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Through Dawn’s Window

- Through Dawn’s Window -
Based on some of my past-life memories…

It was not an era of peace or of reason, nor was it one of innocence or piety, that bygone time of which I shall now lift pen to tell of. To be certain, there was much wonderment as the barbaric civilizations looked to their sages, who themselves did lift their gazes to the heavens in wonderment. But their minds could not perceive the vastness beyond their ken, and so with time has wonder left us in favor of cold, cruel, and calculating logic. But other forces and beings exist within the voids that do lay betwixt and between the worlds that wheel about the cosmos… even in the uncharted regions not glimpsed by mortal eye or imagination! In the barbaric past of which I speak herein, man did seek to emulate their gods… those same who had taught them the arts by which the barbarism of mankind was lessened and made more civilized, so that the human beings who served the gods believed themselves to be as sophisticated as their masters. Within sandstone dwellings, temples of stucco, and tombs of mud-brick, man communed unseen with those who have since time immemorial guided from the deep shadows of history. The smoke of incense was offered up unto gods whom the humans did not know were fast becoming as mortal as they. Or was man fast becoming more divine and less mortal? To honor their accomplishments, the evolving men and women erected mighty monuments, yet those were toppled in time by wars, cataclysms, and changes that the kings and queens of old has never thought to prepare for. The shadows grew, and in time men were fearful the dark and their ancient sense of wonderment was transformed to morbid imaginings of horror and terror. Their gods grew more distant, seeming to vanish from all earthly doings, and the common people believed that they had been abandoned and mayhap even despised by those who once had come down from above. When springtime came late, or when winter lingered ever long, the maidens who had bedecked their hair with flowers and placed laurels upon the heads of heroes, champions, and kings… those same did come to believe that the gods must have been displeased. But the gods could not control the weather, as simple mortals childishly believed! And in their secret places, they laughed to hear the silly thoughts of those maidens… and men… who did utter such things. “Do these mortals think to jest?” a goddess would say to her divine brethren. “They must have forgotten the truth in favor of such fantasies!” a god would reply to her. Only a secret circle of mortals was given the privilege of being in the divine presence, and so of being privy to such godly discussions. And so only a few came to know the true nature of things. They too would laugh at the fancies of the common-folk, and in time they came to see themselves as divine and as mortal no longer. “Let us wait for a time, and see if things change!” they would say, and so they would wait. Just for a time.

So came there unto this stage, a solitary pilgrim. She was a priestess of the goddess Ishtar, and was privy in the councils of that goddess, for her bloodline was one in which the blood of the gods itself flowed in hybrid fashion. She was a poetess as well as a priestess, and she sang oft of the things that were secret, and the things that dwelt in the shadows of history. Pure and untainted by the delusions imposed upon mankind was she, and she walked across the ancient world like a phantom… unseen yet seeing. Unknown, yet famous for her deeds… which in her poems she ascribed to heroes, gods, angels, or other beings who were all metaphors for herself. She had many names, although in this tale the one she bore was Ariel. It was said that this was her first name, and that she had forgotten that it was her first. But those people who had whispered this of her, those same did themselves know nothing of her true nature… believing her to be the stuff of myth and legend. I know, for once upon a time it was I who bore that name. I, who walked thusly upon that bygone stage of history, and I who was the origin of the legends that were told of me! A priestess of Ishtar was I in this tale… in this memory, which I share with you now… and I became a queen in all but name. Men oft looked upon me with eyes that saw naught beneath my flesh, below the silken garments of the priestess, which I wore. Their sight was bleared by self-delusion, by the twisted memory that they were allowed to believe… and so the mind of man turned inward believing itself, alone, to be the center of the universe. Was I so different once? Aye, for I was shown a greater truth, and so with what came to pass the childish delusions and illusions were dispelled for me… and in this tale I came to journey in the company of a great woman, a princess whose blood was part human and part angelic. Like myself, a hybrid amongst mortals who believed their own blood to be purer than it aught to be considered. Purity is a lie, told by those who seek to dominate over those whose own blood they deem to be inferior! We in whom “alien” blood flowed… we knew the truth. We were the truth! We are the truth. So in the company of this kindred spirit, I made a journey. We journeyed together, and we sought to discover dark things that we did not understand.

Lilith was the name of that woman, and she was old when the world was young. Even as I was old before the world existed! But after the drowning of Atlantis, I was punished with mortality and forgetfulness, forced to incarnate and reincarnate. And Lilith too suffered as I did, but for her own sins… which were not the same as mine. Though we had sinned together, of old. We walked in places where men and women dream. We walked in domains of nightmare! And we walked in darkness so utter, that light could only be found within it, if one brought it with them. To call our path obscure and occult is mayhap at best a kindness and at worst a disservice to the fullness of truth. For hidden was our way from all knowing of others. We did walk as ghosts do… princesses of perdition, wraiths of another age, one that came before history began. Yet we lived! Even as we live still. We came unto a city not built by the hands of mankind, but by other hands. The walls of that city were higher than the palaces of the kings of distant nations, and in the midst of it was being raised a mighty tower-like temple. This place came before Babylon of old, and its’ most holy sanctuaries were tended by those who like us knew strange ancestry. We did come there in the hour of twilight, as day waned and the evening stars began to tear their way through the veil of the sky. There were many in that city who: toiled and labored to add their craft and skill at masonry to the building of the temple at the city’s center. It was said that even those whose accomplishments were small, were masons in spirit… for every pair of hands had within their power the ability to create wonders. The artist and the poet were as valued as the stonecutter and the bricklayer. So was laid a different sort of foundation than those reared up by the builders of lesser monuments. It was hoped that here, the people themselves would be monuments to glory! “But whose glory?” Lilith and I asked of the keepers of this way of life. And the wisest amongst the keepers answered: “The glory of all!” and we knew that where in other cities men did follow the way of war and battle, for the glory of king or nation… here, men and women equally strove for something far better than the whims of kings or queens. We came to dwell there for a time, and were shown a hidden room in the tower.

