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Sangrelysia
by Vivian Darkbloom
Which Tells of Reaching the Lake, and Other Events Which Followed
Crushed by overwhelming fatigue, I reclined on my bedroll. I
welcomed the soothing beauty of the surrounding sights and sounds
of nature, the quiet stillness of the trees and birds on all
sides, and the clouds gently grouping and swirling above, forming
tantalizingly evocative shapes as they lazily made their way
across the sky. Sylvia sat nearby, lost in the innerworldly
mystery of the crystal tear.
Two crows, our unwanted companions, nestled patiently a stone's
throw away.
The speed of our journey was severely impeded by my shortage of
stamina. While the stabilizing spell that Sylvia had cast was
effective in reducing the most painful of the symptoms, our daily
hiking had revealed that my body was still not up for more than a
few hours of strenuous effort in a day.
Didn't stop me from feeling horny, though.
I glanced over to where my lovely dark-haired maiden sat
cross-legged on a rattan mat, hunched over in concentration,
taking advantage of the time I needed for resting, stealing every
spare moment to increase her rapport.
After our encounter with Delphia, and through her the Ancient
Mother, Sylvia had experienced a complete reversal in her
attitude towards the crystalline globe. Now that she knew the
cause of the melancholy that permeated it, what had been a
fearsome unknown was now an understood sadness, and her suspicion
had turned into fascination.
In addition to the images that both of us caught sight of in the
crystal, glimpses of the path as we went along our way to guide
us on the journey ahead, my beloved Sylvia was developing a
closer, more intimate familiarity with the dragon's tear, and
through it her relationship with the dragon. She could connect
(or so she told me) with the profound depths of the dragon's
depression, and the sorrow of a mother yearning for her unborn
child.
Now it was my turn to get a little nervous about her association
with the crystalline globe. Not that I'm philosophically opposed
to dragons or dragon-ness of any sort, but seeing as they do tend
to be rather large and toting around sharp claws and fangs, I
wasn't so sure how intimate I wanted her to be with feeling the
dragon's pain.
Still, it seemed like her rapport might turn out to be a valuable
asset, so I kept my skepticism to myself.
"How's it going?" I called over to her.
"Huh? Sorry, I'm concentrating. Were you talking to me?"
"How is your little project coming along?" I asked.
"I think I'm starting to understand what it's like to be a
dragon, to be so huge and powerful, and intelligent but unable to
really speak or write or anything. I think they transmit their
magical understanding to each other through telepathy, but I'm
not sure. It's like I'm linked in with a consciousness that's
lonely and yearning for someone to communicate with, but doesn't
really trust me yet with all of its secrets."
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One day, a little over a week after we had set out, we both began
to find images inside the crystal, of a large body of water.
"Do you think that's it?" I asked my dear sweet Princess as we
she led the way on the path up the steep mountainside. The
refreshing morning chill was prescient of the day's coming heat
and humidity.
"Of course that's it."
"I mean, how do we know it's not just some other lake, on the way
to the `Lake of the Virgin,' and so we'll get there only to find
that it's the wrong lake, and the real one we want is over the
next hilltop? I was just wondering. I mean, I didn't notice any
sign or anything."
"Trust me, that's it," she said. "That's the Lake of the Virgin."
"And why are they calling it that in the first place? Does it
refer to the Virgin Mary, or to some other virgin who was
devoured by dragons in a gruesome blood ritual. . ."
"You had to say that. Now I'll never sleep."
"Sorry."
"Only thing is, that dragons don't eat humans," she said.
"How can you be certain?"
She smirked. "And besides, I don't think either of us needs to
worry about qualifying for the `virgin' part."
And so on.
It was as we crested the pass between two mountainous hillsides
that the glittering surface of the lake came into view. At first
we caught the first glimpse in the distance, through the trees,
and the smell of water subtly on the breeze.
As we descended into the valley, we began to see between the
intervening trunks and leaves that the lake was nearby as well as
being distant. It was huge. It was enormous, and presumably deep.
Beautiful, with a clarity that revealed the crisp white gravely
sand near the shoreline beneath the surface.
"I've noticed something about this lake," I said.
"What's that?"
"It's incredibly large, comparatively speaking. Also. . ."
