elanya

Just before I go to bed. I know I've been abusing my journal priveldges today with waay to many entries. And I did say I would go home and go right to bed. But I have a story bit in my head and I figured I would see if I can transplant it, and why not here? I hope it makes sense. First, though, a little comment on stupid drunk people. On my way out this evening, I saw a huge traffic jam. It was almost 9pm at the time, which is a bit late, and there are never traffic jams. What was it caused by? Some idiot/drunk had failed to properly parallel park their car, and the tram couldn't get by. The tram, stuck right in front of a side street, on the main drag where most of the little pubs are, or at least the main way to get to them. Lots of traffic and frustrated people. But they must have found the driver, because it didn't last too too long. Idiot. Anyway... on with the fragment, if I haven't lost it... I blame this on too much C-verse, too much poetry, and too many damned fairies. Too much Neil Gaiman on the brain too, possibly. I don't know how well this stands alone, but comments from any are welcome...

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He stared at the little hut, remembering the first time he had seen it. It had been the eldest who had seen him first, and she had simple scuttled back inside with barely a grunt to acknowledge his presence. The youngest has glared at him from just inside the door frame, a stray patch of sun highlighting her then golden hair. She'd clutched her broom and wave it at him with mild menace. The middle woman, the mother, had clucked her tongue softly, certainly more sympathetic than her sisters. "You're too young, dear," she'd cooed at him, "you're too early. Your youth clouds your sight like a caul. But we will meet again, you know we will." And then she too had disappeared inside, and the dorr had been closed on him, and not a single question asked. It had been, he now thought, for the better.
He'd been forced to carry on, then, though he'd been cold and weary, and had learned and seen, and been much changed. But his goal remained the same, even if his motivations had changed. He'd matured, and he thought at least that he better understood things now. Time had passed, though he couldn't say how much. He had returned. He had known they would meet again.
The place had changed. It was no forest shack to be stumbled across by weary wanderers through fair or foul fourtune. He'd sought them this time for real, not dreamed himself to them, the quest had proven challenging. It was a cottage he stood before, on the outskirts of a town that had no name. No man or beast stood watch outside, but smoke curled from the chimney and the crone's laughter could be heard from the inside. He knew if he were to look through the windows he would see them weaving, but he did not.
Up to the door he went, and knocked. It was opened by the youngest. She wore a familiar mask: the face of the baron's daughter, Isabel. "We have a visitor," she stated, greeting him with little less hostility than before.
"Let him in, daughter!" the old woman cried, and chuckled, and rocked in her chair in the little room beyond. "Prepare us a tea. There's a good girl..." Isabel, or her likeness, stepped inside. She made no motion to him, but the door remained open. He entered, and shut it behind.
There was indeed a loom, as he expected. The mother, his mother, he noticed with a pang of surprised sadness, suppresed when he reminded himself that it was but another mask, sat in front of a fire, observing its patterns. She did not look up to see him, as all played out before her. The crone had taken the form of his nurse and guardian, Nora, who he had left behind for his quest.
"My little boy is all grown up now," his mother muttered softly. And now he has come to the family for help." She did not look up; she addressed him through her weaving. He could feel her sight upon him. "Now, what will you choose, dear one?"
"Am I... I am not here for choices." He remembered what he had been told. One question each, ever. It was not many, and he did not wish to squander them on trivialities and poor phrasing.
"Aren't you?" Nora chuckled again. The real Nora had never seemed so raspy, nor so voracious. The crone had hungry eyes. "Perhaps not so grown up as all that, after all."
He hung his head. He felt defensive here, as if everything was a test; every word he uttered measured and weighed against some unknown scale. He looked them all over, and met the crone's greedy eyes again. It was less unsettling than Mother's constant gaze. "Ladies, you know why I have come. I have earned this, and you yourselves have spun the threads and tied the knots that make it so."
"You know she'll never be for you," The maiden stated challengingly. "Why do you choose to go on? You are but a mortal boy, and she would never care for you."
"I made a promise." Her words stung, because he knew the truth of them, and because of the face she wore. The real Isabel, he knew, would likely be more cruel, or at least differently cruel, because she wouldn't be able to understand. "You know there is no choice."
"There are more than you might think, young mortal," the crone reproached, sharply. "But you'll soon see, soon see..." She cackled quietly and continued to rock.
"Come here, dear son, and sit with me," the weaver soothed, smiling benignly into her threads.
"You aren't my mother."
"Aren't I? I was there when you were born, I know your heart; know the causes of you joys and sorrows." Her smile was sweet, but her gaze possessive. Her words were perhaps true, but insincere. She patted the bench beside her. "Come sit with me." Isabel glared imperiously, commanding him to obey, and Nora rocked and chuckled absently, devouring him coldly with icy blue eyes. He walked around the frame of the loom, and sat beside the mother.
She smiled, and nodded encouragingly. "Look," she said, directing his own gaze downwards.
It was maddening. The patterns seemed stable at first, but if you knew where, or rather how, to look, their subtle shifts were complexly chaotic. It was instinct more than anything else, that helped him understand. Most of the changes were small, and did not disturb the patterns, but they ways they related, the connections between the separate threads, all seemed so tenuous at this scale. 'Everything is absolute,' he thought, 'but nothing is.' He ran a hand over it, not quite touching the fabric. He sensed the lives, absorbed them, and the tapestry reached itself out to him, secreting its mysteries in his percipience and rooting its future there.
Many lives revealed themselves to him, some with hesitation and others with enthusiasm. The secrets of the powerful, the tragedies of the meek, the past that was and that could have been, paths not taken, cycles repeated, were all revealed. He sifted through these things to touch his own life and follow its tangled course back to other cherished threads, and forward into newly forming patterns. He saw things he knew already, and some that he had never wished too. And then, it was enough. His mind screamed for him to surface, pounded a warning in his heart, and in a breath it was over. The little room was silent save for the crackling of the fire behind him, and the steady creaking of the crone's rockingchair.
"Have some tea." Had it been but a breath? The maiden, Isabel, stood beside him holding a cracked white cup. It smelled like dried flowers and cinnamon. He didn't dare refuse their hospitality, and took the cup. "Drink up, boy. Your path is chosen now."
It tasted as it smelled, and very potent. The heat burned his mouth and the spices his stomach, but they watched him, all their eyes now turned to him. Their masks seemed less natural now, but also less out of place. The air in here was thick and condensed. How long was a breath? He felt tired, and wondered if they had drugged him. Would that be their way?
"Ladies," he spoke through the fog, "I thank..."
"Don't thank us for things you do not understand, mortal," one of them whispered. His vision dimmed
"Someday," another enjoined, "we will meet once more."
"Seek us not again, boy."

He awoke on a cold hillside, far from any town he knew, his quest burning freshly in his mind. He knew what was to come, where to go. He had been given all he needed. He stood, and the gry sky answered his action with a wet welcome. Throwing the hood of his blue traveling cloak over his head, he headed west.

'And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing'