It was a new day, and the world was alive.
It wasn't alive in the way most people thought. There were shining cities buzzing like beehives, certainly, and people trading and giving away in equal measure. Creatures of the forest stalked and trotted and crept and crawled amongst trees and ferns and fallen leaves. Their brothers in the deserts and the high peaks roamed the dunes and crags, a strict game of survival which only the cruelest won. Rulers of the sky streaked through sunlight and rain like untethered flames, feathered beasts playing in the currents the wind wove, hunting each other, keeping the balance of predator and prey. The seas' inhabitants were reversed yet so similar, riding the invisible avenues of the great oceans and dwelling deep in the farthest, darkest crevices of the water-carven sea floor. Great leathery whales and tender, feathery jellyfish shared the same vast home, seahorses and corals and lionfishes and turtles making up the soul of the waves--the quick, throbbing pulse of a world throwing itself forward with everything it had.
He felt it all. Everything no one else paid attention to, the simple things that went unnoticed until they were gone. Every heart beating, every breath being drawn, every leaf fluttering and stilling, every new thing being born and every old thing, every soul nature decided to claim, leaving the earth for a place no one had quite decided was better or not.
And beneath it all, he felt the heartbeat of the world itself.
It wasn't quick or fleeting like the life of a creature, like his own heart within his chest. No, it was slow--dull--the kind of deep, echoing beat you felt in the pit of your chest when you played the lowest notes on the bass. It was the music of a drum, the chant of a monk in the mountains, the guttural growl of things that dwell in the shadows of a sheer-walled valley. Frightening in the best ways, yet peaceful in its steadiness, its steadfastness, the constant reassurance that the earth lived and he lived with it, listening to it shift without moving and think without thoughts. Mindless, inevitable existence. It sounded sort of nice.
Every step he took, he listened and smelled and saw. Saw the caves beneath him in his mind's eye, smelled the dampness of the rain-washed black stone that stretched as far as the eye could see around him, listened to the hum and murmur of it as it spoke to him.
Go back, it whispered. Thy feet dare not tread any further.
He smiled. He might've listened years ago; he almost had, but losing his own life had been an overwhelming desire that drowned out even the warnings of the stones themselves. Now he knew their secrets. Why they lied. What they protected.
Stormclouds rolled like fog above his head, the thunder of a dwindling tempest fading into the distance. His footsteps echoed in his mind, picking up that ancient heartbeat every time his calluses touched the stone. It got louder as he drew near to his goal, nearly drowning out the dying storm.
The last step always made his breath catch. It was the moment when you swung on a rope, right before you fell back the other way, heart in your throat and air frozen in your lungs. One second his feet were on solid obsidian; the next, he was weightless and falling all at once. Tattered clothing and tangled hair fluttered like broken wings around him. He descended, arms out, an angel wearing the mask of a man and the soul of a sparrow, until he hit the bottom with a thud. It didn't hurt; something about the thick moss kept his bones from shattering and his body from collapsing like a pile of stones in an earthquake.
When he straightened, his eyes fell upon a silent world untouched by human hands. Great black cliffs wove paths as far as he could see, coated a hundred feet up with green moss so thick he could sink his arm and then some into it without hitting rock. They dwarfed him, made him feel comfortably small and insignificant. He could hear the life of that moss; the kind, contented spirit that lived in every inch of it, down to the spores he sensed floating in the air around him.
But more than that, more than anything, he heard the screams of the statues.
They were a different sort of stone than the cliffs, some smoky crystal that came in a variety of earthy reds, and everything, even the moss, gave them wide berth in the hall they lined. The earth did, too; the twisted stones hung suspended like spider's prey six feet above the ground. They were warriors, many clutching swords or bows, some with spears. All but one had their mouths open in a cry, like they were being tortured even now, as if they lived beyond their ruby prison. They did not live, he knew. These things should not be here.
The one that didn't scream wore a circlet of silver that was welded to its head. He gave that one greater distance when he passed it; he'd tried stealing that circlet once, and it'd been the only time he'd heard the silent king make any kind of noise. He was fortunate his mind was still sound.
Mostly, anyway. That had been the first day he'd heard the earth.
The screaming quieted to a lull in the back of his mind as he left the statues behind. The sense of wrongness faded. He felt, once again, the heartbeat of the earth and everything in it, until at last his bare feet took him to the place he was going.
The center of the world stood before him. Six robed men made of that black stone stood stoically in a ring, gathered around a platform of grey crystal shot through with imperfections that caught the light, making it shimmer like sequins. The moss shied away from these figures as well, but it was reverence rather than fear that kept it at a distance. Those statues were silent as the grave, but the stone around them, oh, the stories it told. It sang of war and the blood of men and angels, of demons and kings. It told the stories of a million lives lost for a cause it couldn't remember, a war no one bothered to record anywhere he'd seen. It was the last serenade, the last knife to the chest of any who could hear, before he stepped onto the quartz between the robed statues.
Everything went silent. He couldn't hear the earth, or anything else - just the drip of water somewhere in the caverns and the final rumble of the storm somewhere above.
He could hear himself breathe, too, as he walked slowly to the middle and sat with his thick legs crossed. His hands were shaking when he took his pipe and tobacco from his pocket, and they fell from his fingers when tears slipped down his cheeks. Squeezing his eyes shut, he waited for it to pass, that longing in his stomach. He wanted silence. Freedom. Yet the only place he found it was in this ring of stone figures, a prison he was free to leave at any time--provided he relinquish his mind to the earth once again.
With scarred, trembling fingers, he lit his pipe. Breathed the sweet-smelling smoke. Stared out at the mossy cliffs as the sunlight broke through and turned the fog to golden mist, then burned it away and left the tiny, floating spirits that drank the dew starved and delirious until the morrow. He exhaled slowly, and watched the air bend around the cloud of grey.
After an hour or so, he rose and stood for a few long minutes, his eyes burning in the shaft of sunshine that fell in the center of his prison. Then he put his pipe away, took a breath, and stepped out into the world.
The rush of knowledge it brought nearly dropped him to his knees. All the lives he felt in sync with his own, the bellowing beat of the stone beneath him...he didn't think he'd ever get used to the shock of it.
Then he walked. Ignored the screaming soldiers locked forever in crystal. Scaled the cliff with the ease of a practiced climber. Began the long, lonely walk home on the uneven plane of black rock. Shimmering with rainwater, it reflected the sunlight; ordinarily it seemed like it consumed it. His feet sent droplets in every direction each step he took, the lull in his mind distracting him.
One step at a time. Walking the line of madness and clarity.
He didn't know how long he could live like this. Five years? Ten? Until he died, he hoped. Until then he'd look, in his distracted state, for what he sought.
Freedom.
