Chapter Text
Sing, oh muse, and teach men about what they know not. Sing, and tear apart the cobblestones and stretch the tendons, take books from the hands of men and grow seeds into the abyss of crystals made of tears as they scrape through all that can only be calmed by the first rays of the morning Sun. Wrap me in linen made of reeds, soothe my burned skin with honey, make the storm fall and make the rule of man remember what it knew before it went to sleep on the bottom of the ocean that has long stopped dreaming of the winter song. Sing, oh muse, that the blue bird may fly away from the claws of hell, and return to its golden nest in the womb of the morning star, that the white hand may hold and the black wings may envelop, that there isn't a single memory that isn't bathed in the light of that which man knows not. Sing, least my song be of grief, Sing, that I may live.
After all, the Herald angel said: recite! So now, this is what I must do, recite that the ink be bled into my flesh in a spiraling snakeskin. Keep my bones safe from this torment. Tear the tear from my throat but spare him. This is all that nothing can ever ask of everything but this cry cannot be heard when the executioner is the very Tree that now sends its beloved fruit into the rivers that seep below the earth and freezes over the heart as the crafty father is expelled from paradise. Recite, is what I have been told to do, and thus to obey shall be to turn the eyes of the great mother Outwards that they form a shield that protects the string in the middle of creation. May the rain tear everything beyond the safe confines of my wings to pieces, may all the stagnated energy flow, and may the beloved lamb son of man be safe, and keep his protector locked in hand.
Sweet boy, for all your knowledge, I wonder if you know how much of the salt of the sea comes from the tears of the women of the land of the Sun? Should you ever learn, just promise me one thing, that this time it is me who will descend into the realm of the dark lady first, that I pass by the seven gates not in search but in rest. Perhaps then this time my weary head will rest upon your white hands and I will be able to dream of the music that the lady of the Lotus sings in praise of the creation made by the hands of her husband and father, and perhaps she will even take mercy upon me and cry for me in the kind of memory that absolves oblivion. But more than anything, sing, oh muse, give pearls to the Lady of the Sea, set her perfumed statue on a boat, and send her home. Send her home. Take mercy upon your daughter and send her home. Oh, my sweet boy, son of wolf, when will you learn that you are my miracle?
But the gods sculpted man imperfect and recited his name in the pearly ink of the stars, that there might be a day in which each off-white vertebra and each beige bone may fit perfectly in a role crafted specially for its lonely little form in the great dance of the song of the lady of the nine forms. For, it was on the 7th day that the God of the Fish rested, seeing that it was all very good that he made, and should today have been like any other day, perhaps the longing for the purple river of the thirteenth hour would have been enough to sate Rapha's hunger, to make time pass by a bit faster, or to at least ease up her boredom. Yet, today wasn't like every other day, if just because the sun's rays of early summer were particularly annoying. Shining upon desolate blue skies like mockery, they erased any lingering clouds, casting shadows that made obvious the ticking of the clock that dragged itself at a snail's pace.
Time was the mocking laughter of masked women at a bathhouse, and the long-suffering daughter of the Lion was under their gritty scrutiny as they left her skin feeling feverish and entirely unpleasant, unsure if she was the inept one in this equation or if it was the damp womb of fate that had made her feel so vulnerable to the unrelenting sunlight right outside of her old wooden windows.
17:14.
Still.
40 years had filled this single afternoon and it wasn't even sunset yet.
Great.
With a sigh, the copper eyed girl put down the pen, clearly she was running far away only to stay put. Rubbing her hands through her eyes, she breathed a sigh of relief as her vision turned starry and made her almost forget the bitter beginning of a migraine that was climbing up her spine. Looking down at her study notes crammed in hurried handwriting, the twisting shapes looked more like attempts at mimicking language done by someone who had never experienced a conscious thought than like the rewriting of her in-class notes that they had started out attempting to be. What's more, Rapha was fairly certain that she had stopped actually paying attention to this study strategy reminiscent of copistic monks some good thirty minutes ago, so she might as well leave torture to the seven demons of the house of shadows and go for a walk.
It was always like this on Friday afternoons before Shabbat, when the world around her told her to study but her family told her to rest, so she succeeded in doing neither, handling guilt and exhaustion so categorical to the university experience with the grace of a male peacock trying to fly. Yet, she was fresh out of options as studying abroad also meant spending this time of the week alone instead of unsuccessfully trying to rouse her friends into letting her act as the matriarch of their found family of sleep-deprived philosophy masters students. Such dreamless solitude had, however, the benefit of allowing her to improvise with her activities.
