07-26-2015, 07:36 PM
what is dead may never die;
but rises again
And so it is no wonder that she doesn't question it when she finds herself in a world that seems to exist only for her. This is the world she is used to, where her thoughts become reality. She simply accepts it, embraces it completely, and begins the process with a smile.
It starts with a simple premise. In this world, the plants do not wilt if she stands beside them too long. In this world, she does not lifesuck. A thought, and a riot of plants and trees and flowers burst from the ground for her. She stands in the middle of a beautiful garden: a canopy of trees creates dappled sunshine. Sweet-smelling vines trail from their branches, sometimes dipping low enough to touch her back as she walks between them, surveying her handiwork. The trees are dotted with flowers, sweet-smelling plumeria blossoms that perfume the air. The ground beneath her hooves is a gentle carpet of green grass, as soft as a blanket.
Another thought, and the animals come. Squirrels skitter along the branches of the trees, chattering gently. Partially hidden within the woods, a mother deer and two fawns graze, entirely at their ease. They raise their heads to look at her as she passes, but she does not want them to be afraid and so they are not. She continues along her path, building her world as she goes.
A brook bursts from the ground, its headwater bubbling up softly from beneath a pile of rocks and moss, looking as though it had been there for years. The water that flows from it is clear and cold, and when she bends to drink from the stream it tastes as crisp and fresh as anything she's ever had. The other animals approach it too, curious to see what's in their woods. There are elk and moose, badgers and chipmunks. But something is still missing – what? A pause, a breath, and she realizes. It's the silence. It's too quiet. She blinks, and a rainbow of birds pops into existence. They dot the branches around the water, chirruping a gentle song. They are many and varied in their breeds and the style of their song, but in her creation they are like a sweet chorus, all the disparate elements in harmony.
A small squirrel approaches her, stopping before her like a petitioner before a queen. It watches her with interest, and she offers it a reassuring smile. Could she force it to love her, as she wants it to love her? Yes, she knows anything is within her power here in this world. But that's not what she wants. She wants to earn it, to know that she deserves it. To know that they see her as their mother, that they care for her, not just because she has made them.
The small squirrel sniffs the air, and then scampers up her leg to perch gently on her back.
The others are quick to follow then, birds perching along her crest, rabbits scampering up onto her back, all the creatures of the forest perching on the grey girl like a strange erstwhile Disney Princess. And Aletheia, the girl who doesn't understand emotions, the girl who is stoic, the girl who knows nothing of the world – she is grinning, delighted to have friends at last. In the real world, she doesn't fit in. She lives in the Valley, a largely silent kingdom, and any time she gets too close for too long, her lifesteal starts to tick, sapping away possible friendships as surely as it saps away their energy. But not here, not in this world. Here, lifesteal is less than a memory.
And so the days pass as she frolics with her friends. In this place, sadness comes from the little things – a fawn trips as they dance through a meadow, a bird caught in a vine hurts its wing as it struggles to get free. But all the hardships are easily fixed, because in this world, Aletheia is everything. The small fawn is mended before it can be hurt. The bird's wing knits itself back together with no pain. She uses her power to smooth the world for her friends.
Several weeks have passed, and she lies within a bower of grass, surrounded by the gentle press of trees and the warmth of her animal friends, pressed around her so closely that they could be a blanket. Wouldn't it be nice, she thinks, if they could talk to each other? She has always been able to talk to them and they to her, although she thinks that it is not really talking with a voice, but instead a kind of knowing, an unspoken connection, like wires between their various souls. But it's cruel that they can't all enjoy each other's company, she thinks, and at her thought the world twists itself to her whim.
The wordless chatter suddenly has words. There is a collective silence as realization sets in, and then the chatter explodes again. The high, excited voices of the birds mingle with the soft, quick voices of the squirrels. They are comparing notes on the various nuts and seeds of the trees of the forest, deciding which are more delicious. The elk, moose, and deer are having the same conversation about the grass and berries. All around her is laughter and cheer, wordless friends suddenly able to understand each other at last.
They are the best of friends, the dearest of companions, but there is still something missing. There are many who are like her, but none who are exactly like her – no other horses. And her other friends, while sweet, don't fill the void of having none of her own kind. And so she thinks, and they come into being. As is the way of dreams, she pulls them unknowingly from her reality. There is Thorn, a chestnut mare that awake-Aletheia would know in a heartbeat to be Thorrun. There is Infee, a handsome grey stallion, the idealized dream-version of Infection, whose true appearance is too horrific to make its way into this world. There is Rho, younger than all the rest of them, a gold-and-white representation of the real-world Rhonan. And finally, there's another black, but this time a mare. Her eyes are blue and her coat is flecked with blue, like stars. Her name in the dream is Ant, but real-world Aletheia would know her in a moment as Antimony.
