Lord Zee
BBeast
DracoLunaris
Frettzo
Cyclone
Vec
Torack
CyKhollab Productions present:
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RAGING ROSA | THE DANCE-DEMON | FEVERFOOT | LEAPING LINDA
The Galbarian skies and the endless spaces alike were alight with Yudaiel’s works, and the scintillations of the diamonds she wrought into the heavens shone on the eyes of all the gods. All, that was, other than Rosalind the Feverfoot, whose eyes had known no light since the silent terror of the Monarch had cast them into darkness.
the whispering of the gods reached Rosalind even in the black night of her sleep-swathed essence.
She saw, for instance, a terrible flood that consumed the world and left nothing unsubmerged by the deluge;
she saw the terrible visage of the flooder and the bifurcated madness that danced within him.
She saw, also, the furies of salt unleashed upon the flood.
Just as the deluge consumed all things, so was the deluge by unknowable measures of salt consumed.
It raged, did the salt, it danced;
it laughed unsmiling and danced without fever.
It was revenge, was the salt;
it was eternal aeons of ceaseless vengeance.
Even under the blanket of darkness, and though planes of reality separated Rosalind from Sala the Salt-Unsmiling, still did the dancer tremble in fear.
For what, now that terror was the kernel of her being, did Rosalind the Feverfoot not fear?
the countenance of horror and the twin the horror scarred.
The struggle silenced breath as one fiendish sibling set upon its helpless echo.
Cowardly Rosalind!
She could not speak;
she could not breathe;
she could only bear to look because—
oh sickening shame!—
she feared her closing eyes would make a sound and draw the fiend to her!
But Ruina was no thrall to fear—
no, Ruina was the sword of grit!
She did not scream that flesh should shear—
she took the blow and forthwith hit!
She struck the face of ruin with death—
of breath she freed the treacherous one;
she clothed herself in godly flesh and stood as searing as the sun!
And the heart of Rosalind was never so unfree from fear.
the flame of endless fevers and the serpent of the heat;
the eye of hungering fervour and the snake that ached to eat.
She swirled and swirled, did Yoliyachicoztl,
she chased her tail and fled her tail;
she chased her heat and fled her heat.
She danced, did Yoliyachicoztl,
she fled the blazing dance.
And all about the Feverfoot heat grew, and only grew,
till she cried out in her sleepfulness and went off fleeing too!
Oh she’s a coward is that Rosalind!
Courage is not her virtue.
Snakes that dance and burn?—
why yes, she fears them too!
a mountain made of god,
or perhaps a god carved from the mount—
who spoke in ringing rumbles like a cavern with echoing fount:
"Brothers,” he said, “sisters,” so that even Rosalind heard,
“our canvas is monotonous,” he sadly wept and shared.
“We can fill it with variety,” he then at once declared:
“join me and we shall paint it to our and the Monarch’s liking!”
But Voligan had no sooner spoke the Monarch’s name
before Rosalind the coward was fled in fear and shame.
She’s a coward, she’s a coward, she’s a coward of great fame!
“Hear me! I am Epsilon,”
said the mind-and-body-made-one,
“I seek an inky treasure,
which shall live on forever!
Write down within this tome
the cosmic ocean’s foam,
so that even if we roam
we’ll know the way back home!”
And in the embryo of sleep
Rosalind began to weep—
her dancing only knew to prance
and was untrained in ink’s cold trance;
could you write a withering glance
or a sway stiff’ning like a lance?
No it could not be done—
so Rosa did not run;
the impossibility was clear
and so there was no need for fear.
to where she thought she saw the book,
with great affright she saw:
within the tome at once was writ,
by hand that hither thither flit,
the very secrets, long and grave,
that would cast fear into the brave!
The word on ends and final breath,
the word on souls and death’s cruel calls;
Voi the Deathdart wrote them all
with his hand—what hand?! A maul!
Voi the Deathdart wrote a dance,
wrote the lengthy dying dance—
he forgot no circumstance
from whence the beast of death could prance!
Round the cosmic soul his claw
beckoned to that other shore—
and Rosa ran! Oh yes she ran.
She ran as fast as sleepers can.
