(From last year. Not my favorite, but it was enjoyable to write.)
Set apart from millions
a world crafted of eons
stretching into eternity,
a single spark among infinity.
Glittering in the deep
this waking world never sleeps.
Ever-dreaming, ever-living,
around a sun ever-burning.
A planet filled with smoke and scars,
listen, listen to the silence of the stars.
An excerpt of my in-progress fantasy novel, a sketch of the history of the highlands in my world.
It was a land of stone and heather, of misty moors and rocky slopes lost to the archives of indomitable time. Mist lay upon the murky meres, shaped by cold winds into the fluttering cloths of ghostly robes. A few raucous birds disturbed the water with their wings, sending ripples wrinkling along the surface as they skimmed across the face of the lake. Roe deer grazed near the shores, blending with the grasses so that they were nearly invisible but for the twitching of their white-tipped tails, while in the brush rustled a pine marten or mountain hare, searching for food. No footsteps marked the damp soil. No smoke rose in the distance. A strange silence lay upon those highlands, a silence made inscrutable by the roving mists and voiceless heather. Barred from civilization as it was, bordered by the trees of the forest, this place was cut off from the world as much as if it had been locked in a cage of iron. Few traveled there, few set eyes upon its expanse, and few hazarded the endlessness of it for fear of never returning. The highlands were left to the silence of the sun, an unmapped wilderness carved from the beating rains and howling winds of the north.
A warm hand brushes against my forehead, a tongue clucks at the too warm temperature. My hair is smoothed from my clammy skin, a gentle pressure tucks my blankets around me. The blanket was a quilt I had crafted, I remember the beady eyes of Hulk staring at me, threatening to “Hulk Smash”, why that angry green face has stayed with me, is something I have never understood.
Debris flies clouding the air, pelting back to the earth. Screams echo, more broken and hollow then any human has the right to sound. He clutched at his arm, his hand tacky with his own blood, it seeping out with each beat of his erratic heart. His comrade, his brother in arms lays beside staring up at him, eyes glazed over, there isn’t a single scratch on his face, his torso ends at the edge of his ribcage, and the vermin gnaw on his exposed flesh.
Joined at the Authorship 