Bara (gen, lyricwheel fic)
Aug. 7th, 2005 08:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amand_rDisclaimer: Any and all characters from Highlander: The Series depicted in this
fictorial work are the property of Rysher Davis and Panzer, and their ilk. I
make no money, just supreme glee.
Bara
"Let me tell you about heartache and the loss of God..." Jim Morrison
["What one immortal will never tell another is how painful a Quickening really
is. This is not the result of some malicious streak, like a child that doesn't
tell the next that the fire is hot, and watches with glee as the innocent
thrusts his or her hand into the flames; it is because of the fact that no one
can really explain the sensation. It might be pain; it might be pleasure. It
might be a sensation that exceeds all other things, like Walter Stace's mystical
experience: it is indescribable because it is devoid of sensation. "The
mystical experience is a non-intellectual mode of consciousness, it is formless,
shapeless, colorless, odorless, soundless. But a vision is a piece of visual
imagery having shape. A voice is an auditory image. Visions and voices are
auditory images". ]
[Perchance Immortals might not divest this little bit of information because it
never occurs to them to tell a student that they will be pierced to pain, they
will be scalded by a fire that seems to turn the soul inside out.
They never say that realization is not made up of memories in the sense of
words, scenes or actions. It is instead the bare essence of a soul. Memories,
thoughts, aura, emotions are compacted, ground, distilled and filtered to for
the smallest, smoothest, most virile and salient infusion of the divine spark.
It is this that surges through the victor, the most concentrated part of the
human animal will fit into the palm of one's hand, and then some. This little
lightshow will be the thing that makes Immortals, no matter how strong or tall,
fierce and stringent, want to run the blade across their own throat for the
spite of it.]
[And what spite, what fear. And how it chokes my heart. I need a drink.]
---The Methos Journals-March 17th, 1957
Watch, gentle reader. Close your eyes and watch the image of a heart gone dead,
of a soaring recompense for the illness that heart has inflicted. Watch in your
mind's eye Shelley's "keenness of the world hath torn the heart which opens to
its blast". Capture without senses the perfection of the world forcing upon the
unwilling, the unseeming. This is the moment of the pinnacle of man, and this
is its wreck; this is what happens when life goes unchecked, and despair is
dislodged by the gossamer hand of the divine plan, an invisible trace of control
that is never totally gone from the works of men....
*******************************
The quickening took him, a lancet in his side. It twisted slowly, flying
mirthless, passionate and tumultuous through that invisible opening of flesh,
seeking entrance in his side.
There were snatches of poetry, that one canter sliding up in the deceptive hours
of the night to mourn the howl to prayer in the tower of the minaret. This is
thy call... it told him. This is thy call...
He fought that gentle force, soft, directing, only forcing when the bent shape
of his being unwound astray in the stricture of its plan. He fought it,
screaming, a tangled mess of armor, blood, flailing limbs and tossing leaves.
The Quickening, a dark beaste prowling, almost corporeal, wedging into orifices,
sliding snakelike down the hollow pillar of his throat; it roiled in his
stomach, paused for a split second, and exploded into a starburst of light,
pushing outwards.
On your knees... a small, expanding whitewashed part of him groaned, rusty and
clanking to get loose. He froze, paralyzed by light, frozen by fear, impaled by
realization and hard core epiphany. Thou art bound.
He was blind, he was whole, he was unpeeled, unscathed, unnamed. The
Quickening, a pinpoint of being, scooped him up and wrapped him, reshaping,
redefining, molding, pressing, cutting, and cast the mold of his heart melting
down and casting anew.
By this moment, by this action, thou art bound, he knew. By this second thou
art slain, and made again.
That calming wind cooled the tempered soul. It blew in from the North of God
and settled upon him, mantle like and soldered balm. Thou art redeemed...
Darius fell to his knees, and wept.
*************************************
"So I take it it was like no other? This was the thing that made you change
your mind."
Darius turned from the window and sighed. "There was no change," he said
softly. "I didn't change my mind. This was not an epiphany, this was not a
revelation that made me see past wrongs and regret them."
He tossed a chess piece from one hand to the other, uncharacteristically nervous
and tired at the same time.
"This was creation, wasn't it?" the man said, eyes light with dark secrets.
"You know what Israelites called creation from nothing?" Darius asked, voice a
sliding melissimo without ever changing tone. "The original creation that is,
not like making something with your hands, or anything like that."
"Bara," the man answered, not missing a beat.
