How the World Begins

Morbid Fascination

Story Summary:
What if T.S. Elliot got it wrong? What if it was the brginning of the world we should be worried about? Rate for intresting takes on the Bible.

Posted:
12/20/2004
Hits:
268
Author's Note:
WARNING: I've taken a spin on the Bible you might not necessairly agree with, I don't mean to offend you but there it is.


On Monday they just get tired of it and sidestep into another world. There are only half a dozen of them sane enough to leave, to get out. They are the people no one looks at, the minor players, and they have nothing to do with the fighting. Padma, Luna, Charlie holding her hand, Teddy, Oliver, and Cho, the thin wisp that remains of her anyway, enter through a gap in the apocalypse.

And everything looks just as it shouldn't. Like a contemporary artist slathered mud over gravestones, and the air tingles with the moans of the dead who aren't managing to walk, not even in this skewed world.

Time stands fast. Silently, mouths moving but only sand on glass comes out, they walk on into that horizon. The problem with this is that the horizon is getting closer.

Luna does not like the way the sun is melding itself as a permanent landmark in her iris. It is too bright, too strong, too powerful, too wicked. Padma doesn't really notice the way Luna sinks back into the night they're leaving behind. Charlie does feel her hand leave his either, two hundred miles later plus a month he feels how cold his fingers are.

As Charlie contemplates the chill of his hands Luna finds her, frolicking in a bed of moon drenched lilies. Her mother cradles her head, a sparkling finally infuses her watery eyes, and her hair is not quite so dull anymore. Cornsilk splays over the night sky, making the stars shoot amongst the flowers.

The cold in his fingers dies as the fireballs grows nearer, the swirls of pastels mingling together. Charlie falls to his knees, too weak to care that one of his brothers could have done this. He sorely wants a pillow, and that is all he needs. A pillow, simple and feathered, covered in a harsh hand knit. As he thinks this a pillow appears already under his head, orange even though he knows it should be green. Charlie crashes his head on the surface, and sleeps for time memorial. The sun sprouts fingers while he sleeps, mountains cocoon over him in a blanket, and the yarn turns green.

Green was Parvati's favorite color, dimly Padma is aware that this should mean something more to her, but it doesn't. Cho comes up to her, thin and frail, too underfeed from their previous dimension where there were people to judge her. Padma and Cho can only limp together, though they are not holding each other up because they are too weak to manage. If they keep going they'll get there, so they have to keep walking, keep struggling, their feet sinking into weathered parts of the ground. In the end though we all fall down.

Teddy comes to two near matching graves, and knows he won't make it one step farther on, instead the heart stops and when the blood begins to trickle it is blue because it has never made it though the world. Cho and Padma had beds to sleep in, their perfect images forever immortal in the waters of the future.

Teddy left Oliver standing before a grove of trees that seem to have sprouted in strange directions. And he has to wonder how they are so entirely wrong when they are feeding him and sheltering him from whatever got the others. He knows he wasn't alone when he ran away. But he has to continue to go forward, slowly losing his clothes until there is nothing left to wear. He walks on for six days, as water joins him to wash his feet, sun burns over his face to spatter him in freckles, and he wishes for a future in this new reality.

The dead join him one night, no longer shrieking over the barren sands. Red hair falls on his chest, a woman dances over him, laughing lightly and vanishing away behind veiled shrouds.

On Saturday Hermione can't find a book with her answers and she sidesteps into a new world alone. The wishes Oliver made on Luna's stars become the truth and Charlie guides a body through riverbeds to his humble realm. Her hair clings to her wet form, she too has nothing to wear, and maybe it is that fibers haven't come into creation yet. Her eyes crack open under Charlie's upturned palms and together she and Oliver begin to build a utopia that they know won't last.

After seven days they rest. On the eighth they have to sidestep again.


Author notes: Go ahead and review but don't flame me because of my spin with a relgion, you were warned before you read or because you like Elliot and I don't.