Cynthia A. Morgan's Blog, page 24
October 15, 2023
Autumnal Fire – #Poetry of the #NaturalWorld
Autumnal Fire
Sweet Flame of Inspiration
Singing to my Soul
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Poetry and Art by
~Morgan~
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If you’d like to see more of my artwork, please visit my DeviantArt page
September 29, 2023
Cymbalyn Quintets – #Scifi #ConceptArt
I’ve created a new alien race, one which I may eventually write a book or series around and would love your feedback 
In the Cymbalyn realm, which exists in the 16th alternate reality, humanoids exist in quintets. Each group of five consists of one Seer, who has no eyes; one Hearer who has no ears; one Speaker who has no mouth; one Scenter who has no nose and one Feeler who has no hands. These quintets are psychically melded and utilize cybernetic enhancements to act together as one being.
Cymbalyn Sightless Seer
Cymbalyn Scenter
Cymbalyn Hearer
Cymbalyn Feeler
Cymbalyn Speaker
Art and Concept by ~Morgan~
September 24, 2023
#Inspiration and #Artistry
Poetry and Art by ~Morgan~
If you’d like to keep up with everything I’m doing, sign up for my monthly newsletter by visiting my author website
If you’d like to see more of my artwork, please visit my DeviantArt page
August 29, 2023
A Perspective of Truth in our Fractured World
I love this post, so I had to share it.
Not because it’s written by a friend of mine (who’s awesome!) and not because he writes much the same as I do and I understand what he’s saying without having to do a deep dive into the metaphysical subconscious psyche.
I love it because it’s a great perspective to have in a world where our perspectives are, so often, criticized, condemned, and/ convoluted.
I hope you’ll take a moment to read Why the Safety Dance is so Important, and maybe a few more of Love With A Capital L’s words 
http://lovewithacapitall.com/2023/08/29/why-the-safety-dance-is-so-important/or – Love With A Capital L
~Morgan~
August 27, 2023
Passage- A #Fantasy #ShortStory- Conclusion
Getting up slowly, he glanced down at himself. He should have been covered with mud, but he wasn’t; he was barely dusty at all….and…he was also glowing!
With all the other peculiarities that had overwhelmed his attention in the spectral ambiance of this new environment, he hadn’t paid attention to himself. He’d never seen his aura before; he’d never really given it any thought, but here it gleamed into the rose-hued shadowlight, impossible to ignore. And as his emotions shifted from the rage and terror he’d felt just moments before back to curiosity, the color of his aura shifted. Cascading sparks of crimson cooled to lush indigo-violet hues that made his skin appear bluish and other-worldly.
The hovering murmuration of sparkling lights lingered over him, as if equally beguiled by his discovery, and from the floating conglomeration, he began to hear voices. Like hers, the language perplexed and eluded him; nevertheless, the sound was soothing in a way he could not explain. Scanning the horizon for the figure he’d been tracking, he found he could still see her lithe silhouette amid the shadows and barren rock in the distance. She hadn’t disappeared. Instead, she seemed to be watching or, perhaps, she was waiting. It didn’t really matter which; all that mattered was the fact that she…it….whatever it was… hadn’t slipped away into the unknown.
Softly, her voice called to him once again, crossing the distance that remained between them; yet now it felt even closer than before, as if she stood beside him. Looking down at himself another time, he felt greater excitement than bewilderment and all he wanted was to reach the woman so he could get answers for all the questions tumbling through his mind. He didn’t waste time contemplating the peculiarity of his aura or the strangely familiar voices whispering to him from the light. He didn’t speculate over what it meant or why the ropy arm of slimy earth had tried to drag him under, into their realm.
Their realm. The realm of darkness, of death. How he knew these things, he didn’t know; yet from somewhere deep inside himself, he realized he’d always known. Known about the dangers of the darkness, the treachery of the ground and the reason why the beings of this place lived in the air. Each moment that passed brought greater clarity, despite understanding how or why. Shaking his head at these realizations, he looked up at the hovering lights as an image formed in his mind. A vision of this place, not dark as he saw it now, but bathed in glimmering, sparkling light as if seen from within the vast murmuration of sparkling beings.
