"My Lilith"

She awakens with memories of rain, and nothing more.

The wind through the leaves rises to a hiss, then whispers to stillness, as she watches, prone, as the trees dapple the purest light of the moon over her eyes. She moves in the subtle drowse of the newly stirring, feeling the moist, dead leaves scraping and tickling the sensitive newborn flesh at the top of her back, her hips, her thighs. Raising her arms before her, she sits. Furtively smiling as she, reaching, brushes the dead forest flesh from her skin, she peers through the dark, clear silhouettes of the trees to the ocean, shyly sparkling, far beyond.

They'd lost the Keeper two days ago, beyond the veil of the past, but their eyes still gleamed with the tears born from the passing of their brother. Two pulled the oars in the harshly lit darkness, as the Watcher sat impassive at the prow, looking ever forward, looking toward the shore. No lights would welcome them here, no warm aromas of home and hearth... only the cold of that which was to be done, of what must be done. Scrutinizing the breaking waves, the Watcher sat pulled by his brothers, while fate drew them all, into the certain stirrings of the future.

She walks now, testing the curious texture of the ground beneath her feet, raw with sensation. How curious, she thinks, all that seems different from me is but another part of another part of all of us. She laughs aloud, startling herself, and holds her hand to her mouth, not knowing quite where the gesture originates. The concept of all of us amuses her, as her mind knows naught but herself, while her heart knows certain kinship, a togetherness with all things, echoed by the stars' silent, burning comraderie.

They did set forth as the crystal city began to burn. Millenia of songs and great magic were, behind their backs, being overrun by forces so new and ancient as to be comfortably forgotten, so bitterly recalled. Their burden was to end an apocalypse, to follow the streamlets of fate, and to seal the beginning with the murder of the remnants, the avatar, of an age.

The ground turns lighter than the heavy loam of the receding forest. She lays her hands upon a singular tree, running her palms along the bark. She tries to flare her nostrils wide to inhale the spicy, sweet odor of sap that wafts from this one pillar, this one slow, monolithic monument of life. She barely feels the tremors under her toes, she scarecely knows the coming of the going. She throws her hair to her back, and walks pensively toward the water.

The salty spray stung their squinting eyes, as the waves sluggishly rumbled forth from the shore. No cloud obscured the unmerciful sky, as the storm was rolling from the death-throes of the land.

She digs her fingers into the sand, letting it sift downward in discordant fnord clumps, residual thin cakes of grit coating her fingers. She looks up to the heaving waves, gazing at the broad swath of rippling brightness painted by the moon's reflection. Within the broad silver streak is a speck, and it draws closer, waxing perceptively larger.

They turned gently toward the shore as if stroked by a soothing hand. The death of the land was near, as was their destiny. The Watcher turned, a grim set in his lined face, to his brothers. They nodded, and with opposite hands on the oars, they drew their oily knives of darkness, glimmering with the hate, the love, of their makers, glinting in the moon's sharp beams.

She lifts pieces of the wet beach with her splayed toes, glancing ever so often at the approaching thing. Humming lightly over the shifting purr of the waves, she catches herself in an unkown song. She puts her fingers to her throat, lightly silencing herself, running them over her skin-sheathed collarbones, to the soft roundness of her breasts, flitting tentatively over the bones defining her hips. She runs her fingers along the warm cleft at the base of her spine, and gradually lifts them to the cold air. She throws her head back, spinning, and flings her laughter to the wind.

The shore scraped firmly against the keel of their boat. The Watcher waited until all was settled, then put his leather-clad foot firmly through the water, finding purchase in the thick sand. He glanced backward, once more, to his brothers, and drew his dagger. His legs moved with the intensity of purpose, steady through the roiling of the waves. He strode ahead, toward the figure moving in the moonlight before him. His brothers followed.

She lives in sweet shadows, while her eyes are closed to the darkness around her. She opens her eyes from her spinning daydream and, slowing, perceives three strange forms before her. The blinding moon at their backs, they wear dark expressions. She ceases in her movements as the one closest to her moves forward, slowly. An arm lifts up, holding a sharp splinter, made of the dark spaces between the stars.

He held the dagger for too long; too long, as he met her gaze, and fell into her stare. Her visage was that of an inquisitive child. Her wise innocence, palpable, pressed against the walls of the prison that was his, and his alone. His mind could no longer force his fingers to grip the dagger, nor could his fingers longer grip this dagger of his mind.

His mind falters, his arm sinks slowly. His ears are filled with the ocean, and the dagger falls to the sand.

She watches as the two behind him do the same. She watches as he tries to reach out toward her, his eyes springing tears. She watches as he falters and crumples, weeping, to the wet sand beneath his knees. His brothers, with naked hands, come to kneel beside him.

Staring through tearing eyes, the Watcher beheld her slowly lowering herself to the sandy ground before him. Her hand reached out and gently stroked his wet face. He lifted his head slightly, the quickening breeze conveying to him a symphony of fragrances... the sharp, stale salt of the ocean... the spicy, sweet scent of the forest... the balmy, strong, half-forgotten smell of Her. Her hands drew his unresisting face to nestle between her thighs, his mouth greedily and gently worshipping the release of the mortal coil, his tounge singing a eulogy for what he had lost. His brothers slowly moved to touch her, to feel the lifting of her breath, to taste her sweat, to feel the ecstasy of the ending and the beginning of all things.

The small craft moves northward, her prow pushing the breakers aside as her newly flung sail strains against the south-born winds. As the growing waves push them forward, the four look back, away from the moon, to the beaches of the island once home. The mountains sway in a darkening dance as the crystal flames overtake their crumbling peaks. The wind carries the four further. As they watch, on the distant horizon, the mountains sink, absolved, into the sea.

"My Lilith", copyright 1996, by Alexander Lebedeff, all rights reserved.

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