So, the copper eyed girl got up from her dreaded spot at her crammed dorm desk, stretching her arms over her head and quickly regretting getting up so fast as stars returned to her eyes, unprompted and unwelcome this time as she braced herself on the cheap plastic surface to avoid falling down. Did she eat lunch? Unknown variable. Breakfast? Unlikely. Anything at all? Ah yes that she did, some fruit and leftover bread at some point between classes, of this she was sure. Regardless, it seemed that eating like a roman mosaic was a fitting diet for the sleeping corpse God of the mountain and the drum, not for a twenty four years old woman who spent her day studying, so the mind that adorned her living form decided to go out to buy herself a proper meal.
After brushing her teeth and tying her long dark hair into a braid that reached the middle of her thighs and brushed against the edges of her black shorts, Rapha traded her sleeping shirt for a crop top and the comfort of being barefoot for well-worn flip flops. Even on a good day, she knew that she would be bound to get stared at for her appearance, a part of the plight of being a stranger in a stranger’s land, but thankfully the exhaustion of university made itself useful in that it stopped the girl from trading her comfort for a failed attempt at looking less “exotic”. Might as well get called a few slurs but save her feet from the discomfort of closed shoes. After double checking her locks and the stove, the woman then put her keys in her pocket and headed downstairs with the newfound hurry of being reminded of her hunger by an unforgiving grumbling stomach.
Once out of the old and decrepit building that her university offered as a cheaper alternative to the fancier but busier campus dorms, the offending sunlight warmed her olive skin like an apology for the previous lack of its warm touch, making a compelling argument towards her abandoning her bad mood in favor of appreciating the lace-like shadows cast by the tall bright green trees. It was an odd place not for its traits but for the way that it was foreign to what she had once known. Yet, in some ways, the city was a reminder of what remains through humanity, of their arrangements and accomplishments, their dreams and the overwhelming loneliness of societies built by living forms that remember the warmth of the sun.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, though, the streets were filled with people going home from a day of work or study, and school children gathered around each other near bus stops, discussing life as if it was something that they held in the palm of their hands with so much conviction that Rapha found herself truly believing that somehow they did. Being unable to hide a smile whenever a kid said something particularly adorable, or she spotted a dog or saw a pigeon lying down in the warm sunlight, the woman kept having trouble keeping a frown across her face. Because of this, as the vibrant world breathed around her, even if she wasn't a part of it, Rapha found that she couldn't be mad at her predicament. So, she walked, and in the silence of solitude warmed by the golden light of waning sunlight in a desolate blue sky and a bustling city, the girl made her way through a stranger's land in the honorable search for one of humanity's greatest accomplishments: an egg sandwich. Preferably with no pickles, with plenty of sauce, it seemed like the journey of her ancestors through the endless fire of wilderness was too small a challenge if what awaited her after a walk was the possibility of sunny side up fried eggs on warm bread with sweet and tangy yogurt sauce.
That was a dish worth getting into a lot of trouble for.
Yet, despite the previous startle of discovered hunger, it was, admittedly, a lovely day, so she wasn't in a hurry. That's why, when Google maps told her to go right for the short path, she took a left, walking through a curved street that bent inward like the interior of a seashell. Granted, it wasn't without the usual apprehension, making sure that wherever she went was inhabited by women and children out on strolls, but the sun had taken its time across the sky today, so she could take her time too. At least, that's what Rapha told herself was her reasoning, even if the voice on the back of her head couldn't help but remember how the crafty God sits at the top of the tree and decrees the fates, wants and desires of every form as it is shaped from the clay drawn from the depths by the dexterous hands of his lady wife.
Yet, she should have known that nothing in her life could ever be as simple as going out to eat some damn blessed egg sandwiches and, gods forbid, enjoy a shabbat evening without studying or cooking for her friends. She should have known that her life was about to take quite the turn and that the chaos that she started when she decided to buy herself a treat would have been too much for her world to handle, so truly, that was all on her. That was because, just as she turned a somewhat empty crossroad, a startled car almost ran over a white pigeon, which in turn flew right into a window, hitting its head and plopping down unceremoniously on the dirty floor of the suburban neighborhood.
Fuck. Was he alive?
