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The Questing Heart - Into the desert. Chapter I
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The Questing Heart - Into the desert. Chapter I |
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Kethry Member Rara Avis
since 2000-07-29
Posts 9082Victoria Australia 
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Book 111 Song of Sundering - Redemption's Plan Thirteen-year-old Shaynee Greystome stopped and wiped sweat from her brow - for it was hot, too hot - and today seemed more desert-like than usual - being in the wilderness without the filtering protection of the dome sky made it more so. She could see in the distance the spires of Tron, her homeland - and the skyline wavered and shimmered in the desert heat. She could hear the trumpets blazing forth signalling the start of a new day and she believed she could hear the clang and the thwack of the soldiers as they went about their daily practice, although she acknowledged those sounds - the ones she was most familiar with, may have been tempered by memory in yearning. She had always be a silent observer of the soldiers as they practised in the early morn and it had frequently earned her beatings when she returned to her uncle's care. She did not know what fascination the soldiers held for her but she knew they drew her as a well draws life-sustaining water from the depths of the earth. The rising fumes from the glittering city in the distance generated some of the heat and desire she felt but she generated more fire and confusion than the city had ever produced. Her body waged an inward battle between the onset of womynhood that shone with the fire of the unknown and her childhood that was dark and dismal like the crowded alleyways that the city presented on close inspection. She didn't know why she had left the safety of the city; she could not put into words the feelings that were driving her onwards. Restless at the best of times; she now discovered she could not stay in the comfort of the city, the dazzling brilliant city that to all her friends spelt comfort. She did not feel comfort in there, for it filled her with a wild desire to be free, and a desire that she could neither escape nor explain. Shaynee was different from her friends and she did not know the reason why. Only the memory of the legend of the tribes and the words of the book remained with her - the words which had said, "If you desire a wish to come true, you must first capture a beed. Then whisper your wish to it. Because it is silent, it will tell no one. Release the beed and it will deliver your wish." She had caught a beed as it fluttered in the dawn's early light and as she whispered her desire to be free from the constraints of her life she felt a yearning to travel into the desert. She might have believed the legend to be true if it had not been for the fact the beed had been set free only to flutter under the paw of a bassite - a spitting, snorting and totally repulsive beast of burden that had crushed the fluttering beed without a moments thought. She had despaired then and after the kiss - it was the straw that broke the bassites back. She had run blindly into the desert in distress, knowing that her spirit would be crushed if she stayed in the city. The sun that had previously kissed her bronzed skin with heat now began to scorch her and she shielded her dazzled hazel eyes from the harsh glare. She began to have second thoughts about this excursion into the wilderness. She sighed and the burning within her deepened spreading out from her core like a raging forest fire that would not be stilled. She had seen a forest fire when she was seven and she had never forgotten its ferocity or its absolute destruction - the blackened trees and the dead and lifeless scorched ground remained in her memory, long after the fire had gone. The fire was significant - she knew, reminiscent of something she had forgotten but struggle as she might she could not remember. Now in the wilderness, with the heat of the sun burning her eyes sockets from their place, the memory of the ravaged land came vivid and strong. She likened herself to the desolate and dead land after the fire had passed through. Would she be completely destroyed or consumed by the burning within? She did not know - she only knew she was in the desert for a reason, a reason she could not fathom or explain but one that called her and drew her onwards away from the city. She looked longingly at the mirage, that was the city and wondered what would be her path. Could she return to the safety and security of the city that - despite its corruption and vice offered protection from the fierce sun and the rampant thoughts that swirled in a spiral inside her head? The city could be her friend if she could learn to love being confined and wrapped in swaddling, but could she do that? Would the inherent flaw in her nature that made her different, be changed by her desert experience? "No" she decided to herself, "all