Rough Draft, Rougher than Sandpaper and Pumice Stone: Mini Scene Excerpt - Updated
“…white fleece of clouds and softly glowing moon woven into the heavenly raiment. Surely, ornamented in glittering diamond stars, with a blazing sun clasp, the Earth is a fitting garment for the god. She clings to him, acts as he acts, moves as he moves, listens as he ordains…"
"The despicable, pitiable whore begging for forgiveness. Let him cast her away, desert her to just desserts."
And in the years before the land became as it is, the gods were fretful and quarrelsome.
The faintest remains of stars glimmered, with all the brightness of unshed tears.
Mountains reclined in the distance, majestic in naked virgin opulence, fires glowing like fiery rubies on their white breasts. Men, fumbling about in the snow, children at play… coming ever closer, a dark shadow of an angry god thrown over the earth.
The goddess of beauty, proud as her calling demanded, reigned as the delightful reason of divine war. Her emblems were a mirror and an ivory tusk.
"Are you my father, that I should heed your words?" His voice was very quiet, a stark reprimand stemming from the titillating profusion sweeping around them. "Are you my friend, that I should listen?"
Men, if they could be named such, had no minds but to please the gods in their affairs, to serve them with empty devotion because so had been the reason for their birth.
"It is a foolish thing, to cherish hatred; an ugly child who will not care for you in infirmity, nor soothe you in grief."
Men were beautiful, but only that, and the gods thought that it was good, for men in those days could not measure to their creators.
Janus stared at him, heart sick and pained, diseased with longing and regret that rushed through the weak dams of his soul, unutterable, terrible, inevitable. Layer upon layer of soil and rocks until the muck rose even in the deep of the sea to break the surface, and scorching saliva poured from its gaping mouth, almost in surprise at its own wrath.
Spurned by the goddess of beauty, a jealous lover set out to see her brought low, and so fashioned a female form of such loveliness as to shame all of heaven and earth.
“It provides comfort enough, as there is no recourse; so I thank the knife that slew a love, that it might end my life as well.”
The goddess beheld his creation in silence, declining to answer his challenge. But her many worshippers, god and human, began to slip from her, falling to their knees in awe of this work of clay and fire.
Once Aeriole’s countenance had been transparent as water; it had thickened to ice, and Janus could not see the boy drowning beneath the surface.
She brooded, holding the ivory tusk to her mouth lest words spill from her that would ill fit a goddess, but the mirror she dared not consult.
White-drenched mist hung as pearls on the sun’s face, half-hidden behind the soft bosom, a milk-stained beard with a bright red mouth emerging beneath.
The scorned god came to her, laughter in his eyes, and yet a resemblance of love lingering in his heart. “Why,” he asked, “do you not come to our celebration of revival? The new year has begun.”
They listened in silence to the clear drops of rain whispering in secret, falling from the revealed emptiness above them, like the shards of a mirror broken and shattering again still more; they were reflected a thousand times, in a thousand ways, in echoes of an unchangeable past and changing memories.
Feigning disinterest, the goddess replied haughtily that so long as blind fools surrounded her, she meant to be alone.
The rain burst into ragged bloom as it struck the ground, opening in sheer petals before closing forever, gliding on transparent fins on the stone beneath their feet.
An invisible hand traced words in a colorless ink, on stone and silt, disappearing even as they formed.
“You are afraid,” the god said.
The white dead hand of shame pressed against Janus' lips, and he could not speak.
“Look at yourself! I wished to know the truth of your withdrawal, and so I do. You wish to know why all have left you but your insufferable conceit, and the answer waits for you—to look.”
His hands were cold, and trembling like leaves laden with dew. But the rising sun would not wake to see his tears; his burning heart would see the light fall first.
"The door of the past stays fast shut to me. I cannot open it; I cannot return."
She did. A slovenly creature peered back at her, brilliant eyes soured with weeping, shining hair limp as strangled snakes, crimson mouth a faded wound.
He would have spit on the ground, but the sign of contempt would have vanished on the swirling shallow eddies.
Aeriole paled, and that too was lost in the wan, weeping dawn.
Aeriole watched until the bowed figure, enfolded within his cloak as a loosened blossom within dark leaves, pierced as a thorn into the flush of color in the distance; there remained only a single breath of blood air, caught too soon by blanched frost.
“Go, then. I release you, a brand unwisely snatched from the burning.”
In furious pique she flung the mirror to the earth, and as it fell, her former lover stretched out his hand, but too late. The mirror splintered, its fragments flying on dazzling sharp wings as they cut the immortals with the light of their own beauty.
