12-07-2013, 08:32 AM
Charlotte is here quite as often as her packmates. The city closes itself in; makes her feel so constricted and starched. When Erich and Charlotte drove through Los Angeles, all those snaking highways, all that sprawling illumination, all that digitized space, she was nearly catatonic from the alienating regimentation of the sprawl.
Still, they come back. Charlotte and Erich and Melantha. Charlotte haunts both sides of the gauntlet. Sits in silent vigil beneath the Veteran's plinth, watching him sleep, or perhaps Sleep, listening to the alien zip and whirl of all the strange elementals that live here. The Earth is buried beneath concrete and Water does not rule and Wind comes everywhere and oh, man hates Fire but there are other, stranger things that she is only beginning to discover. Plastic sounds like the tongue of the dead sometimes, new and ancient and remade. Electricity hums, bright and constant, charged and sizzling, everywhere, everywhere. Concrete all aggregate, harder than earth, more prone to cracking and dumber but made-of-everything and breathing in a slow, strange, expansive way she is only beginning to comprehend.
Charlotte mislikes the elevator; would prefer to run up the steps but there are many, many steps and after a time or two of insisting she does give up. Reserves her energy for other things.
The girl does not raid any offices; never makes any sort of appearance in any of the places that belong to humans down below. She wanders the empty floors that belonged to the Sept and some quiet part of her does not hate the melancholy. The emptiness, the strangeness of abandoned places. The room for thoughts and echoes, the sense of loss that crowds in, after.
Charlotte brings her own sorts of offerings. A handful of scree from the higher slopes of the Never Summer Mountains, where she and Erich found Volcano, scattered around the floor. Broken shards of an antique coke bottle.
Three finger bones.
The carcass of a sparrow.
Bowls of clear, blessed water swimming with the quiet hum of a small bound-spirit from the higher slopes, where the lakes are fed by the sky, rather than the faucet fed by the reservoirs. A rough-made, rough-fired clay pendant in the shape of a crescent moon.
Still, they come back. Charlotte and Erich and Melantha. Charlotte haunts both sides of the gauntlet. Sits in silent vigil beneath the Veteran's plinth, watching him sleep, or perhaps Sleep, listening to the alien zip and whirl of all the strange elementals that live here. The Earth is buried beneath concrete and Water does not rule and Wind comes everywhere and oh, man hates Fire but there are other, stranger things that she is only beginning to discover. Plastic sounds like the tongue of the dead sometimes, new and ancient and remade. Electricity hums, bright and constant, charged and sizzling, everywhere, everywhere. Concrete all aggregate, harder than earth, more prone to cracking and dumber but made-of-everything and breathing in a slow, strange, expansive way she is only beginning to comprehend.
Charlotte mislikes the elevator; would prefer to run up the steps but there are many, many steps and after a time or two of insisting she does give up. Reserves her energy for other things.
The girl does not raid any offices; never makes any sort of appearance in any of the places that belong to humans down below. She wanders the empty floors that belonged to the Sept and some quiet part of her does not hate the melancholy. The emptiness, the strangeness of abandoned places. The room for thoughts and echoes, the sense of loss that crowds in, after.
Charlotte brings her own sorts of offerings. A handful of scree from the higher slopes of the Never Summer Mountains, where she and Erich found Volcano, scattered around the floor. Broken shards of an antique coke bottle.
Three finger bones.
The carcass of a sparrow.
Bowls of clear, blessed water swimming with the quiet hum of a small bound-spirit from the higher slopes, where the lakes are fed by the sky, rather than the faucet fed by the reservoirs. A rough-made, rough-fired clay pendant in the shape of a crescent moon.
But my heart is wild and my bones are steel
And I could kill you with my bare hands if I was free.
- Phosphorescent, Song for Zula
And I could kill you with my bare hands if I was free.
- Phosphorescent, Song for Zula