PROLOGUE
Something niggled like ideas at back of mind, it squiggled like a worm traversing one’s behind, Sullen might have said that it was really more like a feeling, incessant grating on his nerves that somehow left him reeling…
Beyond that crooked shelter’s wooden door, winds arose and raged as if at war, with stillness found within a space, that lends a bit of needed grace…
In moments fraught with disbelief, one feels as if a falling leaf, but winter renders such things gone, and we’re left perturbed fortune’s pawns…
A winter’s hearth housed in a hall, scant comfort, yet come one, come all, steal moments of respite whilst lost in need, if nothing else, come drink, come feed…
Tucked as he was in a dark corner seat, modest fare set fore, some wine, stewed mash, and meat, he wondered at the breadth of sky, such was the distance in his eyes…
He took his cup and sipped mulled wine, whilst contemplating folds of time, in which we rise as shooting stars, then fall away from where dreams are…
Eternal as the one’s we hold, forever near in spiritual folds, beyond the veils and empty words, the journey marked in mythic thirds: advent, travails, and finding meaning, this realisation left Sullen beaming…
But he wondered where, and why Keeper had fled, from a collective for which they all had bled, just that same insipid, empty feeling, the kind that leaves the faithless reeling…
Just then the whir of a cold-seeking wind, the tavern's door let a new stranger in, but this unlike any other Sullen had seen, compared to most half again as tall, and broad, and mean…
By looks of him a brute it could be said, but there was something about the giant’s head, obscured by hood, though not entirely, Sullen might have shrunk were he but cowardly…
So, the giant grimly laboured in, ‘tween dark tavern’s folk, amid their din, Sullen rose and stood as tall as he could, some ancient voice convinced him that he should…
And in the face of his likely doom, Sullen beheld eyes of someone in whom, he’d once found a friend to span all time, no matter dross, nor pale design…
At which the giant pulled back its crimson hood, Sullen saw that a pile of friends upon one another stood! Stranger and Ariadne bore foundations’ weight, whilst on Ariel’s shoulders did brave Toad gyrate!
Teasing in his silly way, a way that brightens every day, Toad pirouetted and extended his hand, to the one who'd dreamed himself into being a better man…
Sullen, for wishing it at skyway’s door, transcending to rare realms, what’s more, beneath rising moons and setting suns, one comes to know oblivion, in search of those who feel compelled, to convert this earthen shade of hell…
Into something rarest dreamers dream, for paradise exists between the seams, but as people find they’re getting older, their courage wanes as their doubts grow bolder…
After a spell they laughed and thanked the Lord for friends, fine means by which to buck the trends, of nerves worn thin in vapid times, forget for whom the bell e’er chimes…
Toad twirled and did a little dance, on Ariel’s shoulders he skipped and pranced, and all of them then gathered near, in sweet embrace out-loved their fears…
Sullen took Toad off of Ariel’s head, set him on the stool beside instead, and the rest soon softened into fire’s glow, then the housemaid food and drink bestowed…
Once they had supped and were at last, a little warmer, Stranger rose and took his fiddle to opposing corner, a stage surrounded there by candle flame, a point from which to escape mundane…
Three chords that sang of three passed moons, for time is also kept in magic tunes, we conjure when we’re most in need, of those with whom we fight and bleed…
The music rose as asps on air, it inspired every person there, and on a bridge ‘twixt different planes, should one simply go, or e’er remain?
Mired in the woes of life, for fleeting suns and endless strife, recede into your pale fortress, forget, survive, but is that truly what it means to be alive?
At which the winds beyond the faint and failing frames of that edifice, joined with the tune Stranger played in protest against that which threatens us…
Ariadne was the first to ask, “What shall we do now, Sullen? What is our task?”