It was a circular chamber, and its’ floor was pattered with white and black tiled squares. Two magnificent pillars, one white and one black, framed a window, and through that window one could see the blazing sun as it rose each dawn. Across the chamber, on the opposite wall, a second window would show the sun as it set when the hour was dusk. Lilith placed on her left breast the palm of her right hand, and she solemnly approached the window of the dawn. She bid that I follow her lead, and so I did as she did. And when we came to that place where the sun could be seen… a miracle took place. From out the open viewpoint, which no glass or shutter covered, it seemed that all the walls and towers of the city faded. They faded from our seeing, and in their place did arise stranger vistas. Alien sights and sounds assailed our ears, but none of them were once unfamiliar to us. It seemed that we were looking out upon places we had once called home! A nearby priest remarked that such sights as met our eyes in that moment were enough to drive others to madness. Dreams, nightmares, and visions of pure intensity, all of which brought with them an everlasting revelation. The stars of the universe were laid bare before our gaze, and at the farthest point from this world was another. One within a starless region! A sacred place, and one that once I had called home… this is what was revealed to Lilith and I in that instant: this, and much more than would be proper to relate. Mortal minds do not dream such dreams, nor suffer such nightmares as did we just then… nor do they behold such visions of distant worlds. Yet did we do so, for our blood was different and this was a vision that was called by our very blood… not simply by chance or a yearning for knowledge! We came to learn, and we learned all. We learned the names of distant planets, and their suns. We learned the course of those worlds’ destinies… their pasts, their origins, and their endings. For what we beheld belonged to the dead, who shared with us what came before. Such dark gulfs we crossed in so short an instant of time’s spanning… that we were irrevocably altered, yet never once in an obvious manner. Rather, in subtler ways, which no mortal eye could discern, however keen the sight. We came away from the window out of which we had peered. We bowed before the altar that was in the center of the chamber, between three man-sized candlesticks. The priest who was there light each candle in turn, and we places our right hands upon the altar, swearing to keep all of what we had seen a secret. Great oaths and terrible obligations we swore, but we needed them not to ensure our silence… for we knew that no mortal ear would believe the things our tongues might relate to them of our visions. Night came fast to the tower of visions!

The colors of twilight preceded deeper violets and blues, so that the night was nigh and the golden shafts of the setting sun were replaced by the pale luminance of the moon. On the horizon we beheld specks of torchlight and flames like unto those of great hosts of men preparing and prepared for siege and war. “They come for our knowledge!” exclaimed the priest, and he bade us depart by secret ways from that city. And by secret ways we fled, even as the gates of the city were broken in. Even as the torch and the flame were set upon the delicate spires and humbles structures that had, until now, stood for nigh unto centuries, even in that ancient time. Man was savage back then, and savage men put a people who strove for something better… to the sword. Heads were reared on spear and pike, and the smell of burning flesh lingered long on night breezes. I could hear the insects of the hour, but their shrill calls were not nearly as shrill as the shrieks of women defiled and children whose skulls were being smashed in. “Why do they kill in such a way?” I asked Lilith as we looked on in horror from a tall cliff upon a nearby mountain range’s skirts. She shrugged and commented: “They know nothing else.” And I wondered why they did not simply come to that benevolent city with peace in their hears instead of violence. What knowledge they might have gained! That city held no treasury, nor stash of gold or jewels to be seized. Their only gift was lost with the deaths of its’ people, and I wept at their horrific passing. We turned away from this scene of horror and terror, and we went back to our wanderings. The dawn brought with it the sweeter perfume of gentle meadows quite different from the deserts and the wastes in which that now-lost city lay. The scent of the grass and of living things was like an opiate to us, and in time we had quite forgotten about the massacre that was by now far behind us. Yet it would return in my nightmares to haunt me, the sounds of screams, of shrieks, and of burning flames. That would not be the last time I beheld an enlightened civilization fall, nor was it the first. For death and destruction is ever with mankind, and enlightenment is often alien to the understanding of those who claim to be civilized and yet who bring sword and flame rather than wisdom. They will never look out the window of the dawn, and they shall not see the infinite beauty of the universes that lie beyond. The depths into which we had gazed, those same shall elude the ignorant! For many days not counted on any clock, hourglass, or calendar, Lilith and I journeyed onward in silence, treading across the ancient world of that era in which this tale is set. Mankind would war, but we would seek something finer, always on our quest and never retiring from it. Death would eventually take us, but as surely as the spheres of the cosmos turn in their seasons… we would rise again like the phoenix from the ashes of its’ own pyre. Whilst mankind slumbers in the grip of its’ own nightmares past… we journey still, and I make my way through the deep shadows.
Written by Kou_Indigo (Kara L. Pythiana-Ashton)
Published
All writing remains the property of the author. Don't use it for any purpose without their permission.
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