The Lion of God
"Where did I come from, and how?
Where am I going?
Will I know the road?" ~ Lal Ded
Beyond the firelight, Richard Alpert has let himself slip into the dreamstate once more. Strange times have come, and time itself grows shorter than he is aware. There are few moments left for introspection, stolen seconds to look for lost paths and listen for guiding whispers, and he grasps at them. Still and ever always looking for the way. His dark eyes are closed against the rising fire, his mind wanders forth, though his ears are open to a woman's voice.
She is no one in particular, but her voice is melodic and warm. Her shadows are caught in flame's flickers, and she is sorting the drying fish. Small, mundane acts, chanting in a lilting voice as she works.
"Plagas, sicut Thomas, non intueor,
Deum tamen meum te confiteor:
Fac me tibi semper magis credere,
In te spem habere, te diligere...
Shanti, shanti, shanti..."
It repeats, the Latin and the Sanskrit married into a strange melody, and then fades. The woman slides away into the night, but the chant remains in his thoughts. It guides Richard as he dreams.
* * * *
It is a dream, and the boy is a boy, and the temple is grand. Faience and lapis blaze bright blue, and the whispers of linen rasp along the stone floors. His father is lost amidst its marble pillars, his voice distant, singing the sacred words of Ra's blessings, singing of Sekhmet, and Ptah and of course Anubis. Singing, at last, a soft plaint, a lamentation to Set for mercy and to ever protect Ra.
The boy lingers, listening to his father's voice rise and then disappear, and then he slips into ever darkening halls, towards the altars, towards where he ought not be, save for during the festivals. He can't say why he breaks one of the few rules he has ever been given, he only knows he must go. He is driven, and his lips form a silent, mystic cant.
The altar rises before him, the great bull carved into its face, the Eye of their great God peering down upon him. Statues line the walls on either side of him, brilliantly colored, watching him as he invades their quiet kingdom. Oh, but he would be beaten, should his father find him here. One is not to go to Gods without the proper rituals, without the rites. He is afraid... but there is silence, and he had to come or go mad. He believes this. And there is no one here to find him.
A voice utters a strange, strange word behind him. The boy whirls, and there is quite a sight, if not quite the fright. This is no man he has ever seen, no voice's lilt he has ever known.
For this man is pale! Paler than the Libyans, which the boy has seen only a few of. Paler than the Berber nomads. He is taken with the idea that the man is sick and steps away, towards the altar. The being speaks again, a handful of words. They are thick-sounding and rough to the boy's ears. It is nothing like the foreign languages he has encountered.
The man is old, his hair white and shaggy, his face long and cragged. His clothes are strange, too, a pale blue thing that was not quite a tunic, marked with odd decorations, alien methods of fastening. Things upon his legs that were not a man's kilt. And he is watching the boy with bright eyes that miss nothing.
Is this a god? The boy trembles, frozen by the idea. The man approaches him, and places his hands gently on either side of the boy's face. He smiles down, a gentle, welcoming smile, and speaks again. It is meaningless to the boy, but he calms regardless. And then the man talks in his strange tongue, for a very long time, and when the boy blinks again it is dawn and he is alone. He flees the temple, words burnt into his brain, and then he makes himself forget the night a God who called himself a shepherd told the boy of the day he would die, told him in a language not yet born, its roots not yet set in the earth. Told him in words he didn't understand... and yet he did.
* * * *
1885 – or so the dreamwhisper says
It is a dream, and the boy is now a man and his feet have not yet stopped their bleeding. It was three days and a whisper and then the statue... and now the jungle. The jungle rises and falls around him, and once as he flees in his panic he breaks into a grand and uneven field of lush green. This pauses him for a moment, in terrified wonder, and then he is lost again to his fear and he runs, runs deep among the banyan and the bamboo once more.
It is there amidst the deep that the whispers begin to curl around him again. They hiss at him, tug at his consciousness, and finally he stops, his chest heaving, his oily black hair stuck against his face. He must look wild and mad, he knows, his eyes huge in his face, his breath desperate. It is one thing to be called by gods, it is another to look destiny full in the eye, and he is scared beyond all mortal reason. Faded henna marks his fingers, fingers that grasp at his own chest while he tries to sort his thoughts. The whispers mutter around him, then suddenly vanish. The silence brings fresh fear to him, and he is ready to flee when the greenery cracks and snaps near him.