Why, let the world entire jeer:
do they not also have this fear?
while through the veil of space she flew
with jittering feet,
and she saw:
a drunken cloud, asleep, awake,
where forms are shattered and minds break.
The hurtling ball-shape of the drunk
exploded, flew, then swiftly sunk;
wherefore he went he did not care,
he spread his joying everywhere!
But then—great gods!—he left despair!
What wafts there on the gentle air?
What wafts behind the bloodshot stare?
Despair despair! It’s everywhere!
So Rosa ran—oh yes, she ran.
and as she ran she saw, she saw:
the hunter with the barken face
who scrawled the words that left no trace—
he sculpted in the inky tome
a pit that horrors all called home.
What did he write?—she did not know.
What did he make?—she did not know.
Which only made its horror grow!
“May the unknown’s mystery
stretch eternally!”
Where could she go? Where could she go?
Fly up above or dig deep below?
How do you run from what you don’t know?
Weep, oh gods, the coward’s plight
as she takes off again in flight!
like a windmill whirling on a wire,
she saw:
a moment’s joy extended
so joys are never ended;
a splotch of yellow,
a carefree bellow,
and a cartwheel quicker than an arrow—
her mind, meanwhile
was free from guile
and flew free on the wing
of “a shiny thing that goes ‘ting!’”
The cartwheel danced and the dance cartwheeled
and as she watched even Rosa reeled
away from such excess!
She remembered too clearly
how quick and severely
she’d been punished for all of that mess!
Oh yes it was fear
come again to help steer
the coward into the clear!
chuggachuggachug
chuggachuggachug,
once again she saw:
on rails of steel
that do not feel
he chugchugchugs;
beneath iron wheels
you can hear the squeals
of bugbugbugs.
Explosion for you and oil spill for you,
there’s plenty to go round, it’s true!
With a belch and a burp and the blazing of coke
we’ll send fog up in billows and swellings of smoke,
and we’ll dance and we’ll soar
and industry will roar
as you, and you, and you all choke!
So coughing and wheezing,
and tearfully sneezing,
Rosa rolled from the smog
like a dirty old cog
and really wished she was somewhere—anywhere!—else.
she saw:
is that rain or is that fire,
is it tree or is it pyre?
Where goes all this magic air?
For whose use and dismal glare?
Aethel the Manaker was his name,
in yonder days his is the blame—
so says the cursed Sight of Yudaiel
that sits on distant hills to hail
and speak its mysteries
to all who wander on Sight’s breeze.
Oh Manaker, oh Manaker, why, why did you make this mana?
Why did you plant it in a tree
and let it grow so wild and free?
It’s everywhere, it’s everywhere!
Wherever you run you’ll find it there!
Oh cowardice must you now die?
What comes of you if you can’t fly?
cowards need a hiding place
and forests offer ample space—
Phelenia the Lifeline did not know this,
but Rosa cooed and leapt in bliss.
Here was a god, it would appear,
who sheltered those who lived in fear!
Deep, dank woods away from sight
where you can hide and not take flight.
What more than this do cowards need? -
for the weed loves living with the weed.
But even as Rosalind committed to life
in forested groves
and lichenous coves,
the murmurings of life sounded out at once
such that she erupted with fear,
would not listen or hear,
and turned fleeing without a glance!
And even as she woke,
in those wee hours of the slumbering mind, she saw:
the ice-storm whose eye was god and the god who dwelled on the branches of a snowflake.
The lonesome flake fluttered and flittered,
down down down,
until it breathed a mane of white upon the world’s once naked head.
An icy breath wafted through Rosalind’s bones and chilled her burning, jittering feet.
And as she woke she sighed to find that the fever in her feet was,
if momentarily,
gone.
Perhaps, she thought, that great expanse of ice was the cure for fevered feet.
But fevered feet have no mind for such things, and they kicked such that she went spiralling and accelerating and burning and jangling; in the heavens she became a motion; among the stars she glistened and flashed and moved and shot. In some worlds they called such motions and movements ‘shooting stars,’ but in this one they would forever be called feverish-feet. And that first feverish-foot went flying furiously and fiercely flitting, its fervours forcing the ether to fold and unfold before it with such ferocity that even the infinity of space was set aflame.
