Open Yawning Darkness

[Fallon]

52nd Summer 513AV
About the midnight bell

It was within the chasm of thought, and the near darkness that she sat upon a throne of iron. Her head was bent; her posture slouched against the firm back. Her forehead rested in a pale hand, her skin having simply turned to the colour of ivory, and her usual clothing had changed to that of rich ebony. It clung to the skin, tight and almost suffocating to her form. But she did not react to it as she usually would.

They dulled eyes of the Skylar looked upon the grey hall and the great pillars that reached up into the black abyss of the roof above, the glowing of the winter moonlight scattering light across the floor. The skeleton of the once great hall was silent, dulled of life and colour. If it was not for her gentle breathing, it too would have been silent. The chink of chains sounded in her ears as she raised her other hand, her free hand, to look upon the red stain that existed there. Her eyes focused on it for a moment, and then turned down to her shoulder. A dark, sticky liquid bloomed from there, a low hiss escaping from the source. Her vacant eyes stared upon it, unmoving and uncaring. There was no spark of care behind it all, nor really did there seem to be any real acknowledgement of it all.

Her head turned, and her back straightened. The clinking of chains sounded out again, the grinding of steel against steel hovering in the air like a hum. The heavy weights of cuffs rested upon her wrists, the trail of metal leading down and round to the solid iron loop before her. It would not loosen, not for her nor for anyone else, that was a single fact that existed in her mind. Pale knuckles rested upon the arms of the chair, her face cold and lacking in warmth. There was no heart to feel, no emotion to truly speak of within her form.

A slitter of steam escaped her lips, the creeping of frost resting within the air. Summer had gone, or more over there was no summer here. Only darkness and winter existed. No spark would push it back. Her jaw clenched shut slightly, solidifying as she remembered what she did not want to. The cowl of black was raised across her face, her eyes cast into shadow. Bitter frost rested there, and all the while Fallon remained still and unmoving. Skin turned cold, her lips turning blue with it. Darkness took its firm grip as the thoughts were pushed aside.

It was safer that way.
x

[Philomena]

She did not walk, for he feet were above the ground, drifting softly forward. Dream-thread calling, calling, yearning. Go forward, go forward, go forward. She had stepped forth from the heart of her tree self, and left the wood, in procession, the dark and creaking spirits of the copse about her.

It was a keep, lonely and dark, that stretched crumbling upward before her. Strange and foreign, strange and foreign, to angular and strong to be her own scenery. She drifted forward, so that the attenants changed: five men in solemn grey Livery, five maids in silvery dresses, all with eyes that underneath the lids were knotted balls of wood. And Philomena, tugged her dark veil, down, and settled it upon her shoulders, so that her face was obscured.

"Who hides? Who cowers inside these crumbling walls, and abdicates the right to set a foot on the soft cold earth?"

Her voice was low and witch-like, queer and piercing, and she came atop the hill. One of her grey liveried men forwrad to take one gate, and the grey-dress woman, the other. And Philomena waited, her own body centering, forming growing real.

Small, and bare, her uncovered skin like snow-fall in the moonlight of a full night, hairless but for the inscrutably fine down of a child on her arm, so that it made the dark smears of scars upon her stand like words of some forgotten tongue - and then they were. Then each word whispered itself, and loudest the great read smear across her bared and swan-like neck, beneath the veil which was the only stitch of fabric that she wore now, tented over her rich thick hair. The Great red smear pitched its word out softly, like a sorrow-voice.

"Consequence. Consequence. Consequence."

The doors opened, and the procession entered, and the child-sage of the singing scars and the veil across her face went forward, slowly, slowly, to approach the iron throne. The attendants began to sing, softly, and in a strong Unison.

"What price to those who would attend
To she, the mother of the dead?
This is not their place. The grave a gateway,
Only one dark mother knows the ends,
For they are the glowing sorrow that she sends
Into the pools of her deep blue eyes."

Slow, slow, she float towars teh iron chair. Who? Who is the figure that draw her forward, the pulls her to this strange and foreign construction, built of stone, and mitered with forgetting? Abomination of repression, the price of sin.
x

[Fallon]

The procession entered, and the eyes of the throne stared upon them, but she did not acknowledge them. She simply stared, unflinching and unmoving. The dulled irises sharpened, the pupils growing fine and pointed. The cold steam escaped once more, her lips curling back into a grimace and the whites of her teeth revealing themselves. A dark shadow passed by, and the frown sunk away into a cold, unfeeling canvas. She did not even blink. Her tongue rolled, her throat trembling as the mournful song of the procession reverberated throughout the carcass of the once great hall.

"Who comes upon the throne of iron?" her voice was a hiss, dark pupils having fixed themselves upon the gathering few, "Who dare come to the winters sleep with many steps but leaves no prints?" She stood, the chains groaning and scraping as she did. Low slow steps marked her movement, the clacking of surfaces meeting filling the momentary void. She stopped before the iron ring, the solid chains having snaked their way down from those solid cuffs. Her feet planted themselves upon the ground her pale fingers lacing together. The back straightened as she sent her unwavering gaze of ice glazing over all of them.

