THE LIES LOCUST TELL

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..."

 

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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:

CAN LOVE SURVIVE WITHOUT LIES? FRIDAY'S ROMANTIC CHALLENGE

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My 400 word Friday entry for the Romantic Challenge given by Francine and Denise comes from the sequel to LOVE LIKE DEATH. Its title? THE PATH BACK TO DAWN.

Sixteen year old Blake Adamson has lost his heart both to a fallen angel and an alien succubus. Neither will share him. One or the other will kill him. Fallen, of THE LAST FAE, already has chained him to a tree in the wilderness to slowly starve rahter than chance him being corrupted by the infamous DayStar.

Kirika, the succubus, and Hone Heke, the fearsome Maori warrior, have been stunned to discover Blake still alive after six months of starvation.

He has survived by eating half of one of Idun's golden apples of imortality, gift of the Odin Raven, Muninn. He has saved the other half for the two girls he loves more than his own life.

In giving the saved quarter to Kirika, the succubus, who has found him, Blake finds love is never what he expects :

I frowned at my trembling. I was so weak. I fumbled at the button cinching my left shirt pocket.

I looked at Kirika. “W-Would you?”

She teasingly slapped my fingers. “The first of many buttons I will gladly undo, beloved.”

Beloved. I saw images of us wrapped in each other’s arms, doing things I knew we shouldn’t.

Not with Hone standing right there.

She quickly undid the button. Smiling wickedly, she dug into my pocket. She jerked her hand away.

Hone snapped, “What kind of trick did you pull?”

Kirika shook her head. “No tricks, Hone. Only a love that shames me.”

I pulled out the glowing slice of Idun’s apple. I looked at it. It wasn’t a jewel, but why was Kirika acting this way? Hone looked sick.

“I - I know it isn’t much --”

“Not much? Starving to death, you kept this. For me. Beyond the diamonds of suitors, I will treasure this gift.”

She slowly took it from my fingers. “Always.”

She brought it to my lips. “Now, eat, beloved.”

Muninn cawed, “Do not worry, Lady Kirika. He hast eaten a full half of ...”

Muninn looked like he could have bitten off his tongue

Kirika quickly reached into my right shirt pocket. Her eyes narrowed into slits.

“You saved a quarter for the Sidhe bitch? Fallen? She who left you chained to a tree to die slowly of starvation? You insult me!”

Muninn rasped,“I beg thee to pause an instant.”

Kirika spit in my face. I jerked. Time to leave.

“Hold, young fool. She dost not understand.”

Kirika husked, “Enlighten me, raven.”

“Hast thou truly tasted of this one’s spirit?”

“I was deceived by my loneliness.”

“Perhaps thou hast forgotten what meaning the boy places on his left side.”

“I do not understand.”

“Dost thou see no significance in his placing the apple he meant for thee in the pocket --- over his heart?”

Kirika’s lips quivered. She threw slender arms around me. “What a jealous fool I am! You did choose me over her. Over her.”

She kissed me. I couldn’t enjoy it. I would have placed her slice in my right pocket but for Muninn’s request. Muninn murmured in my ear.

“Sayest the truth, and I wilt peck out thine eye as I didst Odin’s.”

My silence was to spare Kirika’s heart not my eye. But it wasn’t any less a lie.
***


***

FALLEN in TO KNOW THE POWER OF DARKNESS

I paused before following the disordered orderly through the open doorway.

"Now I shall enjoy myself full measure."

"Wh-What are you going to do?," whispered Clover.

I arched an eyebrow. "I shall tutor him and his ilk as I did Guy de Maupassant."

"You knew him?"

I smiled, and Clover shuddered as her eyes met mine.

"Indeed. And he knew me. Though the encounter was not to his liking."

I smiled at the memory. "What he saw drove him quite mad. He tried to slit his throat to keep from seeing those visions endlessly repeated in his fevered brain. But I was merciful."

"H-How?"

"I let him die a year and a half later."

Clover started to edge back from me, but I snared her arm. "Come. Let us hear what lies locust tell."

"I don't understand."

"Nature does not require that her victims understand their fate."

"Don't make me. Please!"