In this world, their personalities are so different from how they are in the real world. Thorn is quick to laugh and mischevious. Infee is gallant and caring, almost as close with all the animals of the woodlands as Aletheia herself. Rho loves to run with the deer, to frolic and play. And Ant is gentle, sweet, and innocent.
Almost instantly, their little band is inseparable. They roam together, playing in idyllic fields and meadows, lying down to sleep together at night tucked within copses of trees, warmed by blankets of forest friends. It goes on this way for some months, or perhaps some years, and all is well.
It begins with a desire to make things fair. When she'd given voices, she'd given them to the animals only – how was that fair to the trees and the plants? Surely they deserved to speak just as much as any of the rest. She thinks it, and it is so. But when their voices come through, they are not voices of happiness and harmony.
You see, the world she had created had no violence – at least, not that she could see. The animals did not eat each other, but they still had to eat, and what they ate was the plants. And now, now that those plants were given voice, the animals could hear their screams.
The world is alive with the screaming, as though a million souls are being massacred. The grass beneath their feet screams as they stand on it. The leaves scream where the deer nibble at them. The seed pods bellow as the birds pluck seeds from them. She, and all of her companions, are instantly horrified. She had not meant this, not any of it – she had only wanted them to have a voice; she had never dreamt that that voice could be a scream.
Almost as one, the animals freeze, hoping that if they stop eating, stop moving, the screaming will stop. And it does diminish, but it does not stop, not so long as they stand on the grass, or their tiny talons punch into branches. And so in the next moment, they are moving. But there is nothing coordinated or graceful about it now. This is a mad dash, a desperate flight, something primal and dangerous and entirely outside of Aletheia's wildest imaginations.
They are desperate for a place where there are no plants, for a clearing where the screaming will stop. But there isn't such a place; the closest they can get is to go into the water, to stand in the stream where the water rushes and the plants are not so thick. But as they try to enter the water, there is too many of them, and Aletheia cannot save them all – many are crushed beneath the hooves of others, or pushed beneath the water, drowning.
For her part, the grey mare and her companions can only watch in horror. This had been their world, their playground, their utopia – and now it was falling apart. In desperation, Aletheia begins to think, just as she always had, to fix it, as it had always been fixable, but now it is useless.
Her first reaction is to silence the trees and plants and flowers. But it doesn't work; they feel her intention, and they are angry. Not only are they not silenced, but her thought seems to somehow give them a new kind of life. They are the things of terror now: forests dig up their roots and use them like legs, giving the trees the terrifying capacity to march. The vines have life too, and use it to ensnare the animals who had once eaten them. Angry and hurt and silenced for too long, the vines wrap around necks, snapping and choking and destroying. And the grass is alive too, trying its best to snare and trap the animals that stand upon it, acting like a strange blanket that waves as one, turning itself into a snare, a slide, a hazard to the other animals that stand upon it. Every green, growing thing in the world has suddenly acquired will and initiative of its own, and is bent on destroying every animal that's ever eaten anything green – which is to say, all of them.
The trees reach the deer first, their delicate hooves held in place by the mutinous grass. Their roots wrap around the mother deer, and with a sickening crunch, snaps her skeleton in four places. Her fawns watch in horror for a moment before they too find the same fate. The tree wraps tentacle-like roots around them and pulls them into itself, where they disappear beneath the rippling bark surface.
"Run!" Aletheia speaks to her four friends, and to all the rest of her friends. Her thoughts don't seem to work anymore; nothing seems to work anymore. She is barely able to keep the grass from crawling up her legs, barely able to keep running, although where she hopes to go, she cannot say.
In one last, desperate effort, she thinks of fire. Burn it, she thinks, burn the plants and the trees and the flowers and they can't come for us. And this thought succeeds, but she hasn't thought it all the way out. As the flame sparks into life behind her, the trees and the grass and the flowers do go up in flames, but fire is even more unpredictable than her sentient greenery. Created by Aletheia in the passion of her fear and desperation, the fire is unnaturally powerful and hungry, devouring everything in its path. Still caught in the vines and the grass, animals are roasted alive.