“Weston.”
His name drifted on the breeze, echoing from the shadows even as the light from the mass of sparkles dancing over him flashed brightly… for an instant. She called to him by name, refocusing his attention, and he couldn’t resist the urge to run. Her whispers became softer as he drew closer; then stopped altogether as he suddenly stepped from the distance into closeness.
He stared at her; mesmerized, just as she stared at him. She looked into his blue eyes, her own gaze as peculiar as everything else about this place. Violet in color, her eyes seemed to glow from within, sparkling much the way the lights did that still hovered over him. She looked him up and down, his tall stature and the strength of his body emphasized by the odd ornamentation of cloth covering his body. She seemed fascinated by him, yet the expression within her scintillating gaze held recognition and undeniable affection. A smile curved her pale lavender lips into a delicate smile and he returned her curious stare, both intrigued and startled by what he saw.
Lissome and irrefutably beautiful, she stood bathed in a semi-translucent rose-tinted light he hadn’t noticed from the distance. Her shimmering silvery hair, sleek and long enough to reach her knees, reflected this delicate pink hue. The color of her skin seemed to mirror the atmosphere around them, Rosy-purple in hue, she seemed to shimmer from within. She stared back at him and he understood that she was one of the sparkling entities that floated around him.
A star-being in human form, yet entirely unclothed.
The sight of her made his senses spin and a wry smirk turned the corner of his mouth. Not too difficult to figure out why, given her unclad state, but why he felt so irresistibly drawn to her was less easy to sort out. She stood before him, no longer whispering, though it seemed he could still hear her. Was it possible she was communicating with him telepathically? Certainly. It was also possible that he’d slipped over the precipice of reason and had lost his mind entirely .
He could be lying unconscious in the cool grass of Astonbury Corners, having tripped over the old well and knocked himself out by hitting one of it’s rocks. Everything he’d experienced could be nothing more than an elaborate dream concocted by his sub-conscious and his overactive imagination. It would certainly be a lot more reasonable than thinking he’d stepped through some sort of magic portal into an alternate reality where the ground was treacherous to walk on, where the air itself was alive, and where an alluring female stood before him, exquisite in every detail and beguiling him with some form of telepathy…or magic.
But she was beguiling. Exquisitely.
Unconcerned about the fact that he was quite certainly dreaming, and unhindered by the watching star-beings, who shimmered their myriad lights as if encouraging him, he stepped forward and gazed down into her upturned face. Drinking in the soft blush of her cheeks, the delicate smile turning her lips, and the spectral glimmer in her eyes, he reached out with a trembling hand to touch her. Lightly, hesitantly, he allowed his fingers to trace the contours of her cheek, her neck, and the tempting curve of her bare shoulders.
Each second seemed to transform into thunder as the gentle contact of his touch ignited an irrepressible, passionate yearning within him. His intense inspection of her brought his attention back to himself when he realized that, in the shifting spectral shades of the atmosphere his skin was reflecting the rosy-violet light just like hers did. He stared at his hand, perplexed, as an unanticipated notion suddenly filled his mind.
He remembered her.
She was his Love.
He was home.
The End
Words and Art by ~Morgan~
If you’d like to keep up with everything I’m doing, sign up for my monthly newsletter by visiting my author website
If you’d like to see more of my artwork, please visit my DeviantArt page
August 24, 2023
Passage- A #Fantasy #ShortStory- Part Four
With a squelching sound, the grasping arms of velvet mud yanked down on him and he went sprawling into the dust. Ripples spread outward from the point of his impact even as dust and gravel bit into his skin as he skidded across the solid surface of the ground. Coming to an abrupt halt, he cursed and spat out the debris that filled his mouth. Shaking his leg, he tried to free himself of the clasping tentacles pulling him backward into the quagmire of slime and muck that seemed to exist in the same space as the gravel he’d fallen onto. He scrabbled forward, away from the grasping mud, but the landscape absorbed the sound as if he spoke into a pillow. The deep baritone of his voice was insignificant and almost feeble, but it instigated an immediate response. An onslaught of vicious laughter. It echoed from nowhere and everywhere, swirling around him in a dizzying, infuriating rush and, the moment it began, the sound of her whispers ceased.
