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The Writer
06:18
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When A Wish Comes True
08:00
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It was a dark night in spring, and the moon was only a sliver in the sky. The furious scratching of a quill on parchment could be heard hanging in the still night air, often starting and stopping, interspersed with the sound of parchment being crumpled. Candlelight spilled out from the window of the house of a writer on that dark night, and that was where the sound was also coming from. The writer sat at his table, face crinkled in a frown. Piles of crumpled parchment were littered on the floor alongside books of poetry and stories and songs all written by the the man at the table. With his head in his hands, he sighed. It has been years since he had written anything that he he considered passable, and now he had been commissioned to craft a song for one of Eldslunds most famous knights, a knight who is not even confirmed to exist. Wringing his hands together, he stood from the table and paced the room. The bed was made nicely decorated by blankets of rich design and the rest of the room was decorated equally as lavish. The writer had made his living by writing, but now with this task ahead of him, he was quite stumped, for he himself had never been on any adventures, and in order to write the song that would truly allow the people hearing it to explore with the knight of legend, he needed to experience something more than his lavish, sheltered life. So write and write and write he tried, the sweat from his brown dripping onto the parchment, muddying the ink as is seeped into the page. Another crumpled piece to the piles. Stepping to his open window, he threw his head to the sky, shouting a wish and a curse, asking for his writers block to be lifted.
“Let me experience even a morsel of adventure and I can provide the people the most glorious tale that they’ve ever heard!” He shouted to the stars and black inky sky.
The writers plea was not unheard. In the sky, during his desperate calling, a star began to glow brighter and larger. Soon enough, the writer took notice and ceased his shouting. The star was growing larger and brighter, almost as if it was getting closer. Before the writer had time to fully react, the star flew through his window, catching his hand in the bright flare. A searing pain shot through his hand, bleeding up into his arm slowly. His face was stretched wide in astonishment as the star lay on his floor. The writer stood frozen as the star began to change shape, burning bright and stretching to the size of the man. The searing returned in his hand, and when he looked down in reaction, he noticed a hole in the corner of his palm and his index finger was missing. A glow and shimmer was swarming out from the hole as the writer started to scream. The shape reached out to touch his wounded hand and in that moment the writer burst into light and dust, flying outside his window and into the night sky.
This was the story that was being passed around the Holy city of Pilesburogh as a new prisoner had been brought to the dungeon on the charge of heresy. As a priest of the Holy Faith of the Greats, my job was to interview the prisoners that claimed witness to heretical things and get the whole of the story from them. Worship of the old gods and rumors of dark things crawling in the depths of the black of night must be stifled in order to maintain peace in the land, and this was one such circumstance that posed a threat to the peace. The dank smell of the dungeons curled my nose as I descended into its belly. The guard that walked with me held the torch that provided light to the hall, and the echo of our footsteps on the stone floor alerted the prisoners to our presence before they had seen the light flickering upon the stones. There was banging and shouting, and many begging to have their transgressions retried, but I had only one person to speak to. Through a door at the end of the hall was a holding cell where the writer was being kept, this would be where I conduct my interview.
As the door creaked open, I saw the man seated at the table, his arms and legs chained to a metal hoop on the wall behind him. Turning back to the guard, I motioned for him to leave the room. Nodding in reply, the guard placed the torch into a sconce on the wall by the door as he left. Sitting down across from the man, I could now clearly see his appearance. His long hair was quite disheveled and patched shorter in some places almost as if it was singed. He was curled up, knees to his face as he sat in the chair, jittering and tense, seeming to be lost in his thoughts. The man looked up as I cleared my throat, beginning the interview with the question of;
“What is your name?”
Sharply turning to face me, with a distasteful look in his eyes he started.
“Have you no taste? I am the one who wrote those tales of the legendary voyages of the lost Dwinsponce. Wrote the ballad of the coral wizard, and the many tales of the decimation of Geruntunthop!”
The writer adjusted in his seat, the chains rattling as he moved.
“Oh, it matters not now. We’ve to discuss much more important things.” He said as his eyes looked right through me, as if seeing something off in the distance.
Continuing my questioning I asked what it was that he had been speaking out about, what was so important for him to be thrown in the dungeons for refusing to be silent.
Moving the hair out of his face, I noticed the absence of one of his index fingers, the spot where it should be looking blackened but healed.
“I’ve experienced something fantastic!” The writer said with a wry smile on his face.
