How About Them Apples? (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
applespice) wrote2011-03-11 08:30 pm
applespice) wrote2011-03-11 08:30 pm
LJ Idol - Week 17 - Open Topic - The Better To See You With
Even after the world caught fire and the rivers and lakes burned away, the temple at the edge of the sea stood sentinel over black waves. It was built of stone that had been scoured white by salty wind, and was unornamented apart from the stone wolf’s head that rose on a spire forty feet in the air. The spire had been there long before the wolf’s head, bare and sharp as a fang, though records of that time had been purged from the temple’s library. The bold black letters bearing the former name of the place had been covered over with white paint. Even if the words had been visible, they would have had no meaning now. The world had grown and withered and changed, and the old ways had been forgotten.
Lue liked to watch the sea, sitting on the lip of a rocky overhang with her robes and black hair snapping in the chill wind. It was only when she looked out on the water that she felt alive – a miniscule heart beating red and rich and vibrant in a colorless world. Whenever she could, she slipped out of the dormitory and stared out at the waves, dreaming of boats and kites and sea monsters that would bear her away from this cold, rocky hill. Lately she even crept out of the temple during prayers, the headache that pounded down on her in the smoky, fragrant building dissolving at the first rush of sea air.
They were praying now; she could hear the murmuring of voices coming through the wind in low, musical bursts. She didn’t fear being caught, really – most of the other devotees were so enraptured during prayer that they wouldn’t notice if she cartwheeled out of the building. It wasn’t likely that anyone had noticed her edging out of the door while all heads were bowed, silent as a wraith in her bare feet.
She had never felt the same euphoria that seemed to grip the others during prayer. The temple left her cold, even with all of its lush trappings – the heavy black velvet curtains, the carefully painted scenes of running wolves… even the minutely crafted silver statue of the wolf god himself, with its sparkling golden eyes, did not move her to gasps of wonder like it did the others. Sometimes Lue wondered if anything apart from the sea could move her heart. A curious way, she thought, for the living receptacle of a god to feel.
For Lue, it was said, was god-touched. She had been chosen by the wolf god before she had even been born, and marked with his sign – golden eyes, like his. Old Bett, the grey woman that ran the tiny women's dormitory, told her that her mother had brought her to the temple the day the sign was clear, tears dripping from her chin.
“She were only a simple woman,” Bett said, “and rightly god-fearing. She knew the temple was the only place you’d be properly cared for, so she gave you your name – all she had to give, the poor thing – and handed you over to Master Lycus himself.”
Master Lycus was the religious leader at the temple, a tall, broad-shouldered man with an imperious manner and eyes and hair the color of lead. He was as close to a father figure as Lue could remember having – a distant father, perhaps, but a father all the same. He was Lue’s primary teacher, as he did not trust the others to instruct her properly in the ways of the order. As she grew older, Lue understood that this controlling aspect of his character was born out of true devotion to the wolf god rather than an overbearing personality, but she still chafed at it. She chafed at everything about temple life. As far as she was concerned, she hadn’t asked for golden eyes, and just because she happened to have them didn’t mean that her entire life should be signed away to a god she didn’t even believe in.
It had taken a long time for her to decide that she didn’t believe in the wolf god, but once she came to that conclusion there was no undoing it. The thought was like a knot in her belly. Everything in her life led in and out of it. She just didn’t understand how anyone could be happy in this life – cloistered in a miserable huddle of rocks, praying for hours to a god who never seemed to listen and certainly never replied.
A sudden lash of rain struck her face. Lue knew she should go inside; the rain would make it obvious that she had left during prayers, and the devotees would be upset with her for putting her health at risk. She was their treasure, and they treated her like a piece of sea glass rather than a girl of fifteen summers. When she stood, though, she walked along the cliff-edge rather than back toward the temple. She couldn’t bear the thought of going back there, into the musky, incense-wreathed room and the garbled roar of prayer.
The rain was falling in sheets now, coursing through her hair and into her clothes, soaking her to the bone. It clouded her vision, and she imagined a bridge of water shimmering in the air, leading her up over the ocean and into another world.
And then she heard the scream.
Lue whipped around like a rapier. Even through the downpour, she could see a thick column of smoke rising from the roof of the temple, and a flashing tongue of flame. For a moment she froze, indecisive, and then tore toward the building, her wet robes flapping heavily around her.
Just before she reached the door, it slammed open, and Master Lycus staggered out. Behind him, she could hear jeering laughter and screaming, twisted together in a horrible, cacophonous melody.
