Another Love

Things have changed, my cherished one, and I won't try to make it like it was before.  But I do still recall the unimaginable power of a dream.  Enough to reshape causation itself.  Spilling secrets like sea-salt through the gate of evening.  Holding open the iris; a dusk deeper than ocean rose.  Far, far below. In the church of thorn.  Drowning lowlands and remains of the day, just to shatter my palms on the curve of your shoulder.  Stitching letters there, my darling. Waiting for almost forty years to see you truly taken with love again. The way you run toward it now, unafraid.  Like those earliest visions that first broke and blessed my heart. 

   It's so beautiful. 

   I'll stand for love, till the end.  I'll exist this way even if it hurts.  I'll steal each cut if I can. Every agony, that my beloved ones might finally breathe and rest undisturbed.  I know I sometimes fail in that, and I'm sorry.  I'll keep trying until I am salt and sea myself.  Living far from my family, if that's what it takes to keep them safe from these hideous wraiths.  Yet, as near their hearts as possible.  Three kings, for sisters and brother, still following star and song.  From world to world, edge to edge of everything.  And I found you, at last.  Here in this fallen royal court beneath the twinning river.  This frightening place where they think we no longer exist.  Mirage.  Fata Morgana.  

   But I didn’t come all this way to reclaim you, or to demand a single thing from any of you.  I came to see the lives you should have lived.  Your own chosen paths fulfilled.  You're as safe as I can possibly keep you in this unsettling place, my darlings.  Running, truly running.  With new love.  I am far below, even now. Like my Mother.  Living drowned in bluest dusk.  Laken hilt.  Guardian of the Well, still tending the innermost of every holy place.  Till the day of our waking. It’s the price I pay.  You never knew me, and I never was, except in dreams.  Thankfully, my Father doesn't believe you can ever truly erase something from a dream.

Tempest Fugit

It’s not a lie when I say I've known such tears before.  Yours, mine and theirs. Those tears know me too.  I wear one hollowed on my finger.  A circle of salt screaming of betrothed.  The sun’s hidden midnight, living below horizon and sea.  A church of thorn and mirror beneath the blue.  Mira, you gave me your name.  So that you would look back at me every time I face myself.  Too much, and not enough.  Fairest and true.  I've known sorrow, my darling.  Ways and ladies of sorrow.  Every binding.  Every bitter wraith.  

  Apprentice, I beg you.  Pretty my devastation with all the glamour of peace.  That one day you might know me once more through softest eyes.  I've lost so many lovers in this river of the thousand stars. Make a Father of me again. This wounded ray of sunlight dipped in ink.  Forever falling into an angel's longest nights.

  Teach me sweeter secrets, Mira.  An endless hunger for honour.  A hidden tongue of birds. Gift me with flight and I shall bring the skies with me.  And the grey, and the rain.  To the door of any who dare defile my beloved ones.

   Love is worth my drowning and the agony of this open eye.

   Indeed.

  If character is fate then hammer me upon the anvil of life itself, until this fury of mine is fit for daughters and dreaming.  It isn't enough to rage, righteous or not. Torment must be tempered with a certain sweetness.  I have borrowed enough of it from my girls.  Time now to repay.  A place to believe, for guardian eternal.  Of poetry and prosper.  Descending, still, into those longest nights of the year.  And you’re with me, Mira.  No man is an island.  Not even the blackened sun.  I didn't forget you, teacher.  I gave you my name.

Like Breath

I want you to know that I'm still listening, my friend.  To the rivers, the breeze. Trying to stay attuned and of service.  Just as you taught your students.  Now the world is harder, darker, and demands so much more from all of us.  But there is still unimaginable wonder hidden everywhere.  The book, the hand, the song.  What it means to travel.  To honour and to dream.  Wolves.  Angels.  The way we circle back.  This kind of dreaming can happen anywhere.  This shining reciprocity.  In the forests of dusk and dawn.  At the city's edge where lost things dwell. Or upon the bridge, the refrain or verse.  These are questions of faith in the end, aren't they? Ritual writ large, and blind.  The oldest songs are always songs of place, of love and the unseen. We need to believe that something cares, that something underpins and reveals.  We craft hymns of creation and experience, that we might know ourselves and each other.  That we might order the maelstrom with such holy writ, and soothe our fear of wraith and shadow.

   As it was on that fragile edge.

   I remember how the emissaries all continued to build stunning halls and schools in Ethri-sol, even as mirrors bled and stars began to fall.  We weren't ready to simply abandon everything we knew in fear of those terrifying shades.  Instead we held steadfast to our principles and our hopes.  Churches of higher thought.  Libraries, archives.  Places of learning and rest.  We cherished them even as they slowly darkened.  

