Post by Jester- PsychoBunnyProductions on Aug 21, 2009 15:19:23 GMT -5
A short story i wrote today for my girlfriend. I only wrote it in 2hours so its a little flawed. Hope everyone likes it tho. Feedback is very much appricated.
The moon. A mystic mystery for millennia. A silent shy sentinel hiding away in earth’s shadow till the comforting darkness of night sets in. Its creation a myth. To us the moon has always been, and it has been by many names. Hilal, Napir, Terah, Artemis, Mani, Luna, Chang'e, just some of the many names our kind has given to the moon. Every human language has its own word for her. She has watched over us since our birth seeing all the secrets of the night. All the lies, all the fights, all the arguments. But the moon has also seen all the love and all the heartbreak...
Midnight. An empty field bathed in moonlight. Tall barleys swaying and shivering in the eye of the cold moon. Little bugs caught in glorious light, danced. A gentle breeze disturbed the barleys. They rustled quietly as if not to disturb her.
She seemed to float as if the breeze had pushed her forward. Silent, like a ship sailing through the night sea. She was beautiful, but a sad beauty. A hurt beauty. One that had felt heartbreak. Her silk white face looked ghostly in the pale light. Big wide eyes wept gently. Her face betrayed no emotion yet a deeper hidden face illuminated many. Her features were set in stone yet something about her solemn eyes echoed painful scars of hurt. Her beauty was disturbing yet breathtaking, exaggerated by a glimmer of madness which rested in her eyes like a sulking beast.
Her fragile pale body was wrapped in a loose thin white nightgown. Its silk texture flowed behind her in the light breeze like gentle waves lapping on an empty beach. She was barefoot, her little feet treading softly on the fresh grass. Her footsteps were eerily silent. The chill disturbed her skin as goosebumps crept rapidly up her legs and onto her bare arms.
The barley caught the breeze and scratched past her leg. She didn’t seem to notice as she soundlessly moved on. A secret determination was a shadow on her face expressionless face. The wind grew stronger. She pushed onwards cutting through the grass like a fish swims upstream.
The moon has a unique power. It controls earth’s tides. The side of the earth which faces the moon is caught in a stealthy battle. The moons gravitational pull is stronger on the tides than that of our earth’s centre. Thus the moon effectively has power over more of the earth than we do. We rely on this power. The silent lighthouse of the night sky has always held a great power over our planet...
The silent lady reached her destination. The field cut off abruptly as the ground fell away. It tumbled down into a white cliff face. Lunar light caressed the water below. Little waves danced in the light, a welcoming blanket calling out to her. But beneath the shimmering surface, terrible horrors hid. Horrors so terrifying that her pale soft skin shuddered.
She stood so close to the edge, her little toes dangled dangerously over the edge. She had been here many times before. She remembered this much. The rest was a mystery. She knew she was waiting, watching, always watching. She raised her eyes from the siren of the water below. Far in the distance was a place the moon could not reach. A place shrouded in the pitch black of night.
The barley rustled as another push from the wind begged her to move away from the cliff edge. She smiled a sad thin smile. It did not matter anymore. As if to tease fate she lifted one foot off the ground. It hovered dangerously over the cliff edge.
The wind stopped, even the quiet lapping of the waves seemed to die down to a mere buzz. Midnight held its breath as this broken beauty tempted fate with one foot dangling over the illusion peace of the sea.
They waited. The world waited. She waited. If she closed her eyes she would still hear it... The deafening noise surrounded her. She could hear the screaming... The metallic roars... the sound of mental tearing apart... The crashing as fire hit the waves tearing holes in the water’s surface... The fear in his face...
She snapped her eyes open. Slowly, silently her head turned. Not too far in the distance stood a tall willow tree. It stooped over like its poor tired old branches carried the hurt of the world. This tree had stood for many years. This tree had seen terrible things. This tree had seen the darkness and evil approaching over the water...
The moons curious white luminous gaze poked its way, feeling through the willows wearily branches until it finally rested on something newer. Newer, but still very old. From where she stood, this something was simply two lumps in the dark. However, she knew what they were. She could never forget what they were.
Without a sound her pale face and wet cheeks turned back to look at the sea.
There is a legend about the moon. When the moon is full, many claim to see a man. This mysterious fellow was simply dubbed “The man in the moon”. There are many stories about how a man came to live in the moon. One old European tradition holds that the man was banished to the moon for some crime he had committed. Christian lore commonly held that he is the man caught gathering sticks on the sabbath and sentenced by God to death by stoning.
