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Jan. 13th, 2007 03:59 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
dedra.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
tamingthemuseTitle: Pass Over
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
spikespetslayer
Fandom: None--Original
Rating: G
Summary: She didn't know why she did it, she just did.
Pass Over
Gray as mist and silent as a still night, she walked among the living on feet made of fog, misty and quiet among their beating hearts.
She watched jealously as their lives ticked by unnoticed except for the metronome beating of their hearts. Thud, thud, it echoed in her dreams and haunted her waking moments until she wanted to pull her hair and scream for them to pay attention. Pay attention to the ones that you love. Pay attention to the things that mean so much to you now. Too soon it will all be over and done and regrets fill your head with tears you cannot shed and an unbearable ache in the region where your heart once beat.
She saw the blood and heard the chanting inside their homes and went to places where the blood was missing and the chanting was not to a name she recognized, it was to another who had disguised himself for so long he didn’t remember his own name. Drifting in and out like the thief that she was, she stole jewel-like souls like a kleptomaniac let loose in the bazaar, as unable to stop as it was to block out their heartbeats.
Class was not an issue, nor was age; she concentrated on those marked by her lord for collection, never discerning the pattern. Each one she stuffed into a bag black as night itself before the beginning. Each one cried as it was ripped from the body of the one in front of her until the depth of the bag silenced it.
She came to the last place, the large palace with its fine gold hangings and statuary of the lost. Gliding up marble staircases and touching one here and there, watching them fall as they listened with fear to the cries of the city around them.
She entered the final bedchamber, her bag bulging with room for one more. His soul was a bright light in the dim room, pulsating with life although he lay sick and pallid on the pallet in front of her.
She tried to ignore the fact that he could see her. He turned his limpid brown eyes on her and stared directly at her, not past her like the others, until it became so unnerving she couldn’t stop her inquiry.
“Are you an angel?” he asked her finally. She shook her head once, then nodded. It was the life that she remembered. It was the life she had grown accustomed to, at least. She couldn’t remember any other time before…this.
“Why do you do this thing?” the boy asked and she shook her head again. She had no answer to such a simple question. It was her mission. She thought it was a mission, at least; perhaps it was her punishment.
“I guess we have to go now then,” he said, extending his hand to her. When she grasped it in her own, his essence slipped into her hands easily of its own free will, almost eagerly leaping from his body and into her care.
Instead of shoving it forcefully into the sack at her side, she walked with him hand in hand, listening to the wailing of mothers and fathers throughout the streets they walked. “They are sad, aren’t they? They didn’t understand the gift before you took it.”
Mutely, she nodded, surprised at finding a kindred spirit among the many she had collected.
Together they ascended and she handed her bag to the Guardian at the gate. The boy she took with her to her dwelling, richer and finer than the one they had left.
He looked around and went to find food—she couldn’t remember if it was possible to eat here or not. There were too many things that she couldn’t remember.
With frustrated tears, Eve, cursed to walk as the Angel of Death, lay down on her pallet to drift to sleep, lulled by the metronome beating of a million hearts.
Author:
spikespetslayerFandom: None--Original
Rating: G
Summary: She didn't know why she did it, she just did.
Pass Over
Gray as mist and silent as a still night, she walked among the living on feet made of fog, misty and quiet among their beating hearts.
She watched jealously as their lives ticked by unnoticed except for the metronome beating of their hearts. Thud, thud, it echoed in her dreams and haunted her waking moments until she wanted to pull her hair and scream for them to pay attention. Pay attention to the ones that you love. Pay attention to the things that mean so much to you now. Too soon it will all be over and done and regrets fill your head with tears you cannot shed and an unbearable ache in the region where your heart once beat.
She saw the blood and heard the chanting inside their homes and went to places where the blood was missing and the chanting was not to a name she recognized, it was to another who had disguised himself for so long he didn’t remember his own name. Drifting in and out like the thief that she was, she stole jewel-like souls like a kleptomaniac let loose in the bazaar, as unable to stop as it was to block out their heartbeats.
