Coming Forth by Day
An LLS Production
The fore-paw of a lion, the forearm of a man, the primal ray of sun. I wake in the dark to the stirring of birds, a murmur in the trees, a flutter of wings.
It is the morning of my birth, the first of many.
The past lies knotted in its sheets asleep.
Winds blow, flags above the temple ripple. Out of darkness the earth spins toward light.
I feel a change coming. My thoughts flicker, glow a moment and catch fire. I come forth by day singing...
For you I light a fire in the sky. My love dispels darkness. I place the pot over the fire, add water, flour and meat. We shall nourish each other with words and bread.
Born of stars, of pale moonlight skimming mountaintops, we are men and women exchanging glances at the crossroads. I am born of sky, filled with light. I darken. I am various as weather. I am predictable as sunrise, moon-set, the winds that blow, breathtaking as Sirius rising.
I am for you. I am the utter-er of your name. Speak of me often and we shall live...
I am a thought that came to pass. Long believed, I live forever. I am words repeated often. I am a happy man. I am a blessed man. I am a perfecting man. I am love and shall endure forever. I am a thankful man, a man of peace, poetry, dream. I am a well-fed man. I am a dancing man beloved of gods. I am an old man who has lived long.
I am heading home...
I wake up to the fading strains of the Pert Erm Hrw, the voices of the dead around me. I am alone, in the darkness, and the sun is tinted with the begging of Ra's ascension. Apep is defeated again, and the result lies before me.
I think that sunrise in the American desert is much different from the Egyptian counterpart before the lump beside me stirs, and hair as fair as my own from a head bearing similar features to mine is lifted. The illusion of looking into a mirror is fleeting as the hair juts out in its mess, and the sharp features with those blood-red eyes look back at me.
If you stood on a summer's morning on the bank under a brilliant sky, you would see the thousand petals and say that together they make the lotus.
But if you lived in its heart, invisible from without, you might see how the ecstasy at its fragrant core gives rise to its thousand petals.
What is beautiful is always that which is itself in essence, a certainty of being. I marvel at myself and the things of earth.
Silently, we begin the morning ritual. Travelling freely, we stretch, we awaken, and each other is nursed back to walking.
The Pharaoh himself is in Japan, with his other half. The Thief and his light are in the Old World. Each of us are chasing one of the Darkness. It is thus that Malik and I are in the New World, this world of revolution and turbulence and change.
I am to retrieve the thing. Ishizu and Rishido are in Egypt, but soon they join us. The work of the Supreme Council is never done, and Egypt has more history than most to share and preserve.
It matters not to the two of us, as my companion proves as he gives that half-sleepy smile. The rest of the time, he is my self, my blood-thirst and anger and hatred and sadism. He embodies it well.
I used to hate him.
Perhaps I still do.
Perhaps not.
Even I do not know the answer.
Lunacy. It's quite fun.
Tumble down into it. Go ahead. Don't be afraid. Fling yourself off the bridge and laugh while you do it. Yeah, you might be crazy, and you probably are, but does it matter? Madness isn't so bad, really, not when it's all you've ever known and everything you've dared to dream of.
Forever and eternity, yes! If I could race the wind and challenge all the stars, I would do so gladly. And though, tumbling down I might loom on the horizon, the horizon is still far away, and I might never reach it.
That's not for us. Eternity, yes, that's what we're gonna race along and keep trying to find, because stopping would kill us both - but time to grow up? Impossible! For those few who were chosen so long ago, age froze beneath the desert sky with a last gasping breath - and it hasn't bothered them since.
And we, the so-called innocents, are them just as much as they are us.
So I fell in love with my own darkness.
Damn everything, he's mine and even though I hate him, I can't dream of not having him in my arms.
Evil isn't so bad when it loves you.
We find it. The monster attacks us. Here in the American South-west, there is a tribe called the Navajo. They fear this monster so much, they do not speak of it.
They are right in a way the average American has not managed. Some things are not meant to be spoken. The English term is skin-walker, but they have different terms for it, even though they do not tell.
It takes on different forms to fight us, an eagle to a boar to a bison to a snake to a lot of other things. It is a shape-shifter, and it fights like one does; viciously and fluidly.
The Items of Millennium, however, do not disappear without a trace as much as leave their legacy on the six of us. Between the powers of the Sceptre to see memories, and the Eye to read minds, the shifter has met his worst match. Makyura the Destructor takes it down with a surprise trap, and we retrieve it even as it screams from being bound to a Nightmare Wheel.
Malik traces the bruises, where the bear-shifter had hit, a strange, pensive look even as we take the darkness. As if on command, Des Gardius slashes the bound shifter, hard, and harder, and darkness swirls as Malik raises a hand and the Eye shines on his forehead as it does on mine.
The sound of its mind cracking and its heart stopping is ignored as the shadows take it. It is his way of showing that he cares, I suppose.
Sometimes, I stop and take stock and wonder.
I wish my yami would walk down the street with his arm around me - but I know he can't. I wish we could run around in daylight and hug and kiss and touch - but we can't. Not yet – he does not like such pedestrian stuff.
But someday... some long-off day I'll walk just as freely with my yami down the street domestically.
The thought gives me shudders.
I will live the life the way I sees fit - and I am living a dream, is he not? Freedom from duty, freedom to choose, freedom to fall in love...
I choose to live.
It is wonderful. It is changing, never constant, and I am free.
I float among the days in peace, content. Not part of the world, the world is all the parts of me. I open toward the light and lift myself to the gods on the perfume of prayer. I ask for nothing beyond myself. I own everything I need. I am content in the company of god, a prayer that contains its own answer. I am the lotus. As if from a dream, I wake up laughing.
I come forth by day, unbound, without shackles, and my darkness dances with me all over the world. I am young, and eternity stretches before us. I can go anywhere in the world, as long as he lingers by me. He will, I know it, and he knows it, and we are whole.
It is wonderful, I tell you.
The words in italics are from translations of the Book of the Dead found online. One useful source is Awakening Osiris: A New Translation of The Egyptian Book of the Dead' by Normandi Ellis. Google it!
Please review!