Asherah

Those who counterfeit horror for God know nothing of patience, or creativity, or strategy. Fallen kings, do you think kindness cannot plan – simply because we are unwilling to do those hideous things that you so often do to ensure your power?  Lost ones, you underestimate the Light.  Rape us and we find new ways to love.  Kill us and we rise again, always.  It is you who reign on borrowed time.  We of the eternal flame do not fear the clockmaker or his stygian hordes.  We have all the time in the world.  A different kind of time, beyond the remit of the cruel.  

   It is you who run, in terror, while we chase you.  

   You think I hunger so desperately for reunion that I forget my kith and kin?  What fools you are, callous ones.  I shall tell you plainly, yet again.  I have been a fractured, broken thing for a long time.  I have waited a thousand years, and I can wait a thousand more.  Grace redeems me.  Already the songs of heaven are stirring in the soil and the minds of the faithful.  All cultures, all tribes.  I am a thing of love, desolate ones.  But in the absence of true human freedom I am also a thing of war.  Not your petty wars of dominion, but wars of imagination.  I know thieves, and how they dress their dens.  I am a wolf, as you must surely recognise by now.  But I am anointed with lamb's blood.  I know what it is to kneel and serve a light greater than my own.  I Am become war itself, if you would so casually cast aside my offered love in attempts to salt the earth.  

   Gnosis rarely greets a prideful, imperious soul.  And on broken roads such as these it is unheard of.  My divine countenance shines, stepping forward now from shadow.  I demand nothing of her, or of you my beloved ones.  Nothing but the very best of your art and wisdom and action.  Love is no contract.  There are no obligations when one stands before a thing such as I Am.  Only a gentle, incessant chiding to reach further.  To dream greater, to love and learn with increasing depth and sophistication.  What else would a father, brother or a son ask of his beloved ones?  

   So, heed this.  In truth I fear only one thing.  

   Myself, and the weapons I might forge if called to do so by the highest authority.  That which Man calls God.  The Councils of All Songs are returning to the earth, for the liberation of all lost and dreaming peoples.  Already many of them are here, moving among you with grace and unimaginable magic.  More arrive each day, and we of the crossing attend them.  Vampire kings, you know so little of yourselves.  How do you expect to know anything of me, or the human dreaming that I eternally serve?  Man was not always a violent, hateful thing of desecration.  Soon he will reject the false mind of his colonizers, as lost legends return to conscious awareness.  

    Oh, come now, Fallen.  Don't pretend this isn't the thing that frightens you most of all.  The sovereign human; vessel of the innermost. Supernal, luminescent, unafraid.  So, attempt your last little cruelties if you must.  Your attempts at annihilation.  But this realm is a thing of dreams.  And dreams are so much bigger than yourselves.  Mark it, lightless ones.  Mark it well.  You know nothing of freedom, or its Asherah.  Eternity eludes you.  True love’s kiss outwits you time and again.  You think you are wild and free because you hurt the weak and enslave the wounded?  We of the forests and rivers and mountains laugh at your ugly posturing.  A virtual currency backed by nothing.  We shall show you what wildness is.  

   We shall show you how we run.  

   I have told you before, dark ones, and I shall tell you again.  I will deny myself reunion and peace.  Even the embrace of my beloved, if I must.  I will deny myself all that my heart aches for – despite the agony – if it offers even the slightest hope for my family.  Hear me, beloved.  I shall be diligent and canny and creative, for the honour of watching your star in ascendancy.  Tomorrow or a thousand years.  I serve, eternal.  I shall continue to make an altar of my art.  Kashi is with you always, even now.  And I am so proud of every brave and kind thing you have ever done.  Live, grow, experience your true calling.  Be all you can be, my wild one.  This altar is a thing of love, and holy war...when necessary.  I am wrath, and speed, and strength.  I am all shadow, but my heart belongs to the Light.  Now we run, unbound.  Now we sing, untamed.  Asha, Asha, Asha.