Duality
by beadlety

(Last edited on 7/29/08)

Miglia approached the cemetery filled with passion, wearily, the way an artist approaches a masterpiece that is almost complete, but not quite. Her dress was stained with grass and it’s hem was steeped in mud from her traveling. The tattoos that swirled up her left arm ached warningly, concealed beneath the faded, dusty rose of her patched dress. It always ached, nowadays. Dark clouds grumbled in the east.

The sun fell behind her, slipping slowly beneath the horizon like the trailing hand of a lover. With her back to the setting sun, she approached the rotten, sagging gates. It had taken her two wearying months to reach this cemetery; she hoped the spirit here would be worth her time. A small clump of forget-me-nots by the gate made her smile briefly as she entered.

Miglia wandered through the cemetery, eyeing the crumbling, mossy tombstones with distaste. They looked like putrid masses of rotten, blackened ecru. The green-purple grass beneath her bare feet was moist, squishing like water-logged seaweed. This place was corrupted, tainted beyond belief. Her lips curled into a grimace of disgust. All she had was some antique poetry mentioned by the corrupt friarof this pitiful church to fix it. How had that thrice-blasted poem gone?

…In mourning of the night, deny, deny the moth’s call.

Her brow wrinkled with concentration. Something…something…

Escape! Forsake the…er…

She looked up at the crooked, weather-worn cross above the church in the corner of the cemetery. It was a shadow in and of itself, a specter on the fringe of the conscious, shaded in gray. The spirit had cast an impressive look-away charm; the church was almost invisible, unless she looked at it out of the corner of her eye.

Forsake your dreams…

The graveyard would be crawling soon, a regular necropolis of the dead in all its glory. And she’d rather not have to fight dusty, bone constructs, familiars, and bitter spirits.

For in the darkness all will fall.

Personally she felt that the poem was a little, well, over the top. A bit too dramatic. She turned to Ekuaseon, the pitiful friar, eyes glittering with humor. “I take it the first stanza is meant to serve as a warning?” she said dryly. In the back of her mind she wondered who had written the poem, when, why.

He nodded, frightened but disdainful. The evil spirits of this corrupted place were heathen, nothing Christianity could grapple with. Attempting to reconcile the two was like trying to care for a single, fragile bubble of soap. The reconciliation lasted only as long as the wind did not blow.

It would take a heathen to tame that which was heathen. No matter how much holy water the friar sprinkled, all he would do was drench the floor boards of his precious church. She wrinkled her nose at him, “Don’t be so worried. Your church is safe in my hands.” I think.

He spat, but said nothing. After all, she was only in it for payment, not respect. She didn’t care what he condescendingly thought of her. It came down to basic reconciliation, which would always be impossible. He crossed himself.

Miglia smiled openly, falsely, “What is the rest of it?” Her anger was veiled in the poisoned honey of her red smile. The overcast skies hinted at rain, and, slowly, drops began to spatter about Ekuaseon and Miglia.

He handed her the ragged parchment, scrawled upon by some unknown hand centuries before. It smelled of rat.

Ekuaseon was careful to hand her the document without touching her fingers. She grimaced, not in the mood for his childish games. “There is an evil in there,” she inhaled deeply, pointing at the church, “Evil to you, evil to me. Do not think that it will only attempt to destroy me in its fury.”

She gazed at him flatly while his cheeks reddened. “This evil is beyond distinguishing between you and me,” she finally spat.

For a moment he gazed at her, his eyes sharp, analyzing. When he finally spoke his voice was low and rough, “Well said, pagan. I will aid you in this task. God has commanded it of me.”

She spat on left her hand, blessed with purple runes and symbols, an amalgamation of cuneiform and pagan lines, and held it out for him to shake. This was the hand that most of her power came from. Along her fingers, purple tattooed snakes danced and writhed. Her palm was decorated to be a filter for the power of the gods, a filter for their strength. He did not take her hand. Miglia shrugged and began striding toward the shadowed, sepulchral church. For something heathen to inhabit a structure that contradicted its very existence…It was very strong.

The tattoos that ran from her hand up to her shoulder began to shift and move painfully, glowing in the darkness that deepened as they approached the church, the spirit’s den. She gazed in awe at the unmarked door. For her to enter she would have to completely destroy it, blast it with the strength she was given, for, like the demon, the church's very existence countered her own. For this spirit to enter unscathed… She shook her head, confused. What manner of spirit could have done this?

Without turning to Ekuaseon she said softly, “I do not like this at all. No spirit…” The darkness deepened as they got closer to the church, until the church itself was barely visible in the poisonous fog around them. “How long has it inhabited…” she trailed off again.

“Centuries,” was all he said. And she knew. She knew she could not fight this evil, could not vanquish it with her powers. She was strong, she was of nature and its gods, but she was not strong enough for this.

Her heart in her throat, she read the next two stanzas of the poem even though she already knew it was futile.

In the shadows,—Do not look!—stands a woman with a pall.

All, nothing, is as it seems

In mourning of the night. Deny, deny the moth’s call.

Drowning in slumber, refuse to heed her call.

The lost remain and nothing redeems,

For in the darkness all will fall.

“The lost remain…the woman…the…nothing…”There was something incredibly wrong. She grasped for the seals on her hand-

The woman next to her laughed, her voice cruel and cold. Miglia turned to face her, eyes wide, heart pounding in the darkness. She moved away quickly, her panic rising. “Who are you?” Where was Ekuaseon? The woman with her dark hair and eyes, her red lips, seemed incredibly familiar. Like a distant cousin, a sister. Where had she come from? When?