It flew, that first feverish-foot, until it flew no more and instead nestled—gently, mind you: for a few seconds it was like the embrace of long lost lovers—into the newly-struck moon. Had Yudaiel foreseen this? Had Yudaiel engineered it? Or was it, as seemed fatefully destined with the turbulent dancer, a great affront and defiance to her Sight? For a great silent moment fever-foot and newborn moon kissed and embraced... and then a silent boom mushroomed in the heavens—like distant fireworks you can’t hear, spied from the depths of a lagoon. And those recently pent-up fevers left the Feverfoot so that the dance would forever be at home in the moon.
It went dancing then, did that moon, across the heavens. Its dance rippled and vibrated all about it and beckoned to Galbar, but Galbar’s foundations were strong and did not move; her seas were fickle, though, and given to flights of fancy and so gave themselves—why, threw themselves!—to the dance. They danced with the moon, those seas, they rose and fell, they reached up in great waves like godly hands, they thrashed and kicked against the shores and sent off surf and foam. The moon and sea, they danced and pranced; the fever had them now.
Defiantly, the nascent moon had been placed contrapositive to the sun, as far as possible from that heavenly palace where the Monarch of All dwelled. There, hanging in a place perpetually shielded from His light by Galbar’s long shadow, was the moon—her moon. In such a lofty and presumptuous perch, from Galbar one could look up and perhaps see the moon as an equal to the sun, a contender even! But Yudaiel’s furtive insolence against the Monarch was not to last long, for Rosalind’s collision spurred the great celestial body into motion even as it created a massive impact—the first to come but not the last, the Reverberation sensed—that marred the otherwise pristine surface as it had been cooling from the heat of the last meteoroids that had fallen into its embrace.
The Great and All-Seeing Eye did not weep. In her heart and just over her shoulder, there to the left a little, in the past, she could always see her creation in its perfection and infancy as it had been first wrought by her designs. Now it was thrust out into the world and others were bound to leave their marks upon it, out of greed or jealousy or mere capriciousness. Such actions she had always expected, and perhaps even ordained.
It was similarly ordained that as the moon and Galbar spun through their eternal dance, there would come times when the moon returned to its lofty perch opposite the sun and was enveloped in shadows, and other times (more defiant still!) when it would come between the sun and Galbar and block the Monarch’s eyes and radiance from reaching the prison below, if only for a time. In those rare events, her impudent apostasy against the Monarch’s will and His designs would be more potent and brazen still—and what was He to do about her spiteful fomenting? In the end, she would deny that she’d done any more than craft a beautiful jewel in the sky, a companion to Galbar to inspire and awe all those who cast their gaze skyward.
In the wake of the celestial orb’s dancing hung Rosalind, fully awake now and moaning. She lifted a jangling hand to her head and rubbed it, such pain shooting through it as would torment even Jiugui’s brow if ever he sobered. The void caressed her throbbing head and body as she drifted through space, softer than a feather falling upon fresh snow. A cool and familiar sensation crept through the snow: a wet trickle, a tiny stream of the vast sea of consciousness that was Yudaiel, that reached out to touch the Feverfoot’s mind. Rosalind stiffened then, her endemic fear vomiting its lichens across her chest.
The Fever flared in her head, a banal bonfire suddenly alive as a great pillar of flame, animated and writhing with fingers, so many fingers. It reached out balefully to grasp at Rosa, to wrest control of the Dance and lead her steps, to crush her in an angry grip—but then the air whispered a forlorn name, Yudaiel, Yudaiel. Yudaiel! The gossiping eddies came together as one wind, and this cooling breeze swept away all the smoke and pain and heat. The fire shuddered and simmered before the extinguishing gust, and then all was calm.
Time moved slowly and yet fast; the only dance was the lethargic and content beating of Rosa’s heart. She rested for what felt like days, but it was quite soon that she raised her head to look back to where that horrible blaze had been, only to realize that even the bonfire’s dying coals now glowed no more. So tranquil was her mind that she hardly seemed to notice as the ground melted away to water, and now she floated upon her back in a sea so calm that there weren’t even any waves, just tiny ripples created by the playful winds in the air. The salt breeze was there, but it was only a fresh scent upon the air, not Sala’s smothering kiss muddled with the rancid and foul breath of fish. Ah, peace. The air was warm, yet puffy white clouds shielded Rosa’s skin from the sun’s unforgiving rays. Forgiveness.
