The Smile of the Unvanquished

Though year after year we might trudge and wade like an anemic and aimless spectre across the bloated sticky mass of mud and filth, there's no reason for the mind not to lie down in tranquil slumber, clinging with a warm and invigorated heart next to a moon-lit pond, and then to spirit away to new, strange horizons and fabulous wonders of ultramundane lineage, riding along the delicately swirling fragrance of an illusory bluebell...

in the silent immensity of a dreaming horizon our motherstar climbs with solemn grace towards the glum and ashen sky. still the wintry nightmare chuckles with glee and claws greedily for the last embers in our hearts, yet at the height of her insolent victory, she draws ever so nearer to the hour of her demise.

Rough weather outside the walls, the Wild Hunt charges by full tilt in a menacing errand of gloom and doom. It's the dagger, dripping of gelid venom, that cuts out the last stubborn remains of puerile innocence, which in other respects would survive the impugning affront of conqueror worm and the entropy of remembrance. The bark torn by invisible gnashing teeth, leaves swept across sepulchral meadows, giddy boughs dancing to the howling chimes of rusted derelicts; nature's labour pains masked as an overwrought tirade. The vigilant heron perches among the limber reed - the redoubtable pivot in the whirlpool of tides.

As the years crawl on, then gaining ever so much momentum, the oceans shrink to seas, seas retreat to lakes, lakes to dew; a single drop remains, so fragile and furtive, easily spent under the scorching glare of the motherstar. Yet, for the length of a melancholic sigh, that dew tear burns with incandescent fury that overshadows the luminosity from ultramundane worlds, wasted aeons ago across diseased gulfs and to dull, soulless eyes. Her indelible thrall flits the accursed reality of oblivion as she enmeshes herself into the womb of our unfolding fate to grow into a pearl whither eternity and the gods themselves must gravitate.