I easily dragged her after me. After all, she was but flesh. I turned back and showed her all my needle teeth.

"Only she who walks the country road by night knows the power of darkness."

"Fallen!"

"Too true."

She squirmed helplessly in my arms as I followed the shivering orderly through the open doorway. I clamped a tight hand over her mouth. Alerted these tormentors of the helpless would force me to end my fun much too quickly.

Clover went death still as the metal door hissed closed behind us. I smiled when I spied the interior. The angular starting gate of a sprawling maze of corridors. Rats. They thought of humans as rats. How insulting to rats.

The metal dull. The stench fetid. Decaying flesh. Stagnant sewers. Stale air of the tomb.

The group of humans were intelligently scared witless.

But not as addled as the orderly who approached the tall, angular man in the lab coat, twitching his eyebrows furiously. The orderly jerked his arms about as if regressing to another stage of life. His clicks and clucks were unnerving the already unsettled humans. The doctor in the lab coat was past unsettled all the way to furious.

"Smitz. Smitz! Remember your station. English. English!"

The three other orderlys looked at one another, their own eyebrows convulsing as if about to tear themselves from their moorings. I smiled. One so likes to see one's efforts appreciated.

Smitz was beside him. Literally. He twitched in place as if cursed to dance to the music of the damned eternally. The clicks were mere husks now.

The doctor gave up and wetly gurgled his own series of rasping clicks. The humans stepped back as one unit. But the alien words seemed to help the orderly gather a wit or two.

"A-Abberations, Doctor. Abberations!"

"Talk sense, Smitz!"

Smitz shuddered in a grotesque fashion, his knees rubbing together as if for comfort, not unlike some giant preying mantis. "Man-Manifistations of psychic presence. Insane psychic presenses!"

The doctor's eyebrows did the impossible and moved sideways. "Psychic phenomena are the delusions of hu ...."

He bent his neck so sharply mine hurt just seeing him do it. " ... delusions of inmates like those here we study."

"Study?," grunted the tallest female among the patients.

Hair cut like a boy, body held in what she felt a mannish pose. Yet her genes betrayed her, and the effect was one of childish exaggeration.

"You're supposed to be helping us, Usher."

Unblinking eyes studied her remotely. "Are we? And that is Doctor Usher, Sydney."

A feral cherub of a young man to her right whispered, "What are you doing, trying to get him mad? Are you nuts?"

Sydney smirked, "Depends who you ask."

Smitz jerked in spasms. "No! I felt it. It is out there."

Usher moved his jaws sideways as if they were mandibles. "Felt what?"

"C-Contagion."

The doctor finally lost patience with Smitz and motioned with his eyebrows to a short, bulky orderly. "Chizsene, take this ... this reject to the larvae."

"No! Not that. Not that!"

Chizsene was not to be denied. And Smitz in his current state was no match for him. Though I will give him this, he tried. Chizsene dragged his throttled charge right past me. I could see the distaste and fear in the short orderly. I smiled. It would seem he feared contagion. So be it. His fear had pronounced his own judgement.

I leaned forward, drawing in his fear and breathed it back upon him fourfold. I smiled wide. Best to layer this cake.

I drew forth the words etched on the tomb of Edward the Black Prince. Cursed wretch that he had been. Though, truth to tell, since 1376, he had done nary a crime in all of Albion. Not surprising since when you are dead, you are quiet a long time.

As Chizsene looked his fear of contagion at Smitz, I murmured in his ear,

"Behold and see as you pass by

As you are now, so once was I.

As I am now, so soon you will be.

Prepare for that and follow me."

His eyes went wild wide as he passed. His chirp to the door barely audible. It hissed open. Chizsene and his charge stumbled through. The door slammed closed.

I whispered to the unseen mechanisms, "Rust of ages."

No longer would that door open. The contagion of fear and madness would now spread throughout the rest of the staff outside this chamber --

and to the larvae, whatever manner of creatures they might be.

And these few that remained? I smiled cold. They were mine.
***
the new trailer :

FALLEN in IT IS A FEARSOME THING TO BE FRIEND TO A SIDHE

I took Clover's quivering hand.