"Yes,"
"It would appear to be rather deep."
"Your point being?"
"Well, even supposing we could find a boat somehow, and supposing
the visibility is so miraculously clear that we could distinguish
the round boulders on the bottom from a dragon's egg, which by
the way I've never seen one of ever before; how do we know that
one of us can hold our breath long enough to dive down and
retrieve it, not knowing, also by the way, how enormously heavy
the thing may well be?"
She tossed her head casually. "You just need to learn to be more
optimistic, that's all!" she said, smiling.
"Right."
It must have taken an hour or so to make our way cautiously down
the switchbacks leading down into the valley. Our trail came to
an abrupt end at the sandy beach, nearby the tail of a stream
which fed into the larger expanse.
"So this is the Lake of the Virgin," said Sylvia.
"Now what?" I asked, setting down my pack and taking a seat on a
log at the lake's edge. I saw our two unwanted companions, the
large black crows, settling in the upper limbs of a tree opposite
from us, down the shoreline, across the water.
Sylvia silently placed the crystal in her palm, and stood gazing
out over the beautiful refractive ripples.
I shrugged and got up, wandering around to explore the nearby
beach and riverside. Dipping my hand in the water, I determined
that it was icy cold. Snow melt, most likely. A bit chilly to
swim in.
I made my way around a bend in the river, and reclining by the
streamside I meditated on seemingly ceaseless flowing of the
water, thinking of the journey of the water, through
precipitation, blizzarding snowflakes, and landscape blanketed in
frozen snow, to springtime melting into tiny creeks merging into
bigger ones, in shapes echoing those of the trunk and branches of
the trees around me. Through the leaves I watched the clouds
slowly drifting overhead.
I think I must have dozed off for a short while. When I returned,
Sylvia had opened her pack and taken out her sketchpad, the one
which our mysterious antechronal doppelgaengers had given back,
long ago in the royal castle.
She had it opened to the page with a picture that showed her
being led down a slope underwater by a parade of fish, with a
giant golden Koi in the front. Sylvia studied the drawing for
some time.
Then, placing it aside, she opened her pack once more, and asked
for my help taking out her harp. Once we had set it up, she sat
on the stool and began strumming, faintly humming a familiar
melody.
"What are you singing?" I asked, sitting down beside her.
"A song my mother taught me when I was little. The words are in
ancient Sangrelysian and I forget what it's about, but the melody
sort of floated into my head as I was sitting here. "
As I sat and listened, presently she closed her eyes and began to
sing, and I fell into dazed adoration of her hypnotically
beautiful soprano voice:
Ea uthanlie o cliaran shea
Fae atham o/ miara zo embra
Fae sha clath kre uphthe zer apth rauo/l
Ner asque niasch atham schaee o miaro/l
Uae cial lleth nya
Uae cial lleth nya
Aino/th orpha l`aloth seya nasco/l
Er ho`itha uth senn myria ez ra hautho/l
Mu a lluthanrie u miaro wea
Sae ratho/r e niasch az orthera
Uae cial lleth nya
Uae cial lleth nya
Over and over she sang it, as a chant, until the meaning faded
into the vibrations of the air over the water, into the mystery
of the contemplations of the wise and ancient mountain, into the
endless infinity of the skies, into the invisible circles of
angels and ancestors surrounding us everywhere present inside
each breath.
Below the shimmering surface of the water as she sang, I caught
glimpse of an elusive movement. It disappeared when first I
looked at it, but then the motion grew larger and more distinct
beneath the refractive waves. My first thought was that a large
school of fish had come our way, perhaps just in their daily
circling of the lake, or curious about the presence of other
creatures in this ordinarily desolate surrounding.
Then I saw that the figures were not fish at all, but beautiful
young girls, who swam suspended in sensuous curvaceous dances,
gazing curiously at us, hair curling weightless in the aqueous
chill, faces smiling, skin porcelain white.
Sylvia, with her eyes closed, hadn't noticed the movement in the
lake, but she broke off abruptly from singing with a short laugh.
"Now I remember. It's something about water nymphs."
"You think, really?" I asked, pointing to the submerged pale
naked feminine figures gathering before us, one of whom
prominently placed herself in the center, wearing a silver crown,
riding a giant golden Koi.
Chapter 22
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