All of these stories have one thing in common; it ends with someone trapped on the moon. A trapped soul...
He didn’t know where he had been. His mind held no clues. But now wasn’t the time to try and strain himself by remembering. He knew no one but himself. And himself he could not name. He had to focus on one thing; getting home. He didn’t know where home was; just that he knew the way to go. If someone was to ask him how he knew the way to go, he would reply, “my soul is leading me.” He knew it sounded crazy. That much his brain could tell him. But he just knew. It was like something or someone was tugging at him, willing him to return.
He rose from the sea, his head breaking up through the water like a crashing wave. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, he felt the soft comfort of sand beneath his bare feet. He knew he had been travelling for a long time.
He moved forward, his clothes dripping wet. Yet he could barely feel the cold. He knew he was near. So long of travelling and he was near. All he would see was a beach. The tide ended abruptly before him as he finally realised he had left the sea.
This place felt familiar... The eerie white cliff that rose towering above him muttered echoes of the past willing him to remember. His eyes wavered as reflections of times long past danced mockingly in front of him just out of his grasp.
He ignored them.
One thing was clear to him; on top of this cliff was his destination.
The moon fixated her gloomy eye on this strange lost man as he struggled his way up a small pathway in the cliff side. The sea waited patiently for this young man to finally understand. The moon silently willed him to hurry as she knew her time here was coming to an end. Everyone waited.
The path finally broke onto a moonlight field of barley and grass. Not too far from where he stood was an old tall willow tree. Its wispy branches swayed gently beckoning him forward. The tips of the tendon like branches touched two lumps of darkness almost as if they were pointing.
He hesitated. He did not know this place, that he was sure, but it felt so familiar. Was this his home?
He moved. He seemed to float as if the breeze had pushed, encouraging him to his destination. Silent, like a ship sailing through the night sea he moved. He was handsome, but a sad handsome. A hurt handsome. One that had felt heartbreak. One that still did feel heartbreak. One that felt incomplete. He was incomplete. He knew this now. It was the clearest thing to him. Under that disheartened old tree he would be completed.
The moon smiled a secret smile. Her time on this scene was to end now. But she was about to see a very beautiful end.
As this broken man reached his destination he fell to his knees. Here, he had finally found the truth. Pale shaky hands rose to he’s head as long held in tears broke free from his eyes. He wept.
Silently she came. Quicker than the midnight breeze she was upon him, holding him tight to her cold breasts. Tears would not come to her. She had cried every midnight for many years now. Cried for him to return...
The sun broke that morning, as it did every other morning. Only this morning felt... happy. Jon Basinger stood at the edge of a cliff looking out to sea. The ocean stretched before him into the far distance. On a clear day it was said you could see Normandy from this cliff edge. He could never say he had had that pleasure, but every sunrise he stood at this cliff edge and waited. Maybe one day. Not today.
Signing he turned around to see he was not alone. A young child stood silently in his shadow beaming up at him. He smiled a tired smile to her. It was her first night in this place and it appeared that the sad mood of the area had yet to take its toll on young Grace.
Oddly, even Jon felt a little less sad today. Must be the sudden change in weather. It was shockingly warm morning for an English winter.
“Hello granddad.”
Jon smiled. Granddad was a term he found hard to get used to. Surely he wasn’t old enough to be a grand. And yet here stood his granddaughter.
“Hello Grace. Can I help you this morning?”
Grace’s little smile flicked with doubt. He waited patiently. He knew where she was trying to get to.
“I was wondering if you would tell me why this place is so sad.” She said with a sweet smile.
Jon closed his eyes. He hadn’t told this story in a long time. Was it really fit for a little girl? Jon wasn’t used to children. This visit by his daughter and granddaughter was a rare one. But he supposed if the girl was eventually going to feel the sadness of this place, she might as well know why.
“You know about the Second World War, don’t you Grace?” He didn’t wait for the little girl to reply. “Well, many years ago a young teenage couple lived here. They were married at a young age even by today’s standards. Mr Tomas Pillath and Mrs Wendy Pillath. They lived on this very farm. They loved each other dearly.
One day Tomas was called away to war. This broke Wendy’s heart. She cried in his arms for ages. But he stroked her hair and promised her he’d be home before she knew it. He whispered in her ear that he loved her. That night was the night he left.
