It's Friday somewhere....
Jul. 17th, 2008 06:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
norcumiSince I wasn't doin' it last Friday, here's my Friday ficbit thingy a bit early. And I actually used this as as reason to FINISH something - how nutty is that?
This was once upon a time going to be my entry into the Phoenix Gate anthology, but I couldn't find an ending for it. I did when looking at this and realizing that this being time travel, it's perfectly ok and thematic to be trippy. At least, that's what I told myself. I think. Mostly, it was an excuse to play merry hell with verb tenses.
"The phoenix is a bird of fire. At the end of its life, it lies down, lets out a heart-rending song of beauty and joy, then is consumed by its own fires. Within the ashes there remains an egg – the blue and gold of a giant coal – precious and whole for a single moment. Then the blue and gold sphere cracks, and a whole, full grown phoenix rises again, ready to live."
A pleasant legend, told by an old man from Peking to his grandson to sooth nighttime wailings.
False.
There is no life. There is death, and birth. No rebirth. Only birth, over and over and over again, with no beginning or end. A loop, like my cousin the Orourubus who lies deep beneath the oceans. A snake eating his own tail, feeding so that he grows but since he grows there is always more snake to eat so no progress is ever made. Humans talk of the day he squeezes the world to pieces... how could he? He is busy eating, eating, and the more he eats the more he is able to eat. He will never be done.
Nor will I. I birth, then I die. I die, only to birth.
I never live.
I remember a smith in the Rome of an Augustus, a fay disguised as a burly human carefully studying gold and blue enamel. He will take his time, reproducing it exactly in the same gold and blue, then hands it to a man called the Archmagus. He took the shield shaped objects for some more pure gold, then strolled down the streets of Rome. I will hear that it is the height of "Ancient Rome" and much of what was the foundations of other great nations that wish and believed they rule the world, but it matters not.
All ages believe they are best - with appropriate nods to those who created supports before them. And so it goes, until even the most primitive will look unto the gods they create as having lived better.
"There will always be a hunter, and there will always be the hunted."
Foolish, proud humans. And gargoyles. And yes, even the third race. They who pride themselves on all their achievements, certain of their place in the world. A place iron is anathema to. Their hubris is always their sore spot.
All think to leave monuments. When they will build the pyramids, when they built the Sky Ring, as they construct Avalon – all will be dust and memories. All are simply dreams.
Only I continue. Only I have always existed, only I will go on through time. For all are one. Every moment is now. I cannot imagine trying to explain to a mortal, even the near immortals of the fey. Not that any ever try. I am a tool, an artifact, a prize to be tossed around or fought over until Goliath had tossed me into my own fires.
As always, when I live that moment, I am not sure if I wish I could curse the gargoyle, or bless him. Tossed away from mortal hands and direction, I live whenever I will, travel to whatever part of this world or others that I wish. It is a freedom, it is a prison of freedom. I cannot cease to exist, so I live... any moment, any place.
"Time is like a river."
Also false. Time is a moment. No more, no less. Just a single, eternal moment. It varies - it alters in the blink of an eye and the flash of light... the moment of fire.
Always fire. Always death, but it never takes. This is my eternity.
Or rather, perhaps Eternities? For while I know all that I will see and have felt, I am not the same being that will spark the great explosion or disappeared as the last fragment of heat. Every time a being recites The Incantation, every time I will think of a different memory, every time the flames consume me, I die.
And when the flames cleared, I rise again.
"Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat their mistakes."
Those who do not know the past live it. Those who do not dream the future reenact it every moment. Why do they limit reality to one direction? Even those that travel in the wake of my deaths react so linearly. They talk of loops and rivers, directions.
There is only fire.
There is only a moment, ever different, ever eternal.
fin
This was once upon a time going to be my entry into the Phoenix Gate anthology, but I couldn't find an ending for it. I did when looking at this and realizing that this being time travel, it's perfectly ok and thematic to be trippy. At least, that's what I told myself. I think. Mostly, it was an excuse to play merry hell with verb tenses.
"The phoenix is a bird of fire. At the end of its life, it lies down, lets out a heart-rending song of beauty and joy, then is consumed by its own fires. Within the ashes there remains an egg – the blue and gold of a giant coal – precious and whole for a single moment. Then the blue and gold sphere cracks, and a whole, full grown phoenix rises again, ready to live."
A pleasant legend, told by an old man from Peking to his grandson to sooth nighttime wailings.
False.
There is no life. There is death, and birth. No rebirth. Only birth, over and over and over again, with no beginning or end. A loop, like my cousin the Orourubus who lies deep beneath the oceans. A snake eating his own tail, feeding so that he grows but since he grows there is always more snake to eat so no progress is ever made. Humans talk of the day he squeezes the world to pieces... how could he? He is busy eating, eating, and the more he eats the more he is able to eat. He will never be done.
Nor will I. I birth, then I die. I die, only to birth.
I never live.
I remember a smith in the Rome of an Augustus, a fay disguised as a burly human carefully studying gold and blue enamel. He will take his time, reproducing it exactly in the same gold and blue, then hands it to a man called the Archmagus. He took the shield shaped objects for some more pure gold, then strolled down the streets of Rome. I will hear that it is the height of "Ancient Rome" and much of what was the foundations of other great nations that wish and believed they rule the world, but it matters not.
All ages believe they are best - with appropriate nods to those who created supports before them. And so it goes, until even the most primitive will look unto the gods they create as having lived better.
"There will always be a hunter, and there will always be the hunted."
Foolish, proud humans. And gargoyles. And yes, even the third race. They who pride themselves on all their achievements, certain of their place in the world. A place iron is anathema to. Their hubris is always their sore spot.
All think to leave monuments. When they will build the pyramids, when they built the Sky Ring, as they construct Avalon – all will be dust and memories. All are simply dreams.
Only I continue. Only I have always existed, only I will go on through time. For all are one. Every moment is now. I cannot imagine trying to explain to a mortal, even the near immortals of the fey. Not that any ever try. I am a tool, an artifact, a prize to be tossed around or fought over until Goliath had tossed me into my own fires.
As always, when I live that moment, I am not sure if I wish I could curse the gargoyle, or bless him. Tossed away from mortal hands and direction, I live whenever I will, travel to whatever part of this world or others that I wish. It is a freedom, it is a prison of freedom. I cannot cease to exist, so I live... any moment, any place.
"Time is like a river."
Also false. Time is a moment. No more, no less. Just a single, eternal moment. It varies - it alters in the blink of an eye and the flash of light... the moment of fire.
Always fire. Always death, but it never takes. This is my eternity.
Or rather, perhaps Eternities? For while I know all that I will see and have felt, I am not the same being that will spark the great explosion or disappeared as the last fragment of heat. Every time a being recites The Incantation, every time I will think of a different memory, every time the flames consume me, I die.
And when the flames cleared, I rise again.
"Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat their mistakes."
Those who do not know the past live it. Those who do not dream the future reenact it every moment. Why do they limit reality to one direction? Even those that travel in the wake of my deaths react so linearly. They talk of loops and rivers, directions.
There is only fire.
There is only a moment, ever different, ever eternal.
fin