"The midnight hour has just begun. Time enough to teach terror to those who think themselves expert in it."

As we followed the unhinged orderly, Clover could not stop her shaking. I frowned. This would never do.

She must have some semblance of composure else she would be consumed by the next terrors I would inflict. I sighed deep.

If verse dipped in magic black unbalanced her, perhaps words of light from a long lost friend might restore some small measure of peace to her?

But which one? There were so few. So few. And none remained who still lived. I smiled though I ached inside.

Georgie Gordon. His poetry. His spirit would I use to restore hers. I would speak to her the words of another who, alone out of all his generation, could see me as I was.

I leaned my head next to hers, and though she flinched, I whispered still the words I hoped would heal,

"I would I were a careless child,
Still dwelling in my highland cave,
Or roaming through the dusky wild,
Or bouding o'er the dark blue wave.

The stiff pomp of Saxon pride
Accords not with the freeborn soul.
Which loves the mountain's craggy side,
And seeks the rocks where the billows roll."

Clover hushed in a breath, and with a sudden lunge, kissed me light on the cheek, pulling back as if the deed were done before thought could check it.

"How did you know that was my favorite verse? How?"

I touched gingerly my cheek. "Mayhap we are kindred souls."

"I - I would like that."

I turned my back to her and husked, "It is a fearsome thing to be friend to a Sidhe."

"Does it suck as much as being alone?"

Slowly I turned around and hesitantly took back up her hand. "Let us find out, shall we?"

She smiled wide, and I tried, and failed, not to hear the rest of Georgie's verse :

"I loved -- but those I loved are gone;
Had friends -- those friends are fled:
How cheerless feels the heart alone
When all its former hopes are dead;

Though gay companions o'er the bowl
dispel awhile the sense of ill,
Though pleasure stirs the maddening soul,
The heart -- the heart -- is lonely still."

And suddenly I was on fire with the need to be rid of this place, this foul deed ahead of me. Earlier I had not hated these tormentors. They had been merely acting out their nature.

But now hate was there hot within me. And they would rue the day they had decided to step conquering feet upon strange shores.

The unhuman orderly clicked out a series of churps as he hung onto the doorframe in front of him as if under assault by a gale. The black door hissed open. So that was how they secured their wards.

I smiled sharp. Time to tip the balance.
***

FALLEN in TERROR FOR TERROR

I placed a long forefinger to my lips in a silent order to hush and with the flat of my other hand pushed back reality a heartbeat.

The world became misty after-images.

Clover, showing all the memory span of a lightning bolt, started to speak. I pressed my forefinger against her open lips.

I kept forgetting the girl was daft. Poetry seemed to work best with her so I dredged up dreary Longfellow. Perhaps she would learn wisdom from his verse.

"Tell me not in mournful numbers,

Life is but an empty dream;

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem."

Longfellow seemed to work. Or mayhap it was the door being unlocked and thrust open. The massive human walked oddly into our room. Clover appeared shocked that he seemed to look right through us. I winked at her.

She almost giggled, but my fingers closed about her mouth like a vise. She hushed. As shocked as Clover was, our guest was even more so.

He looked this way and that, his eyes widening more and more. He twisted his neck in a way that hurt me to watch and spoke into a wire mesh on his shoulder. If you could call what he uttered speech.

It was a wet series of clicking, clucks, and rasping of vocal chords as if he were trying to imitate chalk grating against a slate board. All in all, it sounded nothing so much as a human trying to chatter like an angry grasshopper.

And it unnerved me to no end. Clover had gone from giggles to aghast in a heartbeat. Nor could I much blame her.

A hollow version of his strange speech sputtered from the wire mesh on his shoulder. His eyebrows appeared to be trying to wrench themselves from his forehead. He twisted about sharply and walked back down the hall.

I had to literally drag Clover after me as I followed something I no longer thought of as human. It had even stopped trying to walk human. The being scuttled quickly down the dark hallway. I half-expected it to drop to all fours and give up the pretense of humanity altogether.

Clover hissed low into my ear, "Things are not what they seem! You think?"

"I take it you have never heard him speak thus before."

