Ah majesty! she sighs to herself and proceeds immediately to trip upon a loose rock in full sight of the rest of the tourists wandering about afore the castle. Well that will make me memorable at the very least. Thankful that no ankles had been sprained nor knees skinned, Emily gets up to her feet grateful that her pride had long ago rolled its eyes and withdrawn into some deep dark cave. She was a lost cause after all. A little bit of Irish dirt clung to her jeans but other than that, no damage done. And even the dirt was only a souvenir at the end of the day.
Now Emily walks off the path and onto the grass, approaching the edge of the cliff, the view that had caught her eyes moments before and so precipitously tossed her to the ground. There is something inherently majestic in the way the three realities collide. The solidity and gravity of the cliff and the ground under her feet sound forth in pompous solemnity. The whimsy and fanciful airs given by the sky and its train of clouds scurrying to and fro whistle jauntily in their place. And of course the sea. The wild angst and sheer power of the waves below her soar forth as strains of the violin, haunting in their beauty and aching in the rawness of their tears. So a symphony is born. The cliffs, the sky and the sea. All a part of something greater yet to be.
There is a sparkling in the air as the waves crash into the cliffs and throw up a spray into the sky and proclaims that this moment has arrived and that in its very temporal nature there is a beauty that signals the eternal of the divine. Emily doesn’t recognize all this in words, at least not in this very moment. Later she would write upon it in full, at least as much as her conscious mind can comprehend at a moment far removed. Yet now, though words escape her and only a silent exclamation hovers in front of her lips, Emily comprehends now more fully than she ever will again. The spirit within her resonates as if strummed by an invisible hand. And perhaps it has been. There is in this moment a knowledge that she has witnessed a creative act that is far beyond her. Emily stands at the edge of the cliff and whispers a prayer. It is good for her to be in this place and worship. It is good for her feet to stand upon this solid earth as she gazes upon the sky that stretches over her and the sea.
Tag: short story
Scribblings
The scent of jasmine wafted through the open window. He breathed deep. Truly, this was a different place. As he continued to climb the stairs, he looked out the window to his right and gasped. The grey sky from down below was gone. Now there was only blue sky as far as his eye could see, even to the horizon. Below him green foliage waved cheerfully. The tops of trees, he realized. From above it was difficult to identify the types of trees, but they were large, that he knew. Yet it seemed as if he looked out upon a carpet of living green tendrils, welcoming and inviting.
The sky glowed an even deeper blue. The sun was nowhere to be seen and if he had to guess, it was surely not far past noon. Yet the breeze floating through the window was cool and crisp and he breathed in the scent of jasmine once more. He came to himself and found that he was standing still at the window, captured by the glories of the day, enraptured by the true found stories. He had heard tell of this, but even now, he didn’t know how it was possible. This was a dead world. Or so he had been told. Where did this life come from? Was it a dimensional pocket extrusion or a fancy holographic illusion? He doubted it. Even the finest light tech couldn’t replicate such beauty as lay before him. Maybe it was a different universe. Indeed, he thought his own incapable of this. Maybe in Old Earth. Not here. Not now.
And now he understood why some would come to pilgrimage here. Now he knew why some would come to live a half-remembered dream. Even if he didn’t truly understand where or how or why he was, he did not doubt that he was. He breathed in deep. Again the jasmine. Again the light of the heavens startled him with its brilliance. Surely it was not possible for something to be so blue.
He supposed he should keep climbing. He had been standing at the window for what could have been either hours or days. He knew not. With a sigh, he turned and stepped upwards. He knew he dare not linger, even though he felt as if he may never see such a glorious sight with his own eyes again.
As he continued up the stairs, it seemed that the staircase started to spiral in a tighter circle, that possibly the stairs began to narrow. He wasn’t sure, so gradual was the change. The deep mahogany of the handrail felt warm beneath the skin of his hand as he ascended. His legs now seemed incapable of stopping. Upward and onward.
