Arrival
Tumbling down a hill. And as the bumps and bruises form a passive sense of being, consciousness slowly emerges. A consciousness existing alongside the self. Upon beholding themselves they’re cleaved. The elevated being seizes the skies. Leaving a broken, burly shell to explore the earth. Roaming, the being beneath survives as a predator.
The being above builds. An ivory tower, the Sky’s Fortress. Apoch names themself Lord and proceeds to bear children.
Isolated, the being below crafts a bow and conjures fire. They pray to Sol and Lunes and hide their presence from the spirits.
Madarat
The Lord’s exhaustion knew the Demon’s stirrings. Being aligned with the leader did nothing to alleviate our suffering. Made constantly busy, my siblings and I eagerly helped maintain the Sky’s Fortress. Their home, their parent, their leader, their Lord.
I had no memories of life before the Fortress. No record of a time, or existence prior to serving the Lord. The source of life itself, seated between Sol, the great flame, and an earth too far below. All I knew was the Fortress and where my wings could take me.
The Lord and my dormant siblings kept entertained by managing earthly affairs. Maintaining a reality could only be less taxing than creating one. It was not a task for one being, no matter how great. And so, the Lord breathed life into my siblings and I, born of earth, air, water, and fire. We took on the shape of beasts. Greeting Sol and Lunes daily, singing to them for rain and dancing before their lights. Whispering to the trees and roaring into the winds, the earth and stars were theirs. This labor came to me and my siblings as play, yet incapacitated our parent.
Through song and dance, we made a paradise of their grace. It was not long before we learned to predict our parent’s movements and eventually thoughts. It came to us children more easily than our own breath. As their ability to communicate with the Lord through thought and feeling grew, they grew cold and distant. As if the balancing processes performed by my siblings and I, destroyed our parent’s equilibrium.
We were all one. As much a part of the one that created us as we were to each other. We shared thoughts, memories, feelings, and work. We were formless. We merged together and into one another freely. Our bodies could take one another in and reshape themselves with this same ease. Yet we were trapped in our spirits. Trapped in the Fortress. We lacked names, edges, and faces. Our entire identity came from togetherness, and the animals the Lord shaped us into. All of us fell into the one that had created us, and our reality fell into place around us.
Until this balance was not enough. And so, they gave us each names and separated us from one another. Forcing our being into individual, fixed forms. I was, Madarat, the Hawk. My twin brother, Lor, the Crow.
So we became familiar with our new forms as the ebb and flow of time became more clear to us. Though we were still free to move between earth and the Fortress, the change was immediate and felt by each of us. There were nine of us in total. I was known for exploration and daring, yet my exploits were never for the sake of others. I only ever moved to prove a point or impress myself.
To assume our earthly forms, we had to surrender ourselves to the core of our being, the Lord. And as they sat watching and waiting from the Fortress, we were slow to truly understand our new roles.
My first memories were of darkness and fire. I don’t remember much besides the burning, and the way it fed me.
The burning never frightened me. The flames were warm, illuminating, kindling. Their glow took attention away from myself, which I adored.
I was surrounded by life. Not the kind that populated the surface, but the life of processes. The life which moves through the shadows. I lived among the shadows. Beneath and between the insects, trapped under rocks, resting on a bed of dirt and roots.
I was one of many. Small, hungry, waiting. Consumption was the life of process. Everything we interacted with was dead. My brothers and sisters fed on the pieces of the surface as they fell into our mouths. We lived among the rotting, dined upon decay and supervised transformation.
It was busy and cramped full of life. There was nothing, but the eating and the waiting. Simply a world of lost souls and loose energy. I was one of hundreds like myself that I knew. We made up the world as far as we all could see. Born and bound by the fire. Contaminated by the darkness. We were all alike, and unlike one another. A family.
The flame brought us together, calming the will and force of the darkness. Brightening the endless mazes of tunnels. There was no hiding before the flame.
Each of us built our bodies from the bits and pieces of what we had broken down. We wore the different faces and bodies of the animals we had consumed. No one of us looked akin in posture or pose, but our spirits were all connected through the fires.
There were tales of fires above. Little and great, but none of them seemed to reach us. Our flame was enough. Grand enough to hold us all in place. We were waiting for one to lead. Some claimed to have seen the one born to flame. That upon his birth, he was swept up by a great wind. A wind to make all the flames below rage. Or so they say. But even the ones who tell the tales are waiting. Watching as they wait, but waiting and working, nonetheless.
I have found I like certain pieces from the surface. There are certain little creatures and nuggets which come down every now and then I can enjoy. I clean the bones and hide them within myself. I am not one to wear the bones of my favorite meals, though most of my siblings choose so.
I am content with waiting and the flames. I do not mind shrinking to make room for others. I am small, but strike quickly and my mouth is big. I am picky about what I eat, but mostly for show. My stomach can handle anything. Even chunks too large or foul for some of my greatest siblings, I’ve found to my liking. I wear small bones from these meals, like badges inside of myself.