Rosalind sat like a suppliant in the arms of her god, whose supplications all were answered and could think to ask nothing more. She breathed and was awestruck by breath, she sighed and was filled with wonder. So overpowering was her fever that she had not been quite able to notice these things before—there was only the rising heat or the fear of the rising heat. But for a moment, this moment, it was not so.
She rose then—her feet were her own!—and she plip-plip-plopped across the serene sea. Her movements were clean, rippling with the waves and flowing with the main. She stood for a second and stretched on her toes and rocked on her heels. And she laughed—a small laugh mixed with fear and uncertainty… and gratitude.
She brought her hands to her abdomen, lifted her chin, and allowed her feet to flow with the water. Her movements were slow and measured, her arms danced around her head like the ring danced about the world below and her feet pitter-pattered on the water. Though unhurried, it did not lack any of the force her fevered dancing had, she seemed to weave her movements—carefully, precisely, as though threading and rethreading and triply threading a needle. When her hips spun, her back swayed, her shoulders swung, her head turned, then like a velvet curtain her hair spiralled—like a galaxy it turned, like the murmuration of ten thousand starlings or more it swirled. Then with finality a foot landed, water rippled and stirred but did not break, and Rosalind’s eyes of dusk emerged from behind the great dark curtain of hair—they glimmered, they smiled, and even in the stillness of finality, they danced.
The unblemished surface of the water underfoot, immaculate in its stillness and smoothness, was suddenly broken. Waves lapped at Rosa’s feet, their crests distorting her reflection in the shattered mirror. She looked up, and there it was, a beautiful boat! It drifted lazily closer to her, propelled by its own desires if not by an unseen and unfelt wind, and it had come to carry her away. The hue of the sea grew deeper, darker, as though clouds had come overhead, but there were no clouds above this wine-dark water, for the sky had vanished. Or had it merely moved? Now the night sky seemed to be below her, where before there had been only water. The sun was gone, but some little sparkles of light still bejewelled the crests of some black waves. They twinkled, and with a blink, Rosalind realized they were stars, and that she was once more in space, the dream and the ideabstraction gone.
But the boat remained before her, and in fact, it drifted so close that she could reach out and touch it. Her fingers brushed the wood, charming in its simplicity and lack of ostentation, and she found herself half drawn and half falling in. She lay there for a few moments, a mess of fabric and hair and limbs and then struggled to right herself and place her bottom on the thwart doubling as a seat. She burned with shame at the odd debacle and patted down her skirt of black velvet, then swept the blanket of dusky hair from her face. Only then did she note the oar, which she picked up and surveyed. She did not know how she knew what it was and how to use it - though she suspected it had something to do with Yudaiel and the strange way she knitted thoughts into one’s mind.
The goddess extended the oar from the boat and gently pushed off into the waiting darkness of space, her feverish feet gently quivering against the bottom boards. She looked up to where she thought Yudaiel’s epicentre might be. She opened her mouth to speak, to say - perhaps - you are good, Yudaiel or I will be better - and I will thank you, but words seemed unable to form up in her throat or flow off her tongue or slip between her lips. And in that moment she knew that dancing was more eloquent than speech.
Rosalind the Feverfoot closed her mouth, allowed herself one last long glance towards the sister who had rebuked her so fiercely and forgiven her so readily, and she rowed her boat.
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ROSALIND
RAGING ROSA | THE DANCE-DEMON | FEVERFOOT | LEAPING LINDA
The Galbarian skies and the endless spaces alike were alight with Yudaiel’s works, and the scintillations of the diamonds she wrought into the heavens shone on the eyes of all the gods. All, that was, other than Rosalind the Feverfoot, whose eyes had known no light since the silent terror of the Monarch had cast them into darkness.
On Sala
Though her mind walked in darkness, the whispering of the gods reached Rosalind even in the black night of her sleep-swathed essence.
