Sic Transit Gloria Mundi~

~rewriting The end~

The stones are jagged beneath Girl's bleeding feet. She walks the rubble of cities.

Her spine is an uncertain arch beneath the hemorrhaging sun in the metal sky.  The wreckage of everything lit in dribbles of crimson that breach the pallor of clouds.

The pain has always been there to coil the length of her twisted spine, a dull ache pounding out the unsteady rhythm of her heart beats, coursing the damaged nerves, some severed, some still intact enough to remind her of the definition of anguish.

She is an ash bow, bowed but not broken, possessing a simple grace in the very aspect of tortured beauty.

She breathes softly, flare of nostrils, singed air soaking her sinuses, her lungs.

She climbs the bones of Earth toward skyscrapers crushed to the ground.

 

Woman is shadow and sunlight.

She reaches her white hands toward the dusk beyond the horizon.  She shapes its extravagant splendor into pained shining to bring into the cradle of her arms.

The burgundy sun dips in the sky before her radiance.

Her feet are cold as frost upon the metal hump of what once had been a bullet train, once glorious and flirting with the speed of light, now little more than a disfigured beast of singed and gutted alloy.

Myth reaches its twisted, ruined hands for the hem of her lavender robe in the arena of monstrous shadowy gloom which has come to eclipse the lands.

“What mortal gifts have I to fill this devastation I have come upon?” Woman beseeches Myth.

“You know what must be done.” Wheezes the scorched creature, its eyes firestorm galaxies within the broken terrain of his ash skull.

“My determination wavers. I was never meant to be more than a fragile girl in glass slippers.” Woman whispers, shaking fairy tales in fractal pixels from the jewels wound through her red hair. They conflagrate as they touch the metal buried deep in Earth’s abdomen, leave impressions in red beads desperate to find a chain to link together upon.

Myth licks the beads. Fairy tales slip under its tongue. It nuzzles Woman’s ankles.

“Earth has endured generations of horrors. Bled, raped, murdered tiny acre by acre. Greed emptied her veins. Her womb is a hollow. A wasteland, a waste, all of it such a waste!” Woman weeps in stillness, tears molten gold incisions down the curve of her cheeks.

Myth kisses her slender feet, aching to comfort.

She glances down upon Myth with love, gives it her moon colored eyes in tender gaze, her hand to stroke the dark matting of fur on the top of its crushed skull.

“There will be no more celebrations under the moon, no more guests come for divine suppers.” She bows her head.

The soft trilling of a dove separates pleats of atomic nuclei in the dusk as Woman caresses Myth’s wounds with gentle hands.

 

A measure of Girl’s distraction can be ascribed to weariness. She reaches up to onyx sky, whispers, “O Beauty, I would speak your tongue.”

Trance takes her instantly, captures her deeply, shows her the way.

She walks through metal, steel ripping her little feet until they are shorn and open to the bone.

Girl feels only rapture as she strolls past a crawling bird’s gentle pain.

The ash of Men, pearl gray dust, pools in the shimmering impressions of her footprints.

 

Woman shivers in unnamed anticipation as the last of the Timber Wolves leaps up the metal to recline back on his silver haunches beside her.

“There will never be such beauty come to this world again!” Woman cries.

Myth trembles, clutches her robe in double claws, fear racing its scored spine.

Woman sighs, whispers.

“Watch.”

 

Girl knows she should not upset History, but the temptation teases at her temples like wings on the inside of her skull.

She continues her bleeding pace as Sky opens her dark mouth and sings dying stars across the heavens. In Girl’s spine, the Past is like a thorn, the Future burning in her abdomen.

She rounds a metal corner on whispering feet, and there, atop the beetle back of a twisted bullet train she sees the Woman who is like a lion amidst all the ruins.

Girl closes the cream lids over her eyes, looks beyond the here into wispy ethers of spirit.

Within the mist she ‘sees’ Woman’s stalking soul, the brittleness in her hips, the source of both the same. She ‘sees’ Mother, and names her Salvation.

Girl unseals her eyes, bursts of joy like warm cocoa in her belly. She skips across a mountain of sharp steel toward Home.

 

Woman bends from the waist, grasps girl’s hands, pulls the naked child with the bleeding feet and the mangled spine high atop the metal stump to stand before her.

Girl beams with rapture, warmed within Woman’s double moon eyes brilliant in the snowflake patterns of her delicate face.  She falls beyond the lunar orbs into liquid albescence and through into azure seas which embrace whales diving deep, alive, despite the feverish depths of the oceans. 

Joy is fleeting.

Girl shivers, her vision drawn to calf carcasses cradled lovingly beneath the belly of whales. A thousand whales crying a shivering death knell into the waves that crash upon dead shores barren and on fire.

“I stood on white beaches, once upon a time, awaiting their resurgence, but they died, every last one of them. Now they are soft dreams inside the planets that gave themselves to my skull.” Woman speaks softly as she gently pushes Girl out of her memory back into her body.

 “I stood that day, alone, except for Myth and Timber Wolf, who stood with me to witness the sighing waves.” The Woman’s eyes alight with love, like moths upon Myth at her feet and Timber Wolf at her side.

 “Murder was at my back. Humans with blood on their hands, sharp steel in their hearts, their souls become hard as metal. And yet it was just the beginning. Little shocks, horrors, raced across my skin like embers and unfolded themselves across the world that covers my bones like skin.”

“They knew it was coming.” Myth mourns. “It confronted them in vivid display each moment of everdays. But they had learned how to be blind in their artificial comforts.”

