Alan D
Group: Members
Posts: 3670
Joined: Aug. 2004 |
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Posted: Jan. 17 2007, 15:24 |
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Rider Among the Stars
Blackness isn’t an absence of light, but a foil to it. To the Horse who sailed through space on giant blue wings, the universe seemed ablaze with the light that radiated from jewel-like planets, glowing gas clouds, and fiercely burning distant stars. Only against the velvet blackness of space could the colours show their full beauty.
The Horse was guardian of all this colour and light. Here, between worlds, he maintained his patient patrol.
In a far-off place (though some might say it was more a state of mind than a place), a being was collecting golden rings. She’d found one hidden inside a pearly-white shell that had played a short ethereal tune when she took it; she’d found another hanging from a tree branch, and yet another guarded by a scorpion beneath a smoking bush. She’d travelled to an offshore island for a fourth, and ridden wildly through a storm on horseback to claim a fifth from a praying mantis in the middle of a lake. Carrying her five rings, she’d approached an intimidating mask-like face in a temple and had heard a voice. 'Go back,' it advised. So she did.
On the edge of a desert close to the sea, she’d come to a silent place between large red rocks and found the object of her search – a sixth ring. Around it scuttled a crab, tracing out a narrow circle. There was danger here. She waited, standing clear of the claws of the crab, but she’d come too far to stop now. She moved forward and took it.
Far away in the silent spaces between the stars the Horse changed his flight, sweeping down towards a blue and white planet where, in a different kind of space, and a different kind of time, an orange crab circled a now empty place in the sand. The being by the rocks knew nothing of the approach of the Horse until she felt herself suddenly taken up and carried high into the air. The ground receded below; the sky turned from blue to black. She passed from one strangely beautiful world of rings and rocks and ground and sea and sky into another, even stranger. The great wings of the Horse beat powerfully as they rose. Music filled the space around them. Together they flew through a universe of sound and light.
She couldn’t say, afterwards, how long the flight had lasted. It seemed only moments, though they flew so far and saw so much, as planets turned in their courses and were left behind, while shooting stars lit up the darkness with dazzling beams. But the Horse knew his purpose. Turning towards a curiously familiar blue planet (was it the one they’d left, she wondered, or another?), he glided downwards, carrying his charge safely towards what seemed like home. He left her, safe and amazed, in the ruins of a temple, and was gone. She stepped forward, took the seventh ring, and vanished.
Far above, in another kind of space, and another kind of time, the winged Horse resumed his solitary patrol.
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