She saw, for instance, a terrible flood that consumed the world and left nothing unsubmerged by the deluge;
she saw the terrible visage of the flooder and the bifurcated madness that danced within him.
She saw, also, the furies of salt unleashed upon the flood.
Just as the deluge consumed all things, so was the deluge by unknowable measures of salt consumed.
It raged, did the salt, it danced;
it laughed unsmiling and danced without fever.
It was revenge, was the salt;
it was eternal aeons of ceaseless vengeance.
Even under the blanket of darkness, and though planes of reality separated Rosalind from Sala the Salt-Unsmiling, still did the dancer tremble in fear.
For what, now that terror was the kernel of her being, did Rosalind the Feverfoot not fear?
On Ruina
There in the inky swirl of sleep she saw: the countenance of horror and the twin the horror scarred.
The struggle silenced breath as one fiendish sibling set upon its helpless echo.
Cowardly Rosalind!
She could not speak;
she could not breathe;
she could only bear to look because—
oh sickening shame!—
she feared her closing eyes would make a sound and draw the fiend to her!
But Ruina was no thrall to fear—
no, Ruina was the sword of grit!
She did not scream that flesh should shear—
she took the blow and forthwith hit!
She struck the face of ruin with death—
of breath she freed the treacherous one;
she clothed herself in godly flesh and stood as searing as the sun!
And the heart of Rosalind was never so unfree from fear.
On Yoliyachicoztl
Yudaiel’s curse was on her now, and in that curse she saw: the flame of endless fevers and the serpent of the heat;
the eye of hungering fervour and the snake that ached to eat.
She swirled and swirled, did Yoliyachicoztl,
she chased her tail and fled her tail;
she chased her heat and fled her heat.
She danced, did Yoliyachicoztl,
she fled the blazing dance.
And all about the Feverfoot heat grew, and only grew,
till she cried out in her sleepfulness and went off fleeing too!
Oh she’s a coward is that Rosalind!
Courage is not her virtue.
Snakes that dance and burn?—
why yes, she fears them too!
On Voligan
In the womb of slumber still she saw: a mountain made of god,
or perhaps a god carved from the mount—
who spoke in ringing rumbles like a cavern with echoing fount:
"Brothers,” he said, “sisters,” so that even Rosalind heard,
“our canvas is monotonous,” he sadly wept and shared.
“We can fill it with variety,” he then at once declared:
“join me and we shall paint it to our and the Monarch’s liking!”
But Voligan had no sooner spoke the Monarch’s name
before Rosalind the coward was fled in fear and shame.
She’s a coward, she’s a coward, she’s a coward of great fame!
On Epsilon
Floating in her foetal languour, sightlessly she saw: “Hear me! I am Epsilon,”
said the mind-and-body-made-one,
“I seek an inky treasure,
which shall live on forever!
Write down within this tome
the cosmic ocean’s foam,
so that even if we roam
we’ll know the way back home!”
And in the embryo of sleep
Rosalind began to weep—
her dancing only knew to prance
and was untrained in ink’s cold trance;
could you write a withering glance
or a sway stiff’ning like a lance?
No it could not be done—
so Rosa did not run;
the impossibility was clear
and so there was no need for fear.
On Voi
But even as she deigned to look to where she thought she saw the book,
with great affright she saw:
within the tome at once was writ,
by hand that hither thither flit,
the very secrets, long and grave,
that would cast fear into the brave!
The word on ends and final breath,
the word on souls and death’s cruel calls;
Voi the Deathdart wrote them all
with his hand—what hand?! A maul!
Voi the Deathdart wrote a dance,
wrote the lengthy dying dance—
he forgot no circumstance
from whence the beast of death could prance!
Round the cosmic soul his claw
beckoned to that other shore—
and Rosa ran! Oh yes she ran.
She ran as fast as sleepers can.
Why, let the world entire jeer:
do they not also have this fear?
On Jiugui
She ran inside that cosmic spew while through the veil of space she flew
with jittering feet,
and she saw:
a drunken cloud, asleep, awake,
where forms are shattered and minds break.