“Lue,” Master Lycus gasped, and he threw out one of his large, calloused hands to push her aside. “Get away!”
“Where do you think you’re going, old man?” The sound of booted feet, and raucous calling from a dozen male voices. Master Lycus looked at her desperately, and the fear in his normally impassable face spurred her to action. Quick as a flash, she slipped around the edge of the temple, blood hammering in her ears.
She knew she should run for the dormitory, at least, or find a place to hide, but there seemed to be an invisible chain linking her to Master Lycus. She could not see him, but she could hear him, his strong voice rising above the pounding of the rain.
“Stop! We are people of peace, dedicated only to service of our god. Do not harm us!”
More laughter. The sound went through Lue like a spear, setting her heart afire.
“We don’t like your god, old man. He’s a pretender, like you, and needs to be stamped out. We worship another god – the only god. We are here in his service.” The voice was harsh with anger and pride.
Master Lycus murmured something that Lue did not catch, and the harsh-voiced man snorted derisively. Lue felt a sob rise in her throat, and she bit her lips to keep it in. “Stop your begging. We are here in the name of righteousness, and the pleadings of devils do not move us. Now get on your knees. Joshua!” Lue assumed he was calling to one of his comrades. She listened closely, tears burning her eyes, but Master Lycus said nothing else. Instead there was the sound of metal, the cold, sibilant hiss of it, and a whistling like the wind. A ragged cry, and then only the sound of rain. The door to the temple slammed.
For a moment, Lue remained where she was, shuddering with fear. Then she tore herself from the wall and ran back around to the front of the temple. What she saw there drove her to her knees.
Master Lycus’s body lay on the cold ground in front of the temple. Blood pumped from the open maw of his neck, flooding into the sparse winter grass. His head was gone. Retching and shaking violently, Lue vomited onto the ground in front of her. The world shimmered, blackened, and refocused. All thought had abandoned her. She could imagine nothing further than Master Lycus’s broken body and the smell of bile in her nose.
And then, from within the temple, the screams began again. It was almost as though they were being torn from her own throat, ripped from the darkest place inside her. Others were dying – being slain, mutilated, and maybe even worse – and here she was, cowering helplessly in the rain. A sudden burst of energy arced through her body like a bolt of lightning, and she leapt to her feet with a howl. She moved faster than she thought possible, with strength she did not recognize as her own. When she threw open the door, it seemed to her that she ripped it from its hinges and threw it in splinters behind her. All the hair on her body stood on end, and she felt her lips draw back into a savage roar.
Eyes glinted at her from inside the darkened temple, and she smelled smoke and blood and fear. There was no laughing now. In seconds she picked them out – men in crude leather armor, with a white sigil of two crossed lines across their chests. They gaped at her. Beyond them she could see the shapes of bodies on the floor.
For an infinite moment, they did not move. And then, suddenly, the white flash of a reaching hand and a glint of steel. Rage burst from her throat in a guttural growl, and she tore down the center aisle, her vision flooded with golden light and the taste of blood in her mouth.
Afterward, she could remember nothing but a handful of images - the open mouth of one of the men, his scream vibrating on the air; the snapping of a bone under her hands; the warm wash of blood over her tongue. When at last she came back to herself, she was kneeling on the floor of the temple, ringed in leather-clad corpses. She did not see them. Before her was the statue of the wolf god, his golden eyes picking her out of the darkness like burning coals. He drew her gaze like a magnet, and the air between them shimmered with power. She saw the smile between his teeth, the love and pride in his glinting eyes.
She burned the bodies of the devotees, piling incense on the fire. Master Lycus's head she removed from the pike on which it had been impaled, and she stroked the lead-colored hair before she consigned it to the flames. The men in armor she flung over the edge of the cliff, watching their bodies shatter on the rocks below. Her strength no longer surprised her - she could feel the wolf god in every stretch of her muscles, in every beat of her heart. His power was hers now, vicious and terrible and beautiful.
The statue she placed in a nook on the cliff face. She imagined him watching the sea, his brilliant gaze piercing through the darkest of sea storms.
When she left the temple, she did not look back. She carried only the merest provisions, but she did not worry about that. The wolf god would provide. Already she could scent blood and bone on the air, and the heartbeats of hundreds of creatures thrummed in her ears. Her loping steps seemed to carry her miles in an instant, the world an array of color and taste and sound around her. And under it all, the golden touch of the wolf god flowed like ichor in her veins. Where he led, she would follow. She would feast on the flesh of his enemies. She would see them broken under her hands.
