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aguu1; 1542, England
Rhode was young, and she was also dying. The nurse came back to caress the head of limp golden hair from Rhode's ghastly skin. With a steady, practiced hand the aged nurse pressed a wrinkled hand covered in a sweetly-scented silk handkerchief to the girl's mouth. It came away reddened with rust and anger, her life's blood rejecting her body entirely.
The priest that mama and papa paid much guinea for came and laid his hand on her bandaged forehead; wet with sweat of the afternoon sun. He commented that her temperature was too hot for her skin; it should have been crab-red by now.
She shrugs his hand away and settles herself back on the pillows, adorned with golden silk and white pearls, princess to the very end. Her bed and fragile body smells of licorice and dried blood.
He came because he did, she thought, what was appropriate to the dying everyday. Her ears strained to hear the strings of Latin rolling out of his mouth, oddly comforted. He checks the marks on her arms, minute crisscrossing lines that made her look abused, the wound to his weakened eyes bleeding more profusely than before.
'What a pity, and to a mere child.'
"May I?" his mouth opened to say, a dry whisper in the perfumed room. He didn't want to hurt her any more than necessary. Rhode gives a small nod, unable to speak without purging more blood. Her arm looked skeletal, veins protruding and the ghost of a bone could be seen but it wasn't this he was looking at.
It was the dark, large star-cross that was embedded onto the inside of her wrist; blackened sinner-holy blood that could be a sign from the Devil and God they feared and revered. She was either very evil or very good, a prodigious female Christ chosen to die for them all -- or the byproduct punishment for the couple that owned the woodsy mansion -- stories hushed and retold around the family, from the Contessa's numerous infidelities to the Count's inability to father a male heir and their only daughter was being called into God's sanctuary. He refused to even let the thought of such a girl fall into Evil's hands.
She, Rhode thinks that she is neither, but something more wonderful than they could ever hope to comprehend. The cuts on her body and the smell of her bloody mattress only reminded her of the hunt, that call for the strong to blot out the weak...a calling she treasured.
'I hate this body. My mind is free while my body is pinned by disease.' the mantra echoed inside her head.
Unbeknownst to everyone in the bedroom a tall man was watching, his body black and wearing a top hat. Even as she is dying, he thinks, she wears the veil of immortality very well.
For it is only when we die, he believes that we begin to live. Slowly Rhode's eyelashes sweep and close, and she is whisked away to dream.
He is waiting for her there.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The King of Neverthere, he called himself. He who was First feels her, who is Second. The Gift was bestowed by God upon all of mankind; his prideful army being molded to separate the holy from the damned.
He reminds himself that God did not wish to create 'Hell' -- the actual word was lost upon the human tongue, who cannot understand the language of angels -- but without strife and confusion he could not prove who wanted to be in Paradise.
'Who are you?' he hears her heart whispering and calling; his own immortal beat leaps with joy. It will be wonderful to have a family again, to share the dark with. He cannot speak and thus sends her dreams to explain that he could hear; he just could not talk.
The language of humans is too simple; far too much that it is easily misunderstood.
~~~~~~~
She has a most unusual dream. Rhode is alone in a vast meadow where pink-red amaranths grow, and the moon is always yellow-white and languidly, plumply hangs in the amber-gemstone sky.
The wind runs past her short, spiky hair, and gone are the long hot sleeves of gown, instead clad in a notoriously short negligee. White, trembling hands seemed to embrace a knotted, gnarled tree. The apples of her pale cheeks were glowingly warm as she looks towards someone else waiting, far away from her.
Rhode cannot see the face of this person, but she is very sure of two things: the smell of vanilla and the taste of honey linger in the air.
A loud church-bell is rung and she jumps; the figure she is watching is cut away like a knife through the thickest mist. She sees him; the tall man with the jaunty hat and the careless gait, although his presence made her heart thump horrifyingly fast.
Rhode calls to him in her soundless voice and for a moment he looks, as though he hears her small pitiful feelings. After awhile he shakes his head and continues on his merry way.
Being treated as if she no longer mattered.
Now the anger comes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
She is lovely, he thinks, looking at her sleeping form still on the bed.
'The first fifteen steps are nearly done, my dear...'
it was as if she had been born to live forever.