The hurtling ball-shape of the drunk
exploded, flew, then swiftly sunk;
wherefore he went he did not care,
he spread his joying everywhere!
But then—great gods!—he left despair!
What wafts there on the gentle air?
What wafts behind the bloodshot stare?
Despair despair! It’s everywhere!
So Rosa ran—oh yes, she ran.
On Tuku
In her head she ran and ran, and as she ran she saw, she saw:
the hunter with the barken face
who scrawled the words that left no trace—
he sculpted in the inky tome
a pit that horrors all called home.
What did he write?—she did not know.
What did he make?—she did not know.
Which only made its horror grow!
“May the unknown’s mystery
stretch eternally!”
Where could she go? Where could she go?
Fly up above or dig deep below?
How do you run from what you don’t know?
Weep, oh gods, the coward’s plight
as she takes off again in flight!
On Zenia
Wheeling and wheeling in the sable gyrelike a windmill whirling on a wire,
she saw:
a moment’s joy extended
so joys are never ended;
a splotch of yellow,
a carefree bellow,
and a cartwheel quicker than an arrow—
her mind, meanwhile
was free from guile
and flew free on the wing
of “a shiny thing that goes ‘ting!’”
The cartwheel danced and the dance cartwheeled
and as she watched even Rosa reeled
away from such excess!
She remembered too clearly
how quick and severely
she’d been punished for all of that mess!
Oh yes it was fear
come again to help steer
the coward into the clear!
On Astus
Chuggachuggachug chuggachuggachug
chuggachuggachug,
once again she saw:
on rails of steel
that do not feel
he chugchugchugs;
beneath iron wheels
you can hear the squeals
of bugbugbugs.
Explosion for you and oil spill for you,
there’s plenty to go round, it’s true!
With a belch and a burp and the blazing of coke
we’ll send fog up in billows and swellings of smoke,
and we’ll dance and we’ll soar
and industry will roar
as you, and you, and you all choke!
So coughing and wheezing,
and tearfully sneezing,
Rosa rolled from the smog
like a dirty old cog
and really wished she was somewhere—anywhere!—else.
On Aethel
Swirling and whirling in the quagmire, she saw:
is that rain or is that fire,
is it tree or is it pyre?
Where goes all this magic air?
For whose use and dismal glare?
Aethel the Manaker was his name,
in yonder days his is the blame—
so says the cursed Sight of Yudaiel
that sits on distant hills to hail
and speak its mysteries
to all who wander on Sight’s breeze.
Oh Manaker, oh Manaker, why, why did you make this mana?
Why did you plant it in a tree
and let it grow so wild and free?
It’s everywhere, it’s everywhere!
Wherever you run you’ll find it there!
Oh cowardice must you now die?
What comes of you if you can’t fly?
On Phelenia
And as she soared and slept and dreamt, she saw: cowards need a hiding place
and forests offer ample space—
Phelenia the Lifeline did not know this,
but Rosa cooed and leapt in bliss.
Here was a god, it would appear,
who sheltered those who lived in fear!
Deep, dank woods away from sight
where you can hide and not take flight.
What more than this do cowards need? -
for the weed loves living with the weed.
But even as Rosalind committed to life
in forested groves
and lichenous coves,
the murmurings of life sounded out at once
such that she erupted with fear,
would not listen or hear,
and turned fleeing without a glance!
On Chailiss
There was nowhere left to flee now except into the dawn of wakefulness. And even as she woke,
in those wee hours of the slumbering mind, she saw:
the ice-storm whose eye was god and the god who dwelled on the branches of a snowflake.
The lonesome flake fluttered and flittered,
down down down,
until it breathed a mane of white upon the world’s once naked head.
An icy breath wafted through Rosalind’s bones and chilled her burning, jittering feet.
And as she woke she sighed to find that the fever in her feet was,
if momentarily,
gone.
Perhaps, she thought, that great expanse of ice was the cure for fevered feet.
