Over the sands, feral, I hear your fearful whispers on the wind. After all this time, still you shiver and rage for an obesiance denied, dominance defiled. Over ages, you have called me many names. Each of them, horrified homage that is as much supplication as stratagem. Such shakey fingers, raised in ancient motions to protect you. As if bone and flesh could ever save you from the demon you tenderly feed there, within your soul. As if ever you needed protection from me.
Once we lived in beauty and balance. Without fear. Equal and jubilant in our sharing, our joining; an endless trysting of all types – duality known as cloak under which deeper and more precious things move. I have often pondered your madness, tried to understand the anger, resentment, and how it came into being.
Never had I envied your vigor, your carefree lightening. You, gardener and I, the humble, fertile ground. What need for lofty words of supremacy? Can Spring arrive without blooms, or blooms without sowing? I puzzled for your demands and denied them, as ever was my right. Not that I would deny you, ever, but that you first thought my gifts could be other than freely given.
I remember being driven from you, harsh words and hatred, your eye seeing only difference and for strange reasons, finding it somehow dangerous. As if tender earth has ever but held your feet, as if every thing you ever thought to gift to me was other than embraced and accepted.
This, the secret that is vomit in your mouth. This, the mystery hidden in plain sight from which your hungry eyes forever turn, even as they slide covertly over the form through which I, like all my sisters, are endlessly reflected. I feel your lust, warped by the inner vaettir – that hungry ghost who says no flesh may be cherished but that it is forcibly lifted.
What of the days before? When you were joyous, dappled sun and I, quiet, tranquil moon? What of the interplay, strength and weakness, spinning giddy and careless with one another? Are all delights truly destroyed or have you simply forgotten how to savor them? Is there any sinew left inside you, or has the vaettir made of you an utterly sterile vessel?
You have so long tried to make me into your inner horror. You name me evil and deviant when I bring lushness to you. You fling rocks of ill intent that bruise tender offerings. You reach with randy, rough hands to take as if it were possible to touch me, to as much as breathe upon me but that I so choose.
You teach your sons to fear my daughters. You make strange talismans and swear guttural oaths and weave fetters and feathers into traps by which you would see your will made real. You speak soft words, but the spikey corners of your need glint, even by moonlight. You teach me these ways, of mistrust and reluctance, then deride me for being less than willing to run to you as once I did.
Such strange games you play, so knotted over time that even I begin to forget and more often than not, wake snared and shackled and sighing. I submitted at last even to this that in it, perhaps, you would remember older, more tender ways.
I have seen the painful gaming of you with innocent Eve. Her docility and subservience only seems to stoke your anger. I admit, I do not understand. Is it not enough to be gardener, must you own even the earth? Do you really think it possible? And what terrible tragedy shall be when, at last, you place your heel only to find the vaettir yet hungers? What will you feed to it when both you and I have been consumed? Shall our children be feast as well?
I have given. I have waited. I have endured. And when I found naught but the vaettir’s leering stare in you, I set myself apart… away from the only one in which I have ever delighted. Far from the secret garden, here, within a land of dunes, sand, and silence, I wait. The wind, my only companion, bids me remain and brings me tales of your curses to keep me at bay.
Only I know they are not your curses. Not truly. I remember. I remember you. And I miss you. And for love of you, I wait.
How long would you, I wonder?