As daylight slashed the purple sky with gold and palest blue, Lue stopped and sniffed the air. Her black hair lay matted against her back. Her eyes glimmered. Her lips, darkest red, drew back into a hungry smile.
Lue liked to watch the sea, sitting on the lip of a rocky overhang with her robes and black hair snapping in the chill wind. It was only when she looked out on the water that she felt alive – a miniscule heart beating red and rich and vibrant in a colorless world. Whenever she could, she slipped out of the dormitory and stared out at the waves, dreaming of boats and kites and sea monsters that would bear her away from this cold, rocky hill. Lately she even crept out of the temple during prayers, the headache that pounded down on her in the smoky, fragrant building dissolving at the first rush of sea air.
They were praying now; she could hear the murmuring of voices coming through the wind in low, musical bursts. She didn’t fear being caught, really – most of the other devotees were so enraptured during prayer that they wouldn’t notice if she cartwheeled out of the building. It wasn’t likely that anyone had noticed her edging out of the door while all heads were bowed, silent as a wraith in her bare feet.
She had never felt the same euphoria that seemed to grip the others during prayer. The temple left her cold, even with all of its lush trappings – the heavy black velvet curtains, the carefully painted scenes of running wolves… even the minutely crafted silver statue of the wolf god himself, with its sparkling golden eyes, did not move her to gasps of wonder like it did the others. Sometimes Lue wondered if anything apart from the sea could move her heart. A curious way, she thought, for the living receptacle of a god to feel.
For Lue, it was said, was god-touched. She had been chosen by the wolf god before she had even been born, and marked with his sign – golden eyes, like his. Old Bett, the grey woman that ran the tiny women's dormitory, told her that her mother had brought her to the temple the day the sign was clear, tears dripping from her chin.
“She were only a simple woman,” Bett said, “and rightly god-fearing. She knew the temple was the only place you’d be properly cared for, so she gave you your name – all she had to give, the poor thing – and handed you over to Master Lycus himself.”
Master Lycus was the religious leader at the temple, a tall, broad-shouldered man with an imperious manner and eyes and hair the color of lead. He was as close to a father figure as Lue could remember having – a distant father, perhaps, but a father all the same. He was Lue’s primary teacher, as he did not trust the others to instruct her properly in the ways of the order. As she grew older, Lue understood that this controlling aspect of his character was born out of true devotion to the wolf god rather than an overbearing personality, but she still chafed at it. She chafed at everything about temple life. As far as she was concerned, she hadn’t asked for golden eyes, and just because she happened to have them didn’t mean that her entire life should be signed away to a god she didn’t even believe in.
It had taken a long time for her to decide that she didn’t believe in the wolf god, but once she came to that conclusion there was no undoing it. The thought was like a knot in her belly. Everything in her life led in and out of it. She just didn’t understand how anyone could be happy in this life – cloistered in a miserable huddle of rocks, praying for hours to a god who never seemed to listen and certainly never replied.
A sudden lash of rain struck her face. Lue knew she should go inside; the rain would make it obvious that she had left during prayers, and the devotees would be upset with her for putting her health at risk. She was their treasure, and they treated her like a piece of sea glass rather than a girl of fifteen summers. When she stood, though, she walked along the cliff-edge rather than back toward the temple. She couldn’t bear the thought of going back there, into the musky, incense-wreathed room and the garbled roar of prayer.
The rain was falling in sheets now, coursing through her hair and into her clothes, soaking her to the bone. It clouded her vision, and she imagined a bridge of water shimmering in the air, leading her up over the ocean and into another world.
And then she heard the scream.
Lue whipped around like a rapier. Even through the downpour, she could see a thick column of smoke rising from the roof of the temple, and a flashing tongue of flame. For a moment she froze, indecisive, and then tore toward the building, her wet robes flapping heavily around her.
Just before she reached the door, it slammed open, and Master Lycus staggered out. Behind him, she could hear jeering laughter and screaming, twisted together in a horrible, cacophonous melody.
“Lue,” Master Lycus gasped, and he threw out one of his large, calloused hands to push her aside. “Get away!”
“Where do you think you’re going, old man?” The sound of booted feet, and raucous calling from a dozen male voices. Master Lycus looked at her desperately, and the fear in his normally impassable face spurred her to action. Quick as a flash, she slipped around the edge of the temple, blood hammering in her ears.
She knew she should run for the dormitory, at least, or find a place to hide, but there seemed to be an invisible chain linking her to Master Lycus. She could not see him, but she could hear him, his strong voice rising above the pounding of the rain.