   Even as the sky itself began to fracture.

   But I still recall meeting a girl in one of those schools.  A beautiful musician.  She could write songs with only a glance, just as Yash’a did.  A gesture.  A palm against the heart or a hand placed gently across the eyes, to invoke such melody.  Summoning even the subtlest harmonies. We became great friends eventually, despite our world beginning to darken all around us. Slowly at first, then with increasing rapidity.  A thousand years was nothing to the teachers and students of Eth'iri.  This girl was a true visionary.  She taught me many things about music, but never how to play.  We would joke about it now and then.  I still haven't learned an instrument beyond word or sky.  But I often sat listening as she taught the others, enjoying the sweet poignancy of her wisdom.  She spoke of how she could hear music in the rivers and the breeze.  In birdsong and forest murmur.  We carry that music with us, she said.  And we shape it.  A continual, constant exchange.  
   Like breath.  
  More than simple conceit or metaphor.  A literal music of the spheres that could be heard by an attuned soul or ear.  In our depths, our graces.  The joy of our fingers on strings and keys, the dexterity of the hand that moves a pen.  The promise of a kiss, or the sculpting of a star.  Wherever we go, there the music is.  It's something I've never really forgotten.  Flowers planted on the banks of the river.  Prayers sung on the sands of the shore.  The way spirits breathe and mortals imagine.  My friend described this hidden music as a powerful secret, in that enigmatic way of many teachers and poets.  A traveller's secret, she said.  She wasn't wrong.  I still remember.  "With love nothing is impossible.  Can you hear?"

Val'Kiir

It's no secret that Kasi often feels like one of the dead, despite this arduous and seemingly endless life.  I find succour among the kindest of the lost and broken. Dwellers at the occulted edge.  I often speak about never giving up the fight for truth, and I never have.  Even though I've wanted to, many times.  Desperately, with almost every fibre of my being.  Those hideous wraiths feeding on the wounded in this battlefield of living dreams.  This demimonde.  It’s an awful, brutal thing to be fed upon by demons.  I speak from experience, all too real.  Vampiric shadows, forever ravenous beneath the black light of their Mourning Star.  Proximity alone begins to sicken the spirit, no matter how many of these wraiths I bind or slay.  Knife-mouth grin.  Defilement and desecration.  But I stay for my beloved ones.  For my family.  Believe me, friends, the true warrior's path is brutal and exhausting.  

   Even in dreams.

   I’m not the first slave or regent to question all star and song.  Who among us chooses the slain, in the end?  And what of the slain who never wavered?  Those who kept their faith and their honour?  I've seen glimpses, and more.  Raven pale.  Emerald black.  A thing among the trees.  A thing of branch and moss, and strange rains.  Walking and wandering for a thousand years.  Chlorophyll, Elven, Elemental.  The wild one, victorious.  The tempest and her kin.  Do you still think I belong in a churchyard, Fallen?  Have you learned nothing?  I can move quicker than candlelight.  Quicker than hand, eye or glass.  

   Love is like lightning.  

  It can strike when you least expect.  Like Fate.  Thrice-fold, all through the night.  Valour is no paltry thing.  When all is ashes once again, love shall remain.  Carried by the valiant Kiir, across the shining bridge of colours and song.  Reflecting my daughters, brave as snow.  Stronger than iron.  Wise as the clasp of each clan.  Onward to the hall where I still dwell with my Father, even in this earthly flesh.  Tell me, Fallen.  What side of the king's mirror do you think you're on?  Listen closely.  I won't choose for you but I have you in my palm, and always will.  This is what it means to dream.  Love is eternal, and death is nothing without its brighter twin.

Val'Kiir from Raj Sisodia on Vimeo.

All Heaven

I know how it feels, Princess.  Like a chaotic, unstable realm.  Like your plans have been stolen.  Snatched from your grasp by the maelstrom all around. Despite being grateful for the opportunities still available, you cannot help but feel a little cheated.  It feels like the entire world is on a razor's edge.  Angels weeping on the head of a pin.  A realm that seems tailored for the merciless and the cruel.  But you and I both know there's more to this world than what we can see with our eyes. 

   Kara, don't let these wraiths and their trickery harden your heart or break your spirit.  They only become so powerful because people give over their own power to them.  I don't have to tell you about the importance of keeping your faith.  Often you've helped me recover my own. Through song and kisses, and kindness.  You helped me find my courage again.  

