The grendel has opened a second front. No longer content to batter us with the brute machinations of his necromancers, he has enlisted a host of disenchanters and disillusionists, Gothic faeries floating on delicate black-lace wings, miniature Circes with raven hair whose melancholic melodies are difficult to resist.
Some swoop down on silent wings at twilight, night-raptors leaving no trace across the sky. Others creep on cat's paws from the shadows of the data mines, their eyes glowing malignant green across the night. They stalk lone victims, shunning the banes of light and laughter. They hunt the darkness, draw strength from low, gray days.
Their spells are studies in subtlety that exploit our natural faults and weakness like diminutive dwarven wedges tapped, tapped, tapped patiently into stone.
Fear fills the void between the dull monotony of day by day and the dread of a future unknown. Sadistic sprites weave smoky incantations, summoning shadows that cling to our flesh with kitten claws while raking us with tiny daggers that draw no blood but sow an ache into an unseen web of scars.
Spells of insomnia deprive us of sleep yet not the need for nightly dreams. Brain fog rises from dark rivers of undreamt images, their languid tendrils weaving an elaborate phantasmagoria before our bleary eyes.
Some days we feel cloaked in the forgetability of Victorian children, unseen, unheard. Charms of confusion infuse some allies with linguistic misdirection, suggesting that talking about is the same as talking to. Domes of silence mute others completely.
Stalwarts shake off these bewitchments in a spray of color, a misty halo that guides us to the gold within. Veterans lean on prior experience, exposing the diaphanous line drawings of illusion as transparent legerdemain.
Our familiars engage in a proxy war of spell and counterspell, shielding us with the warm curls of their bodies as their soft purrs dispel any lingering sorcery. They lull their prey with this feigned passivity before pouncing, taking perverse pleasure in snapping fragile wings and batting helpless, grounded bodies before consuming their muffled cries. They resume their contented purring, a disguise for bitter fairy breath.
During our isolation, we engage in make-work projects, distractions for idle hands too easily dusted by depraved pixies, enchanted into soulless golems, enticed into a demonic workshop to hypnotically spin their poison thread.
Each night, demon faeries seek to bind us in that twisted spider-silk of emotion. We spend our days untangling the skein before the Norns can weave it into permanency.
© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III
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ReplyDeleteNotes and asides:
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Isolation, both physical and mental is difficult to deal with. Behind the physical battle there is a mental one. By this point, we were both tired most of the time. Both of us regularly had bouts of sleeplessness in the middle of the night, though oddly at different times. I’d usually get up and checked the computer. Karen would often just lie awake. We were both numb from months of physical and mental stress. But by then, we’d adapted to the routine enough for fear to begin to settle in.
This was also the point some people started fading away. That was one of our hardest times. It felt as though many friends who had been in contact after Karen’s surgeries had returned to their old lives and we had been forgotten. Part of that came from our having too much time to dwell on it. But part of it was real.
It was the people who kept in contact on each and every one of those dark days that helped us win that shadow war. We cherished them perhaps beyond their knowledge.
Them and the cats. Especially Mara, who was still a kitten at the time, so springing and chasing all over the house, sometimes like she was hunting something only she could see. Although she sometimes got into trouble, her antics always brought us joy. A young, unconcerned life.
Reading back, isolation was one of the biggest themes throughout Karen’s treatment, and somewhat beyond. I don’t talk about it to dwell on it, though sometimes I can’t help it. I repeat it now in hopes someone else can learn that small actions sometimes have large consequences. Reaching out just a little means everything to someone who’s alone.
Picture notes: A picture from Walsingham Park on a very foggy winter solstice in 2008. It seemed to capture the thought of light and shadow perfectly without any manipulation. I love the way the water looks like liquid mercury in that light. The bird is a marsh hen.
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