. . . love you
Good-bye
* * *
and all things parted
and all parts were as one
and the song ended
* * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . *
* . . . Willard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . *
* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Ali'Maksam . . *
* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . *
* . . . . . . . . . . . . .* BRIGHT * . . . . . . . .*
* . . Dax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . *
* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .*
* . . . . . Ganz. . . . . . . . . . .terrakells . . . *
* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .*
* . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jeaves. . . . . . . . . . . . .*
* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .*
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * *
There was no place now; no song; there was only being, and at its center was the power and spirit of a star, which had died; but even in dying it had visualized and shaped the newlife that it was becoming.
* * *
Bright/Ruskin/Dax/Max/Ganz rode the vortex into the darkness, spirits commingled, bound inextricably with the forces that had destroyed them. The vortex took it/them through the place where light itself died, where space-time ended and all things began anew. And though the vortex was held by the darkness, it was not, could not be ruled by it.
* * *
Memories did not rule either, but remained: sparkling motes drifting on the ether
Can you sing ?
meant no harm
no forgiveness
no one should own
Max I forgive
Fargleam call
Tamika I miss
are you new ?
would be a part
with little left of meaning; but change continued, and structure and form; and the being that was, slowly passed and became something different, something that rang of death and life
* * *
And yet
through the dust and the ether
came the thought
I want to be
I must
* * *
Awareness blew in like a rain from eternity, emerged from the darkness like a rainbow. And it was a single awareness, transfigured and made luminous.
It knew only that it was, a candle of life reborn.
There was darkness, there was light: there was neither. Meanings were sifted, words lost, tongues forgotten. Thoughts began to come dimly to recollection, but they were confused. And feelings . . .
Time was an invisible blade that divided wind from rain, light from dark, knowledge from feeling. Time was a blade that healed.
Newlife lived where there had been no life at all, where primordial forces flowed, where until now God alone had peered and breathed. The Newlife peered and it breathed and it waited. Within it there were names dimly remembered: Ruskin . . . Ali'Maksam . . . Ganz . . . Bright. And names within names, life within life: memory-of-Dax/-of-Tamika/-of-Ruskin/-of-hrisikan/-of-Storm/-of-Fargleam . . . beyond number. It was an extraordinary union: killers and victims, foes become One, old become New. It was angels of fire dancing among snowflakes; it was mountains and dust-motes sharing life and breath. Was it created in the image of the Creator? It wasn't sure; it knew only that it was.
That it thought.
That it felt.
* * *
One thing that it wasn't was lastlife.
Almost before it had taken form, it became aware of otherlife streaming into its realm, life hooting and listening and asking and sharing, and sometimes just passing through. Some of that otherlife was alien and curious; some of it became unlife. Some of it was familiar, for a little while, and welcome and startling in its familiarity
Tamika
Thalia
Sunlife
of memories, and hopes. Memories joined
Will you become a part
Yes I will become a part
and interwove
and joined
and gladdened
And otherlife passed through in numbers until their passage became a whisper, scarcely noticed
where there were stranger things to be noticed.
* * *
The winds and currents of space were not eternal, though they seemed so. The beginning and the end points, where reality itself was punctured, wheeled slowly through space and through time, bridging worlds and otherlife, bridging knowledge and feeling. Upon the winds came seeds of wisdom; and in time the New began to know itself
its smallness
its knowledge
a dusting of pollen
on the winds of time.