Shall these bones live? Oh no no no, if I could have done it she would have but the rest of her was nothing to speak of, she screamed and drooled and died and I kept the best of her, but she did not live. And the shine of her is horrible, pulsing and crying out, and the crowds are choking and the sky is black and there are no stars.
I know this place. I have been here, but there was life then, albeit thin squabbling life and poor shacks barely hinting at the rooms and tunnels underground. There is nothing but the low sound of wind, now, and the air does not move. The books in halls beneath our feet are crumbling, the flaking tatters of them and the blackened pages still and blind.
It is Bethlehem. Where the words were buried and their bodies dug up in pieces. Where the dead men lose their bones--no--
But she is not in my hands anymore, she pours out words from another woman's face. I think it is another woman's face; surely it could not be Linnea again? She is older, after all, but there has been so much time between then and now...
"I have built my posterity," I say. "I have made--beautiful things," and I draw that knowledge to myself. It is not warm, exactly, it is too pure for that, but there is a strength to it. "Things have opened their eyes and breathed in this world that never would have been without me, and I have suffered to make it so." And for all of that I cannot reach the words beneath the ground. They are crumbling away.
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Date: 2011-02-27 06:13 am (UTC)I know this place. I have been here, but there was life then, albeit thin squabbling life and poor shacks barely hinting at the rooms and tunnels underground. There is nothing but the low sound of wind, now, and the air does not move. The books in halls beneath our feet are crumbling, the flaking tatters of them and the blackened pages still and blind.
It is Bethlehem. Where the words were buried and their bodies dug up in pieces. Where the dead men lose their bones--no--
But she is not in my hands anymore, she pours out words from another woman's face. I think it is another woman's face; surely it could not be Linnea again? She is older, after all, but there has been so much time between then and now...
"I have built my posterity," I say. "I have made--beautiful things," and I draw that knowledge to myself. It is not warm, exactly, it is too pure for that, but there is a strength to it. "Things have opened their eyes and breathed in this world that never would have been without me, and I have suffered to make it so." And for all of that I cannot reach the words beneath the ground. They are crumbling away.