Post by NeoEllis on Feb 2, 2006 0:27:41 GMT -5
The Million and First Winter
Justin Ellis
Justin Ellis
In the beginning, God, and all the rest of the world, was to be found only in an egg. A tiny black egg, smaller than the smallest grain of pepper. God did break free from his shell, and out with him came the heavy and the light; the Earth and Heaven.
In the beginning, there was very little of the world to speak of. Heaven was less meager than the smallest wisp of smoke and Earth was smaller than the smallest grain of soil. Yet Heaven and Earth grew tenfold whenever God slept, and God grew with them.
Soon, Heaven and Earth grew to enormous proportions, and God stood erect between them so that they would never touch.
With time, God's body withered and died. His blood became the rivers and the seas, his hair became the wheats and the grasses, his left eye became the moon and his right became the sun, his muscles became the soil and the fleas that lived on his body became the humanity and the bears and the birds and the fish and all the dominion of creature.
Yet God's soul did not die. His soul found rest in Heaven because it was clean, and the Earth, with his body's rot, was foul.
God looked down on the Earth and saw it was a haze. And so, God separate the dark from the light and called them night and day, and it was good.
God looked down on the Earth and saw that humans lived too easily. And so, God separate humans into Man and Woman so they might make their time wandering and searching for something greater. God made women weak, and God made men weak. And it was good, and it was bad.
Men and women, forever with bottomless want, became corrupt. Humanity made war and pollution and other great waste so that they might fill their bellies with material pleasure - because it was easier that way. After a thousand years of watching this decadence, with great anger toward humanity, God sent his messenger to smash the human things, and smash them it did. And after a thousand years of human rebuilding, God sent his messenger again to teach humans of virtue. And after a thousand years of teaching men and women virtue, they were still corrupt. Thus, every thousand years God sent his messenger to smash human culture to dust.
While God's servant crushed human means and human ends, he could not crush human thoughts and human ideas. Humanity recalled its endeavors of the past, even in the rubble of the present. And so, men and women built tools -weapons- with which to fight. Nine hundred and ninety nine times humanity used the finest fruits of the minds to fight God's messenger - and nine hundred and ninety nine times they fail. It was on the thousandth battle - a thousand years since their last battle, a million years since their struggle against God began, mankind killed God's messenger.
So, the next year, humanity then set out to kill God, and kill God they did.
So, God was dead.
Episode I -The 6000th Winter
At first, no one took much notice of it, the fire in the sky. Really, how long had it been there before the first court astronomer took notice of it? Nothing more than a wobbling, pale white smear against the stars at that time, anyhow. High priests and nobles made small talk about it to each other between duties and leisure and whatnot, but it was not for two moons that the rest
of the city began to take interest.
After two months of being left undisturbed by the eyes of most men and women, the sickly, pallid scuff mark on the heavens had bloomed into a haunting ballet of color in the sky. Wispy streams of radiance danced and swayed amongst the stars, mutating from scarlet to amber to emerald to the most brilliant blue any of the poor peasant desert dwellers had ever seen. Oddly enough, it grew more vivid and luminous on the nights when the moon was at its fullest.
Thoth shuffled his bare and calloused feet along the sandy main street of the low rising adobe city. He and his wife, Maat, had just completed their ritual prayers at the temple and were now on their way just outside the city walls. Being small farmers along the river, they had naturally spent the better part of their day praying for a successful harvest - they would need it. A tide of maroons and violets had begun to wash in across the sky as the sun slipped below the western horizon and, the eastern skies becoming a cool and dark blue in turn. The fire in the sky was just now becoming visible, and Thoth regarded it with awe, a little suspicion and much ire.
Reaching the gate, Thoth found himself staring down the road that stretched on without him, over the horizon and beyond. Where did it go? To the next town; he had been there himself once and had seen it with his own eyes, but the road persistently went on to meet the horizon just the same from there. Likewise, it did the same in the opposite direction. How far could it go? Forever and on? Not possible. Perhaps it met itself again? That didn't seem possible to him either. Thoth regretted wondering.
Maat gazed at the spectacle in the sky as distant winds howled closer, bringing her arm to cover her face just in time to protect her eyes as she tasted a gust of dusty wind. When it was safe, her eyes flickered toward her husband, and a moment later to the bare line where the dunes and clouds met.
She asked what was wrong, rubbing her bulging and firm belly.
He told her that it was nothing, that his mind was wandering.
That night, as Thoth and Maat, shared an old burlap blanket and a wood fire in their small hut in the center of their small wheat field, little more than a passing blemish on the river bank, they wondered.
“What do you think it is?” Maat asked.
“Don't know,” replied Thoth with a shrug and a half defeated sigh. “I worry about it. About what people are saying about it.”
“Yes but, haven't you heard the legends, too?”
“You must have heard a different story than I did, because that's exactly what I mean.”
“You don't mean the legend of Ouroboros, do you?”
“That's the one.”
“Well... what did the version you heard say?”
“That the fire in the sky will bring doom, death, destruction and the end of all things as we know them. My life isn=t exactly what I want it to be, but I'm really not in the mood for that.”
“Oh?” Maat smiled a bit, shifting as the wood fire flickered in her eyes. The legends I heard was that the fire in the sky would bring rebirth and the renewal of all things. It=s the most beautiful thing I or anyone, I think, has ever seen. Doesn’t that give you, I don't know, hope?”
“Hoping for the best, but expecting the worst. That's what they say isn't it?”
“What's wrong?” she asked.
“It's nothing,” he said.
“Tell me,” she insisted.
He relented. “I just wonder... is this it? Is this all there is? Be born, grow up, get married and work in the field all day until I die?”
