Part XII: Change
Vines will remain for days and days around my neck. A brace, something to help. My birthing of Iksander may not be the norm, but recovery it still requires.
On the next morn Earth Child holds Iksander.
"Ooooo-oooo."
"That's right." I say smiling as I sit beside them.
***
Iksander does not eat at first, it concerns me.
Mother Sky and Earth Child teach me. In the center I must stand. Vortex of earth, water, and air. Close my eyes. Feel the vibrations and the warmth.
A beam of it concentrated like fire and thought bathes over us.
Different every time, powerful energies these. Laws here begin to make sense. Iksander fights it sometimes.
Birds and flowers and bees. So many they come. All for him I know.
Black walls.
No.
No longer a triangle. Now only a single circular wall, at the center of which sits the holy structure.
At night he shines like a star, casts colors and illusions, visions.
He wakes me frequently. Psychic assaults against my mind. I am not prepared, but I will learn. Tireless nights and frustrating days. And despite an odd diet dirty diapers, always dirty diapers.
***
Months or years I cannot tell, he grows so fast, too fast it feels. The dilemma of parenthood: the delight of raising, the pride of success, but the sadness of each fleeting moment, the desire to hold each one and cherish it til endless time.
Earth child and he are great playmates. Fights occasionally but mostly glee.
Precocious in many ways. Old he seems. Far too old for his age, yet still the world is anew to him.
Through Iksander I see lines never imaginable before. Where once my spells were weak in this place, now grow stronger. I have begun to teach him the art of weaving the laws as once my mother did for me. I wish she could see him, more potent than any wise master she is. They would do well together, Iksander and she.
And yet even without the weave, Laws by instinct he knows, no doubt the birthright of his father, that lumbering pollinator. Fire is to him as if it were his own hand.
Speeches unknown he speaks. Birds. Birds especially, a commander of them he is. When first I saw him leap from the tree I nearly died of fright. Flight is his though.
Not only his father, traces of myself in him I see. Pensive, and reserved, lonesome sometimes. It fills my heart with ache some nights. He is still small, I put it from my mind.
The archive he loves book after book, voracious is his interest. When something has caught his attention he speaks and speaks his strange and endearing bird-like speech.
For all his peculiarity, still just a child he is. My child.
***
Curiosity is his nature, and bigger he grows.
Too much like me he is.
It has taken me time to learn his speech and his ways, his mother I am. Yet still he exceeds me in many things.
Excited he was to bring me and happy I was to indulge my happy son. Until now.
Here they are. Unchanged, waiting.
The sigils in the wall he has found and things which I have left dormant arise.
"Shbwa?" He inquires.
***
No more lullabies to me are sung. I've returned to it since the muse will not sing.
I miss the neckball, how once I loathed it. Now what an ally it might be.
Regardless the song matters, I know. It speaks like fates to me. The final verses.
In dreams like gardens grew
Old and new
Shattered shared
Sweet waters, light blossoms
It sounds like salvation
But on a winter wind you tossed
Away you went and now a bridge that was,
Remains, remains again.
True love a coal grows cold
A soul old
Burn burn tinder ash
Grow grow and return
Oh true love return
Return, return again
***
I've tried and tried again, figure it out or let it go. But it sticks like gum or graffiti to a desk. Bridge, Pregnant, Ouroboros.
More I've tried to drive him away from it. Yelled at Iksander and demanded as a parent he stay away.
Jealousy.
He seems closer to it than me. I want to take it from him.
Retreats and withdrawn from me sweet Iksander grows.
And then I hate myself.
A bridge stays. A parent dies. A child flies.
Useless and furious.
Pain and sadness and love.
So why I remain?
It feels like death more than death.
Sky mother has tried counseling me, earth child wants nothing to do with me. My little family feels broken and I am the source of its agony. Defenses are up, I've never been this way before.
I want to weep. A bridge stays.
***
A triangle again. No longer a circle. The walls.
Inconsolable pain, greatest pain.
He has gone I know. Through the wall he went.
***
Days and days
Tears and tears
To the wall I have gone but it stings like isolation. Sealed itself once more after his departure. Touch it. Desperate hands, frail slender fingers, this the closest I can be to him. Last he knows of his mother is my weakness, crippling and lament.
I failed you Iksander. I just wanted you to stay a little longer. You've gone so fast.
Branches grow bare, chandeliers they are. Never a winter here, but now grows cold. Sky mother has tried to reach me to bring me out, but I shrug her off. Earth child it hurts to see him.
Drag and drag
Moment to moment why go on?
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