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rainbowfic2013-04-17 10:49 pm
ysabetwordsmith) wrote in rainbowfic2013-04-17 10:49 pm
Poem: "Mortal Coils"
Name: ysabetwordsmith
Title: "Mortal Coils"
Colors: Sunlight #8 Mortal
Supplies and Styles: None.
Word Count: 380
Rating: G
Warnings: No standard warnings apply. One of the two characters has just died and crossed into the next world; that's what the poem is about. It's actually quite sweet, not dark.
The following poem belongs to my series Path of the Paladins. This is spiritual fantasy about the followers of a deposed goddess. Themes include faith, perseverence, recovery from trauma, nonsexual love, and making the world a better place. This is a direct sequel to "This Beaten Drum" so it won't make much sense unless you've read that one first, but you probably don't need the whole series if you're new to it.
"Mortal Coils"
She was there to meet him,
of course she was:
Gailah always greeted her paladins
at the end of their living days.
"Oh, my Lady," said Darthur,
his tears falling like stars.
"It has been too long since I've seen You."
He did not fling himself upon her
as he so clearly wanted to do,
but merely opened his arms
and yearned for her.
Gailah stepped into his embrace
and let his adoration wash over her
like clear clean rain.
Darthur was right.
It had been much too long.
"I've missed you too, beloved," she said,
because she loved him, she loved all of them,
every one of the paladins and saints and priests
and the ordinary folk who followed her.
She loved them all the more now,
those few who remained stubbornly hers
after all that had happened.
She clucked over the state of him.
"Look at you, what a mess," she scolded.
Odd coils of mortality clung to him
like weeds in a horse's tail.
She began flicking them away
with a sweep of her hand.
"What did you even do to wind up like this?"
"Well, there was this battlefield,
and a bunch of the ghosts got stuck,
so I stuck around to help them out,"
Darthur said, "but then you know that already."
She did, of course she did,
because she was a goddess
and saw everything and was everything,
but sometimes it was a little overwhelming
so she didn't look at all of it all the time.
"Enough," said Gailah. "Let it go."
Darthur did, because she asked it of him,
and because he was good at it to begin with,
which was something she'd always appreciated
about him even as a novice.
Gailah sat down in the soft meadow of heaven,
tugging Darthur down to lay his head in her lap
there amongst the grass and the flowers.
She stroked her fingers
through his moonlit hair,
and as she did so,
the silver came away
in little spirals like wisps of smoke,
wafting away on a gentle breeze
to leave behind the sunny gold of his youth.
Gailah gazed at the soul in her grasp,
beautiful as a painting finally complete,
and felt ineffably grateful
that he had given himself to her.
ysabetwordsmith Title: "Mortal Coils"
Colors: Sunlight #8 Mortal
Supplies and Styles: None.
Word Count: 380
Rating: G
Warnings: No standard warnings apply. One of the two characters has just died and crossed into the next world; that's what the poem is about. It's actually quite sweet, not dark.
The following poem belongs to my series Path of the Paladins. This is spiritual fantasy about the followers of a deposed goddess. Themes include faith, perseverence, recovery from trauma, nonsexual love, and making the world a better place. This is a direct sequel to "This Beaten Drum" so it won't make much sense unless you've read that one first, but you probably don't need the whole series if you're new to it.
"Mortal Coils"
She was there to meet him,
of course she was:
Gailah always greeted her paladins
at the end of their living days.
"Oh, my Lady," said Darthur,
his tears falling like stars.
"It has been too long since I've seen You."
He did not fling himself upon her
as he so clearly wanted to do,
but merely opened his arms
and yearned for her.
Gailah stepped into his embrace
and let his adoration wash over her
like clear clean rain.
Darthur was right.
It had been much too long.
"I've missed you too, beloved," she said,
because she loved him, she loved all of them,
every one of the paladins and saints and priests
and the ordinary folk who followed her.
She loved them all the more now,
those few who remained stubbornly hers
after all that had happened.
She clucked over the state of him.
"Look at you, what a mess," she scolded.
Odd coils of mortality clung to him
like weeds in a horse's tail.
She began flicking them away
with a sweep of her hand.
"What did you even do to wind up like this?"
"Well, there was this battlefield,
and a bunch of the ghosts got stuck,
so I stuck around to help them out,"
Darthur said, "but then you know that already."
She did, of course she did,
because she was a goddess
and saw everything and was everything,
but sometimes it was a little overwhelming
so she didn't look at all of it all the time.
"Enough," said Gailah. "Let it go."
Darthur did, because she asked it of him,
and because he was good at it to begin with,
which was something she'd always appreciated
about him even as a novice.
Gailah sat down in the soft meadow of heaven,
tugging Darthur down to lay his head in her lap
there amongst the grass and the flowers.
She stroked her fingers
through his moonlit hair,
and as she did so,
the silver came away
in little spirals like wisps of smoke,
wafting away on a gentle breeze
to leave behind the sunny gold of his youth.
Gailah gazed at the soul in her grasp,
beautiful as a painting finally complete,
and felt ineffably grateful
that he had given himself to her.
no subject
Thank you!
That's typical for me on this topic; a lot of my death-related poems are positive, across many iterations of death.
>> and especially the detail of her basking in his admiration. <<
I'm glad that worked for you. Ideally, deities and their devotees have a reciprocal relationship.
no subject
Thank you!
Yay!
>> Too often gods are portrayed as cruel beings, playing with their believers -- I like one who cares deeply for hers in return for their devotion. <<
In this cosmology, the deities vary a lot based on personality. Some are sweet, some are sharp.
You might also like "Half of Four," featuring Gorrein (who is admittedly an idiot and a jerk of a deity) and one of his more clue-enabled followers.