"I knew everyone on the staff here was weird. But not this weird."

Something was trying to claw its way back into my bruised mind. "I do not think weird goes far enough."

"You think?"

"I know."

"That makes two of us."

She seized me by the shoulders. "Oh, Fallen! Please do not make me go. You don't know what that thing has done to me."

The brute turned suddenly, hearing as he did Clover's plea, though muted by time's reprieve. I clamped a hand back over her mouth. The orderly studied the shadowy hallway, his glowing eyes blankly passing over us as the unseen wraiths we were.

Clover stood, rooted to the spot by her terror. So this obscenity had done unspeakable things to my field mouse, had he? Then it was past time that this unwanted intruder and his ilk discovered Gaia's shores held terrors of their own.

I turned to Clover, and she shivered at what she saw in my eyes, and I smiled wide. "Bridges it is that you love so, then Bridges it is that this brute shall receive. Though I doubt he shall be thankful for the gift."

Midnight held her shadows close. I glided through them, gathering up their magic as I went, until I walked beside the striding tormentor of helpless girls. With ghostly fingers I stroked his throat. He stopped full still, fright bright in his unhuman eyes.

He glared unseeing right at me, and I whispered in his ear,


"On such a night, when air has loosed

Its guardian grasp on blood and brain,

Old terrors then of god or ghost

Creep from their caves to live again.



Some have seen corpses long interred

Escape from death's control.

Pale decayed forms -- nay, have even heard

The shrilling of an insane soul."



And with that, I licked his naked throat and raked the points of my nails across the back of his soft neck. Only their echoes did he feel. But they were enough. He shrieked wet, shrill, and long. With maddened eyes, he splayed with slipping feet down the darkened hallway.

I turned to Clover, her trembling hand held up to her open mouth, and smiled. "Terror for terror."
***

FALLEN in THE WORST HELL?

Clover hugged her knees, still shivering.

"Midnight. Just great. There's no clocks in these bloody rooms. They do that on purpose, you know. To make us sweat and jump at every footstep outside the door."

I shook my head. "Not this time. When you dared to be my champion uninvited, your terror became my province."

She went pale. "Wh-What I did was a bad thing?"

"The very worst, human."

She nodded wearily. "Figures. The times I caught the worst hell were always when I tried to do the right thing."

I felt my heart harden. "The worst hell? Human, you simply have no idea."

I breathed upon her, murmuring, "Sleep."

The room filled with the perfume of jasmine and lilac. Clover stiffened like a deer caught under the bow of a hunter. Eyes rolling up, she slumped backwards across the mattress in a most ungainly position. I arose and walked to her bed.

Sighing, I picked her up. She was light as if filled with straw. I laid her gently upon her hard mattress, nestling her head upon the pillow. I brushed the hair from her eyes, haunted even in sleep.

A whimsey of Tennyson came to me as I stood watching her in troubled slumber, and I whispered,

"She breathed in sleep a low moan,

And murmuring , as at each night and morn,

She thought, 'My spirit is here alone,

Walks forgotten and forlorn."

"Never forgotten, little field mouse. Never forgotten. Not for all eternity. My nature may well be the death of thee, but forgotten thou wilt never be."

Holding her right hand, I stood watch over her as the heartbeats drummed into minutes and the minutes flowed into hours. No clock did I need. My race knew well the chiming of the midnight hour when Hell's gate swung open the easier.

A chime of brass vibrated in the hollow that was my soul. The hour had come. I bent and lightly kissed her troubled forehead, quoting from the Bard this time, "The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve. It is almost fairy time."

Clover's eyelids fluttered as her mind struggled to surface above the heavy waves of sleep. I turned slightly. The odd doorstop of a human was just turning the far end of the long hallway outside.

For me there was no silence, only the sigh of spiders breathing, the shudder of the dying leaves as their tree held back its sap, the wet clicking of stretching scales as the snake slithered upon a rock.

And speaking of snakes, our very own two-legged one was walking its odd gait to us. I smiled wide. Death was on the air like the taste of ashes on the wind.

Clover shot straight up, clutching her breast. "Oh, god, it's midnight already?"

