Rise

You're legs give out and you fall to the ground... you feel it's cold touch welcoming, pulling you against it like water settling between cracks. You're one with the world, and you hear it's call.

I am you whisper back, a ghost of a voice you barely recognize as your own. I am home. 

A frozen wind swirls up around you, a thief in the night stealing warmth from your limbs. You attempt a scream, it seems logical, but the gurgle is proof you have nothing left.

Take me you pray to the earth pressed to your cheek. I am yours.

"Rise."

One word, spoken with such command you dare not refuse. A pain wracked mind smiles hard as it sends signals to broken limbs. You feel the world spin, fading in and out of your visage as your slowly pull yourself away from your resting place. Dirt from the ground still clings to your face.

"Rise."

It is spoken again, from another place in the world. You feel it reverberate in sunken lungs as you pull to your feet. Bone grinds on bone as a stretch pulls at every corner of your body. The breath you thought was your last pours out of your mouth like smoke from a thurible.

"Rise."

It's louder now, it's words vibrating against your skin, hair lifting in anticipation. Your eyes are open, and surprise is your shell. The world around you is darkened by clouds, the distance illumnated by a smattering of lightning strikes.  You look at your hands, bruised and dirty, a life time of work.

"Rise!" The words come from your mouth, like a ragged angry breath. You feel it envigorate and full you with purpose. The word echoes around you, like wings beating in the wind. Rise the world echoes back, I am home.

Frost Bound

He stood silently, staring back across the featureless stretch of tundra he'd just crossed. It was becoming increasingly difficult for Tommo to tell how far he'd traveled or how long, since the Sun had refused to dance with the moon for several weeks now. He grunted at the thought of the bright nights. Sleeping was diffucult as it was in his world without the lights staying on.

His big wintercat Targa stood at his side and stared hungrily into the white mist thrown off of snow piles by whiping winds. Tommo had no doubts that she saw something in the distance that his eyes were incapable of seeing at this distance, but the big cat knew Tommo needed her more than she needed him.  She would never leave his side.

"Come, Targa." He smiled as he reached his hand down to her stark white mane. "We will walk." 

In unison they turned and continued into the wilderness.

In Silence Swings Our Agony

Whose frost fills these window frames
While outside blooms and brings spring rains?
The answer to the question blames
whose frost fill these window frames...

It's you I know, and who I'd be
If truths are told in mirrors seen
like bulbs at christmas red and green
It's you I know, and who I'd be...

Forsaken tokens from our past
left rusted broken in our wrath
Cold and wet a poor lit path
Forsaken tokens from our past...

In silence swings our agony
Sturdy limbs of oaken trees
The aching in our hearts to beat
In silence swings our agony...

Lucid

Too true, the words rolled through his mind in the final moments. It was a strange feeling drawing your final breath, knowing your lungs would be ash and that breath steam in the same instant. Too fucking true.

The moment the flames washed over him, he cringed internally, yet the pain never arrived. Instead, his world blurred. Pixels falling away like wayward dominoes from a shelf. He shook himself hard, finding his arms and legs restrained by thick leather bands.

"What the fuck?!" he fought against the short slack in the belts. "What is this?" He cried out, the last of the world falling away, leaving him alone and strapped to a table in a mostly empty room. Strange points of light flashed on and off at the ends of protusions that stuck out from the walls, ceiling and floor at equal distance, sending dancing shadows across the room.

"Help!" cried out, feeling as though the plain walls began to move precariously close in an instant. "Someone, help me!"

"Calm down Jimmy!" A woman, came rushing around a corner Jim hadn't noticed. She wore all white scrubs and her face was obscured by a surgical mask. "You'll be just fine." She approached him slowly now. Her eyes darting to a spot just behind Jim's head that he could see.

"You didn't finish." She said. Her eyes settled on his, and he felt her gaze as heavy as the leather bonds holding him down. "You have to go back."

"What? Go back? Go back where?" His mind reeled as images of walls of plasma and flame filled his reality. The pain was instant and his screams brief as the heat engulfed his body. The last thing he saw before he faded to black were her eyes, green and full of hate.

He Sleeps

"For fuck's sake!" He dropped the flashlight and grabbed at the quickly swelling spot on his forehead that just kissed the low hanging rock ceiling. Darkness was inpenetrible and he'd already found more of the cave's rough surfaces than his body would care to admit.

"Again?" Jill Forsyth asked from somewhere ahead in the darkness. He could feel her laughter more than hear it, as she'd managed to navigate the pitch black with nary a scratch.

"Fuck off." Tally replied. Talin McCorrin stood for a while rubbing at the welt on his head. He knew they were there for a reason, that much had been made clear when Drummond had paid him. A cool half million to retrieve what had been lost in this cave system.

Too bad they didn't tell him what it was.

"Hey Tally." She sounded much closer than before. She was doubling back to him for some reason.

"What now." Tally's mirth was wasted and he was beginning to lapse into frustration.

"Looks like a dead end." She was right next to him, and he could barely make out the shape of her face in the dim light thrown off from her flashlight. "Holy shit." She shined the light up on his face. "You need to get something on that."

He could feel the warm stream of blood coming down his face, dripping off the edge of his chin. Swearing under his breath he began fishing through his bag for something to cover it up. "I'm sure I'll be okay, it's not too bad. Just looks that way."

Finding a bandage, he pressed it's guaze to the side of his head to staunch the bleeding. "I want to keep moving, we made it this far and I'd rather not make this trek a second time.

"Fine, but can you at least be careful? I can't carry you out of here.." Her voice trailed off as she felt a cloud of warm air come rushing by. She shined her flashlight on Tally's face to see if he felt it too.

"That was weird." His eyes were locked in the direction of the source.

Jill laughed softly, more nerves than humor. "Yea, wonder what that was."

They stood in silence a moment longer before Tally broke it with a grunt "Fuck it, we need to keep moving. It was a cave fart, lets go with that." Tossing his bag up on his back he turned slowly to orient himself. "You ready?"

"Lets do it."

***

Deeper yet, in the heart of the earth, it felt the footsteps as he roused from eons long slumber. Each tiny footfall brought his teeth to bear. In its ancient mind he worked for the words to place a face to a name. The sounds they made, what was it again? He knew it was there, locked in his mind amongst a million years of memories. A cackle of flame and spit danced around sharpened teeth as the word hit him like a stone. Huumaannssssss...