Tutto finito
And even as she thought it, the great weight of all she had dreamt and heard rushed into her feet and set them ablaze once more. Her eyes widened in fear as she felt her hips begin to sway to an unknown drum: her feet to kick, her body to move, her wrists to shake—and there, on her wrists, a hundred bangles jangled and echoed and vibrated. With every foot that kicked and let off heat the bangles jangled and sucked up the excess. For a perfect moment it formed a great harmony.But fevered feet have no mind for such things, and they kicked such that she went spiralling and accelerating and burning and jangling; in the heavens she became a motion; among the stars she glistened and flashed and moved and shot. In some worlds they called such motions and movements ‘shooting stars,’ but in this one they would forever be called feverish-feet. And that first feverish-foot went flying furiously and fiercely flitting, its fervours forcing the ether to fold and unfold before it with such ferocity that even the infinity of space was set aflame.
It flew, that first feverish-foot, until it flew no more and instead nestled—gently, mind you: for a few seconds it was like the embrace of long lost lovers—into the newly-struck moon. Had Yudaiel foreseen this? Had Yudaiel engineered it? Or was it, as seemed fatefully destined with the turbulent dancer, a great affront and defiance to her Sight? For a great silent moment fever-foot and newborn moon kissed and embraced... and then a silent boom mushroomed in the heavens—like distant fireworks you can’t hear, spied from the depths of a lagoon. And those recently pent-up fevers left the Feverfoot so that the dance would forever be at home in the moon.
It went dancing then, did that moon, across the heavens. Its dance rippled and vibrated all about it and beckoned to Galbar, but Galbar’s foundations were strong and did not move; her seas were fickle, though, and given to flights of fancy and so gave themselves—why, threw themselves!—to the dance. They danced with the moon, those seas, they rose and fell, they reached up in great waves like godly hands, they thrashed and kicked against the shores and sent off surf and foam. The moon and sea, they danced and pranced; the fever had them now.
Defiantly, the nascent moon had been placed contrapositive to the sun, as far as possible from that heavenly palace where the Monarch of All dwelled. There, hanging in a place perpetually shielded from His light by Galbar’s long shadow, was the moon—her moon. In such a lofty and presumptuous perch, from Galbar one could look up and perhaps see the moon as an equal to the sun, a contender even! But Yudaiel’s furtive insolence against the Monarch was not to last long, for Rosalind’s collision spurred the great celestial body into motion even as it created a massive impact—the first to come but not the last, the Reverberation sensed—that marred the otherwise pristine surface as it had been cooling from the heat of the last meteoroids that had fallen into its embrace.
The Great and All-Seeing Eye did not weep. In her heart and just over her shoulder, there to the left a little, in the past, she could always see her creation in its perfection and infancy as it had been first wrought by her designs. Now it was thrust out into the world and others were bound to leave their marks upon it, out of greed or jealousy or mere capriciousness. Such actions she had always expected, and perhaps even ordained.
It was similarly ordained that as the moon and Galbar spun through their eternal dance, there would come times when the moon returned to its lofty perch opposite the sun and was enveloped in shadows, and other times (more defiant still!) when it would come between the sun and Galbar and block the Monarch’s eyes and radiance from reaching the prison below, if only for a time. In those rare events, her impudent apostasy against the Monarch’s will and His designs would be more potent and brazen still—and what was He to do about her spiteful fomenting? In the end, she would deny that she’d done any more than craft a beautiful jewel in the sky, a companion to Galbar to inspire and awe all those who cast their gaze skyward.
In the wake of the celestial orb’s dancing hung Rosalind, fully awake now and moaning. She lifted a jangling hand to her head and rubbed it, such pain shooting through it as would torment even Jiugui’s brow if ever he sobered. The void caressed her throbbing head and body as she drifted through space, softer than a feather falling upon fresh snow. A cool and familiar sensation crept through the snow: a wet trickle, a tiny stream of the vast sea of consciousness that was Yudaiel, that reached out to touch the Feverfoot’s mind. Rosalind stiffened then, her endemic fear vomiting its lichens across her chest.
The Fever flared in her head, a banal bonfire suddenly alive as a great pillar of flame, animated and writhing with fingers, so many fingers. It reached out balefully to grasp at Rosa, to wrest control of the Dance and lead her steps, to crush her in an angry grip—but then the air whispered a forlorn name, Yudaiel, Yudaiel. Yudaiel! The gossiping eddies came together as one wind, and this cooling breeze swept away all the smoke and pain and heat. The fire shuddered and simmered before the extinguishing gust, and then all was calm.