His wife stood at this very cliff edge and waved him away as he left on a ship destined for Normandy beach in France. What no one knew then Grace, was the horror that awaited at that beach. It is believed that her young husband was killed there, along with thousands of other young men. Grace, so many men lost their life in that place that it became impossible to tell who had died. His body was never found. However Wendy refused to believe it. It is said that she waited for him every day on this cliff edge, hoping, praying he would return. Not long after she too died after several German and British aircrafts got into a dogfight above this field. She was killed.” Jon paused heavy hearted.
The one part of the tale Jon had decided to always leave out is that when Tomas had left to go to war, he had left two people. The other he would never know about.
Wendy carried Tomas’s baby for nine months. She sent several letters to let him know, but he was most likely dead by then. Lost in the flood of brave young men who had passed away in the second Great War. Wendy had raised the baby alone, but when her little boy was only young, Wendy took the boy into the local village and left him at a pub called “The Man in the Moon”. She said she feared that the Germans would land and raid her house. She wanted her only son to be safe. It was that very night that Jon lost his mother. He barely remembered her.
Grace must have noticed the silent tear he had shed for the parents he never knew because she awkwardly shuffled her feet. Jon looked upon her slowly. He might as well finish his story. He cleared his throat. “Over there, underneath that tree is a grave marked for her and her lover.”
Jon stopped the story at the same place he had done every time before when telling this moving tale. Normally his heart was heavily, full of an ocean of sadness, however he was feeling less sad that he usually did.
He looked down at Grace. Her eyes were full of wonder and sadness. She was only little. Maybe this harsh tale was a little too much for her. Jon gives her one last hope.
“It is said that she waited every midnight for him. Many believe that the Moon reunites the dead.”
Grace smiled sadly. “So they were together in the end?”
Jon couldn’t help but laugh. He took her little hands in his own old worn cold hands. He could feel the sweet innocents of youthful life beat within her.
“Yes” said Jon. “Yes, they were together.”
With that he took Graces hand and led her back to the farm. A light breeze whispered past his ear grabbing Jons attention. For one moment he felt a strong urge to turn around. Slowly his head moved. For one fleeting moment he thought he saw a young couple hand in hand watching the sun slowly rise above the water, but within a blinding flash of sunlight, the image was gone.
“Come along you old Granddad.” Giggled Grace dragging Jon forward by his arm.
“I’m coming’” He muttered taking one last hopeful look at the old willow tree.
Underneath, bathed in the warm morning glow stood two grave stones side by side. The wind signed and the waves crashed in loving memory of Tomas and Wendy Pillath.
Midnight
By Pelé Hearne
By Pelé Hearne
The moon. A mystic mystery for millennia. A silent shy sentinel hiding away in earth’s shadow till the comforting darkness of night sets in. Its creation a myth. To us the moon has always been, and it has been by many names. Hilal, Napir, Terah, Artemis, Mani, Luna, Chang'e, just some of the many names our kind has given to the moon. Every human language has its own word for her. She has watched over us since our birth seeing all the secrets of the night. All the lies, all the fights, all the arguments. But the moon has also seen all the love and all the heartbreak...
***
Midnight. An empty field bathed in moonlight. Tall barleys swaying and shivering in the eye of the cold moon. Little bugs caught in glorious light, danced. A gentle breeze disturbed the barleys. They rustled quietly as if not to disturb her.
She seemed to float as if the breeze had pushed her forward. Silent, like a ship sailing through the night sea. She was beautiful, but a sad beauty. A hurt beauty. One that had felt heartbreak. Her silk white face looked ghostly in the pale light. Big wide eyes wept gently. Her face betrayed no emotion yet a deeper hidden face illuminated many. Her features were set in stone yet something about her solemn eyes echoed painful scars of hurt. Her beauty was disturbing yet breathtaking, exaggerated by a glimmer of madness which rested in her eyes like a sulking beast.
Her fragile pale body was wrapped in a loose thin white nightgown. Its silk texture flowed behind her in the light breeze like gentle waves lapping on an empty beach. She was barefoot, her little feet treading softly on the fresh grass. Her footsteps were eerily silent. The chill disturbed her skin as goosebumps crept rapidly up her legs and onto her bare arms.
The barley caught the breeze and scratched past her leg. She didn’t seem to notice as she soundlessly moved on. A secret determination was a shadow on her face expressionless face. The wind grew stronger. She pushed onwards cutting through the grass like a fish swims upstream.
***
The moon has a unique power. It controls earth’s tides. The side of the earth which faces the moon is caught in a stealthy battle. The moons gravitational pull is stronger on the tides than that of our earth’s centre. Thus the moon effectively has power over more of the earth than we do. We rely on this power. The silent lighthouse of the night sky has always held a great power over our planet...
