Sapling #110 — All that’s left to us
Some tales, as a writer, you don’t write. They write you. The most powerful stories change their makers from within.
‘The book of Seth’ is a precious project that had been set aside for quite a while. It needed time to mature. Now it has returned in full strength, ready to be taken on.
One small scene, a dear fragment, as an introduction to the world:
She wakes up in the twilight before dawn and instantly knows where she is.
Seth is lying with his back to her. A few red locks of hair are licking his neck and the curve of his shoulder.
Slowly, the waves are lapping across the landscape of time. When the rains stop, the sand will come and the land will sigh from its depths.
He is looking out across the desert. The horizon is hazy and will not let itself be seen. Neither will his heart. It knows its chains and accepts their weight.
But as the sun rises over the dunes and the dawn trails its veil of pink, the song of cranes blows towards him across the plains. That’s when he remembers why no temple or tomb can ever contain him.
It was she who extinguished the candles and laid down to cradle him, without a kid word. A shell she wanted to be, embracing his fragility.
When does a god feel fear? When does an angel think of falling?
Do you see, Seth, how death is watching over me? How gentle its darkness, bandages enveloping the silence of the sarcophagus? Nothing but a memory of pink and golden dunes, a dream tasted but never lived.
How far did you pierce into the marrow of this land?
How deep did you dig, until you found the bones?
He hadn’t objected when she wrapped her arms around him, and the world went quiet like the center of a deep pool. From where they were lying, its ripples spread through the house, and the city, and beyond, into the night.
Love us.
We are the only thing that’s left to us.
The SAPLING series is a joint project with artist and illustrator Jurgen Walschot.
Saplings are creative sprouts. I will write to the images, he will draw to the words.