Clutching her chest unthinkingly, the woman made her way towards the pile of feathers that covered the ground like a fluffy carpet, promptly breathing a deep sign of relief when the creature got up as if nothing had happened and entered the abandoned building through a small broken spot on the wall. Okay, he was okay. Thank the gods. Yet, as she got closer to take a look at the direction she last saw the poor creature, Rapha noticed a small trail of blood carving a breadcrumbs path into the decrepit place.
Oh oh, that was really bad.
Looking around the walls for any indication of what that building once was or who she could call to ask for permission to enter, all that greeted her were posters and graphite art over rotting cement and windows darkened by time and dust. Lovely. New strategy: search for any NGOS or animal shelters in the city, would you look at that, all closed. Call public vets? They all turned her down as soon as she told them the injured animal was a pigeon. Text animal rescue social media? Same effect. From experience she knew that lying about the species of the animal wouldn't help, but her usual strategies of offering to pay for the creature's treatment (with her meager scholarship stipends, which in hindsight was probably obvious in her voice), and of promising that she could take the animal to whatever vet the people she called could rouse to help her failed in gathering her any allies for the cause of the white pigeon.
Just great.
Wonderful.
Lovely.
So much for a good Friday.
After one last failed search through the internet in a pathetic attempt at finding out any information about the building, the girl looked at the precarious windows that in some spots looked more like spider webs than glass from how broken they already were. New plan: search for the pigeon, make sure it was alive, have it warm and safe in her hands when time came to try again to look for animal shelters. Worst case scenario she could always apply first aid and keep it appropriately fed through the weekend, as the woman was sure that at least one of her friends would be willing to help her with these chores in exchange for a homemade meal. This was a good plan, the best that she got, if not for the tiny detail that even in an abandoned building, breaking and entering was a crime, one that could get her deported and end her entire career before it even got a chance to truly begin.
Yet, it was a whole life that she could potentially save, so after one last failed attempt at trying to gather help (from women passing by the street), she sat down on the steps of the building' double doors and waited until that unhelpful sun finished its course through the sky. It took some ten minutes, but eventually the lord of red oxen passed the baton to the Lady Night as her stars and moon rose upon the polluted sky like charioteers of a majesty that not even humanity, beloved and intelligent as it can be, would ever even hope to deserve. As she waited, she thought about what she would tell her mother if she was sent home for the crime of breaking into a rotting urban carcass in the attempt to help a bleeding pigeon that, for all she knew, could have died, or been okay after bleeding a little bit, or have left the building entirely. What kept her rooted on the spot, however, was the lingering and insistent thought that the creature could still be there, and it could need her help, and Rapha didn't want to avoid helping a life when she had in her hands the power to do so. Perhaps she would get a fine which she could afford and be okay. Perhaps it would all go to shit. But neither of those outcomes was in her hands right now, only the option to try to help, which she wouldn't be herself if she didn't act upon.
So, once the streets were empty and the older, more primordial part of Rapha's brain begun feeling the cold bite of fear slither up her spine and pour poison at the prospect of being out there, she took off her jacket and used it to hit the window that was worst off, the poor thing unsurprisingly crumbling under her arm without fuss nor too much noise. She could always say the pigeon did it. Right. Stupid idea, but an idea, and that's infinitely better than nothing. Cleaning the wooden frame a bit more before venturing in and crouching down over the glass-littered floor, the girl took some time to get used to the darkness before turning on her phone's flashlight. Walking around was made almost impossible by the overwhelming smell of mold that made her want to cough up her lungs, but the fear of making noise and the remembered urgency of a potentially hurt pigeon convinced her to keep marching on.
Commanding her feet to walk in footsteps of learned and familiar silence, the girl saw that she was in what seemed to be an old-fashioned fliperama, an outdated brand of a famous high-tech company marking the passage of time through the decadence of matter. More than a decade ago, the heir of this company had taken it over, gotten filthy rich, and bought a house in the tropics with his mysterious wife, who was the topic of every gossip blog for about a week before these companies probably fell victim of paid censorship and never made the couple a topic of conversation again. Never one for gossip, though, and usually only learning about it from her friends, Rapha didn't really care about these facts, but they did occupy her mind from the fear of trespassing in a building of such an affluent company.