As if on cue, Toad belched so loud, expressed some dank and bilious cloud, of insect juice and fresh ate stew, it bore a brown and greenish hew…
They laughed, but soon the laughter waned and went, for too long had all their hearts been spent, in animating life from dust, or hope from loss, discerning noble paths from all the roads that cross…
Without any chance of resolution to be gained, to finally evolve beyond the human stain…
They looked unto that Sullen one, beside whom they’d seen all doubt undone, but Ariel interceded then and there, twirling ‘twixt pale fingers a flaxen tress of hair…
“It’s not enough to say that he just went, despite the wondrous love he lent, we must persist and seek him out, for surely he’s in need of us, and is somewhere yon about…”
Sullen shook his head and calmly said, “If he wanted it so, he would be here with us instead…
But within my head I am undone by the same insipid, empty feeling, and it seems somehow so known to me, as if some recurring, ancient frequency, and I swear it is within that place and on those tones, that I know that Keeper feels he’s heading home…
Nearer destination, despite any temporal loss, toward a central time, for all of us…
No distance, ruin, nor fading face, the clock of life retains a place at, and in a time of our choosing…
We are only gaining here… we are not losing more than measured loss to balance things, what fortune takes, derision brings…
And smiles…
And friends…
Good folk, come… lend me your hands…”
Their hands placed there, the one upon the other, if belief in more is life, the earth is the healing mother,...
Then Stranger gathered too, having quit his song, to rejoin the circle to which he now belongs…
And in the glow of soft, fair firelight, safe from the chill, at least for the night, Ariel leaned still closer to Sullen, as he took another sip from his cup…
As two cub Snizziphants sprung from Ariel’s sack, she gathered and lifted them up, soothed and gently placed them back…
“But say to us now what I see within those sky-stretched eyes, for your silence is a thin disguise, there is no plan yet hatched within the head, so you’re just idling lost within this pub instead?”
Sullen regarded her as Toad climbed and perched upon his shoulder, “We are, each of us, moving our own existential boulder, up and down the mountainside, summits gained and lost for balance we abide, and what I believe is happening here, for here and now it’s coming clear, is that Keeper has had his fill of marking time. Three moons have passed us now since he took flight, but I know it’s just the start of a different, noble, worthwhile fight… And he’s run off to find a radiant and special way to be, our sagely friend in perpetuity.”
Ariel looked gravely upon that Sullen boy, as Toad flitted his tongue at his friend with joy, but her brow furrowed for the folly there, in lives spent grasping at elusive air…
And then, as if summoned back from dreamed haze, returned unto that time and place, Sullen raised his cup to all of them, and with his eyes good feelings lent…
“Before we drink, I’ll simply say, Keeper has not yet gone away, for our part now it’s time to live, unto respective stories give, mind and heart that mythos grows, that time is measured as we’d know...”
To this, they drank, and called to sky, pleading voices, longing eyes…
“And where will your path take you, my love,” Ariel asked of him, wondering what he was thinking of…
Sullen shuddered before replying, in some sense he was abstractly dying…
“I must find him as it was he, who helped me through the mythic door, beyond this truth I’m grasping straws and nothing more.”
“So, you’d have us fall away and head about, to forge our own sagas whilst you figure things out?”
“That’s what I was thinking,” he said, in a tone both resolute and shrinking…
“No.”
Ariel pronounced the word and it hung on air, stark silence soon descended there, and free from both her skin and space, she called them all back unto place…
“We are the story, and the centre, the solution to any problems into which we enter, first from within as you and me, then collectively we supersede, flying further and higher than I’d ever dreamed, so departing now does not e’en remotely seem, in the slightest bit too helpful here, amid the absence and the drear!”
At this, the others roared and flung coarse bits of bread, at blushing Sullens’ whirring head, and then they clambered to a central space, that eluded eyes but occupied a place…
Sullen laughed and solemnly nodded his head, basking in the radiance of fellowship, instead, “We shall indeed endure as e’er, as one, unto the heights of kingdom come, I will simply say that it may fall to us, as time slowly compresses, to rise above with but a thought, a hope, a dream, to slip the knot…”