***
The silent lady reached her destination. The field cut off abruptly as the ground fell away. It tumbled down into a white cliff face. Lunar light caressed the water below. Little waves danced in the light, a welcoming blanket calling out to her. But beneath the shimmering surface, terrible horrors hid. Horrors so terrifying that her pale soft skin shuddered.
She stood so close to the edge, her little toes dangled dangerously over the edge. She had been here many times before. She remembered this much. The rest was a mystery. She knew she was waiting, watching, always watching. She raised her eyes from the siren of the water below. Far in the distance was a place the moon could not reach. A place shrouded in the pitch black of night.
The barley rustled as another push from the wind begged her to move away from the cliff edge. She smiled a sad thin smile. It did not matter anymore. As if to tease fate she lifted one foot off the ground. It hovered dangerously over the cliff edge.
The wind stopped, even the quiet lapping of the waves seemed to die down to a mere buzz. Midnight held its breath as this broken beauty tempted fate with one foot dangling over the illusion peace of the sea.
They waited. The world waited. She waited. If she closed her eyes she would still hear it... The deafening noise surrounded her. She could hear the screaming... The metallic roars... the sound of mental tearing apart... The crashing as fire hit the waves tearing holes in the water’s surface... The fear in his face...
She snapped her eyes open. Slowly, silently her head turned. Not too far in the distance stood a tall willow tree. It stooped over like its poor tired old branches carried the hurt of the world. This tree had stood for many years. This tree had seen terrible things. This tree had seen the darkness and evil approaching over the water...
The moons curious white luminous gaze poked its way, feeling through the willows wearily branches until it finally rested on something newer. Newer, but still very old. From where she stood, this something was simply two lumps in the dark. However, she knew what they were. She could never forget what they were.
Without a sound her pale face and wet cheeks turned back to look at the sea.
***
There is a legend about the moon. When the moon is full, many claim to see a man. This mysterious fellow was simply dubbed “The man in the moon”. There are many stories about how a man came to live in the moon. One old European tradition holds that the man was banished to the moon for some crime he had committed. Christian lore commonly held that he is the man caught gathering sticks on the sabbath and sentenced by God to death by stoning.
All of these stories have one thing in common; it ends with someone trapped on the moon. A trapped soul...
***
He didn’t know where he had been. His mind held no clues. But now wasn’t the time to try and strain himself by remembering. He knew no one but himself. And himself he could not name. He had to focus on one thing; getting home. He didn’t know where home was; just that he knew the way to go. If someone was to ask him how he knew the way to go, he would reply, “my soul is leading me.” He knew it sounded crazy. That much his brain could tell him. But he just knew. It was like something or someone was tugging at him, willing him to return.
He rose from the sea, his head breaking up through the water like a crashing wave. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, he felt the soft comfort of sand beneath his bare feet. He knew he had been travelling for a long time.
He moved forward, his clothes dripping wet. Yet he could barely feel the cold. He knew he was near. So long of travelling and he was near. All he would see was a beach. The tide ended abruptly before him as he finally realised he had left the sea.
This place felt familiar... The eerie white cliff that rose towering above him muttered echoes of the past willing him to remember. His eyes wavered as reflections of times long past danced mockingly in front of him just out of his grasp.
He ignored them.
One thing was clear to him; on top of this cliff was his destination.
The moon fixated her gloomy eye on this strange lost man as he struggled his way up a small pathway in the cliff side. The sea waited patiently for this young man to finally understand. The moon silently willed him to hurry as she knew her time here was coming to an end. Everyone waited.
The path finally broke onto a moonlight field of barley and grass. Not too far from where he stood was an old tall willow tree. Its wispy branches swayed gently beckoning him forward. The tips of the tendon like branches touched two lumps of darkness almost as if they were pointing.
He hesitated. He did not know this place, that he was sure, but it felt so familiar. Was this his home?
He moved. He seemed to float as if the breeze had pushed, encouraging him to his destination. Silent, like a ship sailing through the night sea he moved. He was handsome, but a sad handsome. A hurt handsome. One that had felt heartbreak. One that still did feel heartbreak. One that felt incomplete. He was incomplete. He knew this now. It was the clearest thing to him. Under that disheartened old tree he would be completed.
The moon smiled a secret smile. Her time on this scene was to end now. But she was about to see a very beautiful end.
As this broken man reached his destination he fell to his knees. Here, he had finally found the truth. Pale shaky hands rose to he’s head as long held in tears broke free from his eyes. He wept.
