venomous diamonds

ventilate

they heard the train in the distance, smelled the toxicity of its smoke, felt the rumble of steel against steele against wind shaking their knees. there was a fog, that morning fog that makes your stomach do loops in anticipation of the light that dispels, the light that heals. a midmorning fog, like liquid diamonds, a hazy crystalline rainbow of color and shadow. and behind the lingering voices of the arcology, the merchants, prophets and militants that trailed them, and eventually pursued them.

jonas stopped.

to my kind reader, i note this occasion. there are moments that shine like blazing beacons in the empty hallways of history, that live on in the collective memory in the form of legend and myth. some sing songs of deeds so gallant, or so heinous. those moments creep into the deepest dreams of sweet lovers lost, or conversely into the thousand blackened fangs of the darkest terror. they become spoken word handed down attached to names of power like achilles or tepes. somehow the overwhelming glory of that moment, that place, touches upon all moments, all places, and rings through the spaces between, a sort of subtle vibration between worlds. felt by all and recognized by few.

there was a mark made when jonas spoke that day. the others stopped and hearing this cocked their heads as a dog to the sounds of the dead. as he spoke his eyes shone like polished glass, reflective yet revealing.

i could repeat the words, but their power would be lost, the occasion rent asunder by grammar and assumption. to some they were beautiful, and will be found in gospels and hymns after the stigma of his deed comes to pass.

but as he spoke, from somewhere above them a sound like a horn blew through the horizon. around them the trembling earth began to lose solidarity. a rumble, the approach of a train. Ariel clung to Tethriel, her head rested on his shoulder in a pose of comfort and fear, a rampart against the gale force of what was to come. the others huddled frightened, awed and terrified by the gravity of the word, and of the forces that consumed them.

"a wise leader said once that when you are suffering, know that i have betrayed you. i don't think that's half wrong." his face contorted then into an almost scowl, the words seeming a pain to say.

that's when judith ran, and, at that moment, jonas went quite mad.