I met the goddess upon a stair in a realm adjacent. She was vague, both someone I thought I knew once and a shimmer at the edge of vision.
The many of us, golden, had swept the countryside of summer to line our pockets with its sweet smoke. The scent of it the chaff of what we should have gathered. No matter, we said as the rains set in. We would have each other.
I look back on those days and see faces. So many faces. Faces I loved or said I did anyway. Faces turned away so I have to gently tap on a shoulder and lean in front of them to see if they are who I remember. I see them in the rust on a leaf, in the raindrops against the window. They watch me from their shadows on the floor. I know now they are an illusion, an artifact of the filter over everything. Yet they stare.
The actual number of us was lost to antiquity. You see, there were only ever two of us on the stair. What had seemed to be a crowd for so long was merely a single companion. He is to me as I am to the clouds. That is to say, a flood.
Kerry climbed the stairs with me. Unadorned stone stacked to the sky ahead of us, a surf of pleasant nothing behind us. In the surrounding darkness, star after star lit up in the black. Wander, not fear laughed at the edges of the world and levity carried the day. Kerry and I the pair, the binary.
In leaving behind the flax of day, we traded in our vast rebellion for a dance. It seemed a promise of treasure, to us. From the outside, from the faces, it must have seemed a blunder. To give up so much in exchange for something so fleeting. To us, it was first a bounty, in the end, empty of value. It was so generous of the universe to free us from the debt of success.
On we trudged, up, towards the narrows. A temple aglow waited for us at the top. As the stair rose higher, it became steeper and thinner. It twisted as it lifted higher. I looked over to see Kerry climbing a separate staircase somewhere n the distance. His reached high into the darkness. Where it led was not for me to know.
I lost him in there. A face, now quiet among the others. On the bark of a tree or in a cloud. In the embers of the fire staring back at me. Loved, like the rest of the fictions, but indistinct. On I went to meet the goddess.
The stairs led to a platform above a wide valley carved in gossamer and hung from the Great Arch. Much too precious to harbour life, the valley shone of fundamental frequencies and poured harmonics into the canyon to the north. A photophany glittering on filament and star, the whelm of it seeming to obey no law. No further could I go.
I stood before the Valley of Light, the Lucent Gown of Mystery, The Lady Herself, Vision. The landscape dispersed into a fog of memory. She smiled, in the way of statues, permanent and subtle. She reached for me as I to Her, She with her knowledge, me with my clumsy arms. I could only flail to stay afloat swallowed inside Her eyes.
We looked out over the vastness. Her eye the rim of a crater open to the universe all above me. I should have been terrified of the beauty, but I was no longer that person. The goddess began to draw and I watched through the circle.
The night itself swirled under her pen and little wakes were pulled along with each crisp stroke. Each mark she made upon reality rippled against the firmament, waves spreading and running over other waves reflected off the edge of forever. A storm of noise and light rose and crossed the galaxy. Patterns formed in the interference. Shapes and symbols so bright that even the faces in the dark were lit.
I could feel her smile from my nest in her vision. She reached out to the stars at the centre of her eye and gently dipped her pen in the centre of the storm. The maelstrom calmed at her touch and the symbols came to a focus. An Antikytheran motion of interlocking rings filled the circle of her eye and imagery ticked about the mesh. It was gibberish. Nonsense of unknowably distant light painted into echoes and approximations of language. Simply, it was my name, written in the stuff of stars.
We both laughed. Her chuckle a chime at the tempered locus of hope, mine the lorn rasp of the brash. With the conclave ended, She released me back to colour, green, and to the faces in the dew drops on the grass. At my feet, I gazed at the multitude around me. One stood out among the others: a tiny quatrefoil sprout in the lawn staring back at me. I picked it and placed it in the pages of a novel.
Thanks for reading.
Pete
