❖
If hunger from a day’s trekking, unease from a lengthening promise hangs heavy in the air between two men, Modea only glances sidelong at Irineu. Green-tan frogflesh glinting against a black throat, nucleus of temptation condensing, before turning away.
The brush thins, emerges into a worn sacbeob path. The pillars which flanked either side reduced to their bases and engulfed by fruiting ficus, flaming gurania, phalanx bromeliad.
(Heraclitus’ only book destroyed, Democritus’ works lost, Pythagoras’ every credit contested.)
Modea had never seen such violet against yellow, red against blue. Overabundance, near-pointillism, phantom gradients of simultaneous contrast.
Peppered by light rain, Modea ducks beneath the colonnades. Archways shaded by matted curtains of vine whose white-pink flowers litter the ground.
(Pythagoras, branded a mathematician, his incarnations lost in time, his metempsychosis petered into oblivion.)
The colonnade’s end diverts against a small temple. Modea slips through the broken wall. Sight adjusts, though light, speckling from the roof through corded vine, casts red onto a row of limestone troughs.
He passes two, stops at the third. His head dips and, ever slowly, eyes fluttered closed, his tender, stiffened jaw releases its prey into the murk inside.
(A barbed cilice digging deeper with every step, released at sundown with a seductive relief so great it nearly eclipses God Himself.)
Modea, capitoline, bowed, gaze now locked fully with his conspirator, ready to drink.
(If his are burning salt, then whatever sacrificial lamb they purify is in the name of something that has yet to ever answer.)
He presents Irineu with no mantelpiece, but a viscous slurry of plant and animal from the pagan forces of this lowland: hidden tubers unearthed by the ash witch to the east, prairie blossoms worn by the meadow girl to the west. The moorland frog which has numbed his tongue into prickling static and corded vine from this very vestige of humanity, bled by a claw, sap thickening the mixture into its final tar-like consistency.
The crinkle of humor along his nose and crow’s feet relent: if Irineu allows him to drink first, the man will be safe to watch him writhe, foam, and possibly die in this concrete catacomb.
“Mostre me?”
The brush thins, emerges into a worn sacbeob path. The pillars which flanked either side reduced to their bases and engulfed by fruiting ficus, flaming gurania, phalanx bromeliad.
(Heraclitus’ only book destroyed, Democritus’ works lost, Pythagoras’ every credit contested.)
Modea had never seen such violet against yellow, red against blue. Overabundance, near-pointillism, phantom gradients of simultaneous contrast.
Peppered by light rain, Modea ducks beneath the colonnades. Archways shaded by matted curtains of vine whose white-pink flowers litter the ground.
(Pythagoras, branded a mathematician, his incarnations lost in time, his metempsychosis petered into oblivion.)
The colonnade’s end diverts against a small temple. Modea slips through the broken wall. Sight adjusts, though light, speckling from the roof through corded vine, casts red onto a row of limestone troughs.
He passes two, stops at the third. His head dips and, ever slowly, eyes fluttered closed, his tender, stiffened jaw releases its prey into the murk inside.
(A barbed cilice digging deeper with every step, released at sundown with a seductive relief so great it nearly eclipses God Himself.)
Modea, capitoline, bowed, gaze now locked fully with his conspirator, ready to drink.
(If his are burning salt, then whatever sacrificial lamb they purify is in the name of something that has yet to ever answer.)
He presents Irineu with no mantelpiece, but a viscous slurry of plant and animal from the pagan forces of this lowland: hidden tubers unearthed by the ash witch to the east, prairie blossoms worn by the meadow girl to the west. The moorland frog which has numbed his tongue into prickling static and corded vine from this very vestige of humanity, bled by a claw, sap thickening the mixture into its final tar-like consistency.
The crinkle of humor along his nose and crow’s feet relent: if Irineu allows him to drink first, the man will be safe to watch him writhe, foam, and possibly die in this concrete catacomb.
“Mostre me?”
❖