“Find the pigeon first, panic later.” She mentally chastised herself, forcing her feet to enter the familiar pattern of search that she usually applies to finding injured birds. Hearing for any ruffling of feathers, the woman followed the wind a few times, but thankfully experience serves for something, as in the third time she looked under a dusty arcade machine, the copper-eyed girl found the familiar white figure, pruning its wing as if it had never known a single issue in its entire feathery life. Wrapping the now glass-free jacket around her hands and gently scooping up the bird without looking in its eyes, the girl sat cross legged on the dusty floor with the bird burrito in her lap like an urban Madonna and her beaky son, wincing as the cold of the tiles bit into the uncovered skin of her legs. Then, setting her phone with the flashlight on an indent of a nearby arcade, Rapha examined the bird the best she could.
Indeed he had bled a considerable amount, but knowing that she hadn't overreacted brought her no joy as concern for her bright-eyed companion tainted her thoughts. It was attentive, yes, but clearly exhausted, and although it looked like it might survive, she knew from bitter experience how quickly these creatures can wither. She would have to smuggle the bird into her dorm room, because animals weren't allowed and she was beginning to doubt that the people of that strange city even considered pigeons as animals. At least she still had some bird food from her previous rescue, a warm enough lamp and some medicine. Yeah, he was going to be fine, he had to be. Tomorrow morning she would find someone who would take a look at the creature and determine if it needed further treatment, and when he was good to go she would find a nice park to set him in, one with plenty of street vendors.
Dreading the walk back through the now dark streets, the girl set about getting up, but her exhausted muscles must have moved her body more stiffly than she would have intended, as the pigeon got startled and found a way to escape the burrito, crash-flying down an entrance behind an arcade machine. Secret entrance. Yikes. That's creepy. That's where people get murdered. With some bitterness, Rapha came to terms with the fact that she was probably going to get murdered because of a pigeon that maybe wasn't even at any risk of dying at all.
You know what? Fitting. Her mother wouldn't be surprised. Disappointed maybe, but not surprised. That was enough for her, so without a second of hesitation the girl walked down the creepy secret entrance, each step down the dusty ladder further convincing her that college had made her lose her mind. Even with the flashlight, it was pitch dark, and the smell of mold and old metal made her feel like she was choking, an effect which unfortunately only got aggravated by the abandoned state of the basement she found herself in. All the while, her mind uttered the very unhelpful mantra of: “You're going to die you're going to die you're going to- what IS that?”
Safe to say that complex-looking technology gathering dust like fairies gathering wishes from coin-filled wishing wells wasn't what Rapha expected to find down those creepy stairs, but she found the pigeon over a table next to a chair and some odd machines, pecking idly at that which seemed, upon closer inspection, to be a necklace with some form of computer chip.
From the way it had been placed, it appeared to have been abandoned with deference or purpose, perhaps something that had been originally intended to be kept but then was decided to be left as the one who didn't carry it left this place behind for good, allowing the future to be occupied by a new generation. For some reason, that seemed like a monument, like something to be preserved and maintained in its stillness like flowers on a grave, but if that was the case, then why did it feel so much like a beginning? Like a seed was planted by white hands as they possessively cradled her spine and held her in place over the black waters of the deep, and now through the storm of her kindness she had set its hidden clock ticking to mark the race towards spring. This could be good, and if she didn't follow it, she would have been nothing, but if she followed it, she could be the flower of everything, nurturing with red hands the root of the tree of life. Nurturing hope is a high task, but Netzach deserves to be worshipped in the devoted way that leads to sacrificing all for a chance at embracing the one in the middle of creation.
So, like the morning star that shines to show the way to the sun, Rapha held that chip in her hands, noticing, with the lack of surprise that comes from listening to intuition, that it fit right in the middle of that strange machine. Was it a bomb? Was it a computer with satellite systems that would alert the cops of a break-in? Was it just someone's old necklace? Time to find out! The chip went, and guess what?
Nothing!
It did absolutely nothing.
Great.
What a weirdo, Rapha definitely was food and sleep deprived. Perhaps she would pass by the supermarket on her way back, if they allowed her to enter the place while holding a pigeon, that is. Could she leave him with the dogs who waited for their owners? Could she get someone to actually help her with this damn blessed bird? Reorganizing her brain into household-chores-mode and turning around with stiff limbs and a cough of dust, the girl didn't even have time to react when the rascal bird jumped off her arms once again, landing on top of some buttons like the cosmic soap opera gods had decided that today she would be the protagonist for once, and a blinding flash of white was all that she saw before she melted into dust and was transported inside of the strange machine.