Rock-A-Bye

Lullaby

Rock-A-Bye Baby…

There was nothing but a point of light, solitary and cold in the nothing. The point shrank and grew; pulsating to its own slow, soft beat. Then it winked out. Nothing ruled.

Bing

The ripples spread outward, bright and growing brighter as it roared away from the point. Silence prevailed, but the light grew and grew, becoming as light so to be dark again. However this darkness was the darkness of something, the darkness you get when there is no light to see, rather than the darkness of nothing at all. It was a warm and hidden darkness, rather than the frigid nothing. Here, there was something.

In the tree tops…

The gloomy, dank ground was covered in crackling leaves. The multitude of fragments seemed to glow. Purple, Green, Brown, Black. All of the colors danced in the wind and flew away, leaving behind the crumbling island of thick dark dirt where the mother tree stood, bowed by age and the train of the sky. In her curled branches, a cradle lay, the baby inside crying.

When the wind blows…

From one of the branches, another leaf crackled and fell slowly to the waiting earth, only to be swept up and thrown against the warn granite of a gravestone by the impatient wind. Upon the grave, the name etched deep into the cracking surface was clearly visible, even in the shadowy light. Mana Walker.

The cradle will rock…

But now, the young child had changed to a boy, his brown hair falling into his swollen eyes as he continued to weep; the only sound other than his sobs was the creak of the branches, unable to comfort the child, and the whispering of the soft breeze though the broken twigs.

When the bow breaks…

Again and again the change in the child occurred, until the boy had the white hair of an elderly man, but the body of someone younger. Gray-blue eyes observed the grave bellow as tears fell from the branches to moisten the ground bellow.

The cradle will fall…

"Mana…" The voice echoed out into the pressing darkness kept at bay by the mother tree as a blood-red hand reached up to cover the dark pit which paraded as an eye.

"I'm sorry, Mana…" The voice was weak, as though frightened by everything around it that it could feel, by the welling emotions that writhed and fought, never to be shared.

"Please, Mana…" The words meant nothing but the emotion behind them.

"Forgive me, Father."

And down will come baby, cradle and all…