Book II: To march upon the dishevelled tide. Chapter 2. Quadrilles of the emerald sands
“There seems to me,
In that regular night time activity
Under stars and shadowed heights and beams of lunar luminosity ,
Of ancient wants unceasing,
Of deceptions begging sweetly,
Of wonders bright and olden fights and terrors more than fleeting,
A dance on the stuff like spider strands that entangles every child, woman, and man,
For we do it whithout ever needing to stand,
That mad nightly dance on emerald sands,
On scant breaths that stretch to great spans,
I dream.
And there are truths in dreams” (Alexander Burren, 1787. Of the paths of Angels and other everyday impossibilities).
In that regular night time activity
Under stars and shadowed heights and beams of lunar luminosity ,
Of ancient wants unceasing,
Of deceptions begging sweetly,
Of wonders bright and olden fights and terrors more than fleeting,
A dance on the stuff like spider strands that entangles every child, woman, and man,
For we do it whithout ever needing to stand,
That mad nightly dance on emerald sands,
On scant breaths that stretch to great spans,
I dream.
And there are truths in dreams” (Alexander Burren, 1787. Of the paths of Angels and other everyday impossibilities).
third of Zi’da
The first sensation he had, well the one that directly fell upon his consciousness after falling asleep, was of something wet and cold. It covered his left thumb up to the mid-joint and his right near completely, so too spattering’s of it were upon his shoulders, back, and legs, and both his feet were half buried in it. Yet in all cases the sensations were muted. For a moment he could not decipher what his senses were attempting to tell him. His brain moved with all the sluggishness of striding through early summer melts near Viden, as though he was just waking from a very deep sleep. At least that was what the whole series of impressions seemed like to him, they fit the description at least, as he had never known deep sleep in truth – being a light sleeper himself – which made the present occurrence doubly anomalous. A part of him knew with utter certainty that he was dreaming, even if the character of that dream escaped him. Yet, for reasons that equally eluded him his mind seemed to whisper that this particular night-time occurrence was of an entirely distinct quality than most of such incidences.
Snow
With the sudden realization of the phenomena his surrounding’s burst in upon him with all the intensity of an avalanche: one moment his eyes beheld nothing, not sky, nor turf, nor the contents of either, and the next about him was rolling hills covered with the thick irregular blanket of snow bathed in majestic moonlight; one breath he was floating in a void, his body seeming to be covered in some unequal nothingness, that the impression of snow was barely starting to penetrate, and the next he felt the faint stabs of ice into his thumb and knees, the splash of melting wetness slowly working its way through wool and leather; The faint smells of coal, wood, and burning dung – intermingled with the musk of pine and leatherleaf, with the strong, earthy-mossy aroma of fungus used to surviving among snow and ice – tickled his nose, where they had been not before; and lastly the silence that had been as complete as death, was suddenly torn away by the sounds of the wind, which carried upon it the distant barking of dogs. That wind sliced straightway past him as uninterrupted in its movements as though he weren’t there at all.
He rose then, from his kneeling position, he had apparently tripped on something and had caught himself on his hands, and thus, saved himself from planting his face into the snowfall that was all about him. To his left he spied Holloways Hill, and knew he was facing its westernmost side from the form of its eyes peaking up over what appeared to be a vale or scarf, which were noticeable at any time save the harshest blizzards. three circles of stately evergreens stretched out to his right, sloping downward from the hillock where he found himself to a relatively wide bowl shaped valley. At the other end of that valley a steeper hillock arose, whose flat wide top looked nothing so much like something that some god had pushed down and spread out so she or she could affix a forest to. There was a wood there to be sure, one that he had wandered more than once in his earlier years.
A catch in his knee, combined with a horrid spasm of pain nearly caused him to tumble and he was forced to splay his legs wide to keep his feet; the action prompting him to look down to see if his brace had been damaged in his previous stumble.
That brace was made wholly of wood.
The realization stole his breath for a moment, the understanding forming freezing claws that made him far colder than the wind had just scant eye blinks before
Not again.”
The whisper carried a hint of submission that would not normally be heard passing the speakers lips, but some dreams, some night-time remembrances, did bring a certain amount of resignation to the stoutest of hearts.
He didn’t need to see himself to know that he was clad in bleached woolen tunic and bark colored brown leather pants. No mirror was required to inform him that his thick locks needed both a combing and a cutting, his memory of an event on a particular evening on his eleventh arc, where he still thought there might be some slim chance of a relationships with the man that was now married to his mother, supplied him with all these facts and more.
The barking of the dogs was somewhat closer now.
time to run
He did so, straight down the surest path, his strides having the bounding half-run/ half-jump of a mouse or a rabbit, which given the state of his left leg were utterly necessary. If this dream would play out straight as the memory of the event, then they’d catch him eventually, even so, it was not in the nature of Jedith Skylar to merely give up.
Snow
With the sudden realization of the phenomena his surrounding’s burst in upon him with all the intensity of an avalanche: one moment his eyes beheld nothing, not sky, nor turf, nor the contents of either, and the next about him was rolling hills covered with the thick irregular blanket of snow bathed in majestic moonlight; one breath he was floating in a void, his body seeming to be covered in some unequal nothingness, that the impression of snow was barely starting to penetrate, and the next he felt the faint stabs of ice into his thumb and knees, the splash of melting wetness slowly working its way through wool and leather; The faint smells of coal, wood, and burning dung – intermingled with the musk of pine and leatherleaf, with the strong, earthy-mossy aroma of fungus used to surviving among snow and ice – tickled his nose, where they had been not before; and lastly the silence that had been as complete as death, was suddenly torn away by the sounds of the wind, which carried upon it the distant barking of dogs. That wind sliced straightway past him as uninterrupted in its movements as though he weren’t there at all.
He rose then, from his kneeling position, he had apparently tripped on something and had caught himself on his hands, and thus, saved himself from planting his face into the snowfall that was all about him. To his left he spied Holloways Hill, and knew he was facing its westernmost side from the form of its eyes peaking up over what appeared to be a vale or scarf, which were noticeable at any time save the harshest blizzards. three circles of stately evergreens stretched out to his right, sloping downward from the hillock where he found himself to a relatively wide bowl shaped valley. At the other end of that valley a steeper hillock arose, whose flat wide top looked nothing so much like something that some god had pushed down and spread out so she or she could affix a forest to. There was a wood there to be sure, one that he had wandered more than once in his earlier years.
A catch in his knee, combined with a horrid spasm of pain nearly caused him to tumble and he was forced to splay his legs wide to keep his feet; the action prompting him to look down to see if his brace had been damaged in his previous stumble.
That brace was made wholly of wood.
The realization stole his breath for a moment, the understanding forming freezing claws that made him far colder than the wind had just scant eye blinks before
Not again.”
The whisper carried a hint of submission that would not normally be heard passing the speakers lips, but some dreams, some night-time remembrances, did bring a certain amount of resignation to the stoutest of hearts.
He didn’t need to see himself to know that he was clad in bleached woolen tunic and bark colored brown leather pants. No mirror was required to inform him that his thick locks needed both a combing and a cutting, his memory of an event on a particular evening on his eleventh arc, where he still thought there might be some slim chance of a relationships with the man that was now married to his mother, supplied him with all these facts and more.
The barking of the dogs was somewhat closer now.
time to run
He did so, straight down the surest path, his strides having the bounding half-run/ half-jump of a mouse or a rabbit, which given the state of his left leg were utterly necessary. If this dream would play out straight as the memory of the event, then they’d catch him eventually, even so, it was not in the nature of Jedith Skylar to merely give up.