“Who am I? Who are you? Who are any of us? Who are we?” She eyes blazed maliciously. Her laughter echoed in the gloom, and where her laughter echoed, light appeared like death. Mirrors of light splashed through the darkness like deceiving beacons in a storm, brightening, brightening, all was light, all was noise, all was silence and-

Miglia stood on a beach, drowned in a storm. Heavy clouds roiled and writhed and pitch black waves pounded the gray beach with their fists. Heavy drops like tears plunged to the ground in gales. The storm whipped at her hair, stung her cheeks with its kisses, rent her clothes with its fury. It did not touch her.

The woman was there, again, perched on sharp protrusions of gabbro that surrounded Miglia and cut at her feet. Her sinister, soft voice was a taunt. “Who are we, Miglia?”

Miglia…

Miglia…

Miglia…

The voice, echoing, cavernous, possessed. She shrieked, covered her eyes with arms that didn’t exist. Arms that were and were not. The arms that held the parchment but did not. The dichotomy tore at her mind and she howled. Miglia in the poisoned storm and Miglia with the demon. It’s purple, honeyed tongue murmuring in her ear. Her body, frozen, frozen, frozen. The woman had vanished and a grotesque stood in her place.

The words! She tried to break from the dichotomy in her mind, tried to rationalize being in two places at once, tried the read the words on the parchment frozen in the pallid fingers. Her pallid fingers, her own. The dream, it-

Curse it!

The demon was there it was there it was there it would kill her it would kill and there would be no mercy none at all and she would be lost and dead and devoured and and and

No one escapes the maze—the labyrinth, a wall—

Ignore her wails and keens,

In mourning of the night. Deny, deny the moth’s call.

Empty voices echo, whispers in a lonely hall—

Turn around, look, look. Sullen screams.—

For in the darkness all will fall.

It played with her hair with its long, spindly, deformed fingers and she was trapped. The storm raged and her limbs were frozen, the dichotomy keeping her in place with the threat of madness--moving within the divide would drive her into madness, moving in two places would force her to abandon reality.

To flee from the demon was to run into the storm--that was and was not there--, into the waves, into the cold darkness beneath. Into death.

She couldn’t escape.

She knew then the division of her mind, and the reality of both places. The death in them both. To remain divided was to die; to chose to flee was to die. All was death.

Silvered calls pull, silken strands enthrall.

Run, flee from the woman of moonbeams!

In mourning of the night, deny, deny the moth’s call

For in the darkness all will fall.

Deny the moth’s call. Never sleep, never die, never fade. The words ran through her divided minds like the off-beat surge of drums. The heathen woman was no coward, nor was she beyond the powers of this demon. But she would fight. She bridged the gap, the divide between her minds, keeping both worlds, both realities. They overlapped and shuddered, colliding with one another like ripples in water, visible yet distinct. She could see neither, yet saw them both in her eyes, could see the twisted, silvered web she was trapped in.

She would die. The calls, the shrieks of Ekuaseon were feeble. He was dying.

He was forsaken by his God. Her gods simply did not care.

Flashes of memory splintered into shards of regret as the arm began to move. Her arm. Its-

Her mind began to fracture. Her left hand grasped the demon, her grip frozen solid by the weight of the curse. Her left hand reached toward the waves, willing her body toward their indifferent kisses.

She would die, but she would taken the demon with her.

Her shins collided with the waves and turned white with the cold. The black water roiled and swirled about her knees. The tempest raged.

The triumphant coos of the demon turned into shrieks and wails of surprise, terror. In one world her body remained frozen, her gods-blessed left hand fastened to the putrid, rotten demon of purple-black scales and silvered dreams. In the other world she was leading them both to their deaths.

The icy, black water closed over her head and silence muffled her thoughts. The purple light above her dimmed as she sank deeper, her body relaxed. Gentle currents whispered softly as they pulled her further into the darkness.

Drowning in slumber, refuse to heed her call.

The lost remain and nothing redeems,

The cold made her drowsy even as it stole her airand her life. The demon gibbered in the sea beyond.

For in the darkness all will fall.

She sank. She sank. She sank. There was no beginning and no end. Depth was without depth and without substance. It absorbed without taking.Then something inverted; something had changed. The sea was no longer the sea that consumed, the sea that raged. It was the sea of conscious. Its consciousness, its presence, its examination, its determination and emotion stunned.

She was in her own mind. The sea was her mind. The woman’s laughter rang through her skull shrilly, the dichotomy was still there and no less prominent. Quieter, perhaps, but no less forceful.

“Who are we?” she called again, “Who are we?”

Miglia responded in kind, “Who are we?”

We are We. We always were We.

The sighs of the ocean were soothing and the darkness that surrounded her was the arm of a friend, the shade of a tree, the shelter of a cave. She could be anything here, anyone. Here she could forget and lose and gain and find. Truth was what it was, a lie or a truth. It was what the sea made it to be. The surface of the sea reappeared, a glimmering of purple in the dark warmth around her. She moved toward it and broke the surface.

We are the demon.

--

And there you go. Psychological madness that makes absolutely no sense. But that's it. Constructive criticism is very welcome for this one, please. The poem used in this is the one posted in the moth's summons series. I was required to write the poem and then incorporate it, some how, into a story. Yes. A very dumb exercise in application. Will be a chapter two, and three, and four, etc, if I get to that point, which I'd like to.