I took back her right hand. "No harm comes to you unless it comes from me."

"Gee, I feel ever so much better."

I smiled coldly. "I thought you would."

She looked pleadingly at me. "Oh, please, Fallen, I don't think I can go through another session of group therapy. Could you --"

"No. I am here for a reason."

"What reason?"

"At the moment it still eludes me. But it will come to me."

She pouted. "Before or after I am driven mad or killed?"

I showed her all my needle teeth. "Why I think that depends upon how firm a grip you have on life and sanity."

She reclaimed her hand from mine. "I think I understand why you want me to call you Fallen."

I have known driftwood to burst into flames under the gaze I gave her. "You have no idea. But you will. You will."
***
For those of you who liked PARANORMAL ACTIVITY :

CALL ME ... FALLEN

I ran my tongue over my needle teeth and decided to give this addled human fair warning.

"Call me Fallen."

Suddenly she looked as if she were about to cry. "Oh, I know you think me slow. And I am. But I still know that faeries are dangerous."

I stiffened, and she waved a weary hand. "Don't worry, Fallen. No one else sees you like I do."

I closed my eyes. How truly unique. The only one in this generation who could see me as I was. And she was a lunatic. How utterly fitting. It was a situation that screamed to be rectified. I shook my head. No. To yield to my nature towards a mind-bruised waif was beneath me.

And unimaginative. Clover mistook my frown for worry. I wagered she made many such mistakes.

"Actually, Fallen, I don't think any of the doctors paid much attention to you. I mean, the way you looked when you came in. I didn't think you were going to make it. That hit-and-run driver must've been going ninety."

She shook her head in wonderment. "How does a faerie get nailed by a car anyway?"

"On purpose I would wager. My memory of the incident is denied me."

"On purpose?"

"Do you think me an ungainly cow that I could not elude a bulky vechicle of steel?"

She pouted. "I am not an ungainly cow."

I sighed. "Do not make the mistake most mortals make. It is not all about you."

"I thought you were my friend."

I drew in a breath and my temper. I kept forgetting the girl was addled. "Clover, you are thinking of me in human terms. That is a fatal mistake. Nor I am fae or elf or sprite. I am Tuatha de Danann."

She squinted as if trying to see my words in the air. "Which is?"

The door flung open before I could speak. A mass of muscles masquerading as a man strode in. Clover looked terrified. I could taste her fear. It was thick in the stale air. What was going on?

I sniffed. The human smelled wrong. His eyes blinked too often. Clover started to edge away on her bed whimpering.

My eyes became slits. Was he the one who had fondled me? I felt the fury rise cold within me. I looked to his fingertips. They were not smoldering. He was not shrieking in agony. No, he was not the one. Then why was the field mouse so terrified of him? And why did he move as if his body were some ill-fitting garment?

He even moved his eyebrows oddly. As if something else should have been sprouting there instead. I watched fascinated as they quivered as if alive.

"So patient Jane Doe is awake?" The words came out frail and wet as if from a throat unaccustomed to forcing out air to make sounds.

I smiled, running my tongue along the edge of my sharp teeth. "Doe, a female deer."

Clover giggled despite her fear, "Ray, a drop of golden sun."

I nodded to the blank-faced doorstop of a human. "That is your cue to say ‘Me, a name I call myself.’ By the way --"

I smiled like a wolf. "You can call me ... Fallen."

The human not only looked a bull but obviously was as smart as one. He seemed bored to distraction. I thought about making that bored to death. Then he noticed the small hole in the thick window.

"Th-That's impossible! That glass is unbreakable."

I smirked. "Obviously."

"Oh, a smart-ass, huh?"

"Unlike you, my brains do not reside where I sit."

He turned to the window again and muttered, "That glass simply cannot be broken. How did a hu --"

He stopped and glared at me as if I had somehow tricked him. I ignored him. I studied the glass with all my senses. I went cold deep inside. He was right. On a level which cannot be put into human terms, it was a solid mass. I should not have been able to pierce it as I had.

Unaided that was.

I murmured, "Gaia as well as Abbadon?"

His eyes dismissed me as if I were bad meat. And for all I knew that was exactly what I was to him. He turned and walked in his odd way back out of the door.

