At the edge of the world there are cliffs and precipices, walls of ragged sandstone and shale peaked in everlasting green, the brittle breaking stones echoing to the sound of gulls, razorbills, and the more melancholy notes of selkie in the shallows below. It is a place of beauty, power, strength, but it is more than that. It is a door.
“Brother, can you hear me? Brother?”
The distant waves below thunder and boom without meaning, their din nearly overpowering the cry of the seabirds.
“Brother, give me a sign. Some signal to mark your presence.
An albatross wheels above, its great span blotting out the sun ever so briefly, casting the prostrate figure in shade. Her eyes dart up for a moment and then just as quickly return to the bones and stones that surround her cowled form. With menacing purpose she reaches for a slender blade of marrow etched in scrawling figures.
“Blood of my blood, kindred child of a dying race, call my name that I might know that you too have not forsaken me.”
Her wrist flashes ivory in the afternoon sun, driving the bone-knife deep into the bloated stomach of an elder goat, spilling his entrails over the high blown grasses. A tribute to the Tuath Dé, that by their intervention her cries might not go unheeded, but still the coldsome downs ring with silence.
“Son of my father, child of my mother, why do not listen? Can you not hear my wretched soul weeping for your company? Can you not feel my tears falling headlong into the void?”
The crimson-stained blade falls from her listless fingers and she raises her hands, clawing at her hair, smearing the raven curls with clotting death. Blood above, blood below. A sacrifice in all forms, yet ever found inadequate. Hope draining from her trembling shoulders, she casts aside the rude attempt at mystical communion, thrusting the books and bones and oozing corpses over the long cliffs before her, and ultimately she gives herself to despair, to grief. Heavy silent sobs rise within her, carrying her heaving breast to the brink. The drops of sea-salt misery fall from her sun-spotted cheeks and oaken chin freely, and when finally they strike the earth below a shade rises before her, his hand outstretched and beckoning.
Brigid looks out and down and then back up at her limpid brother. Her lips tremble but her eyes are stone.
“So be it, Finn.”
She takes a step forward, swinging her leg out past the edge, and then she steps again. The rocks below will send her the rest of her way. |
Tale of the Week 286: But use this, to summon one another as spirits, cross the gaps between the worlds and engage in jolly cooperation - TIE BREAK
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