Author's notes: This story, if it can even labelled as such, seems to be getting out of control. A quick scan through this chapter will confirm that. It's even less narrative than the previous one.
Disclaimer: All recognisable characters are property of LucasFilm.
There is a short quote from the Bible, Genesis 4:10, in paragraph 7. Please note that, being a Roman Catholic, I have great respect for the Scriptures, and that I afford the Old Testament the special reverence it deserves, so if anyone is offended, has violent objections to this, or is concerned that it shows disrespect, please tell me through a review, or an email, so I can remove the quote ASAP.
Chapter II: Nanometric Boundaries
There is hate.
Or is there? I would give anything to hate him. It is be better that way, but there is no way out. To hate him for what he does, what he did. To hate him for what he didn't. He is many things, and in retrospective, I can hate him, could hate him, could have hated him, even, for all of them. No way out from the little flickers of recognition in his eyes beside the merciless pool of flame that welded us together so long ago. We were perhaps allies not so unwilling, nor so bitter then. Perhaps he did not see all my fervent promises as tortured threats—I would not have thought them empty. In many ways, they still aren't. There is no way out, no escape from all the promises we make…from the cradle to the grave…The cold threat they carried is still potent. He waits to deliver me, wants to give me a way out, though, from what? Myself? I am nothing. I've long since stopped deluding myself into imagining the ten thousand nonexistent shades of gray.
The macrocosm waits to be discovered within the nanometric boundaries of the microcosm. Indeed.
Indeed? He turns back to say goodbye, a great grief on his face, the cool shadow of his long cloak falling across the burning brightness of his secret love. And he goes alone to fight the darkness, to save the light, to wed his beloved amongst all the overwhelming majesty of the fathomless oceans and the high beauty of the ancient stars and the faraway elevation of the everlasting mountains.
Who's gonna ride your wild horses? The roar of the racetrack is as silence to my ears—I hear only his voice. Far away, high up, far away, shining bright on the walls of the ivory tower from the dark yellow banks of trailing cloud, is the sun. I heed not its pallid light. All is obscured by the golden dust kicked up on the racecourse. Swirls, storms of dust. Everywhere. No way out, no escape from the dust. No way out. Everywhere. In my hair, my mouth—sanding smooth the inside of my throat—my eyes. Vicious dust in my eyes, blinding and biting and painful. Until I am dazzled by the reflection of the suns' fiery light off the dust everywhere. Breathing dust, choking dust. Everywhere. No way out. Until I am dizzied and dazzled by the fiery sunlight reflected off the dust.
Dust. It lies thickly, the dust, on his clothes and his hair and his mouth, so that when he spoke, little grey-white flakes descend softly onto my shoulders. No way out. Dust, the little, little, soft, little pieces of shade that are on him, on every fibre and cell and subatomic particle of him that was hot and bright with hatred. It is many things, but above all it is discreet. Quiet, quiet. It screams not, sparking in the curve of the moon. The pearly sheen of it gleams dully on his hands, with nary an imagined sigh, almost invisible. And one sees it only in the golden grainy light of the suns, the dust motes, sparking and shining and arcing one after the other, like ripples spreading on a pond. Circles, moving. Circles, swirling around, around, around. But silent. Dust is silent.
Not like blood. The blood cries out, no way out. No way out. Then the LORD said, your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground, like a voice calling for revenge. No way out. Blood is not silent. It speaks for the victim and the altar and the holy priest. And it is deeply red. Dark flows its colour, though it runs quick and thin as clear water. So if you thrust your arms elbow-deep into a basin of blood, they would come out streaming blood. The redness of it, on one's fingers and nestling in the hollows of the wristbones. No way out.
Blood on your hands. No way out. All wet and slippery. Blood could not cloak injury. It would fall away, slip between the hands like fine sand or seawater. And then you were left there with the deep burning wound, throbbing and thrumming and pulsing with deep painful emotion, because there is no way out. I'm sorry? What do I know, I, I, pontificating on pain? What do I know? I know nothing. I do not know life—it is a gift, they say—or death's all-'whelming sting. What do I know? Not even hatred for my lover. Love or pain at the sight of blood vivid on his tender legs. Dripping away, dripping from the wounds that mar his body beautiful. Blood, wet on my hands and on my face, bitter on the back of my tongue and the roof of my mouth. No way out. Falling to my knees, kneeling or crouching…low…the night wind at my back, the fire before me. Faraway, so close. So I can feel the shining orange sparks arcing onto my face, turning little bits of me to miniscule curls of smoke in the evanescent hours between sundown and sunup.
I kneel before the fire, and in the orange depths of flame I see the wild horses tearing round the racetrack, eyes wide so the whites show like leftover porridge in a bowl, nostrils red, flared. Round again, round again, hair matted where their riders strike them, solitary drops of blood dashing forth, grim heralds of their passing, as the fleet wind of their speed stirs the dust in their wake. They should hate their masters. They should hate with a burning, bitter, driven passion. They cannot. There is only the sharp burst of adrenaline, the ears-back, hooves a-flying, legs-out fight, the final inertia of the spirit, the last rebellion, because it is not given to them to gracefully lay down arms.