Post by Cy Skywalker on Oct 11, 2006 7:53:25 GMT -5
In her dream, the statue lowered its head as if falling to look at her. Its stone eyes allowed no pupils, no purveyors of emotion. She held her flute up to its expectant non-gaze.
Shift again and something threatening, falling, about the gray slabs of stone-in-Man-features expressed that this offering would not be enough...
Tamatzin remembered nothing of the dream as she ran down the Grand Corridor the next morning to tell the Conductor-Commander about the mermaid that had flopped into Trackel’s room.
She skidded to a halt with her hide slippers making pat-pat sounds as C.-C. Raliste exited his room. As always he looked around the Corridor, forever admiring the seafoam-colored marble and finding new inspiration in it. As always he knew somewhat of his students’ problems. “The melody this morning has spikes of drama in it!”
Tama admired him not only for his middle-aged good looks but for his apparent ability to carry life’s soundtrack around in his head.
The mermaid apologized after her fish half stopped panicking. The human half bade her sit on the floor and talk to Tama’s young prentice Trackel like a civil, albeit nude, schoolgirl. When the two adults arrived she permitted herself to be dumped out the window into the ocean just outside the pillars. Trackel said that the mermaid said some flying fish narrowly missed coming in through the window too. Trackel and Tama ajourned to the shoreward parts of the building to practice. Unexpectedly, Raliste had asked them to accompany him to nearby Noro Town for its festival of the Land Olde...
With finally a breath of adventuresome air, the three mage-bards set up on an ironrail balcony over a courtyard and Olde pool. Crowds of herb-scented people from all castes milled about below, some patronizing or pretending to be interested in the many merchant’s tents. The Colossus, local ruins in the shapes of Men, kept creeping in to Tama’s thoughts as she warbled through her flute scales and gentle trills, as Trackal did similar on her cornet and Raliste on his small guitar.
The crowed started, almost as one, when the small bard’s band began in unity an old A-Minor lull, and then they returned to their apparent business, giving that silent applause called false ignorance–a burst-out shout began the delight when a man stooped beside the pool with a golden coin in his weathered hand. The carefully memorized and toned music traversed from the loud and mysterious opening to almost a reel, a song with happiness infused in it, and the townspeople became a whirlpool around the circle simply talking to one another, picking things off the groung, picking luck off the wind, talking to the salesmen and making new sorts of purchases...Tama remembered her love for her occupation. Music makes moods. Music and magic make luck...
Joyful laughter and talking acted as music to the bards, back at their muscle memory and invisible rhythm. Tama envied Raliste his permission to smile as her fingers smoothly pressed, the air flowed--
Suddenly, sullenly, a loud sound like crunch entered the streets, and some heads turned.
A shadow fell first, and then more crumbly deep sounds. People, once joyful, scattered like breaking waves now away from the music's simple allure. Tama found her own will sapped also, and peered around the building from whence they stood, cursing the sharp angle and high peaked roof--
An enormous statue walked around the junction, just one of many which usually littered the hills locally, and with a terrifying air of mistake turned its gaze, level, on the balcony.
Tama found herself in the strange predicament of standing in a living present legend or impossibility, and forgetfullness screened her from its shock though nothing screened the Colossus from its newfound focus.
"Dirge," spake C.C. Raliste, and he made it a single noun forced, recruited, into verbhood. "The Dirge of Colossus."
Tama raised the flute to her mouth and her fingers resumed the Dirge as if her year's first group performance, the one that always showcased this classic melody, had only ended minutes ago. Perhaps after that she had fallen asleep and dreampt of offering her flute to the Colossus, and now it came again looking over the ornate black rail, so instead of her instrument which surely in that dent of a mouth and square fingers could not produce a squeak, she gave it its multiplied ancient bardic music, from when the Olde Ones thought that each note spelled emotion, and therefor life.
The dirge spilled out in D-Minor.
Other stone-cast shapes drew near, their steps made rocking by strange proportion, adopted rhythm. Some held evidence of frustration at not wandering into the correct place; chunks of building material or wads of decorative vines. Tama saw five as the Dirge repeated through her and her companions. The human audience had long fled, perhaps feeling spurred on even by the sudden entirely non-dance-conducive music, with its rushing waving notes and the impossible sudden jolts where the meter alone and not the speed threw the music around its ancient tidal curves.
Finally Raliste waved back for the women to stop, and as Tama lowered her shaking hands she could not understand why. Then her gaze dropped toward the street and saw how each stone man's feet had melted or bled into the ground, a gentle quick process that gave them the aspect of artistic derivation from the flagstones, and up through their towering bodies lifelessness had resumed.
