an owl on the moon: aprilA Chapter by An owl on the moon Chapter four of "An owl on the moon..." The birthing trees paint wisps of blossom life from branch to branch. I gaze out the inn’s iron patchwork windows to view the transfigured earth. In this moment the Seraph of scarlet and gold strides in stillness by the window to my table. She sits across from me and grasps my hand. I sit motionless. “Is my room...available?” Her sound is soft. At this, a glance through sea and sky pierces her gentle olive eyes. “My room above the sea?” “What are you looking for in that room, Sarah?” “Perhaps,” she whispers, “a clearer window of my destiny. Vita nuova - new life.” I walk to my desk and give her the key to her upstairs room. As the night swallows the day, I leave the inn to wander to my lonely room. The ever-changing breath of the earth moves and mists across my face as I walk and view the Venus sky filled with the slumbering clouds. Oval diamonds cling to the tips of the pine and fir as I approach the darkness of my room. It is stained and shady, veiled of garnet and hazel. Muffled silence grips my stinging sight as my weariness wrestles with my mind. I lean on a pillow, while a myriad of smells fills the air; crushed petals and dusty spring. I close my eyes... White fingers, stretched and malformed, float through the sky in a slow, unrehearsed way. They fragment for brief moments and slowly reform into dragons and fleeting feelings. Sarah, her face torn by scraping shadows, stands alone. Her streaked black hair wavers restlessly in the breeze as she stares at ancient, faded photos, covered with dust and tears. Her feet feel hollow to her as they begin to kick up mounds of loose sand and broken shells. This sand, a cool, cold ice, with twisting feathered fingers, creeps up her worn, fragmented dress. Reefs of jagged, black rock, rise like lone pillars; monuments to the sempiternity of the sea. They try to crawl from underneath their constant cover, but are ever forced adown under the relentless onslaught of the pounding, green waves; deep green waves that rise up like arched wings, then fall and shatter into glassed fragments and foam. The smell of dry fish and salt fill the air, as she walks further. Rhythmic thunder drowns out the sound of circling, gray sea birds. Her eyes turn. Ahead lays a piece of misshapen drift, cast from the belly of the sea. From its form, a face appears, an arm grows, as does a leg, and the girl draws near. A young boy, his body nestled against his arms, seems to sit awkwardly still. His yellow hair stands, then falls abruptly, echoing the pattern of shifting wind. Her dark shadow blankets his face as she sits beside him. Two stone bookends rest side to side, looking out to sea. One turns with curled velvet lips, as if to speak, but hesitates in silence for a moment. “Do you come here often?” she says, after what seems a short stretch of hours. “I see you are here alone,” she hears him reply, without his lips ever twitching. She stares intently at him, trying to see past the wooden glare. Dark shadows cover them as ancient ghosts of iron and steel roar through the sky, leaving trails of gray, black smoke. “I’ve never been here before,” she says. “Parents bring you here then, did they?” he says. Her head swings slow and steady, back to a neutral position, back to the endless drummer. “Moved me here,” she says, as though reciting for a play. “We had to move. I feel so...” “Isolated?” he asks, as tiny crystal bottles begin to fall from the sky and shatter on the sand. The girl stands. The boy remains still. “I really must...must leave be...fore I am...soaked,” she sputters, as she runs off. Her room is small with enormous walls, covered with yellowed winged patterns that move and flutter. It is cold, hollow. Sarah lies. Her back rests against her bed. Tightly sealed gold chests, filled with murking memories, lay scattered about the room. Her eyes are caught, holding to a figurine hanging on the wall. Red. Deep red and brown. An oddly shaped wooden owl stares back at her. It rests in the crest of a wooden moon. A twisted smile creases its tiny face, though it can’t be seen. The girl now sits on the moon, looking down on the world below. Figures move about like clockwork statues beneath her, shifting and scuffling as she goes unnoticed above them, watching their hollow eyes shedding hollow tears. Outside her, all is deep red; a scorched and smokey red. Awakened from a solemn slumber, the girl walks again along the barren sand. Dark shadows grope and slide around her, as the black waves beat time in the distance. A darker