Clambering to his feet, he glared around him, realizing, at last, that the sparkles he’d thought were only water molecules in the atmosphere reflecting the odd, oscillating light had drawn closer. Much closer. No longer shimmering in the distance, they hovered directly over him, pressing inward, seething around him like an angry swarm of bees. He even swatted at them instinctively, but in the ethereal void into which he had plunged, nothing was as it should be. The ground was both solid and liquid. The air seethed with glittering sparkles that apparently had some level of cognitive awareness, and no matter how long he walked, he didn’t go anywhere.
Growling with frustration, he glared upward at the mass of glitter spiraling around him, seeming to glare back. He turned his back to the bog, challenging the mass with repeated shouts of “What?” “What do you want from me?” They didn’t respond, but in his distraction he didn’t see the enormous tendril that reached up from heaving muck behind him, encircled him like a viper and immediately began to constrict.
Screaming, he flailed wildly to free himself, but the air was expelled from his lungs with such pressure he could barely draw another breath, let alone offer any sort of resistance. Pulling him downward as the thick tendril compressed the air from his lungs, the leviathan creature, or whatever it was, laughed again.
Seconds twisted into hours.
Breaths became blades.
Blackness swirled at the edges of his vision.
From above, a shrill sound pierced the heavy atmosphere. The twinkling lights that had danced and sparkled harmlessly spiraled into a blazing maelstrom. The dark, rippling surface of the ground retracted from the glaring light as it streaked downward, surrounding him and the gargantuan arm that constricted around him with seething, intense energy. The shrill cry resonating from within the searing light was piercing and he cringed from the sound. The delicate sparkling light was suddenly as intense as lightning, stabbing and arcing around him at the thick slime slowly dragging him down into the mud. It reacted by rearing upwards and swinging first in one direction, then another before it shook violently, but the marauding swarm of light persisted in its attack.
The compression against his body began to ease and when he looked down, he could see the ropy tendril was melting, falling in great globs and droplets into the muck from where it came. Fighting to free himself, he drew a deep breath and fell to the ground even as the swarming lights pursued the rapidly disappearing tendril of slime. Scrambling away towards safer, dryer ground, he didn’t stop until the laughter and high-pitched screaming faded into silence.
Then and only then, he fell onto his back, coughing and gasping for breath and watching as the vortex of blazing light disseminated outward into a sparkling cloud once more. It hovered over him, moving like a murmuration of birds and he became aware of the female voice once again. Soft and soothing, her intonations were echoed by the collective lights and he stared up at them in amazement, realizing suddenly that they were not simply emitting sounds; they were communicating.
.
The Story Finale remains….
Words and Art by ~Morgan~
If you’d like to keep up with everything I’m doing, sign up for my monthly newsletter by visiting my author website
If you’d like to see more of my artwork, please visit my DeviantArt page
Read Part OneRead Part TwoRead Part ThreeWith a squelchin...
With a squelching sound, the grasping arms of velvet mud yanked down on him and he went sprawling into the dust. Ripples spread outward from the point of his impact even as dust and gravel bit into his skin as he skidded across the solid surface of the ground. Coming to an abrupt halt, he cursed and spat out the debris that filled his mouth. Shaking his leg, he tried to free himself of the clasping tentacles pulling him backward into the quagmire of slime and muck that seemed to exist in the same space as the gravel he’d fallen onto. He scrabbled forward, away from the grasping mud, but the landscape absorbed the sound as if he spoke into a pillow. The deep baritone of his voice was insignificant and almost feeble, but it instigated an immediate response. An onslaught of vicious laughter. It echoed from nowhere and everywhere, swirling around him in a dizzying, infuriating rush and, the moment it began, the sound of her whispers ceased.