Silently she came. Quicker than the midnight breeze she was upon him, holding him tight to her cold breasts. Tears would not come to her. She had cried every midnight for many years now. Cried for him to return...
***
The sun broke that morning, as it did every other morning. Only this morning felt... happy. Jon Basinger stood at the edge of a cliff looking out to sea. The ocean stretched before him into the far distance. On a clear day it was said you could see Normandy from this cliff edge. He could never say he had had that pleasure, but every sunrise he stood at this cliff edge and waited. Maybe one day. Not today.
Signing he turned around to see he was not alone. A young child stood silently in his shadow beaming up at him. He smiled a tired smile to her. It was her first night in this place and it appeared that the sad mood of the area had yet to take its toll on young Grace.
Oddly, even Jon felt a little less sad today. Must be the sudden change in weather. It was shockingly warm morning for an English winter.
“Hello granddad.”
Jon smiled. Granddad was a term he found hard to get used to. Surely he wasn’t old enough to be a grand. And yet here stood his granddaughter.
“Hello Grace. Can I help you this morning?”
Grace’s little smile flicked with doubt. He waited patiently. He knew where she was trying to get to.
“I was wondering if you would tell me why this place is so sad.” She said with a sweet smile.
Jon closed his eyes. He hadn’t told this story in a long time. Was it really fit for a little girl? Jon wasn’t used to children. This visit by his daughter and granddaughter was a rare one. But he supposed if the girl was eventually going to feel the sadness of this place, she might as well know why.
“You know about the Second World War, don’t you Grace?” He didn’t wait for the little girl to reply. “Well, many years ago a young teenage couple lived here. They were married at a young age even by today’s standards. Mr Tomas Pillath and Mrs Wendy Pillath. They lived on this very farm. They loved each other dearly.
One day Tomas was called away to war. This broke Wendy’s heart. She cried in his arms for ages. But he stroked her hair and promised her he’d be home before she knew it. He whispered in her ear that he loved her. That night was the night he left.
His wife stood at this very cliff edge and waved him away as he left on a ship destined for Normandy beach in France. What no one knew then Grace, was the horror that awaited at that beach. It is believed that her young husband was killed there, along with thousands of other young men. Grace, so many men lost their life in that place that it became impossible to tell who had died. His body was never found. However Wendy refused to believe it. It is said that she waited for him every day on this cliff edge, hoping, praying he would return. Not long after she too died after several German and British aircrafts got into a dogfight above this field. She was killed.” Jon paused heavy hearted.
The one part of the tale Jon had decided to always leave out is that when Tomas had left to go to war, he had left two people. The other he would never know about.
Wendy carried Tomas’s baby for nine months. She sent several letters to let him know, but he was most likely dead by then. Lost in the flood of brave young men who had passed away in the second Great War. Wendy had raised the baby alone, but when her little boy was only young, Wendy took the boy into the local village and left him at a pub called “The Man in the Moon”. She said she feared that the Germans would land and raid her house. She wanted her only son to be safe. It was that very night that Jon lost his mother. He barely remembered her.
Grace must have noticed the silent tear he had shed for the parents he never knew because she awkwardly shuffled her feet. Jon looked upon her slowly. He might as well finish his story. He cleared his throat. “Over there, underneath that tree is a grave marked for her and her lover.”
Jon stopped the story at the same place he had done every time before when telling this moving tale. Normally his heart was heavily, full of an ocean of sadness, however he was feeling less sad that he usually did.
He looked down at Grace. Her eyes were full of wonder and sadness. She was only little. Maybe this harsh tale was a little too much for her. Jon gives her one last hope.
“It is said that she waited every midnight for him. Many believe that the Moon reunites the dead.”
Grace smiled sadly. “So they were together in the end?”
Jon couldn’t help but laugh. He took her little hands in his own old worn cold hands. He could feel the sweet innocents of youthful life beat within her.
“Yes” said Jon. “Yes, they were together.”
With that he took Graces hand and led her back to the farm. A light breeze whispered past his ear grabbing Jons attention. For one moment he felt a strong urge to turn around. Slowly his head moved. For one fleeting moment he thought he saw a young couple hand in hand watching the sun slowly rise above the water, but within a blinding flash of sunlight, the image was gone.
“Come along you old Granddad.” Giggled Grace dragging Jon forward by his arm.
“I’m coming’” He muttered taking one last hopeful look at the old willow tree.
Underneath, bathed in the warm morning glow stood two grave stones side by side. The wind signed and the waves crashed in loving memory of Tomas and Wendy Pillath.
The end
)
i really appricate you reading.