Kamakhya Bhairavi (_kala_) wrote in forgotten_gods, @ 2009-11-04 22:59:00 |
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Entry tags: | kali |
Who: Kali, narrative.
Where: Club Shanti
When: Backdated to early morning before dawn, October 30. Following the incident with the rakshasa.
What: Kali. Decompressing.
Warnings: None.
Uma looked through the glass she was polishing at the bar with sleepy eyes. The lights were dim, the hour was beyond late, and the Norwegian bartender was down for the count. But there she was, polishing glasses. She would never suggest she was actually waiting until Kala returned from wherever it was she had disappeared to, for hours.
Unfortunately, when Kala finally did slip through the doors of Shanti and into the dimly lit space, Uma's drool was making intimate shapes on the bar top, her tall frame draped strangely over a stool, long arms thrown over the bar.
Kali tried to tip-toe quietly past her, to the stairwell leading up to the second and third levels of the club. Blood stained her orange hoodie. Her eyes were wide and unblinking, her hair wild and damp.
Thankfully, Uma did not wake. She may have stirred briefly, may have thought she saw a terrifying picture of what was, hours ago, Kala Jnana, but now with blood on her tongue and streaked across her shredded arms, was Kali. Fierce, terribly beautiful Kali. Whatever Uma had seen was mistaken for an image of her dreams; had she been fully awake she'd be at her boss's side in a heartbeat, asking questions, worry lining her face and sympathies dripping from her mouth. But no. The woman slept. And slept. On a bar, at four in the morning.
Such was life.
Kali moved slowly up the stairs, to the second level. She looked over the balcony at the empty dance floor, the abandoned club, the blank, sprawling screen that stretched the height of the wall behind the "stage" on which she worked. Shanti looked barren, and lifeless, and the dark goddess mused on these observations, before letting them slip away like clouds drifting through her mind. Thoughts were, like time, like life, ephemeral things.
She took the small spiraling staircase from the second balcony to the third, where there was a humming, throbbing beat of music that was of her own creation, thrumming through the speakers and the various sub-woofers that lined the floor. On this level, cushions were sprawled here and there, the space usually reserved for private parties. The light up here was darker than below, impossibly dark, made darker still by the unnerving emptiness. In the shadows that danced across the wall after she lit seven candles that lined the crescent-balcony's railing, a door appeared. Had it been there? Kali smiled in the dark, leaned over the balcony slightly to peer down at the unconscious Norwegian, and walked to the door, opened it, and stepped through the threshold.
Immeasurable darkness greeted her, an abyss in the truest sense of the word. The space was completely empty, the only sound came from the door shifting closed behind her. She reached, and she lit a candle, the warm light casting ghastly shadows across her blood-splattered features.
She began to dance. The thrumming, humming, throbbing beats escalated in this empty space, this void, until one could not be certain if the beating music was the sound of her own feet upon the floor, or her own, measured and carefully exhaled breath. Candles lit around the space, incense started to burn itself, and her hands found their place pressed together before her heart, thumbs pressing in against her sternum in anjali mudra. Dark eyes lifted, and they traced the soft angles of the face that greeted her, the statue that materialized slowly as more and more candles lit, casting dancing shadows across the deep vermillion painted walls. Shadows of many arms, a body twisting in its own dance, within the circle that was the universe. In the flickering, sparking candlelight of the hidden regions of Club Shanti, Shiva's bronze, statuesque face seemed to smile.
Kali's lips twisted into a smile, her teeth sharp, her red tongue bared, and the blood painting her features made her skin shine a deep midnight blue. Om, shanti, shanti, Om. A pause. And in the fray of increasing, wordless music - the sort that, like the rakshasa's voice, was felt and not heard, she chanted, over, and over, and over again. "Om namo Shivaya."
And Kali whispered one-hundred-and-eight of the profound mantra, her dance sliding effortlessly into yogic sun salutations. The blood that stained her skin and stained her hair would be lost in sweat, in the perpetual, endless vinyasa. Discomfort lingering in her gnashed and chewed arms would ebb and flow like tides, and never dwelled on. She would slide and breathe her way through until dawn.