three. (cut a corner out of the sky)
I'm getting better at doing this whole thing of writing every week. This may or may not have taken me less than thirty minutes. I'm not sure if that is meant to be a warning or an enticement. Unedited, because I like the way it stands now.
And no, I do not have a fucking clue. I should totally be revising right now.
The whole world is quiet. The moon is a slice cut through the sky, a tiny slit of silver and white in the gathering ink of the sky. The stars are not out tonight, hiding their faces away from the first naked edge of the moon. The moon is as sharp as a knife, as quick as a wink and as real as a dream, solid and liquid and floating away. The reflection of the moon in a puddle is the curve of a face, the edge of a hand as they turn away from you.
People in the city are all asleep, tucked up safe and warm in their beds. Women and men curl up around one another like commas, like pair of spoons tucked into a drawer, put away and just waiting for someone to open the world up. The night is the preserve of the desperate, the damned. At night, the thieves and villains walk the streets. They are dressed in black lace capes and black masks, they have swag bags and striped jumpers. They carry canes with swords tucked away inside like new leaves, and they sport thin moustaches with curls at either end. The witches who hide in the alleyways turn their faces into the wind, letting their green hair blow out free. The warts and pits across their faces look like craters in the face of the moon, like canyons in the face of the earth as she turns in a never-ending dance all the way through time and space. The wizards wear white and red and green, tall pointed hats like medieval maidens and smoke pipes. The smoke clings to their hair and fingers, a cloud of noxious gas the colours everything they say and do.
The werewolves shed their skins under the light of the unforgiving moon, shucking off the trials and tribulations of the human world, pulling on the blood and the chase in the fur of a wolf. They all do it, the leopards and lions and wolves and bears, each one hoping themselves alone as they let out all of the things that a good society will not have.
Trees rustle like the ocean, a murmuring sussuration of soft vowels and consonants, so close to words but yet so far. A language all of their own, a language written in sunlight and rain, in the wind and in the water and in the emission of chemicals and dawn and dusk, in the brush of leaves on branches and the cloying earth. The wild things in the forest cry out, moving sleekly between the city and the wild, between things that will be tame and things that will not. The foxes lift their elegant heads to the sky and cry out in the joy of hunting, red brushes flaming behind them as they roll and sport through the gardens of the city. They are in dustbins and over fences, through catflaps and under cars and all around the city. They carry messages for those who live in the dark spaces, scrolls tucked under the throats and messages tied to their legs and tails and feet. They can travel anywhere, slipping into the spaces between spaces where the universe inhales and sighs.
The dawn is very far away now, in the heart of the night. The darkness clings to the world, a scrap of silk draped over the vast expanse of a hip, the curve of a throat. Like fur or scales or skin, like something living yet not quite alive, the night stirs. The breeze blowing through the city smells of night-jasmine and rotting roses, heavy and blousy, and at once sweet and bitter. The perfume of the fox pervades the air as they run, and the smell of blood and sweat and tears rises on the smoke.
The clouds that hover in the air fold around the sliver of the moon, heavy white bellies and bodies hanging down like swags of cloth, wrapping themselves over the sharp peaks of mountains and cliffs, sweeping out over the plunging peaks and troughs of the sea. They fall into the sea and spring up again as spray, free and alive and so very aware as they batter against the cliffs and the land, evaporating back up into the sky to hang once again as clouds, brought low by the remembrance of the sea. The white horses that gallop across the tip of each wave throw their heads back and laugh with all of the confidence of the never-mortal, held up forever by the back of the sea and the voice of the wind.
The birds that fly high through the air dip and dive and curl and swoop and careen through the skies, wings thrown wide and tails flaring and beaks open in a parody of death, barely avoiding collision as they sport. The wind ties knots around the bodies of the swallows and the bats as they skate through the clouds and lets them pull the winds along, lets the aerial creatures control the air. The moths spread their wide wings and let their eyes pierce the shadowy gloom, faces wide open and honest as they shadow each other across the face of the moon, fluttering and turning and doubling back as they write their secret names over the sky in red and blue and black and green. They have no fear of the future, of the beauty of the butterfly, of the sharp jaws of the bat.
The moon cuts through the sky and watches through the hole she has made, watching the foxes and the moths and the people who live in the darkness. She watches with her face pressed to the crack, splitting it wider and wider until at last she falls through, and the sky goes dark, until the great mother at the end of it all pulls her back and sits her down and tells her that this is another world, where the night is wild.
