| |
[May. 19th, 2006|11:52 pm] |
Silence shouldn’t be frenetic.
And it isn’t.
There is no silence here.
The universe is singing while it dies.
This song
Stars collapse, space and time pull apart, planets crumble into dust , and above all there is that song, humming deep and resonant like the beating of some great heart.
is sweet
Or the beating of wings.
A tiny shape darts through the smoldering debris of worlds. Ash-stained wings carry Raven through the darkness filling the silence where a star burned itself out, center collapsing inward until it swallowed its own voice and was still.
Raven is far from still, twisting one way and another around obstacles, diving steeply to see the final moments of a gas giant, soaring upward to avoid the aftershocks of a star going nova.
And as he moves, he sloughs off names and faces and stories, memory faint and fading like smoke in a dark room.
He doesn’t mind.
It is sweet
He has never minded the loss, and as everything falls away from him,
wide eyes, sharp words, the scent of fear
dropping away into nothing
a pink dress
and what remains even when nothing is gone,
ice blue eyes and a soft musical laugh
all he is left with is the thought so this is what it means to be free.
Hard on its heels--underscored by the lilting refrain of the universe at its end--is joy, and the unparalleled sweetness of being himself without knowing, without caring.
This is peace.
The heart dies of this sweetness.
This is an ending.
And it is not enough.
Some things stick
golden eyes
like burrs,
power and a sort of wondering peace
like leeches,
warm fur and sharp teeth
like love.
And oh, but it is heavy.
It would be so easy to keep flying, laughing as the universe breaths its last, burning bright and true and real here at the end.
But there are always choices, and Raven made his a very long time ago.
So he skirts the edge of one last supernova, laughing high and bright and wild and free, before turning and making his way, slow and inexorable and quiet, back to Milliways.
He is not sorry.
He does not regret.
But there will be a reckoning.
And he will know this kind of freedom again. |
|
|
![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}