Clambering to his feet, he glared around him, realizing, at last, that the sparkles he’d thought were only water molecules in the atmosphere reflecting the odd, oscillating light had drawn closer. Much closer. No longer shimmering in the distance, they hovered directly over him, pressing inward, seething around him like an angry swarm of bees. He even swatted at them instinctively, but in the ethereal void into which he had plunged, nothing was as it should be. The ground was both solid and liquid. The air seethed with glittering sparkles that apparently had some level of cognitive awareness, and no matter how long he walked, he didn’t go anywhere.
Growling with frustration, he glared upward at the mass of glitter spiraling around him, seeming to glare back. He turned his back to the bog, challenging the mass with repeated shouts of “What?” “What do you want from me?” They didn’t respond, but in his distraction he didn’t see the enormous tendril that reached up from heaving muck behind him, encircled him like a viper and immediately began to constrict.
Screaming, he flailed wildly to free himself, but the air was expelled from his lungs with such pressure he could barely draw another breath, let alone offer any sort of resistance. Pulling him downward as the thick tendril compressed the air from his lungs, the leviathan creature, or whatever it was, laughed again.
Seconds twisted into hours.
Breaths became blades.
Blackness swirled at the edges of his vision.
From above, a shrill sound pierced the heavy atmosphere. The twinkling lights that had danced and sparkled harmlessly spiraled into a blazing maelstrom. The dark, rippling surface of the ground retracted from the glaring light as it streaked downward, surrounding him and the gargantuan arm that constricted around him with seething, intense energy. The shrill cry resonating from within the searing light was piercing and he cringed from the sound. The delicate sparkling light was suddenly as intense as lightning, stabbing and arcing around him at the thick slime slowly dragging him down into the mud. It reacted by rearing upwards and swinging first in one direction, then another before it shook violently, but the marauding swarm of light persisted in its attack.
The compression against his body began to ease and when he looked down, he could see the ropy tendril was melting, falling in great globs and droplets into the muck from where it came. Fighting to free himself, he drew a deep breath and fell to the ground even as the swarming lights pursued the rapidly disappearing tendril of slime. Scrambling away towards safer, dryer ground, he didn’t stop until the laughter and high-pitched screaming faded into silence.
Then and only then, he fell onto his back, coughing and gasping for breath and watching as the vortex of blazing light disseminated outward into a sparkling cloud once more. It hovered over him, moving like a murmuration of birds and he became aware of the female voice once again. Soft and soothing, her intonations were echoed by the collective lights and he stared up at them in amazement, realizing suddenly that they were not simply emitting sounds; they were communicating.
.
The Story Finale remains….
Words and Art by ~Morgan~
If you’d like to keep up with everything I’m doing, sign up for my monthly newsletter by visiting my author website
If you’d like to see more of my artwork, please visit my DeviantArt page
August 22, 2023
Passage- A #Fantasy #ShortStory- Part Three
Her voice filled his mind, becoming a soliloquy of sound unlike anything he had ever heard. It was more than temptation borne upon the breeze; her whispers spun his thoughts and made his heart hammer. It didn’t matter that he could neither understand the language she spoke nor hear her intelligibly enough to even make out distinct words. The melody of her voice drew him forward and, with each step he took, the sound of her voice seemed to grow sweeter, though inexplicably softer.
The barren terrain stretched out before him, an expanse as empty as his life had been until the moment he’d chosen to step through the portal. The sky over head was the only thing that moved, awash in a perpetual motion of countless points of light. As he trudged across fields of pebbles and shale, time stretched out and his anticipation grew. He walked for what felt like hours, but appeared to make little or no progress. He neither seemed any closer to the shimmering horizon, nor any farther from the point where he’d started.
Then, in the distance, a shape appeared against the star-jeweled horizon. A lissome silhouette he could just barely see through the scintillating atmosphere. It was enough to make him quicken his pace. Each rhythmic step seemed to mirror his rushing pulse, though why such excitement thrilled through him, he had no idea. The figure was indistinct, outlined against the pulsating light of the rosy-amethyst horizon, and it didn’t seem to move or even react to him.