(Prompted from this.)
And no, I do not have a fucking clue. I should totally be revising right now.
The whole world is quiet. The moon is a slice cut through the sky, a tiny slit of silver and white in the gathering ink of the sky. The stars are not out tonight, hiding their faces away from the first naked edge of the moon. The moon is as sharp as a knife, as quick as a wink and as real as a dream, solid and liquid and floating away. The reflection of the moon in a puddle is the curve of a face, the edge of a hand as they turn away from you.
People in the city are all asleep, tucked up safe and warm in their beds. Women and men curl up around one another like commas, like pair of spoons tucked into a drawer, put away and just waiting for someone to open the world up. The night is the preserve of the desperate, the damned. At night, the thieves and villains walk the streets. They are dressed in black lace capes and black masks, they have swag bags and striped jumpers. They carry canes with swords tucked away inside like new leaves, and they sport thin moustaches with curls at either end. The witches who hide in the alleyways turn their faces into the wind, letting their green hair blow out free. The warts and pits across their faces look like craters in the face of the moon, like canyons in the face of the earth as she turns in a never-ending dance all the way through time and space. The wizards wear white and red and green, tall pointed hats like medieval maidens and smoke pipes. The smoke clings to their hair and fingers, a cloud of noxious gas the colours everything they say and do.
The werewolves shed their skins under the light of the unforgiving moon, shucking off the trials and tribulations of the human world, pulling on the blood and the chase in the fur of a wolf. They all do it, the leopards and lions and wolves and bears, each one hoping themselves alone as they let out all of the things that a good society will not have.
Trees rustle like the ocean, a murmuring sussuration of soft vowels and consonants, so close to words but yet so far. A language all of their own, a language written in sunlight and rain, in the wind and in the water and in the emission of chemicals and dawn and dusk, in the brush of leaves on branches and the cloying earth. The wild things in the forest cry out, moving sleekly between the city and the wild, between things that will be tame and things that will not. The foxes lift their elegant heads to the sky and cry out in the joy of hunting, red brushes flaming behind them as they roll and sport through the gardens of the city. They are in dustbins and over fences, through catflaps and under cars and all around the city. They carry messages for those who live in the dark spaces, scrolls tucked under the throats and messages tied to their legs and tails and feet. They can travel anywhere, slipping into the spaces between spaces where the universe inhales and sighs.
The dawn is very far away now, in the heart of the night. The darkness clings to the world, a scrap of silk draped over the vast expanse of a hip, the curve of a throat. Like fur or scales or skin, like something living yet not quite alive, the night stirs. The breeze blowing through the city smells of night-jasmine and rotting roses, heavy and blousy, and at once sweet and bitter. The perfume of the fox pervades the air as they run, and the smell of blood and sweat and tears rises on the smoke.
The clouds that hover in the air fold around the sliver of the moon, heavy white bellies and bodies hanging down like swags of cloth, wrapping themselves over the sharp peaks of mountains and cliffs, sweeping out over the plunging peaks and troughs of the sea. They fall into the sea and spring up again as spray, free and alive and so very aware as they batter against the cliffs and the land, evaporating back up into the sky to hang once again as clouds, brought low by the remembrance of the sea. The white horses that gallop across the tip of each wave throw their heads back and laugh with all of the confidence of the never-mortal, held up forever by the back of the sea and the voice of the wind.
The birds that fly high through the air dip and dive and curl and swoop and careen through the skies, wings thrown wide and tails flaring and beaks open in a parody of death, barely avoiding collision as they sport. The wind ties knots around the bodies of the swallows and the bats as they skate through the clouds and lets them pull the winds along, lets the aerial creatures control the air. The moths spread their wide wings and let their eyes pierce the shadowy gloom, faces wide open and honest as they shadow each other across the face of the moon, fluttering and turning and doubling back as they write their secret names over the sky in red and blue and black and green. They have no fear of the future, of the beauty of the butterfly, of the sharp jaws of the bat.
The moon cuts through the sky and watches through the hole she has made, watching the foxes and the moths and the people who live in the darkness. She watches with her face pressed to the crack, splitting it wider and wider until at last she falls through, and the sky goes dark, until the great mother at the end of it all pulls her back and sits her down and tells her that this is another world, where the night is wild.
(Prompted from this.)