“For ever sleep in the winter keep,
Where beasts dwell and wake,
And the fragile break.
No not what you see,
No not what you serve.
The mother of the dead you speak?”

She looked upon the ghost - for that was what she appeared to be in the mind of Fallon - and past the veil that covered her features. Her blue lips pursed together, the creeping frost resting upon her shoulders as once more the hissing tone filled the air. The patter of the sticky liquid pattering upon the worn stone floor. She exhaled.

“Least the sorrow reigns,
But come too late you are.
Sorrow has come and gone,
The pain and grief only rests now.
Be they of darkness or another source,
There is no price to pay to the mother of the dead.”

A momentary pause stopped Fallon. There was no feeling behind her words, no warmth or recognition of what was truly being said. But it was those eyes that continued to bore upon the other, with a silent judgement being cast.
x

[Philomena]

The words of The Iron Woman echoed round the hall like crows, and the Floating Woman stopped looked up at them. The echoes reverberated, bounced in a way unnatural, not dissipating, only splitting, into two echoes. The Floating woman watched them instead of listening to them, and by watching they took visible form, two great birds as grey and pearl as burnished steel, ash-colored silk.

Two of the attendants now, one man, one woman, stepped forth raising hands and the two birds fluttered down, to land on their oustretched hands. The attendants, each for each, opened wide their wooden eyes, their faces impassive, and the two grey birds began to peck fretfully at the smooth irises of them. Each of the attendants cocked a head, in sync with each other, but not mechanical so much as brnaches stirred by the same wind.

And as they did so, two more attendants came to them, each to each, and each of the seconds held a heavy axe, and swung their blades into the liveried bellies of the firsts. The sound was steel on sickening soft flesh, the tear of silk, the bursting of the belly, and the firsts crumbled, their bellies torn open, but amber with sap instead of red with blood, the oozing resin thick with the scent of spring and life, running their sides to strike the froze stone floor, searing it with the audible hiss of the meeting of hot and cold.

The two birds fluttered up, then landed upon the breasts of the two fallen attendants, their beaks dipping into the eviscerated bellys to draw out thread of torn and sap-soaked flesh, and eat them.

And the Floating Maiden said nothing, but she liftend up her veil, and underneath there was... a mask, a mask of carved white bone of the leviathan, painted with the red of lips, with the grey shadow around eyes, the eyes themselves inlaid with smoky glass. The was tied back with two silver ribbons, into the heavy hair, so that it hung like draperies on a warm winter day. The face was still, and bone, and expressed nothing.

And she floated onward till she stood before the Iron Woman, her body the body of a child underneath its dress. She reached into the pleats of the skirt and drew out a white handled slender boning knife, its blade of milk-white glass. She lifted it slow, and silent still, her tiny hands queer and unsettling, wastrel thin and grubby-nailed, like an underfed child. The white glass set against the bony hollow just below the throat, between the knobs of her collarbones, at the top of her breast, bone and pressed. A line of red blood welled up, and began to run in a stream down her her chest, a line of red, warm and steaming in the petrified air.x

[Fallon]

It was like the roll of thunder in her ears, each single hack roaring out in her ears. She watched them crumble and fall, their bitter sacrifice presented to her upon the cold floor. Her back straightened, her features rippling as if repulsed by the entire scene. She turned away, her posture forced into movement as she cast away what was going on behind her into the void of the mind. Not that it lasted; for once more she was drawn round to face that masked face, the ivory white that soon drained that liquid so freely upon the cold stone floor.

“Stop!
Why spill you life for those that do not feel?
Why wrench upon the red to dull the black?
Do you dream of the coming spring and its freeing grasp?
The raven has flown; the black wings fill the sky,
It knows none can move the stilled heart of the dead.”

There was a twitch, a wince of the eyes as she felt the bubbling black bloom once more. Her jaw clenched, the feeling of acid seeping into wounds. A great plume of steam escaped from it. It frothed out, and the chained one buckled to a knee. There was a gasp, a drip of sweat falling from her brow as the acid black dripped upon the floor.

“Stop! I do not want to feel,
Do not burden my heart,
With your preset ordeals.
I am too torn, too worn for such ideals.
Dare you place such things upon my shoulders,
When my very will shall soon break?”

It was the taste of bile and acid that built up in her mouth, her back arching slightly as the black bile bubbled out. But still the red fell, the blood pattered upon the floor. There was a cry, arms shaking as the grip continued to hold. She did not want to feel, she did not want the winter to end. She raised a sweating brow, her lips having parted as she remained crumpled on upon the frosted stone. Was she crying? She could not tell, she could hardly think as the ground turned beneath. Her fingers splayed cross it, every breath becoming a desperate gasp.

“Enough! What do you want of me foul spirit?
Mock me? Scorn me?
To rip upon fresh wounds?”

A clenched fist struck against the floor, and she slumped lower in defeat. She gave a muffled choke, the black tears running across the pale white, “Please… leave me be. Let me disappear.”
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