Class was not an issue, nor was age; she concentrated on those marked by her lord for collection, never discerning the pattern. Each one she stuffed into a bag black as night itself before the beginning. Each one cried as it was ripped from the body of the one in front of her until the depth of the bag silenced it.
She came to the last place, the large palace with its fine gold hangings and statuary of the lost. Gliding up marble staircases and touching one here and there, watching them fall as they listened with fear to the cries of the city around them.
She entered the final bedchamber, her bag bulging with room for one more. His soul was a bright light in the dim room, pulsating with life although he lay sick and pallid on the pallet in front of her.
She tried to ignore the fact that he could see her. He turned his limpid brown eyes on her and stared directly at her, not past her like the others, until it became so unnerving she couldn’t stop her inquiry.
“Are you an angel?” he asked her finally. She shook her head once, then nodded. It was the life that she remembered. It was the life she had grown accustomed to, at least. She couldn’t remember any other time before…this.
“Why do you do this thing?” the boy asked and she shook her head again. She had no answer to such a simple question. It was her mission. She thought it was a mission, at least; perhaps it was her punishment.
“I guess we have to go now then,” he said, extending his hand to her. When she grasped it in her own, his essence slipped into her hands easily of its own free will, almost eagerly leaping from his body and into her care.
Instead of shoving it forcefully into the sack at her side, she walked with him hand in hand, listening to the wailing of mothers and fathers throughout the streets they walked. “They are sad, aren’t they? They didn’t understand the gift before you took it.”
Mutely, she nodded, surprised at finding a kindred spirit among the many she had collected.
Together they ascended and she handed her bag to the Guardian at the gate. The boy she took with her to her dwelling, richer and finer than the one they had left.
He looked around and went to find food—she couldn’t remember if it was possible to eat here or not. There were too many things that she couldn’t remember.
With frustrated tears, Eve, cursed to walk as the Angel of Death, lay down on her pallet to drift to sleep, lulled by the metronome beating of a million hearts.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-13 12:21 pm (UTC)This was lovely and dark and painful. I really enjoyed it. *grins*
...with its fine gold hangings and statuary of the lost
Beautiful turn of phrase.
You should write more like this...
no subject
Date: 2007-01-13 12:28 pm (UTC)After some of the other reviews I have received this week, you don't know how much your review renewed my faith in myself...I needed that.
Again, thank you.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-13 12:43 pm (UTC)By the way, you handled those comments very well. I'm awed! So gracious.
(And this happened to me once here. Not the same sort of comments but rather that I wrote something metaphorical I thought was particularly obvious and seemed to be read in a vastly different way by the majority of people. Although I was dismayed, I ultimately just had to let it go.)
Keep the faith. You're doing great! *hard squeeze*
no subject
Date: 2007-01-14 06:16 am (UTC)Of course, I have to give them credit because I know what happens next in the story and they don't...but then again, they should give me some credit, I think, if they've followed the story that long...
*hard squeeze back*
Thanks...I needed some positive feedback today... :D
no subject
Date: 2007-01-13 01:50 pm (UTC)~Nebula
no subject
Date: 2007-01-14 06:17 am (UTC)*hard hug*
I will take the wows as a good!
no subject
Date: 2007-01-14 12:37 am (UTC)I love reworkings of biblical mythology.
excellent use of the prompt too!
no subject
Date: 2007-01-14 06:18 am (UTC)I like reworking the Biblical into something unexpected...gives it a different twist...
no subject
Date: 2007-01-16 10:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-16 11:07 am (UTC):)
no subject
Date: 2007-01-20 04:12 pm (UTC)No comforting image of an afterlife here - what happens to the souls in the bag?
That she is Eve, is both shocking and right.
That in the midst of the epidemic, she found one who understood the gift of life and was allowed to keep him, was a surprise.
Made me think, which is always good.
Very nice.