“We're still better of than others," she squeezed his hand, and we have each other. More than that, we have our child.”
“I love you... but I just wish there was more to life than this. I don't want to die having never done anything more important than raising crops.”
“There's nothing more important than raising and protecting a family, for that, I'm proud of you.”
The next morning, the sky screamed bloody rage like a savage beast with a thorn in its paw and a dagger in its heart. The air above was a torrent of heavy, charcoal colored clouds, as it an inferno raged above them. The heavy hand of the wind moved entire dunes and smacked the city like meaty palm of an enraged adult into a child=s face. Swift and cruel.
It all swirled around a brilliant naval in the sky, an eye in the storm hundreds of meters wide from which a flood of light flowed. Neither Thoth nor Maat dared to venture outside as the clutched one another tightly, praying that their flimsy hut would endure the storm. Never the less, a solider came, shouting to Thoth that the king had ordered all the city's men to protect the main gate. Thoth hesitated, simply staring at the intruder blankly before the man barked at him again to get out. He staggered up, looking back to his wife as if to say, 'This is futile, what ever's coming I can't stop.' She rose, and her eyes seemed to speak, 'You have to at least try.' He grabbed the best weapon he had, a hoe, and headed out.
The wheat fields lay nearly flat, submitting easily to the brute force of the winds. Thoth was in awe of the vortex of light, he was very confused, but he knew what it was. The clouds, in all their violence, seemed impossibly high, as high as the blue of the sky on better days. He kept his head down as he marched behind the solider and other peasant conscripts, but managed to throw his head over his shoulder just once to take a look at his home, it seemed as though it might be the last time he ever would. It was then that her realized Maat had been following after him. He opened his mouth to shout her away, but rather than words coming out, sand rushed in. He double over and hacked, then tried to wave her off, but she kept on.
The city main gate was indeed as well defended as it could have been, given the circumstances. From boys scarcely old enough to grow stubble to men old enough to sleep their next night in the grave, from peasants like Thoth to members of the warrior caste to everyone in between (yes, even nobles ) , it seemed that indeed ever man the city had to offer had gathered around the gate. Many too had their wives, lovers, whores, mothers or what have you with them. Some even brought their daughters.
And then they waited. They waited for long, and then longer. After that, they continued to wait, whatever boredom they might have felt suppressed by the tension, anxiety and maddening primal fear.
Then it came, and the sweet wait could never have been long enough.
Out of the dish of light embedded in the angry cloud cover came... a speck. The sea of the light began to dim and the contract until it was gone. The winds too began to relent, if only slightly. The point, the speck, appeared to be very far off -and it was- but as it slowly loomed in view, still suspended far above the ground, it looked as though it was drawing closer to the city. Some fled in that instant, but most stay, either curious of just too terrified to move. However, before long it dawned on the spectators that the thing, now much more than a speck, was not approaching, but growing. They could see that it was a loop, growing wider and thicker exponentially to impossible proportions.
It was horrible. Or close to it, the creature wasn=t quite horrible. It was wrong, terribly wrong, but horrible would not be the right word - it wasn't quite Earthly enough to be called that.
It was like a snake, almost, its body being pulled out of its mouth as it grew in length and girth. Its skin... its skin Cover in all sorts of things, human and animals things, massive exposed organs beating and pulsing in the open air. Innumerable lungs and hearts and livers and brains and arms and legs and penises and vaginas and things no one had ever seen littered the surface of the monster=s body. Finally, when it had finished unraveling itself, it=s body smacked the ground, sending visible shock wave through the ground, still holding its head erect in the air. Those careful observers who still had enough wits about them to see at all noticed that the width of the serpentine body had completely crushed the next city.
The people around the gate stood rooted in their tracks, sapped of even the basic flee survival mechanism, unable to do much more than relieve themselves and watch. Maat sank her nails deep into the flesh of Thoth's hand, and Thoth crushed a few of the bones in Maat's hand. Neither of them noticed.
And then the massive jaw opened, and it bellowed. The remainder of the clouds shot away from the beast like a flock of birds from an explosion. The crowd as knocked down, thrown back at least ten meters, many where lucky enough to meet their end at city wall. Maat staggered up, she couldn't hear anything, but she felt warmth trickling from her ears. She looked around to see that blood flowed from the ears of everyone around her (among other places), but she could not see Thoth anywhere. Where was Thoth? See noticed that she was holding Thoth's hand and part of this lower arms, but where was the rest of him? Her hand hurt. Where was Thoth? She hurt allover. Where had he gone? Her stomach hurt more than anything else. She was bleeding from between her legs, too. Where was he?
The creature, the angel, then spread it's wings. Massive things like those of a stork or a swan, perfectly formed, a pearl white with a blue tint that filled the sky, so large they seemed wrap right around the people and the city and the river and everything. Bolts of lighting jumped from the ground to the wings as they began to glow. Then there was a flash, and then it was over.
* * *
Are all things that are born destine to live again?
When the universe we live in has long been gone...
...another will appear to take its place.
And another after that, and another after that, and another after that...
Someday, will the matter we are made of find itself in a similar combination?
How many times have you lived?
How many times have you died?
How many times will you feel the same pain?
How many have there been?
How many more will there be?
In the future...
And in the past...
Are all things that are born destine to live again?
When the universe we live in has long been gone...
...another will appear to take its place.
And another after that, and another after that, and another after that...
Someday, will the matter we are made of find itself in a similar combination?
How many times have you lived?
How many times have you died?
How many times will you feel the same pain?
How many have there been?
How many more will there be?
In the future...
And in the past...
Copyright 2006 Justin Klitgaard-Ellis[/i]