Darius smiled, more to himself than the other. "Yes, you would know that,
wouldn't you, Methos?"
The other man smiled. "You are Bara, Darius." Methos made it a statement of
fact, as if he had never doubted it.
"I am Bara. The soul fighting the Godhead and losing. I am the aftermath of
clash so great it nearly killed me," he intoned the chant of the monks outside
in other parts of the monastery, eyes slitted and hypnotic. "It is prideful
thing to say, almost. But it is true."
"I don't doubt," Methos purred.
Darius laughed. "Oh, you doubt," he chuckled. "You would not be who you are if
you went along with this. Now, Duncan, on the other hand..." he trailed off,
and spared a glance for the young ancient.
"Ah yes, Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod. I have yet to meet the youngster."
Methos cleared his throat. "But this Quickening-"
"How old are you?" Darius interjected. Methos smirked.
"Do you really want an answer?"
"Ask me that question again, Methos," Darius raised an eyebrow. "Can you eat
the sunlight, can you drink the rainbow?"
Methos groaned. "No more, please. I just left Tibet," he moaned. The monk
favored the old one with a look of extreme pleasure.
"You know, my friend, you know." The two shared a silence thick as the night
outside, covered in fog and the beginnings of dew. The bells rang sonorous in
the center of the monastery. "Vespers," Darius whispered.
Methos nodded. "By all means. But tell me," he asked as Darius stood and
approached the cell door. "Do you really believe that in the end, only kindness
matters?"
Silence.
"Ahhhh," the world's oldest Immortal shut his eyes against the intensity of his
Darius's stare.
The younger Immortal stole out of the room, robes silent and deadening any
footsteps. Methos played with the chess pieces on the table. He finished the
last of the horrid tea Darius had presented him with. He opened his journal and
scanned the tale that had just been told. The he picked up his pen and
scratched notes into the margin. Then he drew a fresh page.
When I was so young the dirt was newly crushed rock, weathered from the early
vaults of time, I took my first head. It was...
Methos froze. He stared at the candlelight in the room, eyes watering with the
single pinpricks of light scattered about for vision. He bit his tongue, and it
bled. The voices of the monks singing, songs of glory, of comfort, of
redemption, echoed through the seemingly thickened stone that was created by the
hands of men. But not the rock itself, he knew that came from a different
source all together...
It was Bara.
******************************************
The end.
fictorial work are the property of Rysher Davis and Panzer, and their ilk. I
make no money, just supreme glee.
Bara
"Let me tell you about heartache and the loss of God..." Jim Morrison
["What one immortal will never tell another is how painful a Quickening really
is. This is not the result of some malicious streak, like a child that doesn't
tell the next that the fire is hot, and watches with glee as the innocent
thrusts his or her hand into the flames; it is because of the fact that no one
can really explain the sensation. It might be pain; it might be pleasure. It
might be a sensation that exceeds all other things, like Walter Stace's mystical
experience: it is indescribable because it is devoid of sensation. "The
mystical experience is a non-intellectual mode of consciousness, it is formless,
shapeless, colorless, odorless, soundless. But a vision is a piece of visual
imagery having shape. A voice is an auditory image. Visions and voices are
auditory images". ]
[Perchance Immortals might not divest this little bit of information because it
never occurs to them to tell a student that they will be pierced to pain, they
will be scalded by a fire that seems to turn the soul inside out.
They never say that realization is not made up of memories in the sense of
words, scenes or actions. It is instead the bare essence of a soul. Memories,
thoughts, aura, emotions are compacted, ground, distilled and filtered to for
the smallest, smoothest, most virile and salient infusion of the divine spark.
It is this that surges through the victor, the most concentrated part of the
human animal will fit into the palm of one's hand, and then some. This little
lightshow will be the thing that makes Immortals, no matter how strong or tall,
fierce and stringent, want to run the blade across their own throat for the
spite of it.]
[And what spite, what fear. And how it chokes my heart. I need a drink.]
---The Methos Journals-March 17th, 1957
Watch, gentle reader. Close your eyes and watch the image of a heart gone dead,
of a soaring recompense for the illness that heart has inflicted. Watch in your
mind's eye Shelley's "keenness of the world hath torn the heart which opens to
its blast". Capture without senses the perfection of the world forcing upon the
unwilling, the unseeming. This is the moment of the pinnacle of man, and this
is its wreck; this is what happens when life goes unchecked, and despair is
dislodged by the gossamer hand of the divine plan, an invisible trace of control
that is never totally gone from the works of men....