From his perch he counts the last remaining breaths of her life. The final process was the worst, he thought. The transformation between human and Soul -- there was another name, he was called in the realms of the Astral Plane, a being stronger than Satan's ilk, yet closer to God's breast than angels -- was oft the most painful.
He wondered if she had exceptionally high pain tolerance; she hadn't cried out while the priest chanted his drivel or when her tender cuts were touched, handled roughly by the paid nurse who merely wanted to finish her job before scuttling away to gossip about her ward, the Blessed/Cursed one.
A soft moan answered him. Rhode does not mind the pain; it proves that underneath the ache, festering disease and disgusting-sweet perfume she is alive, and that is all that matters in the end. That was what she was, before daughter or princess or girl she is a mash of bones and blood, breath and muscle. Ignoring the wishes of everyone – even the mother in her head that tells Rhode that it is a bad idea – she gets up and, reveling in the pins and needles shooting through her thin legs, walks to the window and opens it, breathing deeply, feeling the snowy air pass into her black shredded lungs, setting them aflame.
Inside her mind’s eye she sees not the tips of evergreen and knotty pine but smells salt and seawater, a dark castle resting precariously, drunkenly on cliffs surrounded by licorice flowers. The water pounds and crashes against the cliff, but strong it stands and the castle is alive. She licks the remaining blood from her lips and a predatory smile crosses her gaunt face. Everyone in the castle is so secure and safe, prisoners in their stone walls and iron gates. They have all forgotten the thrill of the chase, deaf to the call of the hunt, to the genes that made humans survive for so long, to hunger and kill and feed, but she has not.
Her eyes squint to see and the moon aids her—to find in the forest those creatures skulking in the night, looking for prey. Those creatures are amazing, she thinks, to find sustenance where there used to be nothing, to feel and to smell instead of seeing what or who they were capable of killing.
No, Rhode has never forgotten what it was like to yearn for Death. This is as close as she has come. Death has always been her constant companion, and this pleases her to the utmost because the only option is sick fear and terror, but Rhode was not a coward. She was a princess with royal steel in the spine, more than most commoners could be proud of, and so she stays. The glory of the hunt waits whilst her body, weakened by the mysterious wounds has to stay behind.
Rhode dreams, and in her dreams she sees the tall man with the top hat.
Deftly, she catches the very tips of his coat with her long, supple fingers.
~~
The King of Neverthere waits for her, and while he waits, he contemplates God, and all the splinters that make him whole. To be God, he must be everything, because if one isn’t everything then he cannot very well call himself God. The humans who call him that though accept only what they wish, what they can, what they will. The others, more real or terrifying than they would ever know have long been burnt or buried in the sand, forgotten by everyone except time and the truly blessed. In this way they humanize and dehumanize, shaping God into their own twisted vision of holiness. The truth is no one can truly accept all the facets of God that make him whole, and so they are cut, twisted into bite-sized pieces and chewed by priests, given to the people to swallow and thus religion is born.
His love they accept. His vengeance they fear, but still accept. His pride, his wrath, his omnipotence, his benevolence and the wide girth of his sight they accept. They love and believe and fear in him, but they have never allowed themselves to see the truth, and thus are blind and hopeful little creatures.
Pitiful, the King of Neverthere thinks.
The King, descendant of God’s most trusted disciple knows the truth. As much as God loves, God hates. For every saint there is a demon, for every light a long shadow is cast. As much as He is proud, He is ashamed and full of loathing for these creatures He made, who betrayed Him when He sent His son to save them all.
As He is merciful, He is also vicious. War and peace are the same sides of the coin to Him, for who do you pray to when the guns blow and the bombs fall? To whom do you thank after peace is restored?
The Church has begun taking all the saints for its’ own, to teach that demons and saints are separate, that one must wrest control from the other. That it’s impossible for both to coexist in the plane of existence. Humanity’s grasp on worlds is pitiful, he thinks. An entire world parallel to theirs connected by the very mirrors in each home is ignored. Where magic replaces common sense and rituals replace religion, God is named Overlord (or the Light, as the children would say.) and there are two sides.
The Light and the Cold. It is all right. Cold demons are what he prefers.
