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.
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.
Gregory and the Hawk – Boats & Birds [Demo] || 2007/Gregory and the Hawk
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.
The people of the grey lands did not partake in food or drink, nor did they take time to sleep. Instead, they sat in circles and told stories, for that was all they had carried with them. And when the stories were over, they would stand and look to the shores for the new ones, and new stories.
Most often the new ones came in steadily, two by two, in threes and fours, and sometimes alone. Sometimes they would come in earlier than they should have, sometimes later, and once, one one who did not belong had come, and was told stories in his turn before returning. Every hundred or so years a great many would come in at once, and they would assume there’d been a sickness, or a war, as there were many wars.
In the beginning there were not many stories, but what stories they were – great tales of light and word and thunder, breathtaking to behold. As more came to the shores there were more stories, and though with every new arrival the stories seemed to lessen some in grandeur, even until the last days the stories told still moved the old ones, for they were small yet earnest, simple yet true, and they told of things long lost to the grey lands.
Then one day they all came in – every last one of them. Yet this time there were no stories, only silence. And so the people of the grey lands walked to the shores and were swallowed by the waves, and the waves were swallowed by the lands, and the lands were swallowed by the light, and the light was swallowed by the darkness.
And from the darkness, the first story began -
Nigel Kennedy & The Kroke Band – One Voice (with the Kraków Philharmonic) || 2003/East Meets East
In a clearing of a long-lost wood, it was morning. The air was crisp and cold, and icy droplets of spring dew clung to the blades of grass on the forest floor. The only sounds aside the quiet burbling of a stream were the footsteps of a mother doe gently passing by. She walked to the stream, bending her neck to lap at the cold water.
After some time, the doe looked up. There had been no sound, but a man had entered the clearing. His skin was dark and his hair long, and he was clad in the garb of a hunter. Were it any other man she would have ran, but this was not any other man. His eyes were green; the green of ten thousand leaves, the green of the darkest shadow in the wood, and there were vines in his beard and mud in his teeth. Read More