Focused on crossing the morass of dark, undulating ground, he didn’t notice the twinkling lights that hovered closer and closer around him like a thick swarm of insects. Aware only of the horizon that never seemed to grow closer and the whispering voice of the figure he pursued, he ignored everything else. Ignored the moisture of the atmosphere that beaded on his skin like shimmering sequins of blue and green. Ignored the slurking sound that had begun following him.
The only thing that mattered was her voice. It was beguilingly close, as if she stood right beside him speaking ever so quietly in his ear, though she stood at the limits of his visual perception. He knew she was calling to him, though her language perplexed him. He wasn’t even sure if it was a language or, perhaps, some form of nonverbal communication. A song of tone and intonation alone.
Unable to concentrate on the irregular terrain while her voice beguiled and clouded his thinking, he stumbled more than once, but he couldn’t keep his attention focused on his feet. What’s more, the longer he walked, the more unusual the sensation of walking seemed to become. Certainly, it was an ill-conceived idea to walk across such jumbled terrain without looking where he was putting his feet, but he felt suddenly very awkward and ungainly. He tripped repeatedly.
As he trudged across the expanse, his boots scrunching into the dry gravel and kicking up swaths of dust that coiled upward into the sparkling air like smoke curling from an extinguished flame, the velvety surface began to heave behind him. Like concentric rings that spread outward from a source of disturbance, the undulating ground took on the appearance of dark water.
No, not water. The soil itself moved like a viscous bog, slogging outward from each step he took; outward and upward. It was only when he glanced down to reorient himself that he happened to notice a gelatinous tendril reaching up behind him, grasping at his boot, but it was enough to distract him from the melodious inducement singing in his mind. Before he could figure out what was happening, however, a second ropy tentacle of velvety slime clutched upward at him and entwined itself around his ankle.
.
Words and Art by ~Morgan~
If you’d like to keep up with everything I’m doing, sign up for my monthly newsletter by visiting my author website
If you’d like to see more of my artwork, please visit my DeviantArt page
Passage – A #Fantasy #ShortStory – Part Two
Instantly, time seemed to stand still and he stood with it, motionless. A bright flash of purple light surrounded him, but there was no sound of clangorous chimes and no noise of battle into which he was hurled. Instead, there was nothing at all. Nothing, and at the same time, within the nothingness, a swarm of minuscule lights began to ebb and flow.
Slowly. Inward, then outward, and back again. Warping and bending and, with each oscillation, coming closer. Possibly, it was a result of his shifting perception. Perhaps it was nothing more than a fragment of his imagination. Whatever it was, though, it materialized around him into completeness and he stood looking at it with astonishment and wonder.
Where had he come? What was this place?
A dimly lit expanse of mystery filled his questioning gaze, innumerable points of light filling what had been empty only seconds before. They sparkled like stars, yet were as close to him as the air itself, surrounding him with shimmers of dancing light that both beguiled and bewildered. Made unsteady by their movement, he glanced down at the ground beneath his boots and his confusion mounted. The ground beneath his feet appeared much as he expected it to. Rocks, gravel and dust; yet the surface undulated slowly like ripples of water, although he stood perfectly still and the ground felt entirely solid.
Curious, he crouched down and reach out to run his fingers through the gravel and dust at his feet. Grayish-crimson in color, the soil felt like dust and gravel, but it reacted to his stirring motion like thick, slow-moving water. Stretching and rippling outward behind the uneven line he drew in the dusty appearing surface, the ground became more of a viscous goo that clung to his fingers and seemed to reach upward for him when he drew his hand away in surprise. A sensation of dread washed over him and he stood upright, unsettled by the discovery though not entirely certain why.
Looking outward into the bejeweled atmosphere, he noted the softly pulsing, pinkish-purple light that filled the sky. There was no visible source of this light, no sun or moon or any other celestial body that caused the sky to glow, but it glimmered, luminous and ethereal, all the same. As he stood contemplating, he recalled the imagery he’d seen in the vision just before he stepped into the portal; a vision of this place, despite the fact that he’d never seen it before.
