:
