Viridis

Good morning, Dear Reader, and fellow members of The Tribe,

I have been in the throes of finals projects for my latest college course. (I'm doing online college courses to finish a bachelor's degree in English.) It has hampered me immensely in my efforts to write something other than research papers! Grrr .... Anyway, today, I thought I would entertain You a bit (not to mention prove that I actually have been published) by posting a fantasy short story called "Viridis." It was published online by EOTU Ezine (Clam City Press) in April 2003 (Editor: Larry Dennis). That mag paid some of the best rates I was ever paid ... I was devastated when it closed down!

I am going to write today and I hope to check in on you all later. In the meantime, here's "Viridis" and I hope you enjoy it. Feel free to comment.

Hugs to You!

-- L.A.

VIRIDIS

By L.A. Story

He watched her rise as he did every morning since the day after they met. In the dark bedroom, the thin straps of her silk gown were dark slices against flawless pale shoulders.

            “Caire ….” He murmured in the dimness of The Still. He ritually invoked the day with the spell of her name.

            She rose from the bed in a single, smooth movement. She made no answering remark, but he felt her smile, even with her back to him – a ripple in The Still.

            She moved over to the heavy drapes covering the enormous windowed doors in their room. She threw open the curtains with a parting sweep of her arms. Outside the mammoth windows, beyond their bedroom, was indigo-ink stained faintly with a hint of pink-lavender.

“The sunrise is blushing …” His comment gently stirred The Still.

She glanced back at him. Her beautiful lambent, golden eyes danced flirtatiously. “Oh, it’s just being coy. It likes for me to summon it like I always do.”

 “I know how it feels.” His voice smiled. He added, “Your sister is going to get angry. You said Moira told you rain was due and expected you to let her have a turn. It needs to storm and rain somewhere in the world, Caire. After all, it has been sixty days …”

            Caire folded her hands primly in front of her like a schoolgirl. “I know, but I’m in love and I want the world to celebrate with me just one more day … then I’ll let Moira send her precious rain, I promise. What do you think of that?”

            He laughed softly, which generated too much movement in The Still. It made him simultaneously feel good, dizzy and slightly nauseous --  that grape soda feeling from childhood. He leaned further back into the cloud-soft pillows for a moment.

            “All right,” he said. “It’s not like I have any say in the matter. I’m just a mortal. You’re the goddess. You’ll do what you want, regardless.”

            A mischievous smile. “That is true.”

            As he lay in the bed, he crossed his arms over his naked chest and gazed at her. “Go ahead and do it. You know I love to watch you work.”

            She turned back and faced the horizon outside their room. She raised strong, graceful arms and whispered her spell. The darkness lifted and the resulting rush of blinding white-gold light embraced her as it poured into the room and turned her form into a charred, feminine silhouette. Then her image began to dissolve, beginning with her feet, until she vanished completely … And The Still became The Day.

            He blinked rapidly against the glare of the newly released sunshine. He rose from their bed after giving his eyes a few moments to adjust. Caire would return soon and he wanted to complete his morning routine before then – especially tooth-brushing. No romance in morning breath.

            Caire claimed many times to love everything about him – even morning breath.

            Easy for her to say, he thought. Goddesses were immune to getting killer breath.

            While grooming, he looked at himself in the mirror. Several moments passed as he stared at his own image. Every day it seemed he recognized his own visage less. He rubbed his hand over his thinning hair and looked at his naked body. Not bad. Not great … but not bad. Am I good enough for a goddess?

 He luxuriated under a hot spray of water later when she appeared in the shower with him. He let out a yelp. “Caire, you’ve got to find a way to warn me. I’m going to develop heart trouble if you keep scaring me like that!”

“I’m so sorry, Paul,” she said, not looking apologetic. “Here, let me make it up to you …” her warm voice faded off as she trailed kisses down his chest … and continued … lower.

He rewarded her with a sharp intake of breath. “I forgive you,” he gasped, looking down at her water-slick body. The water turned her flaxen hair to a darker, rich honey that flowed down her back.

They dried each other later and dressed to go outside to explore the mountains, still frosted with snow. The cold powder had begun to melt at the lower elevations as spring snuggled up to the mountain.

Just before they left the mountain palace, Caire slipped on her pink-tinted sunglasses and urged Paul to do the same.

He groaned. “Caire, I hate wearing these things. Besides, it isn’t manly to wear pink sunglasses.”

He felt a shiver of pleasure as his comment produced the music of her laughter and, even though The Day had replaced The Still, the air shimmered joyfully still-like. Mortals and immortals within miles suddenly found themselves possessed with an unexpected optimism – a curiously frequent event over the past sixty days …

“Father requires us to wear them,” she said as she placed a pair of sunglasses on his face. “And, you are manly no matter what you wear.”

Paul blinked and glanced about at a world now tainted with a rose cast. “I don’t understand the purpose. Why would the High King of Heaven want to make all His children and their consorts, wear these things?”

She considered him, her head tilted to the side. “Is the view not more pleasant?”

“Well, yes …” he answered slowly as he looked around him again through the pink. “Everything looks quite pretty. I’ll get used to it in a few moments but, Caire I know that what I’m seeing isn’t completely true.”

Caire sighed and glanced away -- off toward the mountains they were about to explore. “I know, Darling, but Father has good reasons for His Rules. It’s for the best.” Her voice was wistful … Paul surmised she had her own questions about “the rules” – questions she had never dared ask.

He pressed the point. “Why would He grant His children such immense powers and then handicap you all by making you see your world through pink?”

Caire looked back at him. By her expression, he realized his question startled her. She appeared to carefully consider her answer before speaking. “I think our immense power is precisely the reason He asks us to wear the glasses. It keeps our perspective a positive one. Can you imagine what it would be like in the mortal realm if you were all besieged by a bunch of gods who were given to dark mood swings?”

He laughed. “You mean we aren’t, already?” He meant the comment as a jest, partially, but her wounded look caused him regret. “I’m sorry, Caire. I didn’t really mean that. But, have you been to our realm lately?”

She warmed Paul with a loving glance through pink. “I spent a few moments there, recently. About sixty days ago … and I found at least one thing there to be quite endearing.”

 “How could I forget?” Even though he had forgotten … At least a lot of it.

He remembered driving along a mountain road … he could not remember what his intended destination had been … Although, he seemed to remember a house – sort of – and a woman with a common name. Janet, maybe?  He remembered a rush of white and cold and being suspended upside down … And terrible pain … And a graceful, feminine arm reaching out to pull him from the pain and the cold.

  The longer he stayed in Caire’s realm, wandering the mountains during The Day; seeing the wonder of her world; watching her work her special power; making love to her in The Still, the more he forgot who he had been. His increasing memory fog worried him.

Reading his thoughts, Caire grabbed his hand, grinned and said, “Let’s go explore.”

He could not resist her -- didn’t want to try.  So, he let her lead him off into the mountain wilderness where he saw mammoth trees with thick, glossy leaves, shining against the backdrop of snow. She showed him bright red flowers miraculously growing up out of snow and ice.  With a smile, Caire leaned over a few unopened blossoms and blew lightly. They opened, gently spreading silky, fragile petals beneath her soft breath.

 “Caire that was amazing.”

She wrinkled her nose and giggled. “Oh, well, I can do a few blossoms, but not anything on a grand scale. That’s my brother, Lenny’s, talent.”

He started to say something but stopped as she pointed over his shoulder, excitedly. “Look Paul! Look!”

Paul turned and froze. There was a herd of unicorns directly behind him. One particularly large stallion huffed and stirred Paul’s hair. He looked into the creature’s eyes and knew magic. “He’s talking to me,” Paul whispered.

“Of course he is,” Caire said and stepped around him to run her fingertips over the stallion’s velvety nose. “They communicate telepathically. Just look them in the eye. This here is Jupiter. He’s the patriarch of this herd and he must know you’re special … as I do because I’ve never seen him look a mortal in the eye before. You have been privileged to look into the eyes of Jupiter.”

Paul wanted to see Jupiter without the rose-colored glasses, and reached up to remove them, but Caire grabbed his hand. “No, Paul. If you take them off … you won’t be able to see him. Seeing through the pink is about more than optimism.”

He nodded in a hesitant, jerky motion. A tear slipped from the corner of his eye. Jupiter allowed him another moment for a shared gaze and bid them farewell. The herd moved in unison to gallop soundlessly away with the next wind gust.

Paul wiped away tears and grasped Caire by the shoulders. “Thank you.”

Her smile was like the sunrise she summoned from The Still. “For what?”

He laughed as he found himself near tears again. “Thank you for bringing me into your world. For trusting me … for loving me. But, I don’t understand why you think I’m so special … there’s nothing special about me.”

When she reached up to touch his face he saw her golden eyes were over-bright with unshed tears. “I knew you were special right away. I knew I would love you the moment that I saw you because you looked green through my rose-colored glasses.”

“Green? You mean, different?”

“Viridis … yes, different … and good,” she whispered and pulled him close for a long, sighing kiss.

He locked his arms around her and they held each other for a long while. Then, hands clasped, they continued to explore the mountains until it was time to for Paul to eat. They returned to the mountain palace during the early noon hours.

The moment they entered the palace, Paul knew there was something amiss. A dark quality stirred the atmosphere and Moira stepped from the shadows of a nearby corridor.

Her dark beauty was as stormy as her powers, Paul noted. She turned a churning gray, assessing, gaze toward him. He could not tell what the sum of her assessment was.

“What do you want, Moira?” Caire demanded.

The churning gray eyes snapped to Caire. “So, this is why you’ve held up the rain? You’ve been consorting with a mortal man? And, I can tell by your eyes, you’re in love.”

            Caire refused to meet his questioning gaze. She did not take her eyes from Moira. “Paul is special.”

            He felt the stormy eyes on him again. Her dark tresses moved like liquid with each subtle movement of her head. “Doesn’t matter. It’s forbidden and you know that. At least you didn’t throw all the rules out the window and you wore your glasses outside the palace.”

            “Tell me, Moira, why is it forbidden for us to be with mortals? Father had intimate contact with them – that’s how some of our older siblings came to be.”