Shinsou
There had been a foul stench in the air for weeks before the Lord called us back to the Fortress. Everyone had noticed the subtle changes in the earth on their own. The ground seemed harder, and Sol and Lunes were slower to hear our song. Rain came less often, and with violent intention when it did come. Something foreign was eating slowly but surely at the livestock, and trees we had raised.
“There is a change coming. Steady yourselves and prepare for war.” Our parent had again grown older, frailer.
“War?” I heard one of my siblings ask aloud from above. I did not know what this meant either, but the word froze me at my root.
“An attack. A time has come to defend ourselves and everything we have built.” We were all confused, but what made it worse was fear. I could feel it in myself and though my siblings and I no longer shared a spirit, I knew this novel feeling was edging itself into each of our consciences. We hardly had a concept of violence, yet here we were imagining it and for ourselves.
“I have told you everything of this world you needed to know up to now. But there is another. We are the same, but they’re unlike me.” I did not want to observe the Lord’s weaknesses, but could not help myself from examining my creator. “You all know nothing of death. I have made a point not to tell you. But that stench in the air, the animals that keep dropping, that is death. And death is final.”
Death? We wondered.
“A process of destruction. Too vast a concept of being for words, my latent half.” Then they closed their eyes and showed us memories of death. And as we felt this cold, dark finality through our Lord, I realized we were not equipped for whatever this vision held.
As we each processed what we had just seen, we collapsed further into ourselves and the link binding us together receded again. Everyone reacted separately, and in their own way. I marched. My spirit’s earthly form was that of the rhinoceros. I could nearly embody myself completely in the Sky’s Fortress, but reserved my full presence for roving the plains of earth. Here, I was a nuisance.
“I will not allow this world to die and I will not concede to death. It will take the strength of each and every one of us to defeat this threat.” The Lord’s petty speeches only spurned me further. I could not help but move my feet…“but I will not allow that evil to affect what I have built.”
Containing a run, I galloped slowly through the Fortress, until the fear finally clutched hold of me and steadied into a sprint.
We had no concept of violence, and here we were being told this was the only option to maintain the world we had poured ourselves into. I could no longer feel what my siblings thought and felt, but I knew I still loved and cared for them as if our bodies were one. Some part of me knew the creator expected us to die in this fight. Expected us to die for them.
Here, as my siblings prepared themselves for war with this other being. I pierced the Sky’s Fortress and entered the realm of Ether for the first time.
Learning to settle was a long and elaborate process. But I found a life for myself among my siblings in the darkness. Whatever invisible force linked and drove us forward was enough for me. I did not feel a need for the fires which balanced me in my adolescence.
The sounds of the darkness no longer frightened me as they once had. The echoes of my siblings moving, shuffling through these cramped, dark caverns relaxed me. Rather than get lost in the worlds swirling above and beneath me, I concentrated on myself and my meals.
And even as many of my siblings grew large and beyond my reach, I still felt their echoes. This binding force was more satisfying than any of my meals. Feeling their security and moving through their shadows with grace, fed me. I was becoming more and more apart of myself in the shadows. Consuming, resting, growing. Collecting pieces of myself through my scavenging.
I did not feel the glow of the flames as I once knew them. As I grew accustomed to the cold and dark, the familiar orange glow radiating from these fires fed me well. Their warmth radiating off the walls, pulling my senses to places I could not see or feel. The echoing sounds and heat signals bounced off one another.
The oldest of my siblings still told tales. Their audiences seemed to grow every time they endeavored to do so.
We were growing. Spilling out over ourselves and into this dark, barren world. Faster than anyone could spin tales or travel between the flames. We were everywhere. Consuming everything. Eating, growing, fighting always.
I ignored the whispers of greeting, instead letting the whispers of intrigue guide me home. Making light of my siblings adoration and jealousies. I was as close to a ghost as any I had crossed. Some blissful existence trapped within myself. I hid from none, shared with none, infected none. I even forgot the sound of my own voice upon some of my later travels.
I never believed tales of the Beast in the Light. The child born to fire, wind, and rage. The one who had glimpsed the surface, and chosen the depths. But I felt something of him in myself. My belief in a divine leader was irrelevant, childish even. I was born of this same darkness. No sibling bound by fire would harden me.
In my travels I had peeped the edge of the surface, and deepest pits of molten flame. Though pierced by the wonder and the whispers generated, I never felt a sense of servitude or fellowship before this entity. Even as my whispers blended with theirs, I never compared the two of us. I was not a challenger nor a disciple. Neither friend nor enemy, but rather a faithful observer. A learner.
I stopped traveling after a while. The tunnels only lead me to more of my kin. More caves, more searching, more waiting. I moved through these groups freely as an outsider, or a competitor. Yet some ancient thread bound me to him. Even in my disbelief and disgust, I was tethered. I could not admit I was chasing him.
Angel Smaller (he/him) is an artist from the Twin Cities looking to explore themes of family conflict, social discipline, and form through his writing and artwork. He loves complex and nonsensical stories, as they allow the audience to fill in the blanks with their own experience and perceptions. He’s been trying to avoid social media, but when he is online…Follow Angel on Instagram: @alilextrangel