Downfall
A dreamt recount of the origins of the Once-Angel Celesta Chime, better known as Poise.
Alcatraz. 1 AM.
All I ask for is the pain.
I ask for it to come sharp, strong. Unrelenting. For it to pervade the marrow of my pitch black bones, course in schools through my hungering veins. I want it under my skin. I want it pooling in my soul. I want it to fill my eyes beneath their lids and even as they open and it spills down my cheeks, I want it to burn them. I want to wake up surrounded by it. All I ask for is the pain.
My prayers are not the kind that go unanswered, of course.
I keep this in mind as I drift off to sleep after saying them.
And so it is no surprise to me when I find her curled in the massive, twining roots of a pale cypress. She peers lazily through the spiraling leaves, drifting petals, into a halcyon orchard, a wonder of spring-soaked willows, elms, birches, ancient perennials that were never named and never lived to be named. She looks and I see, through her untainted creamy eyes. She presses her small palm to the curves of the half-buried wood and I feel, through her fingers. She is what I was. A young guardian of Eden. A child. Me.
And it is no surprise to me when what follows does, as always, follow.
She, I, we stretch out our small legs, pushing up mounds of torn leaves and dirt with our pale bare feet. We tip our face up to stare into the living foliage rippling above us, watching the light of our Father's suns play and fade as chords do on strings, siphoning itself through the skeleton of the canopy. Sometimes she'd imagine what it would feel like if the rustling cloaks of yellowy green were ripped away and the sun could pour unhindered, all around her, upon and through her skin, over the whole Garden. Sometimes I imagine the leaves are still here.
We turn from the sky. It stings our young eyes.
I wish more than anything that we hadn't.
We find ourselves eye level with a strange curio, sprouting across from us in a tiny brown pot placed in the shadow of the Garden gate. It's dark leaves shiver in the aimless gusts, contrasting oddly, peculiarly, with the bright maroons and oranges of the surrounding brush. She finds it strange. I find it to be the deepest shade of disturbing I've encountered in all my millenniums. I feel sick. Acutely sick.
We can't be stopped. We sit up, tilting our head with undeniable intrigue at the poisonously black Sprout. We pull in our feet and rise carefully, holding our second favorite autumn skirt in our fists, stepping over the heaps of roots with delicacy. The sounds of the rasping wind and its cargo of colors seem to have.. Vanished. They seem to have ceased.
I whimper in my sleep.
We hold ourself up primly and pick our way through the flowerbeds to the gate. We release the hem and run our fingertips pensively over the chilled iron swirls. Our sights remain upon the imposing little plant. We kneel, dragging our hand down the gate, and peer more closely at its fascinating hide.
We draw back slightly, nose crinkling, for we find it to be queerly twisted, almost malformed, with a stalk that grows over itself in a sickly coil. We tut knowingly as we inspect the soil it curls up from- the stuff is hopelessly dry and much grayer than the rich Edenistic earth its pot rests on. We've not actually seen such material used in our Father's sweet Garden before. We conclude that it was either brought here, somehow, from another land, or simply forgotten by its carrier and left to grow old and ill. We cup our steady hands around the pot- it is piercingly cool.
Determination fills our march as we hold the thing to our belly and seek a spot to replant the thirsty Sprout within it. We remember a patch of still-sunny ground that lies just over the small hill our cypress crowns. We head for it.
Through waving stalks and falltime debris that crunches as we tread it, we go. We coo soft encouragement to the Sprout, all the while pondering the species of Sprout that it might be. We know our way to the patch, even in the vast Garden, for we've learned its paths wonderfully well over the years. In fact, the patch lies treacherously close to Eden's heart. I know this. She doesn't.
We totter stolidly down the hill and follow a nearby stream until we find it. Bordered on one side by sugar-lilacs and queenly laces, there it is, a bare spot of nice soil, just right for the Sprout, for, after all, who knows if it needs space to flourish? It could very well turn into a magnificent tree one day, or a spiraling bush, or a pillar of vine.
We approach the spot cheerily and kneel in the center, with our knees secure on either side of the pot. We seek a flat stone and begin to scrape away dirt, making a shallow hole to plant the Sprout in. We toss the rock away and look down at the Sprout, smiling. We hold its stem expertly and tug, gently, but with just enough force to pull it and its stubby roots from the crumbling gravel of its pot. With a nod, we lower it into the earth, making sure to keep each stiff fiber in place.
My wrists are tangled in stormy sheets. I twist them into knots and cry out, part of me desperate to end this nightmare, this heartsick fabrication of my past. But I know I mustn't. I know I can't.
In the roots go. Up the Sprout stands.
I moan in grief.
The three midnight-colored leaves shudder once and lie still.
No.
Everything lies still.
The little girl squints at her discovery, beginning to feel a tinge unnerved with her work. Realizing too late, oh, far too late.
I scream.
That poisonous black chars the patch- it spreads with paralyzing speed, blooming throughout the whole field within a fraction of a second. Plants burn, shriveling around us, even as we leap to our feet, even as we howl for it to stop, even as we scramble away from the wicked Sprout and tumble to the dying ground and claw at the wilted remains of our Father's beautiful, beautiful Garden, fingers clumsy, eyes wide, chest tearing with jarring sobs, disbelieving tears clouding our vision. We whirl to stare at the Sprout and we see it, at last, for what it is, for what it had always been...
This was no harmless oddity left in a corner for her to pick up and play with and tend to and laugh at.
This was Death. This was absolute and terrible and it was Death.
And it was only the beginning. The inky plague spread for days until it had devoured the entire planet. The angels fell in agony, defeated by one of their own fools and a plant in a pot.
I lie in that mangled landscape for hours after I awaken.
'She' refers to past Poise (the 'little girl' or 'the child'). 'I' refers to present Poise (or the currently conscious parts of her mind). 'We' refers to present-past Poise, as in a mix of what she's experiencing and what she's living.