A Dream in August

The August God drew the blade from its sheath and moved towards the wolves. The man who was Wàngjì found himself breathing very heavily. To weep in front of the God-King was to show weakness in the presence of the highest order. He did not avert his eyes.

There were throngs of people on the hill; senators, retainers, priests, their robes flowing in the breeze, their jewels shining in the golden sun. No one spoke. The blade flashed and the first of the wolves fell. The remaining two sat on the grass, panting. They had not seen, or did not understand. The hand of the God showed neither mercy nor hatred, for he was beyond men. When the three wolves lay motionless, he turned to the man on the hill. The man was shaking. He was tall, and heavily muscled, and his hair was long. He was a fine specimen of man, but there was a great fear in his eyes. He bowed his head.

The blade flashed, slicing off the top of the man’s scalp, sparing the brain. There was a short silence, and then the man jerked back with a scream. He would not have a quick death. Quickly the August God moved, catching the man’s face in his hand, carving off his lips and nose with the blade. The screams were constant now, and blood began to run down the hill. The man who was Wàngjì felt his stomach turn, his heart pound in his chest. Slowly he rose to his feet, gathering his robes.

The Long Road to Creation

It was written, once, that the road to creation was long. You now know this to be true.

You have been twelve weeks on the Helcarathe, the glacial wastes stretching from the northernmost reaches on the maps of men to places yet uncharted by human eyes. Supplies are thin, and the cold is inescapable, cold that numbs the fingers and deadens the legs, cold that would promise a swift and dreamless sleep to lesser men. Not you. You walk.

You walk until the chill has seeped deep into your chest, each breath a knife in your side. You walk until the wind becomes a veil of white, frosting your face and sapping what little energy remains. You walk until you can go no further, and fall to your knees. Looking up, through the whipping snow you think you glimpsed a thunderhead. You think you crawled; you do not remember.

Stars Ours

Some time ago in kingdoms far,

a people lived in silv’ry towers
and wise men spake in tongues bizarre
that ours were dreams, and dreams were stars.

For as we slept, our minds alight,
our dreams, unchained, would take to flight
where in the skies they’d then make bright
the velvet dark, the sea of night.

And every morn as Sun would rise,
and clear became the starry skies,
we all could see, in different guise
the stars, returned to waking eyes.

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Gregory and the Hawk – Boats & Birds [Demo] || 2007/Gregory and the Hawk

Truth

Last night I dreamed of the first city. It was no city of man; it was the city before men, before the world, before dreams, though it was all of those things. It was the first true city, the city before time, the city for which all of existence to follow would be but a poor reflection of its vision, and yet it was not the silver city, nor was it Avalon or Atlantis, though men would speak of them and in truth would speak of this city (and would not know it). Its houses were built from stones of purest alabaster, their roofs decked in gold and opal, its streets paved in of blood and onyx. Yet its streets were silent, its windows empty.

There had once been a thousand times a thousand inhabitants here; creatures of myth and legend, dream and un-dream, avatars of the elements and the aspects (the Oneros, the ruby avatars of desire, after whose kiss one could seek only them, until one met one’s true love) and they had walked its streets in multitudes, and the city rang with their voices. But it was late in the age of the first city. It sat on the edge of a western sea whose waters were a thousand turning sapphires, upon whose edges glinted the rays of setting suns (for it was summer’s twilight now, in the first city). In its bay stood twin monoliths, from whose rock would be carved the pillars of the world, from whose stone would spring the infant Gods. And the waters reached as far as the eye could see, and farther still, and there were no ships upon the waves, nor land at its end (for there was no end).

And in the east were the mountains, the walls of night, great fortresses rolling towards the city now in their shadow, for it was from these mountains that the world of men would be born, and the age of men was close at hand. And in my dream I read from a book that held the true name of the first city, and was told its true name, but it was lost upon waking, as the book was lost, and the city was lost as well, for it is now the age of men, and the ages of dream are long behind us.

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See also:

A Dream in August

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Eric Whitacre – Sleep (as performed by Polyphony, cond. Stephen Layton) || 2006/Cloudburst and Other Choral Works

Tuurngaq

When men had been in the Arctic for as long as Travis had, things began to turn strange. Three weeks ago he had begun to experience the sensation of waking up while already awake. He would be walking, sitting, eating, when suddenly he would wake and realize he’d only been dreaming he was walking, sitting, or eating. He hadn’t been dreaming, and he knew that at first, but gradually that knowledge faded too. Thus he lived his life in a perpetual state of hallucination. He would wake at night and see the borealis above him, sweeping in curtains across the night sky, reaching out towards him as if trying to snatch him away, and he would lie absolutely still, knowing that if he didn’t move they would think him merely a part of the landscape, and move on. There was no aurora; there hadn’t been for over a month. All of this he had managed to keep hidden from his guide, an old man of a Yup’ik tribe.

The wind picked up, and dry snow whispered across the ground.