Historical Setting, Samhain in an unknown time and darkness
It is a dark hovel with an earthen floor and no fire though there is the damp smell of decay. Life before must have been long ago. My hair and beard are spread all around me, long and unruly like long dark flickers of corona such as the sun would wear in the total void of fire and light. My covering is a badly scrapped pelt of an unknown beast.
Stretching, looking around, I see in the dim light leaking between the covering hides and I know it is nighttime beyond this hovel.
I hear night sounds outside, howls of winter wolves, an owl, the critters of wilderness… I’ve probably slept in death for generations. When last I was of earth all of the arts and all of the treasures and all of the voices of people spoke of war. So now I can suppose the wars have come and gone, leaving the earth as nothing at all but a cold, dark wilderness.
I have human pangs returning, hurts of life, thirst, tiredness, hunger, worry, and always, the Psalmist’s ancient song crying for our distant God. “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.” [Psalm 22]
Or am I not forsaken? My prayer is silent. You are with me here, God? Even here? Even now? Please stay close. Thank you for this breath of life. Thank you.
I am too tired to move… and were I to move, where would I go and what would I do? I seem to be alone, here wherever here is. As my eyes adjust, I see no sleeping place and no cooking place. This hovel seems not to be a home at all, but a storage cellar. In this dark is a heap of celtic metal works with torques such as a soldier would wear on his neck when his chest is bared for battle – and golden bands for gifting. I can catch shadows rising here in the center, like ghosts. Something is hanging down from the center beams…
Human voices outside, call me awake again.
“They said you found the pit of the three spies spoken of in the Wrankle journal?”
An inaudible answer.
Morning light is pouring in the loose places in the hovel covering where pelts are laid one over the other.
Now I see what is hanging here from the center poles above me.
(Continues Tuesday, Nov 5.)
Lazarus Ink 