Time moved slowly and yet fast; the only dance was the lethargic and content beating of Rosa’s heart. She rested for what felt like days, but it was quite soon that she raised her head to look back to where that horrible blaze had been, only to realize that even the bonfire’s dying coals now glowed no more. So tranquil was her mind that she hardly seemed to notice as the ground melted away to water, and now she floated upon her back in a sea so calm that there weren’t even any waves, just tiny ripples created by the playful winds in the air. The salt breeze was there, but it was only a fresh scent upon the air, not Sala’s smothering kiss muddled with the rancid and foul breath of fish. Ah, peace. The air was warm, yet puffy white clouds shielded Rosa’s skin from the sun’s unforgiving rays. Forgiveness.
Rosalind sat like a suppliant in the arms of her god, whose supplications all were answered and could think to ask nothing more. She breathed and was awestruck by breath, she sighed and was filled with wonder. So overpowering was her fever that she had not been quite able to notice these things before—there was only the rising heat or the fear of the rising heat. But for a moment, this moment, it was not so.
She rose then—her feet were her own!—and she plip-plip-plopped across the serene sea. Her movements were clean, rippling with the waves and flowing with the main. She stood for a second and stretched on her toes and rocked on her heels. And she laughed—a small laugh mixed with fear and uncertainty… and gratitude.
She brought her hands to her abdomen, lifted her chin, and allowed her feet to flow with the water. Her movements were slow and measured, her arms danced around her head like the ring danced about the world below and her feet pitter-pattered on the water. Though unhurried, it did not lack any of the force her fevered dancing had, she seemed to weave her movements—carefully, precisely, as though threading and rethreading and triply threading a needle. When her hips spun, her back swayed, her shoulders swung, her head turned, then like a velvet curtain her hair spiralled—like a galaxy it turned, like the murmuration of ten thousand starlings or more it swirled. Then with finality a foot landed, water rippled and stirred but did not break, and Rosalind’s eyes of dusk emerged from behind the great dark curtain of hair—they glimmered, they smiled, and even in the stillness of finality, they danced.
The unblemished surface of the water underfoot, immaculate in its stillness and smoothness, was suddenly broken. Waves lapped at Rosa’s feet, their crests distorting her reflection in the shattered mirror. She looked up, and there it was, a beautiful boat! It drifted lazily closer to her, propelled by its own desires if not by an unseen and unfelt wind, and it had come to carry her away. The hue of the sea grew deeper, darker, as though clouds had come overhead, but there were no clouds above this wine-dark water, for the sky had vanished. Or had it merely moved? Now the night sky seemed to be below her, where before there had been only water. The sun was gone, but some little sparkles of light still bejewelled the crests of some black waves. They twinkled, and with a blink, Rosalind realized they were stars, and that she was once more in space, the dream and the ideabstraction gone.
But the boat remained before her, and in fact, it drifted so close that she could reach out and touch it. Her fingers brushed the wood, charming in its simplicity and lack of ostentation, and she found herself half drawn and half falling in. She lay there for a few moments, a mess of fabric and hair and limbs and then struggled to right herself and place her bottom on the thwart doubling as a seat. She burned with shame at the odd debacle and patted down her skirt of black velvet, then swept the blanket of dusky hair from her face. Only then did she note the oar, which she picked up and surveyed. She did not know how she knew what it was and how to use it - though she suspected it had something to do with Yudaiel and the strange way she knitted thoughts into one’s mind.
The goddess extended the oar from the boat and gently pushed off into the waiting darkness of space, her feverish feet gently quivering against the bottom boards. She looked up to where she thought Yudaiel’s epicentre might be. She opened her mouth to speak, to say - perhaps - you are good, Yudaiel or I will be better - and I will thank you, but words seemed unable to form up in her throat or flow off her tongue or slip between her lips. And in that moment she knew that dancing was more eloquent than speech.
Rosalind the Feverfoot closed her mouth, allowed herself one last long glance towards the sister who had rebuked her so fiercely and forgiven her so readily, and she rowed her boat.