He muttered under his breath, "What do they expect us to learn from the insane?"

He spun about. His eyes reflected the dim light in the room like a snake's ... but without as much warmth.

"Group therapy is at midnight."

Clover whimpered, "Not group therapy."

I smiled. "Midnight. My favorite time of day."

He closed the door behind him. At the sound of the bolt slaming home Clover shivered. Words penned by Kyoski came to me.

The snake slid away,

But the eyes that glared at me,

Remained in the grass.

Clover turned her own hollow eyes to me. "W-Who is Abbadon?"

This time it was I who shivered. "When Question warred against Answer, he was Question."

"Who won the war?"

I grew cold and looked inward into my own darkness. "The jury, as you humans say, is still out on that."
***

FALLEN in NAMES ARE DANGEROUS THINGS

For a little haunting beauty :

Fallen's story continues from LIES THAT LOCUST TELL as she awakens in a British insane asylum ...


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 deer, "The lonely season in lonely lands."

"Oh!," whispered the girl sitting on the next bed. "You like Robert Bridges, too? No one reads him anymore, you know."

Not rising, I turned my head and studied her. A tiny field mouse of a girl. Bright eyes, so clearly wanting to be liked, so clearly showing they often hadn't been.

Those quivering eyes were mute witness to the fact that Man had plowed through her world. And unlike the poet Robert Burns, Man had not cared overmuch. How human.

I rose slowly to a sitting position. "Fragile beauty is like that. Easily destroyed. Even more quickly forgotten."

She cocked her head as if studying me. And it was then I noticed the corpse-yellow bruise covering the left side of her face. I felt mine harden. Her frightened eyes darted to my chest then flinched away. I felt the breasts under my dingy hospital gown burn.

And I knew. I knew. I had been touched, fondled without invitation or delight. And even more, this tiny field mouse of a girl had come to my defense. And had paid the price.

"You were my champion I see."

She looked miserable. "I wasn't able to stop him."

"Few humans in your position would have even made the attempt."

She kept studying me. I wondered what she saw. One human in a generation saw me as I was. The rest of the herd saw only what they were looking for. And I? What was I looking for?

I turned to the face reflected in the barred window. Certainly not that. Not that.

From beyond the wounded window I heard a mournful singing. Nightingales. Far off and forlorn.

To do a service for a Sidhe was a fearsome thing indeed, never to be done lightly nor without cost. But before the field mouse found that out I would do her a kindness. I smiled bitter. A breaking of tradition, true, but I broke every rule I could not bend.

I brought the faint, bittersweet song to the ears of the field mouse and murmured lines from the poet she so liked,

"Nay, barren are those mountains and spent the streams;

Our song is the voice of desire, that haunts our dreams,

A throe of the heart,

Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound,

No dying cadence nor long sigh can sound,

For all our art."

She clapped her hands like a little girl. "Oh that was so beautifully done. Your accent is the oddest thing I've ever heard. Even more haunting than those nightingales."

She stuck out her hand. "My name's Clover."

"Of course it is."

"No, really. My Mum was a bit spacey I'm afraid. The last of the Flower Children."

"We might have gotten along then. I am the last of my kind, too."

She paled, lowering her hand and her voice until even I had difficulty hearing her, "Y-You haven't told me your name."

"Names are dangerous things, Clover."

"They're just sounds, that's all."

"No. True names are runes that foretell the end of those who hear them."

I ran my tongue over my needle teeth and decided to give this addled human fair warning. "Call me Fallen."
***

AND A STAR TO STEER BY

I must go down to the sea again, to the
lonely sea and sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to
steer by.
- John Masefield.

What star do you steer by? When you live? When you interact with others? When you write?

Everybody knows something, but is what they know true? Can you hear Pilate ask his infamous question? I can.

I mean, flames look like objects but in truth are processes. In like manner, so are we humans. We judge others by appearance, by action. But how valid is that?

The human mind is a mysterious realm. A man can't always be judged by what he does. He may keep the law to the letter, and yet inwardly be worthless. The lights go out over the city, and his actions do a 180 degree turnaround. Another man may commit a sin against society and yet accomplish through that "sin" a true act of compassion and heroism.