Rhode was young, and she was also dying. The nurse came back to caress the head of limp golden hair from Rhode's ghastly skin. With a steady, practiced hand the aged nurse pressed a wrinkled hand covered in a sweetly-scented silk handkerchief to the girl's mouth. It came away reddened with rust and anger, her life's blood rejecting her body entirely.
The priest that mama and papa paid much guinea for came and laid his hand on her bandaged forehead; wet with sweat of the afternoon sun. He commented that her temperature was too hot for her skin; it should have been crab-red by now.
She shrugs his hand away and settles herself back on the pillows, adorned with golden silk and white pearls, princess to the very end. Her bed and fragile body smells of licorice and dried blood.
He came because he did, she thought, what was appropriate to the dying everyday. Her ears strained to hear the strings of Latin rolling out of his mouth, oddly comforted. He checks the marks on her arms, minute crisscrossing lines that made her look abused, the wound to his weakened eyes bleeding more profusely than before.
'What a pity, and to a mere child.'
"May I?" his mouth opened to say, a dry whisper in the perfumed room. He didn't want to hurt her any more than necessary. Rhode gives a small nod, unable to speak without purging more blood. Her arm looked skeletal, veins protruding and the ghost of a bone could be seen but it wasn't this he was looking at.
It was the dark, large star-cross that was embedded onto the inside of her wrist; blackened sinner-holy blood that could be a sign from the Devil and God they feared and revered. She was either very evil or very good, a prodigious female Christ chosen to die for them all -- or the byproduct punishment for the couple that owned the woodsy mansion -- stories hushed and retold around the family, from the Contessa's numerous infidelities to the Count's inability to father a male heir and their only daughter was being called into God's sanctuary. He refused to even let the thought of such a girl fall into Evil's hands.
She, Rhode thinks that she is neither, but something more wonderful than they could ever hope to comprehend. The cuts on her body and the smell of her bloody mattress only reminded her of the hunt, that call for the strong to blot out the weak...a calling she treasured.
'I hate this body. My mind is free while my body is pinned by disease.' the mantra echoed inside her head.
Unbeknownst to everyone in the bedroom a tall man was watching, his body black and wearing a top hat. Even as she is dying, he thinks, she wears the veil of immortality very well.
For it is only when we die, he believes that we begin to live. Slowly Rhode's eyelashes sweep and close, and she is whisked away to dream.
He is waiting for her there.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The King of Neverthere, he called himself. He who was First feels her, who is Second. The Gift was bestowed by God upon all of mankind; his prideful army being molded to separate the holy from the damned.
He reminds himself that God did not wish to create 'Hell' -- the actual word was lost upon the human tongue, who cannot understand the language of angels -- but without strife and confusion he could not prove who wanted to be in Paradise.
'Who are you?' he hears her heart whispering and calling; his own immortal beat leaps with joy. It will be wonderful to have a family again, to share the dark with. He cannot speak and thus sends her dreams to explain that he could hear; he just could not talk.
The language of humans is too simple; far too much that it is easily misunderstood.
~~~~~~~
She has a most unusual dream. Rhode is alone in a vast meadow where pink-red amaranths grow, and the moon is always yellow-white and languidly, plumply hangs in the amber-gemstone sky.
The wind runs past her short, spiky hair, and gone are the long hot sleeves of gown, instead clad in a notoriously short negligee. White, trembling hands seemed to embrace a knotted, gnarled tree. The apples of her pale cheeks were glowingly warm as she looks towards someone else waiting, far away from her.
Rhode cannot see the face of this person, but she is very sure of two things: the smell of vanilla and the taste of honey linger in the air.
A loud church-bell is rung and she jumps; the figure she is watching is cut away like a knife through the thickest mist. She sees him; the tall man with the jaunty hat and the careless gait, although his presence made her heart thump horrifyingly fast.
Rhode calls to him in her soundless voice and for a moment he looks, as though he hears her small pitiful feelings. After awhile he shakes his head and continues on his merry way.
Being treated as if she no longer mattered.
Now the anger comes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
She is lovely, he thinks, looking at her sleeping form still on the bed.
'The first fifteen steps are nearly done, my dear...'
it was as if she had been born to live forever.