would be the same. I would be the same and the peace of security may last for a little space of time but I would yearn to be free and I would be trapped in a life I could not tolerate." Her family would not forgive her and she couldn't bear the smirks of her cousins 'I told you so', that would speak louder than words. In retrospect she decided that the last event was merely the tremor that caused the avalanche. She had always been regarded as the cuckoo that came to stay - uninvited and unwelcome and no amount of trying on her part had ever changed that. In addition, she realized, she had never really fit anywhere - not with her family who she remembered vaguely or with her cousins who seemed to be trapped in stereotypes she could not emulate. She was the changeling child; the outcaste and her only happiness lay in watching those as outcaste as she was - the city guard. She was only comfortable in the fields and open spaces such as the practice ground that housed the soldiers in all their bronzed glory. In the cities it was unheard of for women to want to be in the fields - they occasionally had cause to work the fields but no woman that she had known had ever willingly gone outdoors. Women in general - and in her family in particular, except for those women who were bent of purpose were protected, cherished and very, fragile. It was not that she was a tribe's woman. No, that wasn't it. She simply could not cope with the enclosed spaces of the villas and the pleasure places. They made her cry out in terror at a nameless fear that lurked always in the back of her mind but was inaccessible to her. She was so different from her cousins - even her stature was different. Her cousins were lithe, tall and graceful with the eyes of a Madonna and the skin of milky smoothness that even the gorund milk - the purest and most natural kind, did not match for color and silken texture. She was petite and inclined to be wiry, almost as if she had been stunted at birth and had never learned how to grow. She wondered with regret how she came to be this way. What had come to pass that she found herself in the desert alone, unchaperoned and unprotected - alone, on fire and dying. "It was such a little thing", she thought to herself "insignificant really, yet out of tiny seeds great trees do grow". "How could the legend and a kiss lead to such folly? Here I am stuck in the desert with no hope of return and likely to die all because of a chaste kiss. Well perhaps it wasn't so chaste but it not enough to be condemned to die as a consequence," she thought desperately to herself. Murky memories chased each other down the channels of her mind as she had run down the alleyways and corridors of the city as a child. Her fevered mind brought about images of cool water sprinkling and tinkling from the many fountains that dotted the city. She felt the summer rains and winter rains that fell in the nighttime cooling the air running down her face and refreshing her as she ran and she was unaware that the rain was her sparkling crystalline tears that splashed onto the desert sand and disappeared without a trace - dehydrating her further. Her pain and her thirst drove her onwards, her tongue became a poker of fire that scorched her mouth wherever it touched and the sweat of her brow ran into her eyes blinding her as it matched the frantic running of her thoughts. Thoughts that also led her blinded and running through the cobbled streets of Tron when she had been beaten for some misdemeanor. She wept uncontrollably without being aware. Tears ran in a torrent down her face onto her short shift. The shift had originally been long and flowing and a delightful saffron - the color of the priesthood - when there were priests, but now is was a sliver of tan colored nothingness that offered no protection against the blazing sun that was currently trying to scorch its way into her bones. She had not dreamed the sun could be so savage, so unrelenting, so life stealing. In the city the sun had been benevolent and filtered by the domed sky that was always above them. In the city clothing was optional and the balmy weather continued day after day, many wore tunics that fell to their thighs - in rainbow colored array using the dyes that mimicked the pastel shades of the surrounding countryside - and they wore little else. In The pleasure domes that filled her with both horror and yearning, tunics were split along the side seam to allow for modesty and easy access. The tunic she had been wearing had not offered much protection in the city, it had not needed to and now it had been shredded in the escape from the city. It was nothing more than a sliver of material that barely covered her thighs in shredded tatters and offered no protection from the fire that was the sun. As the heat shimmered and wavered so did her reason and her sense. "Oh to be in the city again!" she thought, "to feel the sun that is tempered by the rains mother earth sends as a nightly blessing and have that sun filtered through the