Every few steps he would pass another window of blue radiance and he would smell jasmine and honeysuckle and he would feel the wind caress his cheek. Yet he did not stop for he knew that what he sought was nigh. What he sought! But he sought for nothing, that’s what he had told the old man down below, so long ago now. The old man in his violently violet robes, welcoming him in a voice that had seemed overly pretentious and full of joy at the time. Now the man wondered. Was everything coming true?
He wasn’t a pilgrim, he had told the old man. Pilgrims are fools, blinded by the whispered glories of a dead past. Why was he here? Well, it was simple – he had superiors who had superiors who in a most superior fashion had declaimed desires of revealing what lay beneath the pernicious rumours. And he was the least threatening of his kind, so of course he would be the one sent. To discover and learn and seek the truth. To expose, as he thought of it. To rip the curtain back from the hallowed temple of the weak-minded.
And so he had entered the squat building earlier this morning (week? Month? Year?) and despite the cheap ceramic-overlaid interior décor, he had smiled as he heard strains of Rachmaninoff’s 2nd faintly echoing, as if from a far-off room. And then the old man had ruined everything with his ridiculous grand entrance and pretentious posturing and vain attempts to justify the existence of the Tower.
Despite the old man’s pleas, he had ignored all the scribblings and carvings. He had seen the same such artifacts countless times before. Forward to the main attraction, forward to the staircase. At least he knew of the staircase now, after his…encounter of the night before. Gooseflesh rose. He would not recall those memories.
But now he climbed. And at the bottom he was a man who believed nothing and ventured everything because what was there to lose? Now as his hand gripped the rail tightly, he shuddered. Did he believe? Could he believe?
A doorway loomed ahead. There were no more stairs. The door was small, barely taller than his own height. It was of oaken appearance, inlaid with finely wrought metallic elements. Light glowed and pulsed amongst the metal engravings. Warming, welcoming light. His hand left the railing and he grasped at the doorknob. It was cool and smooth under his touch, and it seemed to melt into his hand as if his hand was the only key that could unlock the door.
He shuddered again. In fear? In bliss? He did not know. What had they done to him?
What were they doing to him?
He could not resist any longer.
He ever so slightly turned the doorknob.
And the door swung open.
To Boldly Go
I haven’t written anything proper in a while…so I hope you don’t mind this extremely random and most weird short story.
Her eyes rested longingly on that last lonely crepe. It was sitting oh so daintily on the faux silver platter, it was adorned with the perfect amount of powdered sugar and it called her name. True, it had been sitting there for a few hours, so it surely would taste of stale flour and dried out berries, but she didn’t care. Her breakfast had been a sad half of a grapefruit. Not even the better half. She almost felt tempted to just grab the crepe and stuff it in her mouth, but then…then she’d get yelled at by the makeup artist and the director and Tom and…it just wouldn’t be worth it. Anna sighed. Sometimes being a movie star just wasn’t worth it. This was one of those times.
Of course, being a star had its perks. She didn’t have to do her own makeup, for one thing. Her outer face sat pristine, carefully plastered onto what she thought of as her “Saturday night” face. Saturday night, of course – being the only night she ever had to herself anymore. This latest shoot was a brutal, six days a week, fourteen hours a day. Saturdays were nominally off-days, but they’d been working those lately too. She still made sure to excuse herself early and make her way to her condo.
And then, for at least a few hours, she curled up in bed with a cup of cocoa, read her current fantasy novel and pretended she was a normal person. Her condo was her last remaining stronghold against the outside world. Her agent wasn’t even allowed in. Her condo was small by her peers’ standards, but it was hers. It protected her from the schemes of the paparazzi and the bloids. It sat in Los Angeles, polluted and tarnished by the city air. Yet it was hers. Sometimes she would look at her face in the mirror and wonder what others saw in her. She saw a woman that looked increasingly dirty and stretched. She’d wash her face again and again, trying to uncover the small girl that used to peer at her out of the mirror’s depths. Where did she go?
When Anna was five, she had wanted to be an astronaut, traveling to the farthest reaches of space. Her life goal was to be the first person on Mars. This was back in the days when mankind still explored space and sent out probes every few months. Nowadays, no country bothered spending money on space exploration, deeming it an “extravagant and wasteful proposition”, as the prime minister of Scotland had said in his latest rant on the floor of the UN.