From his perch he counts the last remaining breaths of her life. The final process was the worst, he thought. The transformation between human and Soul -- there was another name, he was called in the realms of the Astral Plane, a being stronger than Satan's ilk, yet closer to God's breast than angels -- was oft the most painful.
He wondered if she had exceptionally high pain tolerance; she hadn't cried out while the priest chanted his drivel or when her tender cuts were touched, handled roughly by the paid nurse who merely wanted to finish her job before scuttling away to gossip about her ward, the Blessed/Cursed one.
A soft moan answered him. Rhode does not mind the pain; it proves that underneath the ache, festering disease and disgusting-sweet perfume she is alive, and that is all that matters in the end. That was what she was, before daughter or princess or girl she is a mash of bones and blood, breath and muscle. Ignoring the wishes of everyone – even the mother in her head that tells Rhode that it is a bad idea – she gets up and, reveling in the pins and needles shooting through her thin legs, walks to the window and opens it, breathing deeply, feeling the snowy air pass into her black shredded lungs, setting them aflame.
Inside her mind’s eye she sees not the tips of evergreen and knotty pine but smells salt and seawater, a dark castle resting precariously, drunkenly on cliffs surrounded by licorice flowers. The water pounds and crashes against the cliff, but strong it stands and the castle is alive. She licks the remaining blood from her lips and a predatory smile crosses her gaunt face. Everyone in the castle is so secure and safe, prisoners in their stone walls and iron gates. They have all forgotten the thrill of the chase, deaf to the call of the hunt, to the genes that made humans survive for so long, to hunger and kill and feed, but she has not.
Her eyes squint to see and the moon aids her—to find in the forest those creatures skulking in the night, looking for prey. Those creatures are amazing, she thinks, to find sustenance where there used to be nothing, to feel and to smell instead of seeing what or who they were capable of killing.
No, Rhode has never forgotten what it was like to yearn for Death. This is as close as she has come. Death has always been her constant companion, and this pleases her to the utmost because the only option is sick fear and terror, but Rhode was not a coward. She was a princess with royal steel in the spine, more than most commoners could be proud of, and so she stays. The glory of the hunt waits whilst her body, weakened by the mysterious wounds has to stay behind.
Rhode dreams, and in her dreams she sees the tall man with the top hat.
Deftly, she catches the very tips of his coat with her long, supple fingers.
~~
The King of Neverthere waits for her, and while he waits, he contemplates God, and all the splinters that make him whole. To be God, he must be everything, because if one isn’t everything then he cannot very well call himself God. The humans who call him that though accept only what they wish, what they can, what they will. The others, more real or terrifying than they would ever know have long been burnt or buried in the sand, forgotten by everyone except time and the truly blessed. In this way they humanize and dehumanize, shaping God into their own twisted vision of holiness. The truth is no one can truly accept all the facets of God that make him whole, and so they are cut, twisted into bite-sized pieces and chewed by priests, given to the people to swallow and thus religion is born.
His love they accept. His vengeance they fear, but still accept. His pride, his wrath, his omnipotence, his benevolence and the wide girth of his sight they accept. They love and believe and fear in him, but they have never allowed themselves to see the truth, and thus are blind and hopeful little creatures.
Pitiful, the King of Neverthere thinks.
The King, descendant of God’s most trusted disciple knows the truth. As much as God loves, God hates. For every saint there is a demon, for every light a long shadow is cast. As much as He is proud, He is ashamed and full of loathing for these creatures He made, who betrayed Him when He sent His son to save them all.
As He is merciful, He is also vicious. War and peace are the same sides of the coin to Him, for who do you pray to when the guns blow and the bombs fall? To whom do you thank after peace is restored?
The Church has begun taking all the saints for its’ own, to teach that demons and saints are separate, that one must wrest control from the other. That it’s impossible for both to coexist in the plane of existence. Humanity’s grasp on worlds is pitiful, he thinks. An entire world parallel to theirs connected by the very mirrors in each home is ignored. Where magic replaces common sense and rituals replace religion, God is named Overlord (or the Light, as the children would say.) and there are two sides.
The Light and the Cold. It is all right. Cold demons are what he prefers.