Sweet Rho is the first of her friends to get caught. He trips on a root and snaps a leg as he goes down hard, and Aletheia discovers suddenly that she is no longer able to save him. She can do nothing but watch in horror as the root comes alive, dragging him down, down into the depths of the ground. She is not sure what ultimately kills him, or if he ultimately dies – his screams simply become muffled by the ground.
Cheery Ant is the next to go. Seeing Rho fall, she stops fleeing, turning back to the tree and throwing herself at it. She calls out Rho's name, rearing and beating her hooves against the trunk of the tree, demanding that it release their friend. Thorn, Infy, and Aletheia implore her to step away, to simply accept that he is gone, but it is no use. A branch extends from the trunk of the tree with a terrible swiftness, punching right through Ant's heart before the mare can even react. It stays there, impaling her, leaving her hanging almost like a warning.
All around them, the scent of the fire is hot, and ash and smoke and embers are thick in the air. It is hard to breathe.
They turn a corner in the woods, only to stop short. Before them stands an angry mob of all the forest creatures. Aletheia's heart breaks again then – she can remember so clearly how it had been, back when they'd first come into being. She remembers how they'd all curled up together, warm against the gentle, cool night. How had it all gone so wrong?
Because now their eyes are murder, and the voices she'd given them are accusing her. They blame her, it's her fault, she caused all of this. They hurl every insult they can think of – she's got her new friends now, she didn't need them, she had always been on the side of the trees and the plants - and she can't even start to respond to them. The accusations are too wild, too entirely untrue. How do you begin to engage with an angry mob?
Infee knows. He turns to look at Aletheia and Thorn, and she can see it in his eyes. They need blood, he knows, and he – ever gallant – is willing to sacrifice himself for them. You can still find a way to save this, he says to Aletheia. You can figure it out, but only if you survive. Survive, and bring me back. She doesn't want him to, doesn't want any of them to, doesn't want any of this – but there's no other option, and she knows. Feeling hollow, feeling impotent, feeling hopeless, she nods.
She hears his gallant voice try to calm the crowd as she and Thorn turn and run. As he fades out of sight, the voice rises, and turns to screams.
They don't get very far before Thorn slows, and Aletheia slows too, her heart sinking. Her friend is crying. How could you, she asks. How could you let him give his life for yours? Not for mine, Aletheia counters. Never just for mine. For all of us. But the chestnut isn't willing to listen. Thorn shakes her head. They were right, she says. This was all your fault. And then, Thorn lunges at Aletheia.
It's not hard for the grey girl to dodge, but she's too startled to react at first. How had it all come crashing down? How had their perfect world turned to one of fire and death? Why was it all burning? All she'd wanted was to make the world equal, to give the trees and plants a voice. Why had this all happened?
She steps to the side, and Thorn's blind, angry rush misses her completely. As she watches, Thorn wheels around again. She sidesteps again. But this time, the chestnut Thorn doesn't wheel and recover. This time, she loses her balance, tangled up in her legs and in her anger. The chestnut mare goes down hard, and Aletheia knows before she even sees it that the mare has snapped her neck and cannot get up again. She can feel in her bones the way that Thorn sobs, crying for Infy, for Rho, for Ant, for all of them – and, Aletheia dares to hope, for her too.
She is alone then. There are no more friends for her, not in this world. In a cruel twist of irony, she can still feel them as they die, although she cannot control them, or control the world. The trees and the grass and the flowers seem to have lost their will to fight in the face of the fire and are dormant and tranquil once more. The majority of her animal friends are gone, dead just like Infy, Rho, Ant, and Thorn.
And in just a moment more, there is nothing left to do. She comes upon a cliff, not even aware that she'd created such a thing when she'd initially shaped the world. But she hadn't been paying detailed attention; she'd somewhat allowed it to shape itself, to ripple out from where she'd started, to give her something to explore too.
The forest is thick right up to the edge, and she knows the fire is not far. She can feel the heat, feel the way it presses in on her. The air is thick with embers. She can feel the sharp pain of the occasional incinerated animal, a sharp staccato on top of the constant thrum that is the agony of the burning greenery. There is nowhere she can run. Nowhere she can go. All the sacrifice had been for nothing, she knows that now. She will never regain control of this world; it's become more than she can control, spinning out of her orbit like an uncooperative planetoid. Once something escapes gravity, it never calmly settles back. The only option is to continue spinning out, or to crash and burn. And her world, clearly, is crashing and burning.
All that remains is for her to decide how she will die.