Or had he? The glimmering light reflected in his liquescent cerulean gaze as he scanned the landscape, drinking in the scene that was both foreign and familiar when a whisper, just above the point of perception, hinted that he was not alone.
A feminine voice drifted on the soft breeze.
Stepping into the shimmering darkness of the landscape, he cast about him in search of the speaker. Strangely, her voice seemed to echo from the distance more loudly than from the nearby. The sound was soft and subtle; still, it drew him like an intoxication he could not deny. It serrated through him, as chilling as ice drawn across exposed skin, while at the same time it gave him a sense of calm he’d never felt before.
Was the voice familiar? Had he heard it before?
Searching the landscape as he turned in a full circle, the barren surroundings offered no evidence of her existence. Stretching outward toward a rose-hued horizon awash with stars, the odd, gravely-velvety ground transformed into rocky terrain somewhere between a point that was neither near nor far. It undulated like a serpent, moving as if of its own volition and blurring perception. The terrain seemed flat and two-dimensional while also appeared to warp and shift in and out of focus. He rubbed his eyes and shook his head, trying to refocus.
Crossing such an expanse would be challenging in ways he couldn’t begin to calculate, but, just as he’d known he had to step within the portal, he knew he had to cross it. Her voice called to him just as the portal had. It urged him forward into the unknown and tempted him to throw caution to the wind. Again. Reaching for his phone, he tried to get his bearings by checking the compass app, but the phone was inert as a stone. Not surprisingly, it wouldn’t even turn on.
“Already crossed the bridge. May as well see where it brought me,” he muttered to himself as he replaced the phone back onto his belt. The sound of his voice was swallowed by the sparkling atmosphere, making it sound oddly unfamiliar and off pitch. He suddenly didn’t sound like himself, but, for some reason, the whispering serenade of the feminine voice sang clear as the sweetest birdsong and filled him with eagerness.
Her voice was more than just familiar. Though he had no rational explanation, he knew he’d heard her voice before. Many times.
“Weston.”
Again, she called out to him, and, like before, as the softly echoing sound of his name reached his ears, a vivid image filled his mind’s eye. A woman dressed in sparkling blue stood gazing at him. She was held in someone’s arms. No, not just someone. The vision contracted, rushing outward and away, but what he saw was undeniable. She was held in his arms.
Determined, as well as immensely curious, he dragged his boot through the peculiar, velvety gravel, marking the place where he’d crossed with a large X. Not very original perhaps, but without any large stones with which to indicate where the portal was, he needed some way of finding his way back. Although, as he took one final look around, he realized there was no circle of stone on this side. There was nothing at all. Just as he’d feared, the portal had dumped him into obscurity and vanished.
Now, the only option was to find the woman who kept calling to him and get some answers.
.
Words and Art by ~Morgan~
If you’d like to keep up with everything I’m doing, sign up for my monthly newsletter by visiting my author website
If you’d like to see more of my artwork, please visit my DeviantArt page
August 21, 2023
Passage – A #Fantasy #Shortstory
.
Rippling waves of translucent violet light erupted around him, causing him to raise his hands over his head and stoop low. At the same time, a strange sound like strident bells clangorously chiming combined with a heavy, monotonous drone seemed to spin around him and disoriented him in an instant. Beneath his feet, the earth lurched sideways without warning and he tumbled to the ground in a heap. Before he could orient himself, the oscillating sound was replaced by the unmistakable clashing of metal upon metal.
Looking around from beneath the protection of his raised arms, he found himself in the middle of a violent battle! Warriors dressed in strange green and silver armor grappled against others wearing robes of deep scarlet red. Thousands of men and hundreds of massive, six-hooved beasts surged around him in a chaos of noise and calamity and he barely had time to avoid being trampled in the melee before the thunderous sound of hooves rushed up behind him. Rolling away instinctively as one of the six-hooved beasts trampled past, he bumped against something solid and, at the contact, the images blurred and began to spin.
