STANDARD DISCLAIMER APPLIED
of monsters & men
by: pixie paramount (3/15/2008, 9:40 AM)
Beowulf (literature), Grendel's mother & this is my son, my baby, my one & my only (i would die for him, you see)
This is my son, she speaks lowly to the moon and the stars and the old ghosts of lore. There are so many tiny markers behind her mind's eyes--markers of the young she had carried, the young that died before their first breath, young not meant for this world, young that God had took from her. (So his mother hates the light, feeds on man who are carved in the image of their almighty, their creator, out of spite and hurt and anguish that only a mother may feel.)
It is dark in her realm. The fiery waters tepid and cool around her. Her babe nestles her breast, sucks in hair and sleeps peaceful, protected in his mother's arms.
Love spreads through her--fierce and as fearsome as flames that surround her, that conjure at the surface of her volcanic lake--it is foreign and strange but not unwelcome.
And as a mother she holds him close, protects him, feeds him, nourishes him, tells him of all the ways he will inherit the world as her father, as her mother, had taught her.
She teaches him the ways of the earth, the ways to cling and sheath himself in the darkness that man has come to fear and loathe. She takes it in her hands to drill in the caution and the slight fear in the almighty and power God man has come to love and cling to so earnestly, so viciously as she tells him she loves him, her only son.
She is his mother and she is the only thing on this earth that will care for him as fiercely, as loyally, as God is to his people.
Her son dies in his mother's arms. He tells her, I'm sorry, mother, I'm sorry--I was foolish.
She gives him small comforts before he dies. She rubs circles into his back like when he was a child, hums a mother's song under her breath. There is an emptiness in her heart the spreads like a sickness in her--with every breath it skitters about in the blood, makes her feel less the agile huntress she is and more like a sniveling, helpless babe.
She does not cry when his body is slack, death reeking from his corpse. In that instant a small part of her dies and a chocked sob slithers from her throat, a litany of curses strung loosely between sobs as she holds her son, her only, to her and like any mother robbed by death, she seethes in the warm waters of her domain.
She curses God and his son. Promises the worse of crimes on his beloved, the man the breed and populate the world like vermin--on Hroðgar and his people, on the fiend Beowulf and his men, who did Death's duty and slew her son.
In her despair, she plots and thirsts for blood to sate the emptiness that has consumed her. That will haunt her until her dying day.
(That as a mother she is a failure.)
She makes sure his screams echo throughout Hroðgar's lands. That his blood spray upon the witnesses before her. Each step in her plan is carefully sought out.
She wants them to fear, to spend as much time worrying about what might be lurking in the shadows. Fearing as her son had as his arm was ripped from him, as he scurried to her with the knowledge that Death was near and merciless.
She wants, most of all, for Hroðgar to remember this day until he dies and that he is responsible for the chaos that attaches itself like a parasite to his lands.
She makes sure his pride his hurt--as a man, as a warrior. That it bruises red, black and blue with the way he struggles to keep up with her blows, how the only reason he is still alive is out of luck and, perhaps, favor from the Gods.
He wants glory. In the brashness of youth he thirsts for it like she thirst for vengeance, for her to sleep easy knowing that the man who is responsible for all her pain is dead without knowing the full taste of glory.
She feeds her anger knowing how callously he had treated her son--her baby. He had ripped his arm from him, paraded around with it like a rare piece of fine jewelry, hung it from the walls of Herot.
And for that he will die.