You who never arrived
You who never arrived
In my arms, Beloved who were lost
From the start
I don't even know what songs would please you, I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of the next
moment. At the immense
images in me--the far-off deeply felt landscape,
cities, towers, and bridges, and unsuspected
turns in the path
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods--
all rise within me to mean
you, who forever elude me
You, Beloved who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house--, and almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me.
Streets that I chanced upon,
You had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and, startled,
gave back my too-sudden image. Who knows?
Perhaps the same bird echoed both of us
Yesterday, separate, in the evening…
---Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
It was two minutes to eight o'clock.
Perfect. The time was just right…
His eyes flashed queerly as his cloaked form stepped across the threshold of the mansion's woods. Messy brown bangs obscured the features of his face--highlighting the glint of his round glasses and hiding the tense muscles which decorated his cheek. Silently, cautiously, with outmost calculation, his two brown boots sidestepped a possible noisy crackling dry leaf, possible vocal injured night insects and other woodland debris which will prevent him from quietly reaching his usual hiding spot.
…there, behind the mango trees...where the ever dancing leaves will hide his every movement, and the thick roughened bark will camouflage his mud-colored silhouette.
Perfect! How every thing seemed to work for him--as it had done so for the past months. The gods must be blessing him.
With a beginnings of a smile teasing his lips, he maneuvered his way into the spot, making himself comfortable, making sure that his eyes will be able to see everything. Everything!
Taking one last look at his gold pocket watch, he readied himself for what was to come.
And he waited…
Crack. Swish. Sigh. Overhead a owl hooted.
And there she was!
As quiet as a shadow, her elfin boots trod the woodland clearing. It was the middle of a moonless evening, and yet her figure seemed to resonance with a silver glow---her long, thick braided hair the threads of which were the loveliest of all silvers, lighter than the lightest sapphires, her skin the palest of all ivories, icily translucent and hinting of something that was more than flesh, more than blood…
His own flesh heated up, blood flowing across his veins, filling his head in a dizzying rush. Hidden by the shadows of the trees, he watched her--the muscles in his eyes following her every move.
And she had frozen now.
In the middle of the clearing, her luminescent form was lighting up the ground like a moonlit fountain. She was gazing up at the cloudless sky! Sigurd was there Clinging to Brynhild, like a lover, the faint twinkling of their stars like a sprinkling of sugar across velvet. Alive and yet so distant. Like her…
He was now hopelessly lost in a maelstrom of emotions. In his mind, he was already making seas of poems, valleys of arias and symphonies and sonatas, trenches of prose about how her multi-colored eyes reflected the distant sheen of a nebula, how the soft swell of her breasts rose and fell against her chest with each breathe, how the light cool breeze caressed the satin skirt beneath her, in turn caressing her skin, rippling waves which mirrored the silhouette of her long, supple legs.
He was cold and hot at the same time. His heart rate hitched up, and the release of his breathe was at the brink of a pant. Gloved hands gripped the bark of the wood tightly, every inch of his body tensed up, and trembling. Goosebumps riddled his skin.
She had closed her eyes now. Her chin tilted up revealing the smooth slope of her neck. White hands wrapped across her frame, keeping aside the chill that the breeze slathered her with--tiny pinpricks across her cool, cool, naked arms.
He leaned closer, half off his face becoming pressed up against the rough tree limb. Lips mashed against the rough bark, every cell in his body straining to go to her. But the tree and his own hands restrained him. And the only thing he could do was watch her, and imprint each aching second in his mind so that he could review this scene ever hour, every minute, every second he had until he could see her once again.
Her. His goddess.
So inhuman. So cold. And so, so desperately perfect…
She had already left.
Exactly ten minutes after eight, she had unwrapped her arms, opened her eyes, and with a sigh, left the forest clearing as quiet as she came--in a hush that befits the room of one dying.
With a ragged breathe, his body collapsed, only the hard mango tree trunk steadying him, keeping him from falling to the hard, woodland floor.
A/n: This was meant to be a remake which veered off into an original fiction. But since it took so many elements out off the game, I felt guilty and decided to post here instead. So... if the following chapters do scare you. Its alright. I understand.