There is a woman, grown full in life and older than he, and his urge to run vanishes in the face of curiosity. She is not surprised to see him, it is plain. She watches him incuriously, dark hair caught up in a wild, unruly mess, and her face is serene. Her clothes are ragged and strange to him, and the buried memory of old Gods and forbidden temple halls rises in him. This is not the same. She is not as pale, though her face is still foreign. Gamine, with deep, dark eyes that seem to see all.
"Arielle," she says, and points at herself. The word lilts oddly to his ears and a memory he does not yet own marks it as something like French, but not yet entire. The word is not ugly and he repeats it, fascinated. Arielle. A memory flickers in his mind, the Pharaoh's procession, the untamed jaguars on their chains, the prized lion's corpse draped next to the God-King, as proud in death as it was in life. The festival to honor She Before Whom Evil Trembles. He blinks and the weight of the memory vanishes.
The woman arches an eyebrow at him, amused, as if she knew his thoughts. She begins to speak, as the pale man did, though her voice's rhythm is far, far different. The words are still undecipherable to his ears, but he goes still. She – Arielle – pauses and approaches him. Cautiously, with gentleness, she places her hands on the side of his face and begins to speak again.
"I know your name," he hears, but doesn't understand. The whispers begin to rise around them, and his mind buzzes.
"I know your name, little jackal's lamb," she hisses in a whisper of her own, and this time, he does. It itches deep inside, behind his eyes, but he understands. The miracle of it frightens him. She speaks his private name and he tries to step back but her grip won't lessen.
"In time. You'll learn. You're safe here, for now."
The man tries to shake his head, overwhelmed by the words, by the sensation, by the immeasurable heaviness of knowing that his old life is gone and he is now lost here in the dreamlike green that nearly killed him as a boy. He is not safe. No one in this place is safe.
"No. You are safe. As long as you serve, you are safe."
"Serve you?" he says in his own language, and she shakes her head.
"No. We are mortal. You serve the divine. You serve sacred earth, and blessed water. You serve the cure, when all else is disease." She smiles at him, her eyes crinkling. There is green in them, he sees now. In this place, all things are touched by the green. He is still frightened, for there is something wild in this woman, something caught by serenity's cage, and a whisper rises behind him. It recalls a memory of a thing that has not happened yet, and it vanishes. There is a danger here, but his fear begins to lessen.
"You are here. Now." She laughs delightedly, and then she says a thing that chills him, and she says it in his tongue. "Welcome into this, your house of the living!"
His eyes widen, and he finally whirls away from her grasp at the sound of the jungle's crackle. Two more women appear before him, though their eyes are not on him but Arielle. Lalla, they say. Lalla. They are calling to Arielle. It is a name, but not the name he has been taught. They are beckoning to her, she is needed. He is not, as he perceives, and he pulls away further as the women depart again.
"I am mother here." Arielle smirks at him, but there is no malice in it. "I am mother now, and I may be mother again, but tomorrow, I may not be mother."
He shakes his head confused.
"Don't worry, it comes back around." She reaches out a hand to him, the palm open. "You should follow. You should leave fear behind."
"I can't."
"You will. In time. It's the only thing we ever have, after all!" Arielle laughs again and darts into the jungle like a child. He follows. It's the only thing he can think to do.
* * * *
When Richard opens his eyes again, it is dawn and he is weary. He rises from the side of the fire and slips away towards his tent, disturbed. His dreams have given no answers, simply come around into the spiral of what might have been and what might yet be. Something burrows within his stomach, and he marks it as a fear he left behind a long time ago. He thinks of lions, and jackals. He thinks of the ruined ship and the temple. He thinks of blood on an altar and the seven souls of Man. Most of all, he thinks of a pale man and the end of a great journey.
John Locke is coming, it is the only riddle his dreams have given. He denies this realization as impractical, and determines instead to spend the day at rest. There is surely time to decipher future's way. It's the only thing he has, after all.
~fin
(ABC's LOST and its characters are not my creation, nor do I claim any ownership or rights to the above content beyond that of the average godforsaken fanfiction writer. All errors are my own.)