PHQ-Nickname:
Syndel
Halfquake:
Mania
Level:
74
Total kills:
19,884,443
Birthday:
00th 0000
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| Mood: | peaceful |
| Type: | Story |
| Added: | June 20th 2010, 16:46:38 |
| Visits: | 1404 |
| Rating: | 5/5 (Votes: 1) |
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Here it resides, in that special place unknown to almost all of man. Between the darkness and the shadow, between the light and the sun. It reclines in infinitismal beauty under the starry night. Here it is always raining, a small trickle which plays gently against the resonant ambience of the room, echos of music from far off lands filtering through the many-tunneled labyrinth which leads to it's home.
Empty dust-filled corridors reverberate with the noise, and the rain punctures it like a knife sliding gently through velvet. The noise becomes strangely distorted as it funnels around the chamber, curling around the curved walls and spiralling outwards and upwards towards the stars. The rain-bow sighs, and the music in the room ebbs in empathy to the atmosphere.
The sounds gave purples and blues to the grey rockface in the darkness, the dripping rain refracting the sound and light into a million frequencies which congealed and mixed on the rugged surface of the rock, before spreading outwards again and upwards. Forever upwards the magical light and sound traveled, fading and dispersing as it escaped the chamber through a hole in the roof.
The rock hummed as the sounds pushed against it's surface, over many years createing deep crevases in the rock and groves which scritched across the face like tree branches, ever thinning and splitting. The rain trickled into these groves, gathering in pockets and arterys of the wall, and under the light shone with such brilliance as to appear living and moving, as if the very walls were glowing with life.
Light from the starry skies shone down into the chamber and the wind whistled quickly through the labyrinth of tunnels below. All congreated at this point, this central chamber, and in the center a simple stone pedestal. Atop the pedestal, bathed in the blues and purples of the night, lay a small wooden hunting bow, wrapped in white silken cloth and with string so fine as to seem invisible, were it not for the reflections of the water, caught there and dripping off it.
Centuries of darkness, followed by the sun, followed by the rain and storms. Centuries of weather, centuries of laying there taught. It had survived all. It's solitude, and it's position in that exact situation for countless years had led to an unusual event in the chamber. As the sound reverberated off the walls, and as the starlight shone in from above, and the rain flowed softly across the wooden limb of the bow there came another sound, quite unlike any heard on earth and impossible to describe. It was a sort of low rumbling which dug through the very soul of the rock, causing it to shake and water droplets, tinted purple, to escape from it's walls. The rainbow moaned, a sad song of loss, regret and remorse, mixed with frustration.
For many days and nights it moaned, yearning to be free from it's prison of wonder. Sometimes the bow howled a shrill note which leapt from the chamber up into the night, and sometimes it spoke a hollow bass which reverberated outwards into the tunnel. Relentlessly it played it's indescribable one-string tune, until finaly one day whilst it hummed gently to itself it sensed a presence nearby.
The boy was a human, wrapped in simple rags and with a feral twitch which wracked his face and neck every few seconds. The bow was silent, regarding his form in the twilight. He was thin, scrawny and the way he moved seemed somehow mechanical, his features jerking unevenly from expression to expression and movement to movement. In the chamber, filled with the light and rain of centuries he stood on the edge of the circle of rain, the drops splashing the tips of his bare-feet and his rough and muddy hair wet with the moisture in the air. He was still, regarding the box with hungry, madened eyes, but some inhibition held him back, as if some possessing force was holding him there. There was a longing in his eyes, a golden sheen to the edge of the white, fading the a dull blue, and although the light in the cave ebbed and flowed through the refracted raindrops he did not blink and did not move his gaze from the bow.
Experimentally the bow sounded, a single note filled the chamber, flowing off the pedastal and rising up the walls around the edges. The feral boy grinned in wonder, suddenly still, his twitching gone in a moment as his body felt the sound and it flowed into him, as if he was drinking from the note itself. For a split second he appeared not as the deshevelled, feral boy he was in his rags but as something purer, unfettered by illness and simply reveling in the moment, till it was gone again and that same lust crept back into his eyes, and suddenly the bow realised why he had come to this place, what had guided him through the maze of tunnels and why he looked so frail, maddened by his time in this place.
The bow let out a reluctant sigh, then summoning it's powers played the most beautiful song it could. The notes from the single-string flowed and changed like a full orchestra, and the vibrations caused the whole chamber to move, shaking with the power of pent up sorrow from the bow. It came like a rushing torrent of water, uneven and unpredictable but still somehow solid. The emotion of the bow was tangible on a level far deeper than human understanding to the boy, and he stood there motionless, entirely motionless. He did not shiver as the sound crept up his spine, he did not cower as the raindrops blew across his brow, and he did not speak as the walls trembled. He simply waited, watching, enjoying, until the bow drew to a close.
It had been a good song. One that needed no words save the ones spoken in the language older than speech. It had needed no rhythm but that of the earth of the walls. It had needed no strength but that of the stars. It had needed no musician, but the audienece. The bow had played the song which echoed in the heart of the world, to the child of the world. The young human had heard the song in his bones long before his ears had ever been blessed with sound. It was the song of the soul which had run through the chamber and now it was over the rain-bow knew what would happen. He could see the boy's twitching arms, frenzied gaze and mad posture. As the last note faded into the ether above the rain drew to a close and silence filled the room.
The bow was resigned to what happened next, and it watched with great sadness as the boy stepped over the threshold into the center of the room. It was silent as the greedy hands crept hestitently over the surface of the pedastal, and it meerly cried it's last few drops of water as the boy's hand gripped around it's silken cloth. As the boy touched it he cried out, his arms suddenly beyond his control, gripping tightly to wood, unable to let go.
The bow held him there, as it contemplated the last act of the ritual. Slowly water was drawn from the chamber floor, up the pedastal, and even up the boy himself, flowing along his arms to his wrist and into the bow. Between the string and sight it drooped in a great strand, which in moments formed itself into a arrow composed entirely of water, droplets escaping from it even as it hung in the air. Suddenly he felt his arms jerk upwards, fixed pointing sky-wards, out of the chamber and into the night, he cried as he felt his arm pull the string back, a feat he would never have been able to accomplish with his arms alone.
The water-arrow glinted in the starlight, and suddenly the chamber was filled with bars of the colours of the rainbow, bathing the walls in oranges, greens, purples, blues, reds, yellows and all shades inbetween. The walls carved through the centuries of rain became murals depicting the bow's history as the colours played along them and lit them. They showed the past of the bow, a weapon of the gods, cursed beyond use and cast down to the earth, where it was to lie forever to repent it's crimes. It was sentient, powerful, but lonely, and for every hand that had touched it there was only one end. The boys eyes darted madly around as fear gripped him, but he knew it was too late. The bow twanged as his fingers slipped from the string, sending the water arrow screaming into the night, but as it left so too did the boy, his fingers turning into water droplets before his eyes, then his hands and wrists - screaming into the night along the path of the water arrow. Suddenly his whole body was transformed into clear water, his shape quickly becoming unrecognisable as he was launched towards the heavens.
The bow clattered down on the pedestal, falling in the exact same position as it had laid for centuries. For the first time in such a long time the walls were silent and colourless, the darkness was only broken by starlight filtering through the hole in the roof onto the bow, where it lay dormant. A hundred miles above the chamber, where water was gathering into clouds, for a few fleeting seconds there could be seen a rainbow, spanning the length of the horizons, from tip to tip solid, as one more was added to the earth. |
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