shield of mist that protected and comforted all - both day and night." The city had its grit but it had also offered safe haven the only haven she knew. "To be at one with the universe as I was when I was childlike and innocent." Had she ever been childlike and innocent she wondered - it seemed that she had not; all of her life that she could remember was memory of her corruption, her rebellion and her defiance. She did not understand herself and had no resources to fight who she was and what she had become. Her body that yearned to be free while in the confines of the city now yearned for the safety and security the city offered. As her tears flowed faster and yet faster, her thoughts spiraled like an iridescent pinwheel that mimicked the scales of the endangered dragons caught in the summer breezes, which graced the city at faire time. In a decreasing circle they ran chasing each other but going nowhere round and round, causing her to shiver despite the ferocious heat. She ran as she cried - and her thoughts fluttered against the bones of her head as a beed in a rainbow fluttering of life, trapped behind glass where it fluttered endlessly and died. The more she ran the faster those thoughts knotted and spun around in a frantic attempt at escape. Finally she dropped and sat still, exhausted by her attempts to reason why she was here feeling so abandoned and isolated inside. The sense of burning grew and in desperation, she gave herself over to it. Inside and out she became one with the desert and her barrenness of heart mirrored the emptiness of her exhaustion. Her warring desires became an encompassing shroud that she wrestled with and as she wrestled with her thoughts she also wrestled with the capricious wind that covered her, bruising and grazing her already sensitive skin. The harsh desert wind blew, as if to scourge her soul and she gave herself over to wailing, her voice keening with the desert. Her face, although as bronzed as the Earth Mother she had heard about in legend, was adapted to city life and in the desert her skin began to blister. She curled her frizzled limbs underneath her in an attempt to protect as much of herself as possible from the fierce and blazing orb. For now it was trying to eat the flesh from her bones. She huddled in the lee of a sand dune wishing fervently she could return to the safety of the city but she could not. She rocked back and forth hoping for a sign instead of the words of encouragement she longed for - the only words that came out were "shaballa cay ilya, the forest burns." These words spilled out, over and over as she became half-delirious with pain of the raging sun. She abandoned herself to misery. Crooning mindlessly she buried herself in the comforting expanse of desert sun and prepared for her spirit journey. The wind in sympathy rose and fell in time to her heartbeat and anguish. Lying quietly on the ground as if dead, Shaynee's spirit broke free, the silken cord thinned and stretched, but would not leave the arid region and the body lying quietly on the sand. "So this is death" Shaynee-that-was mused impassively and coolly, "it doesn?t hurt as much as life. Why was I so afraid?" A strong, enigmatic voice rose out of the desert haze surrounding her in warmth and light but without the pain of that heat and said, "This is not death. It is for you to decide your path Shaynee Greystome, choose if you will!" A myriad of vistas unfolded before her eyes, each more magnificent and complex than the one before. There were images of banners flying in the breeze and of a people dark and stark chained and bound. Images of a beautiful place that mirrored the desert in all but form came to her and disappeared as the mist. Images of soldiers, bronzed and laughing and then sick and dying came to her and left as swiftly as they came. An image of her father strong and proud came to her and she reached out to him in love as the image dissolved and he became the drunken sot she half remembered. Then came the image of her mother smiling and loving, slender and tall with hair of spun gold that changed with the sun's light to reveal fiery glints that matched the burning in her soul and she sobbed in anguish as her mother turned from her. Images of fire coursed through her thoughts and she saw burning blackened cities, the dazzling gleaming white of the minarets of Tron and her sister city Bren became a charred graveyard with bodies left in the streets for the rocs to devour She saw the cities of Eremon, land of the giants and Fare the land of the gentle folk, folk who had great wonders but followed the path of peace both lying destroyed and abandoned . She saw in her minds eye the dark people she had seen previously, growing proud, strong and free, their crops blooming in the desert wilderness and increasing in prosperity with the passing of the sun. She saw individual faces, a womyn, a man proud and strong and the face of one who shone like the very sun itself. In this face there was dissatisfaction and sullenness and