*******************************
The quickening took him, a lancet in his side. It twisted slowly, flying
mirthless, passionate and tumultuous through that invisible opening of flesh,
seeking entrance in his side.
There were snatches of poetry, that one canter sliding up in the deceptive hours
of the night to mourn the howl to prayer in the tower of the minaret. This is
thy call... it told him. This is thy call...
He fought that gentle force, soft, directing, only forcing when the bent shape
of his being unwound astray in the stricture of its plan. He fought it,
screaming, a tangled mess of armor, blood, flailing limbs and tossing leaves.
The Quickening, a dark beaste prowling, almost corporeal, wedging into orifices,
sliding snakelike down the hollow pillar of his throat; it roiled in his
stomach, paused for a split second, and exploded into a starburst of light,
pushing outwards.
On your knees... a small, expanding whitewashed part of him groaned, rusty and
clanking to get loose. He froze, paralyzed by light, frozen by fear, impaled by
realization and hard core epiphany. Thou art bound.
He was blind, he was whole, he was unpeeled, unscathed, unnamed. The
Quickening, a pinpoint of being, scooped him up and wrapped him, reshaping,
redefining, molding, pressing, cutting, and cast the mold of his heart melting
down and casting anew.
By this moment, by this action, thou art bound, he knew. By this second thou
art slain, and made again.
That calming wind cooled the tempered soul. It blew in from the North of God
and settled upon him, mantle like and soldered balm. Thou art redeemed...
Darius fell to his knees, and wept.
*************************************
"So I take it it was like no other? This was the thing that made you change
your mind."
Darius turned from the window and sighed. "There was no change," he said
softly. "I didn't change my mind. This was not an epiphany, this was not a
revelation that made me see past wrongs and regret them."
He tossed a chess piece from one hand to the other, uncharacteristically nervous
and tired at the same time.
"This was creation, wasn't it?" the man said, eyes light with dark secrets.
"You know what Israelites called creation from nothing?" Darius asked, voice a
sliding melissimo without ever changing tone. "The original creation that is,
not like making something with your hands, or anything like that."
"Bara," the man answered, not missing a beat.
Darius smiled, more to himself than the other. "Yes, you would know that,
wouldn't you, Methos?"
The other man smiled. "You are Bara, Darius." Methos made it a statement of
fact, as if he had never doubted it.
"I am Bara. The soul fighting the Godhead and losing. I am the aftermath of
clash so great it nearly killed me," he intoned the chant of the monks outside
in other parts of the monastery, eyes slitted and hypnotic. "It is prideful
thing to say, almost. But it is true."
"I don't doubt," Methos purred.
Darius laughed. "Oh, you doubt," he chuckled. "You would not be who you are if
you went along with this. Now, Duncan, on the other hand..." he trailed off,
and spared a glance for the young ancient.
"Ah yes, Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod. I have yet to meet the youngster."
Methos cleared his throat. "But this Quickening-"
"How old are you?" Darius interjected. Methos smirked.
"Do you really want an answer?"
"Ask me that question again, Methos," Darius raised an eyebrow. "Can you eat
the sunlight, can you drink the rainbow?"
Methos groaned. "No more, please. I just left Tibet," he moaned. The monk
favored the old one with a look of extreme pleasure.
"You know, my friend, you know." The two shared a silence thick as the night
outside, covered in fog and the beginnings of dew. The bells rang sonorous in
the center of the monastery. "Vespers," Darius whispered.
Methos nodded. "By all means. But tell me," he asked as Darius stood and
approached the cell door. "Do you really believe that in the end, only kindness
matters?"
Silence.
"Ahhhh," the world's oldest Immortal shut his eyes against the intensity of his
Darius's stare.
The younger Immortal stole out of the room, robes silent and deadening any
footsteps. Methos played with the chess pieces on the table. He finished the
last of the horrid tea Darius had presented him with. He opened his journal and
scanned the tale that had just been told. The he picked up his pen and
scratched notes into the margin. Then he drew a fresh page.
When I was so young the dirt was newly crushed rock, weathered from the early
vaults of time, I took my first head. It was...
Methos froze. He stared at the candlelight in the room, eyes watering with the
single pinpricks of light scattered about for vision. He bit his tongue, and it
bled. The voices of the monks singing, songs of glory, of comfort, of
redemption, echoed through the seemingly thickened stone that was created by the
hands of men. But not the rock itself, he knew that came from a different
source all together...
It was Bara.
******************************************
The end.
