|
TITLE: Escaping Twilight AUTHOR: seraC EMAIL: seraphcelene@yahoo.com RATING: G ARCHIVING: Essential-Imperfect. All others please ask. SUMMARY: A slayer in Egypt, 74 - 44 B.C. Imagine if your mother knew. THANKS: Moonwhip for the beta and encouragement. NOTES: Spare, very spare. I once read somewhere that twilight is a very magical time. A liminal time, it's like a window between our world and other worlds. People blessed (or cursed) with extrasensory gifts are, supposedly, often born at twilight. FEEDBACK: Is like air and highly addictive. In other words, yes please! DISCLAIMER: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the idea for slayers and watchers, etc. belong to Joss Whedon, UPN, Mutant Enemy, et al. The characters in this story are originals and are mine. “There was no sound. There was instead, a cessation of sound... A kind of sound you never notice until it stops.” -- Susan Sto-Helit, Soul Music I was born on the Nile. I was born during the quiet time, the holy time, in the stillness that rises just before nightfall. My mother said that the sky was afire, blazing gold and red, on the day that I was born. There was awe in her voice when she remembered, and fear. //Fear, always fear.// She was running, escaping. From what she would not name. To name gives power. Say it aloud and they will find you. //Running. Always running. Big City. Safety in numbers. Lost... to be lost in the crowds.// My incessant childhood questions -- who, why, how -- were never answered and eventually I learned not to ask. We never returned to her village, and in truth, I never even discovered where it lay, except that it was somewhere north. Somewhere in the Lower Nile River Valley. My mother seldom spoke of her past or her birthplace. //Hunt you. Find you. Hurt you.// Eyes and ears everywhere. Be Silent. There is safety in silence. My mother stopped speaking when I was ten years old. It was a gradual withdrawal. Small silences that stretched into forever as she slowly lost her words. //Defense. Habit. Retreat.// And then one day I realized that I couldn’t quite remember the sound of her voice. Language was a dance of eyes and hands, gestures. Her sharp black eyes speaking everything. Seeing ... everything. Soothing. Angry. Such sharp black eyes... //Protect the child. Preserve the light. Silence. Golden. Stony. Unrelenting.// Later, when she would speak it was like a dream. What I could remember of her once melodious voice reduced to tarnished silver from disuse. A jagged sound crumbling around the words. Rambling moments that surprise for their suddenness. Her voice falling like rain, flooding us like the Nile, swift and insistent. It was almost as if she couldn’t halt the river of words that answered all the questions I had ever asked. But in the relief of knowing I wanted more. Always more. More answers for more questions. She would get lost on those days. Hot summer days that baked the children playing in the streets, the adults standing guard simmering in the available shade. Memories of her childhood catch us unawares and she speaks. The words tumble out in disjointed collections of moments long past: friends, family. Love. //Never to be named. Never named. Never.// Even trapped in the vague dream state of memories, she remembered this most important of rules: Never name. I pieced together the story. Fragments. It’s still a broken life and I was too young to hear all the words or to decipher the meaning. But this I know: She came alone; my father abandoned somewhere on the journey. Abandoned. I wonder at that word. There is sadness and loss in her eyes. Not dead. Alive? Abandoned. She clings to the idea of my grandmother. I can hear the softness of skin and feel the texture of love in her voice. I see eyes, like mine, dark, wide and almost too big for her face. I see mystery and laughter and magic... And then it is gone. My mother relapses into silence. Golden. Stony. Unrelenting. She is lost. Adrift, like I am adrift. Anchored to one girl in all the world. One. Singular. Alone. Separated. Isolated. She by her increasing malady of the mind and I... And then she died. My mother died. My mother. In the quiet. Night. Just before dawn when her soul should have returned from its wandering. In the quiet of our silent house I heard the sound of her breathlessness. I heard the lack of breathing. The lack of the one sound I clung to. The only real sound my mother made. I heard the lack and my own too-loud heart beating in my ears, the only sound to disturb the now too-quiet night. And I knew relief and ease and stretched my arms in gratitude for the end of her suffering and mine. My grandmother waiting in the afterlife. //Kiss and embrace. Peace.// What is left is the hope that, maybe, the darkness that hounded us would die with her. Alone, but not afraid. I was fourteen when he came less than week later. I was no longer alone, but still isolated, separated, in the dark. One girl in all the world. //Hounded. Haunted. Hunted.// .Slayer. And it all made sense. My mother chased for the fruit she would bear, the child she would gift to the world. Running, constantly, always hiding. Chased in life, in dreams. Terrified. I remember the fragments of her nightmares. Something that waited. Devouring. Claws. My father abandoned for sake of his life. And I was born at twilight. The quiet time, the holy time. I was born just before dark in a felucca floating towards Cairo during the hush that falls over the world as it gives way to the unrelenting night. Forever trapped, caught between the dark and the light. Neither here nor there. And I move further into the shadows then even my mother was willing to drag me. Isolated. Alone. Separate. Haunted. Hunted. Watched. .Slayer. end |