“They butchered the prophets, the silken souls with ridicule. They cast aside the visionaries for a taste of the latest cultivated atrocity.” Woman laughs without joy. “They injected themselves with the bittersweet ambrosia of indifference, and that was their greatest sin.”

Girl shivers, wraps her arms about her nakedness in the night, remembering. “Yes, I was born on the night of the Collapse. Mother bled and bled. Man hands took me. Mother screamed, imploring them to let me live.”

Woman’s sudden rage is like a scent, clear and sharp as evergreens in a forest of pines. She cups Girl’s chin tenderly with her palm, saying “And they let you live, because you terrified them. But they tore your little wings out of your spine and burnt it with your mother on the pyre.”

“They never saw me for what I was.” Girl shivers, her clear blue eyes upon Woman.

“And so you swallowed them up like Time, though Time was not meant to be bent in your hands.” Woman’s sorrow is a soft veil of shimmering breeze in the air.

“I am His child! It was permitted me!” Girl implores understanding.

“You pushed  them hard into their own self destruct mechanism.” Woman sighs.

“Yes, I did.” Girl nods her head, eyes like hard little gems.

“But this devastation still surrounds us. You changed nothing.” Woman says very softly.

“Men are hard creatures.” Myth sobs crystals from its glittering eyes.

“I wanted my mother back!” Girl weeps blood out of her blue eyes.

Woman brings the twisted girl close against her breasts, smoothes the golden hair trailing down her damaged spine. “It’s alright , little one. Everyone wants their mother.”

Myth dares itself to take Girl’s hand, saying “Before the Collapse, man was already a callous thing. But these new UnChildren born out of the ashes of the metal world are by far the worst. In them thunders a darkness like a second heart, a cruelty unequaled.”

“Myth  is right, little one.” Woman sighs as she works unnoticed miracles the length of Girl’s brutalized spine with her magikal fingertips. “Their avarice and empty meat are so devastating to behold that I could lie down like one in great agony upon their wicked pyres.”

“But the need of dying Earth keep you tall and gently walking forward.” Timber wolf speaks softly, his one gold, other powder blue eyes tender upon Woman.

“And so I walk, but with each step retire deeper into my soul, Earth shivering under my feet, and no amount of my blood has quickened her heart. I have been Girl, and Maiden, Woman, and Crone, as Earth needs me to be, but the damage  this time . . . .”

“She slumbers, she is still, but she is still there.” Girl lifts her cheek from Woman’s beating heart to look into her moon colored eyes.”

“This is so.” Timber Wolf nods, his eyes upon the burning stars brilliant in the canvas of the sky.

“We must do that for which each one of us was made.” Woman says as her palms feel cartilage and bone reworking themselves the length of Girl’s spine.

“This is so.” Myth nods its compressed skull and uncurls itself from Woman’s feet to rise upward, to tower over Woman, Girl, Wolf, its aspect shifting into onyx shadow, galaxies in its eye sockets.

Girl contorts, long throat dripping screams as wings tear themselves through her skin. They unfurl of their own, white and silver and electric blue feathers. Girl’s hair turns to golden flame, her eyes the color of the sea.

Silence, as in the Beginning.

Girl takes a breath.

“Mother Earth.” She smiles devotion upon Woman. “Father time.” She gazes up at Myth. “Spirit.” She reaches to stroke the muzzle of Timber Wolf.

She names the Trinity.

In unison they name her.

She seals Fate with these words. “The time of man has come and gone. Their potential destroyed in the fires of hatred. Their Sin is Indifference.”

Mother Earth rips the velvet gown from her skin in twain.

Spirit  leaps, weeping diamonds from its eyes. It sinks its teeth of sharp bone throug Mother Earth's belly.

Earth trembles beneath their feet and begins her split at the core.

Father Time takes the moon eyes of Mother Earth from their sockets and places them in its own.

The stars above the world begin to fall like fire across the lands.

Spirit tears Mother Earth's abdomen open cleanly.

She with the wings steps forward to retrieve that which pulses radiant and alive within Mother Earth’s womb.

Mother Earth falls like a whispering rush. Her skin sloughs from the bones, scatters like white leaves across the hunched spine of the bullet train.

She with the wings eats of the luminous life cradled in her palm. Father Time takes a taste. Spirit finishes what is left of Mother Earth.

A contraction fills with black fire. Blinks out of Time beneath the beautiful ivory face of a moon.

 

 

copyright:vssmd/amusemusepress

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

 

Reviews

[JelliFyshKissUs]

If humanity could only see from your wounded heart, peer into the vastness of brutality and detached apathy with pulsations hammering away at their psyche, begging them to wake up before salvation is too late. Your writing makes me curl up at your feet and absorb every precious gem of wisdom that drips from you lips and drops into my treasure chest. Your are such a rare paragon, Selene. And this story is history in the making... Magical!

[Matthew Kult]

This is by far one of the most polished and best executes shorts I have read on this site. Absolutely phenominal....It was like a nightmarish dream with vivid imagery of the destruction of life....A strong Message within....you can't ask for much more. Bravo

With Love,

Jaidyn

[Robin]

a finely woven brocade of the conclusion of humanity and mother earth ~ a curtain call with no encore ~

[Aven]

I love the way you refer to your characters in this piece, genius...I often seek the reality in your texts, because reviewing something so intricate, so vivid and so refined, it is easy to seem stupid. You are bottle full of talent, every time I get a taste, it leaves me with a taste for more!