Saturday, December 13, 2014

12-13-14 Writing Warm-up
3:11 PM

12-13-14 Writing Warm-up


12-13-14 Writing Warm-up
Artwork © Krzysztof Szafulski, All Rights Reserved - http://shapk.deviantart.com/
Story and Characters © Corey Blankenship, All Rights Reserved 
Brought to you by Four Fools Press: “Crazy Good Stories”


Light and heat coursed through her veins faster than blood. White filled her vision, a blindness made of sheer brightness. The cool water had burned the instant she submerged, but now was replaced by void, light, and power. All she could remember before the radiance was the frescoed ceiling above the pool, a serene shepherd cradling a sheep. A shaft of pure something had blazed like lightning from above, striking her in the chest. She felt suspended in a great emptiness that was somehow also ever filling and always full.

Her eyes adjusted to the intense glow. The pool had deepened and grown into an endless ocean. New lights separated from within the expanse of light, spheres of varied hues and colors. Wheels of fire danced far away, whirling to a tune which had been unheard by mortal ears for aeons. Luminous tendrils laced around her from the beam above, holding her in a gentle warmth.  The brilliant shaft of light remained focused on her hovering form. Fear and confusion could not exist here, foreign as frost in the heart of a fire. Instead, a pleasant curiosity drew her gaze once more toward the cosmic gleam.

“Well done, my child.”

The words, if thunder can be called words, came from above, around, within. The orbs glow grew livelier, the water clearer, and the light cleaner as if in response. The power throbbing through this place, through her, grew exponentially in the echo. The rain-rinsed air from a thousand springs, filled with a myriad summers’ proud suns, joined with a century of venerable falls, coupled with a hundred winters’ freshest snows, could not have captured the essence of how pleasant, sweet, and strong this presence felt to her. She felt Life, and because of it she felt alive. Alive in a way she had not been in years. More alive than she had ever been.

“I…”

The sound seemed so frail after the thunder, tinged with the rain of joyful tears. She recognized the spoken syllable was her own. A hush had come upon her for...what? A second? A minute? A decade? A millennia? Both time and history fled here in a tempo that could not keep pace with the cadence of this new world around her. Her life seemed to be lost in the ages. All those battles, victories, tragedies, losses, romances, and joys had vanished. Even the shepherd, the pool, and the kind man who had helped her into the water; these things from her most recent past now appeared remote. Personal life felt like fable--a myth soon enough forgotten in the ether. Reality swallowed up her shadowy existence in its sudden encroachment. She blinked and spoke again.

“I am free…”

The wheels of light, the ceaseless waters, and the ever-burning radiance whirled and danced in laughter in response to a joke she had not heard. Then a rumbling voice shook the whole of the firmament and cast the entire sea into a frothing churn. The Voice spoke, and this time she caught something else in the tone. Something she had longed for ever since the shadow had lodged deep within her heart. In her dreams, she had thought she would relish the eradication of the oily whisper from within. Instead, the addition of the new voice filled the moment; her mind; her soul; her entire world. The other, even its memory, disappeared completely in the rumbling voice’s wake. It was a still, tender voice; a fatherly, lordly voice. The Voice many wild men and quiet sisters had spoken of in her now-distant life. Now, the Voice spoke to her. Tears burst forth, running down her pale cheeks into the endless mere below.

“Welcome Home, Roksana…”
***

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