Re: quiet home garden: alyssa & damian
[To Alyssa, this boy's mind was an archaeological dig. Although she was more of a bulldozer than any tiny pick and brush. The minds of men were typically shallow, frequently in depth and often in purpose… but this boy was a rabbit hole chasm where gravity did not exist. Curiosity was like that. She did not so much fall into Damian's thoughts, but rather floated as an astronaut Alice. Tumble and twirl, she dragged invisible claws down his chalkboard, down the caveman hieroglyphs of shadows and secrets. An old name and old blood and a mission that trespassed through the veil of centuries. They'd already discussed this, of course, but then there was something new to bob for like a poisoned apple in the barrel of his past.
He was born, but not… just like her. Alyssa echoed this realization to Damian in a whisper of a long dead language that he would find himself fully capable of understanding now that their thoughts were linked. Siamese minds.] You're just like me… [And her wildly oscillating pupils changed their trajectory, no longer drilling into Damian's own, but rather lifting to the sky. She shared with him the mythic yet somehow verisimilar reimaging of her own creation. They were still seated in garden, maybe he could feel blades of grass underhand, but darkness seemed to suddenly envelope them in an illusion of stars, the silver-pricked nothingness of a goddess' nursery. The universe swathed them in a nimbus of purples and gold, their baby blanket was a galaxy, and the colors were worthy of royalty just for him, sweet prince.
They were in the garden, yes… but they were not. Reality seemed kaleidoscopic, a twist of the wrist or twitch of the eyeball and one could glimpse the colors or shadows of some other dimension. So they were sitting in the garden, but they were also sitting in the stars. The heavens were infinite, but they also managed to be personified in the form of a man. Maybe Father Sky was made up of stars and space dust and nothing remotely humanoid, or maybe with the twist of that kaleidoscope vision he could loom tall and patronly as any father overseeing a night sky orphanage.
It is difficult to say where the blood came from, maybe a knife the size of Jupiter or just an overly ambitious comet that glittered by, assassin fast. The castration of Father Sky rained blood on the stars and their garden and their upturned faces until they wore masks of new, red life. But blink again and there was no blood at all except for what Damian sucked from the wound on her thumb. The stars faded away, and it was just the garden where night shadows rippled and swirled in hallucination trails.
He said that he was at war, and she thought that was fitting.] Greatness often is. [The little prince, the destroyer of man. Alyssa didn't mind sharing the responsibility, they could break it apart like a wishbone to pick their teeth with.]