A lot like his stomach.
Gritting his teeth against the rush of sickness swelling inside him, he pressed backwards against the opposing force he could not see and the sharp droning sound returned. Once again, he was enveloped within undulating waves of violet light and, as abruptly as the phenomenon began, it ended.
Closing his eyes to catch his breath, he shook his head, desperately trying to assimilate what had just happened. As a man with an engineering degree, he knew everything had a rational explanation, but logic didn’t seem to apply to what he’d just experienced. He looked around, but the battle and strange creatures were no longer there. Flummoxed, he pushed himself up from the grass covered ground to gaze around yet again. The field where he’d been walking was exactly the same as it had been. No warriors or strange glowing lights; no curious sounds or clanging swords, nothing. Just an open meadow filled with wild growing grass and flowers…and the remnants of an old stone well that was practically invisible, concealed by the thick grass.
He’d kicked it by accident, but that was all it had taken to send him tumbling into….whatever it was he’d tumbled into. Taking a step away from it cautiously, he examined it with a critical gaze. To the unsuspecting glance it was little more than an irregularly shaped circle of rocks. The perimeter wasn’t much more than two feet in diameter, but its depths fell away beyond view, shielded by darkness, despite the fact that it was a bright, clear day and he should have been able to see down into it quite a way. Leaning closer to peer more carefully into its darkness didn’t reveal anything and he couldn’t stop himself from finding a rock to drop into its deep chasm.
Not entirely unexpectedly, the stone was immediately swallowed up by ripples of violet light and vanished.
“What in the…” he couldn’t find an expletive to match his bewilderment. Standing dumbstruck into silence, he considered several possibilities, but, regardless of how many times he tried to argue the point with himself, only one explanation seemed to make any sense. He’d literally stumbled across a portal.
Inexplicable? Yes.
Impossible? Apparently not, because although he didn’t remember how it happened, his forearms bore the evidence of his first foray into the unknown. They were bleeding and he knew grass didn’t cause road-rash. Brushing himself off absently, he stared at the well trying to reason out what he’d just experienced. Grabbing his phone, he opened it to the camera and snapped a quick a picture, but upon reviewing the image, he discovered the only image captured was grass. Perplexed, he stepped back from the well, aimed more carefully, and took another picture, but it resulted in yet another image of lush green grass. No rocks, no well.
“Impossible.” Aggravated, he strode closer to circle of rocks that was rapidly becoming more vexing than curious, pointed the viewfinder down the center of the well and shot again. The result was a ring of green grass with a blurred patch of blue and purple in its center, blurred like a fingerprint on an old Polaroid. Staring at it with a potent combination of frustration and confusion, an unexpected sense of deja vu washed over him. Something about the image felt familiar, but, although he stared at it for many long moments, the answer he sought eluded him.
Without warning, his phone rang.
Jerking back at the sound, he dropped the device and watched as it bounced off the edge of one of the rocks encircling the well and landed face up with the name Peadrick glaring at him. Rolling his eyes at himself with a supplementary curse, he stooped to retrieve the now silent phone and swiped across the surface to read the message from his co-worker.
Weston, todays mtg r/s to 9/14
Bring reports II, XI, & XV
“Perfect.” Now he had all the time in the world to figure out what was going on instead of having to rush off to work. Taking a moment to change his calendar before replacing the phone on his belt, he looked down at the well again. Despite having walked that field nearly every day for the last five years, he’d never once stumbled across it before; yet today he’d literally walked right into it. Was it possible he simply hadn’t seen it for five years?
How? He’d walked that field a hundred times before and never once ran into a wall of purple light or ended up nearly trampled by a figment from the myths and legends he’d studied in primary school. Yet there it stood, a passage into the unknown silent and waiting.