“I have went to the sky and came back. Oh the things I’ve witnessed! The beauty, the horror, intertwined so intoxicatingly it almost feels as a dream. But it wasn’t, for I have the signs to prove it!” The man raised his hand in display of the missing finger.
“I made a wish, pleading to the night, that I might experience something spectacular, for I needed to write something spectacular and I was out of time. But the star answered my plea, and soon enough it crashed into my room, taking my finger, and then in a shining, furious light it took the rest of me.”
The man’s posture was more relaxed now as he settled into reliving the story. I made sure to stay quiet as to not interrupt the man’s speaking.
“My body was rended into naught but stardust and I was swept to the wind, and it was in that wind, carried high above the ground, that I found myself in currents of the stars. Their light called out to me as if spoken words, drawing me, guiding me to them. While flowing quick through the winds and soaring high, I paused and looked down. The entire world laid out below me, my house no longer visible. To what I felt was my back was a cold, open plain. The heavens are dark, save the stars and the celestial bodies that we always see. The higher I went the smaller the world became, and I beheld other bodies of land far out from the Eldslunds and the large oceans that sat in between them. Despite my every rising height and moving further into that cold open space, I found my path to the stars very long and the in between filled with empty, black nothing. This shot a striking fear through me, a fear of being alone here no matter how hard I tried. I wept, as much as I could as dust, as the feeling of being lost and alone set upon me, but as soon as that loneliness had consumed me, the winds pulled me again into the path of the stars and their light drew me closer and closer.”
The man had started shaking again with the last few sentences, but an otherworldly calm washed over him as he began speaking of the stars.
“The stars, they hum you know. I listened to them, sat right amongst them. After they drew me in, I sat there, surrounded by the humming choir of stars. Such a glorious sound, some soft, some more harsh, but never vile in sound. What would sound unnatural here was done in such a way that it fully had me at peace. It was as if they were speaking to me, showing me truths and stories of the world. It was then that the light of the moon created a path to lead my dust upon, and so the winds took me. Down and closer to the space of the world than that of the dark heavens I began to see more clearly that which was below me. Massive forests and plains, incredibly tall mountains and rich deep oceans. Meadows and creeks and deserts, it was all there, and I was there alone to view it. This time the loneliness was filled with peace, as the humming of the stars still reverberated throughout my dust. I alone was viewing all that was to be experienced in our world, well, at least physically that is.”
The man suddenly tended at the end of this thought as a new one crept into his mind. His legs once again returned to the chair as he wrapped his arms around his knees as much as his chains would allow him.
I’m a whisper he said;
“Then I saw it. There at the north most part of the world, I saw it slithering out. A dark mass that slowly, menacingly lurched across the top. Only a morsel had been claimed, but that morsel was the sized of the lower Eldslunds! A fear shot through me, paralyzing me. I could not move, the stars stopped their humming and all light that would touch that blackness would be devoured. I had to escape, I could not stay there any longer, for I felt as though the slow consuming maw was looking back at me. The winds gusted me back down swiftly, dropping me plummeting back to my house. As I passed down through the heavens, the fear and terror of what I had seen still clung to my mind, and before I reached my house, I fell to sleep. Once I awoke, I could only pray for the things I had seen to be but a dream, but then I noticed my missing finger, and from that point forward, I had to warn you all of what is coming.”
The writer leaned in close to me, his tone dropping from hysterical to unwaveringly serious.
“Darkness, a maw of consuming black is coming, and someone must do something about it! You must listen for I tell naught but the truth!”
Standing up quickly, the man reached out to me, his hands coming up short from my face. Tears streamed down his face in silence as his entire body trembled. I had jumped back from such a sudden and frightening display, and reluctantly turned to leave. This was clearly some form of heretical belief that lead to this mania, for such a tale to be spun would be a direct contradiction of what the Greats claim to do for us. Walking to the door, I knocked for the guard to let me out and say that the man will be dealt with shortly. As the door swung shut, I could hear the man sobbing, but a tale as this cannot be allowed to be spread and is most likely to be spread from heretical teachings. As we walked back to the main floor of the dungeons, I couldn’t help but shake the idea, this creeping fear, that this slow consuming black maw was out there, real and closing in on all that is alive, and this thought still shakes me to my core.
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Spife Tennessee
I am Spife, I make music through many different personalities, Enjoy!
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