She briefly considers jumping from the cliff. It would be a swift, merciful end, but it would also be the wrong end. She doesn't deserve a swift, merciful end. How many countless innocent animals, how many of her friends had died today because of her? It's the least she can do to honor their memories by dying just as they died. The trees and the flowers are not killing anymore, so she'll simply have to die to the thing she'd created as a last-ditch attempt to save them all.
Stoic, emotionless, determined, she moves forward mechanically. She's made her choice, and there is no point in waiting for it. Death will come for her, waiting will only prolong the inevitable. As she walks willingly toward the fire, she cries for all of them. She cries for her friends, for the animals, for the trees and the flowers, for the paradise that was, and the better paradise it could have been. Silently, stoically, she cries.
She makes no noise until she starts to burn.
She is still screaming when she wakes up. Or, thinks she wakes up, because this place feels too similar to wherever she had just been. She is startled, unsure, her mind still hazy in the immediate aftermath of sleep. But it doesn't last long as the adrenaline already coursing through her system kicks back in, because this world, much like the one she'd just left, is also on fire.
But this world, unlike her dream-world, is a world she knows all too well. She is in the Valley, cradled in her usual sleeping spot. She quickly gets to her feet, and decides that she is in fact awake because the plants that she had been laying on had wilted during the night. Her heart aches for a moment for the world she'd had in the dream, a world where the lifesteal had not existed, a world where she'd been the mother of wonderful things (and a world, she remembers, where the wonderful things had eventually crashed and burned.
Looking out into the kingdom, she can see that it is burning. The brush and the trees are alight, and ashes drift through the air. But at least in this world the plants and the flowers are not trying to attack; the only threat of death comes from the fire. It's threat enough, but it is perhaps a threat she can outrun.
As she runs, she sees the only home she's ever known burning. She hasn't lived here long, and she hasn't met many other horses, but it is devastating nonetheless. The Valley is her home – that is one of only four things that she knows with absolute certainty. And now, that only home is being destroyed, consumed in fire. Perhaps it is the smoke and the soot and the ashes, but tears are streaming down her usually impossibly stoic face.
She stumbles, sharply reminded of the fate of her friends in the all-too-real dream. But unlike her friends, she is able to get up again, and to continue running. As she goes she watches for any other Valley-dwellers who might have survived. Perhaps someone, somewhere is trapped. Perhaps she could help guide someone else to safety (assuming, of course, that she's managed to find a way to safety herself). But she sees no one. There are distant screams, but she never sees anyone.
Well, not anyone alive. It's not long before she finds herself in a charred section of the Valley, and in this charred strip, she finds corpses.
It looks like a mother and a foal, and she hopes to god it isn't Quorra. The mare had just agreed to come to the Valley; how could it be that her time could be cut short so soon? From the positioning of their bodies, she thinks they died quickly, that they didn't struggle. The mare's incinerated body is curled around her foal's, almost like they are sleeping. If they weren't burned beyond recognition, they could be peaceful. The air reeks of burnt, charred flesh.
She had not been scared when Infection had entered the Valley. He had been obviously alive, able to talk and think (and touch her, without the kind of intense reaction that she usually engendered in others). He had smelled different, but Aletheia had lacked the instincts to understand that he smelled downright unnatural. She hadn't feared him because she had not understood that he needed to be feared.
But now, now she can put the pieces together. Now she can see everything, can see that this mare and her foal had burned, and can identify that the scent on their flesh means the scent of charred and burning. It means the scent of a possible future for her. It means the death of her friends. She might not have her natural instincts, but she is no idiot – this is a scent she'll never forget for the rest of her life.
After what feels like an eternity, her lungs are scorched and her throat is raw. She's soaked in sweat and tears, her white coat smudged with soot and dotted with ash. But she is in the mountains, and the fire seems far away from up here. There are other horses who have made it up to here, and she moves among them gingerly, careful not to startle them with a touch. She seeks desperately for someone, anyone that she might know – any horse of the Valley, any horse she'd met in the meadow – hell, even any horse she'd met in the field. But there is no one. It takes her two or three rounds of looking at every face before it really sinks in, but there is no one.
She is alone.
Alone, she walks to the edge, looking down into the Valley. Alone, she watches as all distinguishing features of her home burn away in the wrath of the flames. Alone, she sees one of four key points of her identity slip away.
She is Aletheia. Carnage is her father. Librette is her mother. The Valley had once been her home. But now? Now, she has nothing.
aletheia
harder and stronger