A high shriek of laughter rent the watery veils like a tongue of flame. Melessa trickled from behind the pillar, a bee powdered in the pollen of yellow silk, jeering still vibrating in her throat. "Is he not a fool, my lord prince? Look at the silly man creep from you like a dog kicked by his master. Do you not find his escape amusing, a boar scurrying off, squealing from the hounds?"
The flail of the shepherd fell hard on the sheep in desperate urging for it to run, faster, as a wolf leaped forward, as he remained behind.
And so were created the souls of men, in anger and vanity, blood and glass.
Fine mist shimmered in diamond flints, the ascending light of day throwing pearly annuli on the veined marble of the courtyard, piercing with gold light.
Standing by the stone still cold with sleep, Melessa had all the glitter of a beetle’s armored shell. He observed the ugly flotsam of expression float across her face, the natural loveliness drifting away. "No more than I mock the flight of eagles."
But the ivory tusk remained in the hand of the goddess.
Leaves, edges softened by rain, flitted about them like fish, shredding his half-sister’s face in scarlet slashes.
They did not spare him mercy; a brilliant spraying flow fluttered over Aeriole, almost a bubbling of speckled yellows and reds, a fruit swiftly emptying of its insides, sucked away by hoary lips and tongue.
Then the world died, drowned roses and faded golden lances; clouds suddenly tore apart above them in an open gash, the blood of the sun falling in great red drops against the corpse-grey sky.
Sometimes the story continues. The god gathered up his weeping love, saying, “Look, but this time, into my eyes. See yourself as I see you.” And she looked, into a reflection blurred and trembling, and saw that she was beautiful.
The ivory tusk fell from her hand, the end of immortality.
~~~~
Ending of a scene from a story I dramatically and unoriginally called The After of, which ironically is a prequel to another sappy story like this one. I am not equal to writing what I have in mind. Maybe one day. These are chicken scratches on wax parchment.
It’s very amateurish, and as much as it hurts to admit, I know it. But I’m bent on improving, which is why you’re reading this right now.
This is an exercise with a few main purposes. One, I stuffed it full of melodrama like a poor turkey. Second, I wanted to create at least three distinct images in this mini scene that repeated throughout. Third, I desperately tried to transmit the numerous images in my head onto paper, which lost considerable data in the transfer. Fourth, I felt like it, which is most important.
Their relationship is purely platonic. I stress this because it tends to distract people from everything else. When an interviewer was asking Jared Leto questions about Alexander, she was itching so hard for some steamy answers that I almost gave her Hydrocortisone. It was that irritating. In addition, despite my misguided passion for describing guys as flowers and pretty things (a purely anime/manga inspiration) I have no wish to jump headlong into territory that I know nothing about, though I was interested.
Wait...because I have firsthand witness of wars, men, royalty, and relationships? Right.
SO NOTHING OF THAT SORT HAPPENED/HAPPENS/WILL HAPPEN.
Aeriole’s father the king is the megalomaniac type, the one who has to have a stranglehold on everyone and everything around him. He was the Authority that Aeriole had to obey; he sired him, spoiled him, ignored him, and eventually tried to kill him (Aeriole was an unbearable stuck-up little snot). In the beginning of their relationship, Janus took over this overpowering position, and then too Aeriole submitted to the stronger personality. This sounds wrong, but don’t take it that way.When they became friends, Aeriole eagerly sought Janus’ advice himself without it being imposed on him.
Obviously, they’re not friends now.
And yes, this gives “melodrama” a bad name. If things don’t make sense…I probably meant something important, but didn’t carry through. I’ve read that only amateur writers use nature imagery nowadays because it’s so easy, so I hasted to cram in everything I could. It has all the stink of “new money”; it’s tasteless and aimed more for the garish in the search for elegance. Ouch. Darn. Oh well. What really bothers me is that my sister thinks it’s boring. Be repelled, be disgusted, but don’t be bored. Ugh. Just because nothing happens…
*It starts to rain, signaling a change in the plot*
Reader – Why does it keep doing that?
In the whole scene (this is a mini-excerpt), Janus is trying to convince Aeriole that the kingdom must take a stand against the locust-like Western enemy. Aeriole is more afraid of the states in the Eastern confederation than he is of the common foe, and he is unwilling to risk war. The argument quickly becomes personal, as Janus feels indignant that he is the last to know of Aeriole’s decision and only when he announced it as a state policy, and Aeriole not so subtly reminds him he really has no rights beyond what Aeriole chooses to give him.Reversal of role from the past. That’s…weird…nothing happens here.
Believe it or not, they're just staring at each other this whole time. It gets a little confusing, I realize. Just...try to slog through it. Melessa is Aeriole's half-sister. She was...um...discarded by Janus at one point and is "out to get him."~~~~~