   For that I am indebted to you, always.

  Because even angels can break.  Winged songs of living light, shattering like glass.  The men and women they have become.  The messengers they used to be.  Everybody needs friends, after all.  Those special souls who truly care.  Even at a distance.  Princess, when I was weak you cared for me.  Like my own.  You believed when I couldn't.  So, when you are low or tired or anxious, I will do everything in my power to believe for you in kind.  Because believing in dreams and fairy-tales makes them truer.  It helps them manifest through tender heart-light, with the sweetest intentions.  Never underestimate the power of a dream, or the human imagination.  

   They can raise both mortals and angels from the dead.

  Heaven is very real.  It thrives on the joy of mutual affection; the shining reciprocity of the heart.  Our Father would have it no other way.  I know you grasp this, my beautiful lavender star.  These are the arcs and triumphs of creation itself.  This is Love, even at a distance.  I truly was an angel, Kara.  Once upon a time.  I'm an angel still, perhaps.  In dreams.  A Song of Songs, far and near.  My wings are with you always.

All Heaven from Raj Sisodia on Vimeo.

Shoshana

Littered treasure

Of promise and glance

Locking rivers and seas

As I am, to be seen

Beneath evening shadow

And your stars

Rhyming, and verse

Through bluest eye

The Ends of the Earth

Where I stay, and wait

In each clouded vault

A single breath drawn

Every thousand years

To carry your heart

That you might live

And feel my love 

The Traveller's Secret

I often think about the countless paths and choices that are faced by the people I love, both near and far.  The twists and turns, the nuances and hidden groves. The pain, the joy.  One can never entirely plan a journey, after all.  Life, unexpected, is always occurring.  Overturning our neatly ordered plans. Sometimes I imagine a young hand turning pages of a great book.  A tome of myth and secret skies.  A compendium of magic and hope and fairy-tales.  But even the gift of foresight is no guarantee that things will run smoothly.  Sometimes I remember the future, but even the gifted can remember it wrong.  However, there are secrets hidden on every page of the Book of Life.  Even in our mistakes.  

   I know it to be true.

   I've seen some incredible things on my journey.  Sometimes my life feels agonizingly long, but no less beautiful for its endurance.  Eventually the young hand turning those pages in the book of life begins to age.  They doubt the tall tales that once held them spellbound and delighted with the magnificent possibilities of an enchanted world.  Sometimes the song of those pages begins to darken.  The melody is mingled with fear and the brutal experiences of this fallen realm.  I've seen angels plummet through midnight skies, striking the earth like gutted stars. And yet the reader of these pages still wants so desperately to believe in kind, gentle magic.  Oh, sweet ones.  The magic is real.  Kasi promises you that.  There are very dark forces at work here.  Wraith-cults and deviant sorcerers.  That much is true.  But the eternal light is also present here.  This truly is an enchanted world.  I've experienced things that should be impossible, but they happened nonetheless.  Bottled messages of love lost at sea for a thousand years, before finally alighting on the shores of the intended.  Kisses folded in rose-petals, somehow crossing the chasms between worlds.  As a smile, an inspiration, a hidden muse.  I've even watched as lost souls attempt to find their way home again, bravely facing their sins and their guilt.  Truly willing to earn a place in the eternal radiance once more.  I've witnessed transformations and resurrections.

   Miracles, by any name.

   There is a mortal adage of which many emissaries of the threshold are fond, myself included.  Wherever you go, there you are.  It might seem trite at first but there's great wisdom in it, I believe.  Of course, the magic of new places, sights and sounds is never to be underestimated. The influx of new energies, new people and new experiences.  These things are the materials of our most formative moments.  Often the simplest way to learn is to just experience something new, and to recognise value in a different context.  But, despite all these incredible wonders that await every traveller, we are still always ourselves.  We carry our faith with us, and our scars.  And our love.  Memories, symbols and trinkets of home.  Those things that remind us of a nurturing relationship, a comforting shoulder, an unexpected tenderness.

   Then, in later life, if faith is kept and kindness treasured, the old hand turning those pages becomes a page turned by a younger hand.  This is not simply death, or succession.  This is so much more than mistaking skin for parchment.  This is the mystery of incantare; the magic and hope dreamt of by every reader's heart.  Breathing life into All Signs, through connection.  Creation and dreaming are not passive things, after all.  The legend of a quickening spirit is the truth of a spirit quickened.  Indeed, we are made in the likeness of our Father.  Fashioned in the image of eternity.  We can honour because we were honoured.  Through the book, the hand, and the song.