Nor are words to be trusted -- if politicians haven't already taught you that. Universal peace is much talked about. I can't help but think that foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

That last thought got me thinking along strange lines during my exile during Rita and Katrina, and I wrote a story for my amusement alone. What if the Earth were invaded, and Good was too busy hunting terrorist plots and pointing nuclear missiles at each other to notice? What if it were up to Evil to defend the planet? As in "Not in my sandbox you don't!" And so taking that premise, I had a fallen angel awaken in a British asylum with no memory of having gotten there -- an asylum run by alien invaders. I called it "THE LIES LOCUST TELL."

And to make it doubly interesting, I told it in first person through the eyes of the fallen angel. Ever try to express yourself realistically as an angel, whose perspective spans eternity? I found out how hard amusing myself could really be.

Here are the first four pages of my story to give you a chance to see if I did a credible job at looking at life through the eyes of a fallen angel :

THE LIES LOCUST TELL
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. Only a human.

And I?

What was I?

And with the question came a fragment of the answer. I was not the happier for it. More words whispered out of the darkness that was my soul.

"Come away, human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand."

I frowned. I had no patience for whimsy. Not even that of Yeats.

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.

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 on my lips feeling like dewdrops of blood on a wounded doe, "The lonely season in lonely lands."

"Oh!," whispered the girl sitting on the next bed. "You like Robert Bridges, too? No one reads him anymore, you know."

Not rising, I turned my head and studied her. A tiny field mouse of a girl. Bright eyes, so clearly wanting to be liked, so clearly showing they often hadn't been.
Those quivering eyes were mute witness to the fact that Man had plowed through her world. And unlike the poet Robert Burns, it had not cared overmuch. How human.

I rose slowly to a sitting position. "Fragile beauty is like that. Easily destroyed. Even more quickly forgotten."

She cocked her head as if studying me. And it was then I noticed the corpse-yellow bruise covering the left side of her face. I felt mine harden. Her frightened eyes darted to my chest then flinched away. I felt the breasts under my dingy hospital gown burn.

And I knew. I knew. I had been touched, fondled without invitation or delight. My body remembered though my mind still lay half-shrouded in fog. A male human had dared to touch my bare breasts. And even more, this tiny field mouse of a girl had come to my defense. And had paid the price.

"You were my champion I see."

She looked miserable. "I wasn't able to stop him."

"Few humans in your position would have even made the attempt."

She kept studying me. I wondered what she saw. One human in a generation saw me as I was. The rest of the herd saw only what they were looking for. And I? What was I looking for?

I turned to the face reflected in the barred window. Certainly not that. Not that.

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.

From beyond the wounded window I heard a mournful singing. Nightingales. Far off and forlorn. To do a service for a Sidhe was a fearsome thing indeed, never to be done lightly nor without cost. But before the field mouse found that out I would do her a kindness. I smiled bitter. A breaking of tradition, true, but I broke every rule I could not bend.

I brought the faint, bittersweet song to the ears of the field mouse and murmured lines from the poet she so liked,

"Nay, barren are those mountains and spent the streams;
Our song is the voice of desire, that haunts our dreams,
A throe of the heart,
Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound,
No dying cadence nor long sigh can sound,
For all our art."

She clapped her hands like a little girl. "Oh that was so beautifully done. Your accent is the oddest thing I've ever heard. Even more haunting than those nightingales."

She stuck out her hand. "My name's Clover."

"Of course it is."

"No, really. My Mum was a bit spacey I'm afraid. The last of the Flower Children."

"We might have gotten along then. I am the last of my kind, too."

She paled, lowering her hand and her voice until even I had difficulty hearing her, "Y-You haven't told me your name."

"Names are dangerous things, Clover."
**********************************************
Louis L'Amour once wrote : the man or book who can give me a new idea or a new slant on an old one is my friend. Hopefully, this post has been a friend. I know that I think of all of you out there who have written me as friends.

And it is the midnight hour when that dread gate gapes open, and silent shades slip into the darkness to visit our dreams ...