“Stop! We are people of peace, dedicated only to service of our god. Do not harm us!”
More laughter. The sound went through Lue like a spear, setting her heart afire.
“We don’t like your god, old man. He’s a pretender, like you, and needs to be stamped out. We worship another god – the only god. We are here in his service.” The voice was harsh with anger and pride.
Master Lycus murmured something that Lue did not catch, and the harsh-voiced man snorted derisively. Lue felt a sob rise in her throat, and she bit her lips to keep it in. “Stop your begging. We are here in the name of righteousness, and the pleadings of devils do not move us. Now get on your knees. Joshua!” Lue assumed he was calling to one of his comrades. She listened closely, tears burning her eyes, but Master Lycus said nothing else. Instead there was the sound of metal, the cold, sibilant hiss of it, and a whistling like the wind. A ragged cry, and then only the sound of rain. The door to the temple slammed.
For a moment, Lue remained where she was, shuddering with fear. Then she tore herself from the wall and ran back around to the front of the temple. What she saw there drove her to her knees.
Master Lycus’s body lay on the cold ground in front of the temple. Blood pumped from the open maw of his neck, flooding into the sparse winter grass. His head was gone. Retching and shaking violently, Lue vomited onto the ground in front of her. The world shimmered, blackened, and refocused. All thought had abandoned her. She could imagine nothing further than Master Lycus’s broken body and the smell of bile in her nose.
And then, from within the temple, the screams began again. It was almost as though they were being torn from her own throat, ripped from the darkest place inside her. Others were dying – being slain, mutilated, and maybe even worse – and here she was, cowering helplessly in the rain. A sudden burst of energy arced through her body like a bolt of lightning, and she leapt to her feet with a howl. She moved faster than she thought possible, with strength she did not recognize as her own. When she threw open the door, it seemed to her that she ripped it from its hinges and threw it in splinters behind her. All the hair on her body stood on end, and she felt her lips draw back into a savage roar.
Eyes glinted at her from inside the darkened temple, and she smelled smoke and blood and fear. There was no laughing now. In seconds she picked them out – men in crude leather armor, with a white sigil of two crossed lines across their chests. They gaped at her. Beyond them she could see the shapes of bodies on the floor.
For an infinite moment, they did not move. And then, suddenly, the white flash of a reaching hand and a glint of steel. Rage burst from her throat in a guttural growl, and she tore down the center aisle, her vision flooded with golden light and the taste of blood in her mouth.
Afterward, she could remember nothing but a handful of images - the open mouth of one of the men, his scream vibrating on the air; the snapping of a bone under her hands; the warm wash of blood over her tongue. When at last she came back to herself, she was kneeling on the floor of the temple, ringed in leather-clad corpses. She did not see them. Before her was the statue of the wolf god, his golden eyes picking her out of the darkness like burning coals. He drew her gaze like a magnet, and the air between them shimmered with power. She saw the smile between his teeth, the love and pride in his glinting eyes.
She burned the bodies of the devotees, piling incense on the fire. Master Lycus's head she removed from the pike on which it had been impaled, and she stroked the lead-colored hair before she consigned it to the flames. The men in armor she flung over the edge of the cliff, watching their bodies shatter on the rocks below. Her strength no longer surprised her - she could feel the wolf god in every stretch of her muscles, in every beat of her heart. His power was hers now, vicious and terrible and beautiful.
The statue she placed in a nook on the cliff face. She imagined him watching the sea, his brilliant gaze piercing through the darkest of sea storms.
When she left the temple, she did not look back. She carried only the merest provisions, but she did not worry about that. The wolf god would provide. Already she could scent blood and bone on the air, and the heartbeats of hundreds of creatures thrummed in her ears. Her loping steps seemed to carry her miles in an instant, the world an array of color and taste and sound around her. And under it all, the golden touch of the wolf god flowed like ichor in her veins. Where he led, she would follow. She would feast on the flesh of his enemies. She would see them broken under her hands.
As daylight slashed the purple sky with gold and palest blue, Lue stopped and sniffed the air. Her black hair lay matted against her back. Her eyes glimmered. Her lips, darkest red, drew back into a hungry smile.
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I just play devil's advocate, what can I say? ;)
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Just because you don't believe in your god...
A fascinating piece.
Re: Just because you don't believe in your god...
Thank you :)
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I really liked this.
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You really involve all the senses. I forget to do that. Great job!
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I'd actually like to write a longer version of this story with this being a kind of prologue, but only time will tell!
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