            “Yes, and many of those were powerful and beautiful, but tormented, because of it – take Hercules, for example.”

“No, you take Hercules,” Caire said the sharp stab of her finger into the air. “He hardly speaks to me, anymore!”

“Don’t be childish, Caire.” Moira’s voice was level, but her eyes darkened to a color, which Paul found uncomfortably reminiscent of a tornado. “You’re the youngest and summoning The Day is a new responsibility. You can’t” –

“Stop it, Moira!” Caire shouted. “I’m not being childish. I’m in love and I don’t understand why I can’t have Paul … Why I can’t have this one thing for my own.” Caire removed her glasses and glanced back at Paul for a moment – truly looking at him. He felt her anger subside as she gazed at him, but even as her glance warmed him, he felt a twist of anxiety.

Caire returned her attention to Moira. “I have so much power – I can summon The Still and The Day, and I can live forever, but you all would deny me love? Because of Rules?” She took a shivery breath – looking dangerously vulnerable … And almost human. Paul wanted to reach out to her, but knew it was not the time.

“This is how it has to be, Caire,” Moira’s face showed no sign of vindictiveness. “The Rules, once they are made, can’t be broken.” Paul thought she seemed sad and sincere … And that disturbed him.

Could they really keep us apart? Would they do such a thing? His anxiety had become full-blown terror, as he acquired a real sense of his own helplessness.

“You told Father!” Caire accused.

Moira laughed, mirthlessly.  “As if anyone needs to tell Him anything … Of course, He knows, and He’s here to address the problem …”

Caire’s eyes rounded fearfully and Paul’s terror skidded to a new level. “Father’s here? He has come down to the mountain palace?”

As if in answer, the thick palace walls began to shake and the ground began to rumble. Something was coming … walking down the corridor of the main hall. A faint scent of ozone filled the air – Paul coughed at the sharp tickle in his lungs. The atmosphere around them trembled – Still-like – and any movement he made brought about that grape soda feeling to the umpteenth power.

Of the three beings that appeared into the entry, he would not have needed to be told which being was The King. Paul looked to Caire. She had always seemed so magical and powerful to him – and she was – but it now dawned on him that her power was nothing compared to “Father’s.” Caire, Goddess of The Still and The Day; youngest child of the High King of Heaven; and Paul’s lover, began to cry in her father’s presence.

She knows it’s over! She knows what they’re going to do!

“Father, please, don’t do this,” she cried.

“What I do … I do for a reason.” His voice hurt Paul’s ears. He felt his eardrums throb with every syllable. “But, I am not without mercy … I gave you sixty days.”

Paul suddenly knew an irresistible urge to see this being without the pink. His hand twitched with the urge to pull his glasses off.

The High King of Heaven turned and stared right into Paul’s pink-protected eyes. “Don’t do it, Paul. That would be bad idea. You couldn’t begin be able to understand what you would see – and it would drive you mad. The pink is important.”

Paul’s hand stopped twitching.

The King addressed the two magnificent male beings flanking him on either side. “Lenny … Merc … please escort Paul from the palace. You know what needs to be done.”

Lenny and Merc wordlessly obeyed and approached Paul. Stunned, he allowed them to each take an arm. “Caire,” He shouted as he strained to see her after they turned him away. “Caire!”

Moira and The King comforted Caire as she sobbed. Her back stiffened with Paul’s shouts but she did not look at him. Bleakness stole over him and he fought unsuccessfully against his captors’ hands, until he heard Caire’s voice in his head. “If you really loved me … you’ll remember something … that is my gift.”

He did not know what she meant, but her words calmed him. Lenny and Merc took him down through the mountains at an impossible speed.

“I’m really sorry about this,” said the one called Merc. He reached up to take Paul’s tinted glasses and ….

… Paul awoke in the cold to the smell of diesel. A semi rig was parked about five feet away and a burly man stood over him. Paul moaned softly, reached up, touched his head and found blood. He lay on the side of the road and, as he came fully awake, it began to rain. The rain made Paul cry – though he did not know why.

Paul’s vision went grainy and gray … The man said something about having called for help … About how the tabloids were “not gonna freakin’ believe this…”

Two months later, Paul was back home with his wife, Janet. He had risen early to watch the sunrise. He was enthralled with it, he did not know why, he had never been so obsessed before.

Janet complained about the changes in him like his new hobby collecting crystal figurines – unicorns. She said it wasn’t like him – the unicorns – said he would never have liked something like that “before.” She also complained about the tabloid calls, though they had become less frequent.

Paul knew it would blow over and the world would move on to something else besides the story of the man swept away by an avalanche while driving home from work … the man who wandered in cold, mountain wilderness for sixty days and survived … but couldn’t remember any of it.

Paul couldn’t remember the ordeal; he just knew he survived with some strange new obsessions like unicorns and sunrises … and another thing … especially now that spring had come.

Every morning, after the sunrise he saw so much green … everything was so beautiful … green and good. As he observed all this, a word haunted the edges of his memory … a word that made him smile and he saw – for just a moment – a beautiful face. He intended to look up that word very soon …Viridis.