Call it Zorya
This piece was originally published in Star*line Dec. 2008 (the prose poetry issue), and for some reason I feel like reposting it here today. It is probably because the being in this piece wanted a name change (I've known her for almost twenty years), and because I am thinking about that world again. I'm changing the title as well, to the one this piece had originally (it was published as "A Living City"). I hope you like it.
Call it Zorya
In the beginning, we say, the land of Lar wasn't listless; sapling stones bloomed with heather. And yet no living cities had sprung on the graygreen plain, even when Zoran walked out of the north with his people. And into the land Zoran carried an ancient wand of petrified ice, and his people brought letters of birch bark, and fashioned young numbers from petulant stars.
Zoran's wise people grew wiser in Lar, traversing the plain on spiderweb wheels. They poured molten glass into music, and captured winds newborn between the crags. Towers they had and homesteads and tents, but no living city was yet born to them. "Be there but one, only one, I would be content," Zoran sang, "I would call it Zorya before I die."
Long after he died his people still hammered their hearts into hope, and yet of a living city there was no breath. "The land is barren," they said, but had not the heart for great changes. "A new being will do it, a being of our own design, a being of change will do it." And honoring Zoran they fashioned it out of clouds and white clay: shapeless, shameless, nameless. "Only one thing, a living city," they sighed, "and then disappear, and then dissolve."
They joined their patterns. It rose among them, taking them into her, changing them with her. "I know you now", she said, "Wilted and wise, like the winds unbottled you go forth from here." Shadow-skinned she looked into the land, and a subtle reshaping shivered in Lar; her people all whispered their tools into dust and drew forth the wagons.
And who knows what was there before? Perhaps as a land of colors shone Lar, perhaps a land of great wonder it was, where firebirds nestled, but now, yet now, forever changed back and forth it remains veined gray like the stone.
As the people all left, she looked to the south and breathed, into the future, a living city. They called it the Half-time Fortress, for though it can change all that passed, it waits yet for some unlivable time. A few of the wise ones called it Zorya over heather and stone, but the city raised all its bridges away and veiled its face with whispering glass.
Content with those births, Kesteh strode out of Lar; her bare feet sang the roads out of soot, and her hair was billowing silk and a cloud of sprouting stars.
Call it Zorya
In the beginning, we say, the land of Lar wasn't listless; sapling stones bloomed with heather. And yet no living cities had sprung on the graygreen plain, even when Zoran walked out of the north with his people. And into the land Zoran carried an ancient wand of petrified ice, and his people brought letters of birch bark, and fashioned young numbers from petulant stars.
Zoran's wise people grew wiser in Lar, traversing the plain on spiderweb wheels. They poured molten glass into music, and captured winds newborn between the crags. Towers they had and homesteads and tents, but no living city was yet born to them. "Be there but one, only one, I would be content," Zoran sang, "I would call it Zorya before I die."
Long after he died his people still hammered their hearts into hope, and yet of a living city there was no breath. "The land is barren," they said, but had not the heart for great changes. "A new being will do it, a being of our own design, a being of change will do it." And honoring Zoran they fashioned it out of clouds and white clay: shapeless, shameless, nameless. "Only one thing, a living city," they sighed, "and then disappear, and then dissolve."
They joined their patterns. It rose among them, taking them into her, changing them with her. "I know you now", she said, "Wilted and wise, like the winds unbottled you go forth from here." Shadow-skinned she looked into the land, and a subtle reshaping shivered in Lar; her people all whispered their tools into dust and drew forth the wagons.
And who knows what was there before? Perhaps as a land of colors shone Lar, perhaps a land of great wonder it was, where firebirds nestled, but now, yet now, forever changed back and forth it remains veined gray like the stone.
As the people all left, she looked to the south and breathed, into the future, a living city. They called it the Half-time Fortress, for though it can change all that passed, it waits yet for some unlivable time. A few of the wise ones called it Zorya over heather and stone, but the city raised all its bridges away and veiled its face with whispering glass.
Content with those births, Kesteh strode out of Lar; her bare feet sang the roads out of soot, and her hair was billowing silk and a cloud of sprouting stars.
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