An intriguing title I should have looked up the meaning of first. However, that would have yielded a different story I’m sure. And I discuss this at length in the video, but one of my favorite things about storytelling is that you ever only take one possible path when infinite ones are available. I always wonder where those other paths lead.
Thanks for reading.
Artwork by Igor Galkin
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/bKn4Rk
DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.
The Story
The candle’s flame was cold. It flickered, and a thread of smoke lifted into the air, so Merryn knew it was real. She thought to touch it, but she couldn’t bring her hands from the sheet eaten by time. Barely there, it was. However, she enjoyed the hearty threads on her palms, and she sent her fingertips to explore its surface.
It was dark here, except for the faint candle light, but after a time, the moon showed itself, and when she saw what it revealed, she nearly screamed. Walls, high and coarse with stone were dressed in foul whispers that came from dark places tunneled within them. If she could only bring her hands to her ears to silence those whispers. If she could only bring her hands to her eyes to hide what the moonlight revealed. It showed her more than walls festooned with empty holes that breathed horror. It brought the truth of what lay before her. No longer were her hands or the sheet caressed with the warm tones of the candle. The silver moon struck her naked with its frigid gaze, leaving her alone but for the emptiness of a mausoleum.
She dropped to her knees, because it would at least limit her view, and she pressed her face into the hanging sheet. She would bring it back to its former glory. She was good with her hands, with a needle and thread. She would repay it for the comfort it had given her in this terrible place.
Comfort didn’t last long, for she saw through the sheet to see nothing beneath what she had assumed was a table. This was not a table at all but a box without legs. It had to be the dust, her reeling mind, that conjured such illusions. Perhaps she needed to stand again, allow the blood to flow where it needed.
So, she did and was greeted by a ghostly face. It hovered there, expressionless in the gloom. Still, she could not move her hands to run away. They wanted to remain, grounded to the only thing she could feel, and soon the rest of her was possessed by their desire.
The face belonged to a woman, smooth of skin and gentle of eye, her beauty not sullied by the sharp rays of the moon. She did not speak, merely touched the wick of an unlit candle opposite the other Merryn had not noticed. When the woman removed her finger, a flame sprung to life, as cold as the other.
“These fragile things will do nothing to warm you up,” the woman said. “Here, let me.” And she went to Merryn, took the shawl from her shoulders and draped it over Merryn’s.
“Better?” the woman said into her. Her breath smelled of nothing.
Merryn nodded, unable to trust her voice.
The woman returned to her spot opposite Merryn, hands mirroring her own.
“This place is not to be feared, child,” the woman said. “It’s dark and cold and smells of both, but you will find comfort here. Soon.”
“I don’t want to find anything but the way out,” Merryn said, surprising herself. She pressed her lips together and swallowed her tongue.
The woman glanced at Merryn’s hands, smiled softly before gazing back into her eyes. “This place isn’t always so dreary, child. The skylight there, it welcomes the sun when the time is right. I am sorry that time is not now. You will love to bask in her glory, hear her laughter. Her secrets. Feel her touch.”
Merryn felt something at that moment, as if the sun had found its way here, through the candles’ flames. Warmth, growing from her fingernails, over her knucles, to her wrists, burrowing up her sleeves to reach–
“Her heart,” the woman said. “The sun is a she, didn’t you know?” The woman chuckled distant wind chimes.
“When?” Merryn said.
“Oh, it’s difficult to tell anymore. She is a tricky one. Generous but fickle at times. More than anything, you mustn’t fear her brother, who wraps us in his steel blanket now. Only when the family is complete, shall she show herself and take you into her arms.”
“I don’t understand,” Merry said. “Why am I here? Why can’t I move … my … hands?” Tears squeezed from her eyes.
“Look there,” the woman said nodding behind Merryn.
Merryn saw a cloaked man, his hands arranged similarly to hers atop what she now saw resembled the legless box before her, floating, unquestionably housing a corpse. The man blew out the single candle there and was one with the smoke left behind. The coffin rose higher and higher, its shadow moving across the ground toward her like a pit to consume her.
Merryn wept, tore her hands from what she knew now was a coffin beneath her own hands, stumbled back a few steps until the gaze of the woman found her and brought her back.
“Good,” the woman said. “She accepts you. You accept her.”
“I accept no one!” Merry shrieked. “Show me from this place.”
“If only I could. But that is not my duty, child. It is yours.”
Merryn ran away from the woman, into the darkness, guiding herself along the walls, but no matter how far she went, she always came back to where she started, her hands where they started.
“All roads lead to home,” the woman said.
Home. Merryn’s hands revisited the peaks, the valleys. The imperfections that were perfect. Like family.
Merryn felt the candles’ flames. Their invitation. She blew out one, then the other. Around her, other coffins rose toward the moonlight to where she would shortly go. And hope to find the sun.
“Beautiful, no?” the woman said, admiring the display. “I never tire of it.”
Merryn watched her fingers swirl into gray tendrils, then her arms, then all of her until she could watch no longer. Her heart, though, she could feel, and it burned as warm and as bright as the sun.
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