Nor did the townspeople return that day. Raliste explained some old, old history at home, and Tama finally understood her dream.
Shift again and something threatening, falling, about the gray slabs of stone-in-Man-features expressed that this offering would not be enough...
Tamatzin remembered nothing of the dream as she ran down the Grand Corridor the next morning to tell the Conductor-Commander about the mermaid that had flopped into Trackel’s room.
She skidded to a halt with her hide slippers making pat-pat sounds as C.-C. Raliste exited his room. As always he looked around the Corridor, forever admiring the seafoam-colored marble and finding new inspiration in it. As always he knew somewhat of his students’ problems. “The melody this morning has spikes of drama in it!”
Tama admired him not only for his middle-aged good looks but for his apparent ability to carry life’s soundtrack around in his head.
The mermaid apologized after her fish half stopped panicking. The human half bade her sit on the floor and talk to Tama’s young prentice Trackel like a civil, albeit nude, schoolgirl. When the two adults arrived she permitted herself to be dumped out the window into the ocean just outside the pillars. Trackel said that the mermaid said some flying fish narrowly missed coming in through the window too. Trackel and Tama ajourned to the shoreward parts of the building to practice. Unexpectedly, Raliste had asked them to accompany him to nearby Noro Town for its festival of the Land Olde...
With finally a breath of adventuresome air, the three mage-bards set up on an ironrail balcony over a courtyard and Olde pool. Crowds of herb-scented people from all castes milled about below, some patronizing or pretending to be interested in the many merchant’s tents. The Colossus, local ruins in the shapes of Men, kept creeping in to Tama’s thoughts as she warbled through her flute scales and gentle trills, as Trackal did similar on her cornet and Raliste on his small guitar.
The crowed started, almost as one, when the small bard’s band began in unity an old A-Minor lull, and then they returned to their apparent business, giving that silent applause called false ignorance–a burst-out shout began the delight when a man stooped beside the pool with a golden coin in his weathered hand. The carefully memorized and toned music traversed from the loud and mysterious opening to almost a reel, a song with happiness infused in it, and the townspeople became a whirlpool around the circle simply talking to one another, picking things off the groung, picking luck off the wind, talking to the salesmen and making new sorts of purchases...Tama remembered her love for her occupation. Music makes moods. Music and magic make luck...
Joyful laughter and talking acted as music to the bards, back at their muscle memory and invisible rhythm. Tama envied Raliste his permission to smile as her fingers smoothly pressed, the air flowed--
Suddenly, sullenly, a loud sound like crunch entered the streets, and some heads turned.
A shadow fell first, and then more crumbly deep sounds. People, once joyful, scattered like breaking waves now away from the music's simple allure. Tama found her own will sapped also, and peered around the building from whence they stood, cursing the sharp angle and high peaked roof--
An enormous statue walked around the junction, just one of many which usually littered the hills locally, and with a terrifying air of mistake turned its gaze, level, on the balcony.
Tama found herself in the strange predicament of standing in a living present legend or impossibility, and forgetfullness screened her from its shock though nothing screened the Colossus from its newfound focus.
"Dirge," spake C.C. Raliste, and he made it a single noun forced, recruited, into verbhood. "The Dirge of Colossus."
Tama raised the flute to her mouth and her fingers resumed the Dirge as if her year's first group performance, the one that always showcased this classic melody, had only ended minutes ago. Perhaps after that she had fallen asleep and dreampt of offering her flute to the Colossus, and now it came again looking over the ornate black rail, so instead of her instrument which surely in that dent of a mouth and square fingers could not produce a squeak, she gave it its multiplied ancient bardic music, from when the Olde Ones thought that each note spelled emotion, and therefor life.
The dirge spilled out in D-Minor.
Other stone-cast shapes drew near, their steps made rocking by strange proportion, adopted rhythm. Some held evidence of frustration at not wandering into the correct place; chunks of building material or wads of decorative vines. Tama saw five as the Dirge repeated through her and her companions. The human audience had long fled, perhaps feeling spurred on even by the sudden entirely non-dance-conducive music, with its rushing waving notes and the impossible sudden jolts where the meter alone and not the speed threw the music around its ancient tidal curves.
Finally Raliste waved back for the women to stop, and as Tama lowered her shaking hands she could not understand why. Then her gaze dropped toward the street and saw how each stone man's feet had melted or bled into the ground, a gentle quick process that gave them the aspect of artistic derivation from the flagstones, and up through their towering bodies lifelessness had resumed.
Nor did the townspeople return that day. Raliste explained some old, old history at home, and Tama finally understood her dream.
