Ripples of grief

Chapter 17

Her glance fled the gaze of hope, the vipers snatching it before the spiders crawling up her skin began to crawl. It crawled with the leaves she fled past, sobbing in unheard agony and vile grief that lay in every shadow. It was light she sought, and the protruding lights were simply a warning to the future to take a short look around before you let the serpents envelop you in hopelessness. She breathed with rapid ticking of clocks, rasping breaths of the dead, in that petty pace of fear and terror, always murmuring in her ear as she wandered and stumbled – the forest held secrets but even as they lurked, hanging in the branches as tendrils of dread gazed into her mind – they knew her – they knew her next, lassitude-ridden step as they clutched onto a serpent of ink and knotted together the leaves with rope of a noose, tossing over the path thorns of the rose after the patches of light had almost obscured the insidious sorrow from her sight. And now her stumbling footsteps were blinded, dark chasms appearing in her sight. She searched for light, but in a single veil the vipers could mock her with merciless disdain, melancholy enveloping the shadows as they wished. Desperations tendrils always lingered as silhouettes against the dark, the petals behind bathed in darkness and gloom, she could at any moment crash into the great mass of writhing entrails upon the ground, as if they grew from the soil of dolour – something was missing within their chambers of darkness. But it was simply an echo in her mind as the soft veil began to settle and grow as easily as a flower's petal, softly and sweetly as mother's kind, graceful tone. But even in that there were thorns, lurking in the wrinkles and the sorrow in her eyes as the child runs; and doesn't stop. Luxury had simply been feathers, brushing past her skin and cruelly mocking the needles that she tried to pull away, insidiously letting the great clock hand quiver, yet only letting it move for moments at a time, a breath and it was gone, her footsteps fading into another stretch of open page, torn at the edges and rugged with terror. There were seconds peeling away with every step, no matter how light or graceful she tried to be; the vipers were poised, ticking away as an echo in the background as the pulse died like his had. A drum of battle driving her on through the forest, the web vibrating around her as the rugged edges tugged at her mind, her glance of desperation simply watching as time became a fleeting hunt – always running from those shadows – running from itself. Those vipers could turn to the deadly serpent at any moment as it tightened around her throat, the river throbbing with the lingering echoes of trembling horrors.

She took a breath, the serpents of inky, murky time rippling before her in the lake as she saw the petal of the rose – it had shielded everything, yet it had let everything spill through – it covered everything in a veil of that hollow light, a chasm so easily torn even by wind, a trail arisen by the smallest quake in the earth. Almost like silk, so delicate yet so sure-footed in every step; Like the serpents that hissed and seethed like smoke from a flame as it perished – the candle had long been blown out by that single, cold breath, no trace of humanity left, and the threads of smoke trailed into the sky along with the ravens, thieves of the breath. Shadows wavered, and she stepped toward them, so close to seeing the boat among their shreds of a veil tossed over a corpse, a phantom shadow of life still bleeding under the wound of a thorns she herself had planted in its flesh. Unfelt sorrows and remorse stretched out in an uncoiled viper, striking as swiftly as an ember – a single breath could reignite the flame of that rose falling – the agony that still lurked in the dreary, fleeting passing of time. That pulse that made you live and snatched away their breath, the winds stirring the soil until they emerged again. There was a thin veil of panic where the memories lurked, buried beneath the soil as the shadows dig with shovers and wood, the very silk stirred by their desperation to bury the past. Beneath lay dangers – beneath a paper smile of light lurked dangers that lingered, never enough to send a flood of threads cut and tossed to the stars. She still felt the thin bayonet pierce the veil of panic. And all at once she glanced to the emerging boat, then the rabbit in her hand, then the cold, dead flesh with eyes that glistened with ink, blinded by the numb, acrimonious desperation. She felt the rose fall once again, thorns piercing the placid hands of time. And now she watched the rain begin to fall, putting out the embers of memory. So they could never be stirred like a slumbering beast of chaos and anguish. Now the shadow simply lay upon the ground of the rose falling upon flesh as smoke rose. And as it cleared there was a living, breathing petal upon the ground, among the sea of gloom. It was bright and breathing the wind. She held the torn threads of hope in her clutches still, and the winds grasped them among the lamenting melancholy of the dreary shadows, time flowing with eternal apathy. They had pulled her here. And now she stood before the boat, the petal of the rose as she imagined it falling upon the corpse. The petal resurfacing from the water.