she watched detached as the face changed and took on a nobility she had not known was possible. She saw these and many other things too numerous to mention - cities rising and falling, the desert wilderness becoming a garden, war and terrible destruction and birth that was welcomed and celebrated. The sun and the voice merged together until she was surrounded by light and warmth that was beyond pain and delirium and close to ecstasy. The only constant was the voice the embalming surrounding, demanding voice that enforced choice - a choice she could not make. Confused and bemused and no way in control of herself she, shook her head in despair and muttered, "How can I choose? There are too many choices, and I know not the road end." "It is not given to you to know the road end," the voice said. "It is given to you only to choose the path you will travel, the path that will lead to enlightenment for you - or desolation for the world as you know it. Choose!" "I cannot! I cannot," she cried to the wind - and the wind heard her not. "Why do you ask me this?" Shaynee cried in anguish "I cannot choose - correctly! I was not able to in the city and I cannot here. Why do you hound me so?" The voice came again; more gentle this time - but filled with overwhelming power. "You must choose your path, it is your destiny. Will you not choose?" Then she cried in anger and pain. "Every-time I choose, I choose badly and so I cannot. I will not!" She flung her soul to the desert air and screamed. "Take me if you will but I cannot choose." The voice, the loving, sensuous and totally enveloping voice dropped to a whisper and the desert wind with it. And from the voice that hinted of laughter and overwhelming joy she heard the words in the language of the people whispering as soft as a sigh, "Shaynee Greystome, it is not given you to choose now, for many will be the choices along your journey in which you must be cast out; so you can return in victory and triumph. Rest and may the winds of fate carry your feet to your destiny, a destiny that will choose you and make you great or bring you to the bosom of the earth mother. Rest Shaynee." The voice carried on, held by the union of the wind and the moving sands. However, she was beyond words of the voice - she was beyond hearing the whisper of the wind as it swirled softly around and covered her. She was beyond sight and sense as the desert took her to its bosom and protected her. Around her the winds whispered in exultation - the path of Redemption has been awakened, prophecy becomes promise - the Nexus has come. Here is the one. Here in the midst of my lonely abyss, a single joy I find...your presence in my mind. Unknown [This message has been edited by Kethry (05-11-2002 09:50 PM).] |
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| © Copyright 2002 Lynne Dale - All Rights Reserved | |||
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Sunshine
Administrator
Member Empyrean
since 1999-06-25
Posts 63354Listening to every heart |
A very long piece of work - you've been busy! I shall be back! |
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Marsha
since 2000-07-10
Posts 7423Maidstone Kent England |
Keth beloved sister of my soul and writer of rainbows light, this is incredible, it always was, now you’ve polished it and set it in place it does all that a first chapter should. It sets the scene, paints the outline of the character and her milieu, gives a general direction of where the character is going and holds the reader for the whole duration. So very very well done. You darling heart are learning your craft beautifully, and I’m awed when I see the quality of your writing. I’m awed when I see the quality of your writing. You know I utterly utterly love this now keep posting darling heart, for with each word you shape the dream   Love and warm stuff As always Mushy  To give light to them that sit in darkness..... to guide our feet into the way of peace Luke 2:79 |
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Marsha
since 2000-07-10
Posts 7423Maidstone Kent England |
Auntie Kethp you know I really and truly love this story, it takes you right into it, makes you walk with her. I feel as if Patryce and I could have a conversation. I know she’s Shaynee in the first part of the book, but I know her as Patryce. Absolutely breath taking writing, real and immediate I can see why this is such a good story. Excellent my favourite aunt don’t stop writing  Love and warm stuff As always Krissy To give light to them that sit in darkness..... to guide our feet into the way of peace Luke 2:79 |
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Krissy Senior Member
since 2002-02-22
Posts 556kent England |
Autie Kethp Sorry I forgot to log in But i really do love this Love and warm stuff As always Krissy And while thy willing soul transpiers at every pore with instant fires Andrew Marvell 1621-1678 [This message has been edited by Krissy (05-17-2002 09:34 PM).] |
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