A/N: Here's another Mia chapter for ya! Next time, we'll focus a little more on our other protagonist =)
xChocolate Obsessedx: Yeah, I need to work on update times. Nice nick, by the way =)
Insanity Team: Thanks for the review! Glad to have you on board! It's great that you're writing again.
GoldenSunGeek: A Broadway production? That's just weird... Anyway, don't worry too much about Mia. After all, the story wouldn't have a male and female lead if they weren't meant to meet up ;-)
YellowFairy07001: Yeah, wait till you read this chapter! Talk about weird perspective.
DarkKatana: Yes, Holy Grail is great =) Glad to have you here. Katanas rock.
X: The Great Lamp
It was a while before Mia had another opportunity to get out. Ever since her lamp had fallen, Karst had been a little more careful and rarely left her for long. One night, though, as Mia was lying down with a headache, she heard Karst come to her and bend over her. Disinclined to talk, she laid still and didn't open her eyes. Satisfied that she was asleep, Karst walked away, moving so softly that her very caution made Mia open her eyes and watch-just in time to see her vanish, it seemed, through a picture that hung on the wall a long way from the usual place of issue.
Mia jumped up, her headache forgotten, and ran in the opposite direction. She got out into the hallway, groped her way to the stair, climbed, and reached the top of the wall. Alas! the great room was darker than the one she had just left. Why? Sorrow of sorrows! The great lamp was gone! Had its globe fallen and its light gone out upon great wings, a resplendent firefly, soaring itself to through a yet grander and lovelier room? She looked down to see if it lay anywhere, broken to pieces on the carpet below, but she could not even see the carpet.
But surely nothing very dreadful could have happened-no rumbling or shaking, for there were all the little lamps shining brighter than before, not one of them looking like anything unusual had happened. What if each of those little lamps was growing into a big lamp, and after being a big lamp for awhile, had to go out and grow a bigger lamp still-out there, beyond this "out?" Ah! here was the living thing that would not be seen, come to her again. It was bigger tonight! It gave such loving kisses, and such liquid strokings of her cheeks and forehead, gently tossing her hair, and delicately toying with it.
But then it ceased. Had it gone out? What would happen next? Instead of growing into big lamps, would all the little lamps fall one by one and go out? But then, from below, came a sweet scent, then another, and another. Ah, how delicious! But perhaps they were only passing her and were on their way out after the great lamp! Then came the music of the river. She had been too caught up in the sky to notice it the first time. What was it? Alas! alas! another sweet living thing on its way out. They were all marching slowly in long lovely file, one after another, each taking its leave of her as they passed. It must be so: here were more and more sweet sounds, following and fading! The whole of "Out" was going out again; it was all following the great lovely lamp! She would be the only poor creature left in the lonely day! Wasn't there anyone to hang up a new lamp for the old one, and keep the creatures from going? She crept back to her rock very sad. She tried to comfort herself by saying that there would at least be room out there; but as she said it, she shuddered at the thought of empty room.
The next time she managed to get out, a half-moon hung in the east: a new lam had come, she thought, and all would be well.
It would be endless to describe the phases of feeling that Mia passed through, more numerous and delicate than those of a thousand changing moons. A fresh bliss bloomed in her soul with every varying aspect of infinite nature. Before long, she began to suspect that the new moon was the old moon, going out and coming in again just like her, but also unlike her the way it wasted away and then grew again. It must be a living thing, subject like herself to caverns, and keepers, and solitudes, escaping and shining when it could.
Was the prison it was shut in like hers? Did it grow dark when the lamp left it? Where was the entrance to it? She began to look below, as well as above and around her, and noticed the tops of the trees between her and the floor. There were palms with their red-fingered hands full of fruit; eucalyptus trees with little boxes of powder-puffs; oleanders with their half-caste roses; and orange trees with their clouds of young silver stars and their aged balls of gold. Her eyes could distinguish colors that you and I could never see in the moonlight, and she could easily distinguish between them, though at first she thought they were just the shapes and colors of the great room's carpet. Now that she knew they were real creatures, she longed to be down among them, but didn't know how to get down there. She walked the whole length of the wall down to the end where it crossed the river but still couldn't find any way to go down.
Above the river she stopped and gazed in awe at the water. She knew nothing of water except what she drank and what she bathed in. As the moon shone on the dark, swift stream, singing lustily as it flowed, she had no doubt that it was alive, a rapidly moving serpent of life, going-out?-where? And then she wondered if the water brought to her in her room had been killed so that she could drink and bathe in it.
One night when she stepped out onto the wall, she found herself in the midst of a fierce, rushing wind. The trees were roaring and bending. Great dark clouds were rushing along the skies and tumbling over all the little lamps. The great lamp hadn't come out yet. All was in tumult. The wind grabbed her clothes and hair, shaking them like it would tear them from her. What could she have done to make the gentle creature so angry? Or was this another creature entirely-of the same kind, but hugely bigger, and of a very different temperament and behavior?
But the whole place was angry! Or was it that all the creatures that lived here, the wind, and the trees, and the clouds, and the river, had argued, each one with everyone else? Would the whole come to confusion and disorder? But, as she gazed wondering and disquieted, the moon, larger than Mia had ever seen her, came lifting herself over the horizon to look, broad and red, as if she, too, were swollen with anger because she had been woken from her rest by their noise, and hurried up to see what her children were doing, thus rioting in her absence, lest they should rack the whole frame of things. As she rose in the sky, the wing grew quieter and scolded less fiercely, the trees grew more still and moaned with less complaint, and the clouds hurled themselves less wildly across the sky. And almost as if she were happy that her obeyed her very presence, the moon grew smaller as she ascended the heavenly stair; her puffed cheeks sank, her complexion grew clearer, and a sweet smile spread over her countenance, as peacefully she rose and rose.
But there was treason and rebellion in her court; for, ere she reached the top of her great stairs, the clouds had assembled, forgetting their recent wars, and very still they were as they laid their heads together and conspired. Then combining, and lying silently in wait until she came near, they threw themselves upon her, and swallowed her up. Down from the roof came spots of wet, faster and faster, and they wetted the cheeks of Mia; and what could they be but the tears of the moon, crying because her children were smothering her? Mia wept too, and not knowing what to think, stole back in dismay to her room.
The next time, she came out in fear and trembling. There was the moon! She was still there, away in the west. Poor, indeed, and old, and looking dreadfully worn, as if all the wild beasts in the sky had been gnawing at her-but there she was, alive still, and able to shine!
A/N: Another nine days =((( I am so sorry about my update times, but right now I'm getting ready to head off to college and helping build a house and trying to construct a website and lots of great stuff. Heck, I'm even doing some music again. I actually recorded something yesterday.
But I digress. Anyway, this chapter marks the halfway point in the story. I'm really pleased with it so far. Heck, we're up to 899 hits and 31 reviews =)
I hope to finish this up soon before I get caught up in college. We'll see. Please review!
Pyro1588
Planet Weyard (hopefully to be updated soon!)
6:39 PM
08.14.05
1605 words