No, not silent. It didn’t make a sound, not now, but he couldn’t deny it beckoned him. Somehow, it drew him to it like a magnet and, though he tried repeatedly to dissuade himself, he couldn’t stop wondering where this lost vestige of time had transported him? It had taken mere seconds; yet it seemed he’d traversed centuries of time, or, perhaps, countless light years. If he stepped into it again, would it send him back to the same place, right in the middle of a bloody battle, or would he end up somewhere else? Did it go to only one place or many?
As he stood considering, a bright image flashed in his mind’s eye that made him raise his hand to his head and close his eyes. It was gone almost instantly, but the memory of the vision remained. Blurred and bizarre, it held him transfixed and he stood with his eyes closed as he struggled to retain the imagery. An alien landscape, dark and mysterious. A luminous, violet-pink sky, the light flickering like a candle and in that sky, a myriad sparkling stars. Shaking his head, he tried to comprehend the vision. It was neither a scene from a movie nor a place from any book he’d ever read. Still, it felt strangely familiar.
There was something else as well, fleeting and barely perceptible. Hazy blue figures that seemed to glow from within danced in his mind, wavering like a mirage; yet not as alien as they should have seemed.
Looking down at the circle of rocks, he took a moment to feel his head for any bumps or bruises. It was possible he’d hit his head when he’d fallen and was now suffering the consequences, but his head was fine. At least, outwardly it was. Stepping away from the well…the portal….whatever the hell it was, he wondered. Had it been a hallucination of some sort? Had he just imagined the battle?
Of course not. Imaginations didn’t cause you to bleed and, whether he could explain it rationally or not, something had happened. Standing perplexed, he let his thoughts run wild. Where had he gone? What race of people had he encountered and what dangers, other than beasts with six hooves and warriors bearing weapons, might he confront if he crossed again? Would he return to the same place or would he be transported somewhere else? On the other side, would the portal stand ready to return him or would he be lost in a vortex of time and be unable to find his way back?
There were too many questions, too many variables and he was a fool to even be considering them. If the impossible was actually possible and the circle of rocks was more than just an old well, but a portal instead, could it be a doorway into the past or the future, or it could be a trap waiting to swallow him alive? Was it an entrance into realms unknown where he could explore cultures, races and creatures beyond his wildest imagining or was it a danger beyond his most horrible nightmares? Would it close over his head and trap him forever in oblivion?
The morning light’s splendor stretched across the field and the ancient rocks encircling the portal, sparkling in the chasm of its center as if it was still filled with water. It urged and whispered with silent tones, but they were impossible to ignore. He couldn’t explain how or why, but he couldn’t deny that it asked him to step forward. It prompted and compelled him, coaxing and luring, and each moment its urging became more urgent.
Glancing around the open meadow, he drew a deep breath. At any other time in his life, he would never have considered doing something so inherently dangerous, at least not without performing a few hundred tests and analyzing the results until no questions remained. Yet now, the silent well persuaded him with unspoken persistence and with each passing moment his resistance faded. Should he step within or remain amid the languid familiarity of his present reality?
Another flash of bright, violet light filled his mind and he squeezed his eyes closed, desperate to see the images more clearly, but again they were fleeting and strange. Silhouettes of hazy blue danced around the periphery of his mind. Sparkling lights melded with the sound of voices speaking in a beguiling language he didn’t understand, but which sounded….somehow… familiar. As he listened, a single word formed out of the incomprehensible sounds. It floated on the shifting breeze, echoing out of and into the silence and when it reached him, the face of a woman flickered in his memory.
“Weston.”
Opening his eyes to stare down at the well with startled bewilderment, a determined expression overtook his features. Logic and caution be damned. Moving to the edge of the well, he made a motion as if to step across, but paused. He might be inescapably tempted, but he wasn’t a complete idiot. Not yet, anyway. Grabbing his phone, he returned to the message from his coworker and typed a hasty response.
Pdrick, If I don’t show at 9/14 mtg, come to Astonbury Corners. Find old well roughly ½ mile from road. Possible portal. I stepped within.
Nodding once with satisfaction, he replaced the phone on his belt, drew a deep breath and stepped forward to kick the stones of the well.
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Words and Art by ~Morgan~
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