shadow appears ahead. The boys’ body is still resting on his arms. The girl feels the cold grabbing her legs and arms and she sits beside him. “How long have you been resting by this sea? Do you never wander the waterway?” she asks, as pools of ice well up in the pockets of her eyes. “If only I had feathered wings, that could bend and curve and reach, beyond imagined dreams, unhindered by the weight of earth.” The whisper comes from the shadow. A tiny ball of crystal slides down the girls cheek. Laced gray blankets fragment in the air, revealing small candles in the sky. The girl begins to choke and cough on her tears, and she leans toward the boy. She feels the boy wrapping his arms around her, then he holds her. She tries desperately to break free, but he is too strong. A wooden hand covers her pale face and she ceases to struggle. Her body falls slowly back against the spindly, torn fragment of driftwood. A twisted smile lifts her porcelain cheeks though it can’t be seen. My eyes open to garnet and hazel... Leaving my room, I stir and shift toward Sarah’s figure seated by the sea. Intricate weaves of braided grass, gold and green, rest in quietness as they softly stroke the adust sand. Biting chill, drifting sky, waves that speak, a watchful eye. “You’re up with the sun,” I say. “Before the sun, or any star.” She looks toward me and with her voice, she grasps my hand. “I dreamt here last night. On this ever-changing sand, I dreamt of eternity. I touched the moon last night; a golden glow beyond my grasp. Eons before me it rested there. It will remain when I am dust. My hand now glows from the embrace. Voices echo through nights past, and with the glow, caress my face. My finger faints from what will last. Alone I am; alone secure; the moon will last when I am gone. A Master set it in its’ place, to move the tide, refresh the dawn. Unnumbered eyes have felt its rest; have looked upon reflected light. My heart is moved away from pain; I touched the moon last night.” My words grope and grind in my mouth. “How can a mortal moment touch the eternal?” I say. “Is not eternity an everlasting moment?” she asks. “I, too, had a dream last night. A dream of a girl wishing she could find her home.” “And was that dream of me?” She stands to leave. “Oh, how dreams perish in the light of the sun,” I say. “No,” she says. “The dreams always exist. It is the dreamers who perish.” “Sarah, you spoke with such sorrow in my dream.” “And what did that sorrow state that shook your slumber?” “Death will embrace us if we are too eager.” I pause and she turns back to me. “Look how the sand is beaten, and yet remains. Do you think me weaker than sand?” “We are all made of dust,” I say. “Was not dust resurrected from a stone casket? Even the lily speaks of it. The riddle was in the reason, not the reality.” I move toward her and speak slowly. “You don’t even believe your own words.” She hesitates, then speaks again with a mocking smile gripping her face, and her finger extends toward a trampled, rocky place. “Do you see that path? Look at that walking place!” she screams. “It was there before you or I were born. We ran across it as children, and now we are grown; grown feverishly mad in search of what we left on that place. A devouring peace, a trembling joy; measured moments of igniting rest. What justice is age? What mercy is wisdom? They mock our fear and propel us to our death. The enlightened mind is a barren hope, for the darking grave cannot remember. What good is gold in the grave? And power is breathless in silent slumber. I am afraid to feel real life, but I don’t know why I say this to you. I do see a once caring child in your eyes and I’ve no one else I trust to tell. Is it a waste of life to wonder; to wander through your mind? What flighting recollections your clasping thoughts may find.” At this, she begins to cry. I look away from her mourning frame, and stare at the sea, where no path ever remains. My words come slow and steady. “I did not mean to dig so deep. But do not quake, for I too will weep. And wander with you if in dreams, until true sunlight softly gleams across our hope’s horizon.” “If you only knew,” she whispers, “what horrid hand from the past has slaughtered my hope.” At this a dark beast swallows the sun.
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An owl on the moonAbout2024 is here... May we make it so much more heaven than hell... Wishing all peace on earth... Together, maybe we go the distance... The night has a thousand eyes, And the day but one; Yet t.. more..Writing
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