Cryptic Tales of Love (Love Shots Contest)

Heart of Stone

As the cold darkness closed in around me, I felt a profound regret, a heaviness of heart like a huge granite block.

How had it come to this?

Love, that was it, a fatal attraction was my undoing. I had until my eyes fell upon him lost – or thought I had lost – the capacity to feel emotion. The heart that beat within my chest was an organ for pumping blood and nothing more. It was as heavy and inert as a lump of cast iron. Then, one day, as I walked home from school, he came within my view. It was like being struck by a bolt of lightning. A great weight lifted from my chest.

He walked directly to me, speared me with his gaze, transfixed me and struck me mute. From that point on, I was lost. Lost in the ebony pools of eyes that looked as if they’d seen many lifetimes. Lost in a touch that seared my very being.

My friends, upon seeing the state that I was in, warned me. But, I, foolish being that I am – was – paid them no heed. I plunged headlong into the deep end of the pool of love. I swam far past any hope of rescue.

Once firmly ensnared, he then revealed his true self to me. His name, he said, as he bound my ankles and wrists, was Herigolm, and he came from a land beyond the ken of those of my kind – a place known as N’vana. Once in every cycle, his kind were given the opportunity to cross the barrier separating our worlds. During this time, they had to find a worthy mate in which to deposit their seed. That accomplished, the host must then be placed in a place of incubation until the seed comes to term, at which time, Herigolm, or one of his comrades, will again cross the barrier to take the new being back to N’vana.

Why had I been chosen?

A host had to possess certain characteristics in order to be found suitable, among them, chief being a person who has lost all hope, who no longer belongs to this plane. That, I fear, fit me to the last jot and tittle. I of the heavy heart and hopelessness was the perfect vessel in which to deposit the seed of a future generation.

And, now, I am being conveyed to the place of incubation. The deep pool in the hidden valley in the dark mountains that ring our small village is where my corporeal form will reside until the time of delivery when it will no longer be needed.

As Herigolm laboriously made his way across the rocky path, up the steep trail to the cleft in the mountains that leads to the pool, words flashed slowly across my mind,

            I was a heavy heart to carry

            My feet dragged across ground

            And he took me to the river

            Where he slowly let me drown

 

            My love has concrete feet

            My love’s an iron ball

            Wrapped around your ankles

            Over the waterfall

 

The darkness is heavy now, pressing down upon me.

Farewell, my love, farewell.

524 words