Once though, Anna had dreamed of traveling in space. She had imagined braving the silent void, traveling through the vast reaches of space. And now she sat on a set in Los Angeles, filming yet another ponderous period piece. Surrounded by loud-mouthed executives and frantic cameramen and causing a mild panic every time she smiled. She was sick of it. It paid the bills.
Anna’s eyes darted toward the crepe again. She seriously wanted it. Anna sighed loudly and ran her fingers through her carefully arranged hair. Shoot would be starting soon though – once Tom got out of makeup. How it took him an hour longer to get through makeup, she had no idea…unless it had something to do with his preponderance of wrinkles.
And as her mind thought of the wrinkles on her co-star’s face, she thought back to simpler times, back before she knew what paparazzi and co-concentrators and restraining orders were. Back before she had to stare into a co-star’s face and pretend she had chemistry with him. Back when wrinkles signified wormholes in time and space….
She floated through a rusty starship corridor, her suit nearly catching on a protruding gauge. This mission was a simple one, but it would end quickly enough if she tore her suit. As Anna made her way through to the far control pod, she looked back for a second, satisfied she’d not been followed by any…unwanted presence. The silence stretched loud in her ears and she smiled as she thought of what her father would say if he could see her now. He had always told her that she’d amount to nothing more than a shiny broompusher and yet here she was, a rogue starpilot exploring a derelict freighter a hundred light years from Earth. Not too bad for a farm girl from Iowa.
Anna pushed open the last door that sat between her and the cockpit. It swung heavily, hindered by the rust that had accumulated over the centuries. And then…she forgot about the door and the rust and she forgot to think much of anything at all. The ship’s control lights were ominously lit, not dull and dead as they should have been. And there were words swift scrolling across the main console in a far-ancient language. She was not alone on this ship after all. There was an intelligence with her. A machine intelligence. She was not alone. The lights blinked at her in a mildly threatening fashion, and then her eyes glanced more closely at the computer screen. The script had changed to a more familiar one.
WHO ARE YOU TO DISTURB?
Anna reluctantly touched her fingers to the dust stained keyboard and tapped in almost-forgotten patterns.
I COME IN PEACE. I COME TO EXPLORE. I COME TO LEARN. I COME TO SEE.
YOU ARE HUMAN. YOU ARE NOT WELCOME.
I COME ALONE. I MEAN NO HARM. I COME TO SEE.
The lights of the console whirred in an almost hesitant fashion, as if the machine mind was thinking, its mind tracing long unused pathways in its circuits. New words finally flashed upon the console, slowly.
THEN SEE.
The ship began a gentle yaw to her left, showing her another portion of star studded space through the cockpit view screen. And there was a flash. Anna blinked. The sky was still full of stars. Yet, she had never seen such patterns. Before her mind could comprehend the fact that she’d traveled a thousand thousand light years in a millisecond, before it became clear that she was now stranded in deep space with a likely hostile machine intelligence as her only companion…before all that, she brought her hand up to her mouth and gasped. Stars wheeled across the sky in front of her, galaxies pinwheeling in front of her eyes. Stardust filled the void. Space was not empty here, it was heaving, full of life and beauty. Anna struggled to understand. Stars painted the canopy of space as if strewn there by a master painter. Nebulas arrayed themselves in elegant rows and began dancing to the song of the stars of heaven. Anna did not understand. There was so much beauty. Why? Anna put her hand down on the rusty computer console and sighed in longing and awe.
And then the sky crackled, softly.
“Let’s go, people!”
Anna jerked upright. Had she been…dreaming? Tom was striding toward the columned area they were scheduled to shoot their first scene, a flirty rendezvous of some sort, Anna remembered. Anna sighed. What had been in her dream? It had been…beautiful.
“We’re on a schedule,” that annoying voice barked. Carefully, Anna rose from her chair and walked towards the camera strewn pavement.
Anna set her face in the same mask that had graced a thousand magazine covers and smiled a gorgeous pink-lipped smile, casting one more look at the lonesome crepe.
