They had taken their feathers and flown, and she was left to mourn them, her brothers, her swans. Weeping she wandered the woodlands, hoping to see them returning, knowing she never would. All her work, all her suffering, was in vain, for they would never again embrace her except with stiff wings.
And so they left, one by one, believing that to stay would only cause her further misery. She might have told them that she loved them no matter what their form, but her tongue was stopped, disuse robbing her of speech.
Now she stood poised on the precipice, never looking away from the west where the sun had set on her love. Now she spread her wings, rude, unfeathered forms, and gave herself to the air. Now she flew away to them, to their home in the sky. Now she was free.
I can't write another one. I was going to, but then I started crying and I couldn't stop. I'm sorry. It wasn't supposed to end like that.
I had a bunch of stuff to talk about. All about Swan Lake and the fairy tale of The Six Swans (from which this is obviously drawn, although the ending is very different) and the Pearl Jam song from whence I stole the title, and all of that. I was going to reassure everyone in a comic way that I hadn't cheated, that I'd merely provided quite an eclectic assortment of images to PB and let him pick one, so I was no more prepared for this than anyone else. I was probably going to talk about some deep literary shit too.
But I'm not doing any of that, beyond what I just said.
I'm not depressed, my life isn't taking a turn for the worse, and no one I know has jumped off a cliff recently. Please save your sympathy for people who really need it, people who are alone and unloved and just want to fly home. I'm going to go back to crying for them in a minute.
But I can't stop without saying that Flash Fiction Friday is great and you should do it and there's no time like the present. That's the least enthusiastic plug for FFF I've ever done.
14 comments:
I read this quickly before leaving my house this morning but didn't want to leave a comment without thinking about it some more. It deserved more than a "nice post" kind of comment.
The vision of death as a release hits very close to home with me. The long-term illness of my father-in-law showed me that death can be a mercy, that this life ha a natural end. Her grief, so well captured, is pushing her towards that same end, but I wonder if her brothers, when on wing, would have been happier knowing that she was down in the forest loving another, happy once again.
Your line, "Now she spread her wings, rude, unfeathered forms" is a wonderful image. Thanks for another great entry
beautifully written.
It's sad...but there's beauty in that sadness.
@Advizor: The odd thing is that I never said she died. Maybe she really did fly away to them. It's a fairy tale after all. It's an odd thing because that doesn't make me stop crying to think it.
@TemptingSweets: Thanks hun :)
@Oversexed Librarian: Sadness can be beautiful sometimes. Or perhaps beauty can be sad. Whichever it is.
Well played on the various themes. Especially the Celtic images including death being in the west.
A soft sad song and melody for this one. Well done. Beautiful picture.
@wordwytch: It's funny; I put death in different locations depending on what I want it to mean. West has always been a sad death for me, probably because of the setting sun.
Christian, and, I believe, Judaic theology puts new life as coming from the East, the direction from which the the promised Messiah will come. Death in the west, besides being a great name for a cowboy movie, matches the suns motion and the deep rooted notion that leaving "the east" was leaving civilization to a wilder, more untamed frontier where death came early and often.
The only other directional death I can think of is the legend, mostly untrue, of northern tribes sending their old people off on an ice flo to die after their useful years are over. Now, at least in the US, we send our people South to die, like to Arizona and Florida.
And I know that you don't say she dies, the mystical nature of the story could easily support another ending where the swan-brothers cradle her in a blanket held between 6 beaks and carry her off to turn in to Natalie Portman.
@Advizor: Death in the east is hopeful. Death in the west is an ending. Usually north or south, death is from rather than in, at least as far as my literary stuff goes; death from the north is bitter, unfeeling, cold, while death from the south tends to be more exotic, but can also be Armageddon. That's western and northern-ism, but that's what I have to draw upon, culturally. The Chinese have a complex system of direction-element-sensations which makes any of my feeble attempts seem comic by comparison, but unfortunately I'd only be making an extremely uneducated guess about Chinese literary symbolism, and I wasn't making reference to a Chinese myth. I might at some point though.
If our heroine is going to go anywhere, she's flying under her own power. And leave Natalie Portman out of this. The story was around long before she walked onto the screen.
But Natalie is so cute.....even when crazy.
I would love to spend more time on Chinese mythology, the greeks and romans had some interesting stuff, but it all ended up in some god getting some poor mortal pregnant and them making her kids miserable after that.
If death from the east is hopeful should I get in a crash going to work (heading east) or going home from work (from the east). I have the sun in my eyes both directions so it shouldnt' be hard to arrange.
@Advizor: "While I can, I sail east in the Dawn Treader. When she fails me, I paddle east in my coracle. When she sinks, I shall swim east with my four paws. And when I can swim no longer, if I have not reached Aslan's country, or shot over the edge of the world in some vast cataract, I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise..." Damn it, I'm crying again.
...."and Peepiceek will be head of the Talking Mice in Narnia".
Is it sad that I didn't even need to go look that up?
I think you, like I, am given to occasional bouts of melancholy. Not because you're a depressive or because anything's particularly wrong in your life, but because it just happens that way sometimes. I find it best to embrace those moments, take hold of them, and make something out of them, as you've chosen to do here.
As others have said, beautifully written. And drawn from one of the most lovely fairy tales.
-- PB
@PB: I sometimes wish my melancholy was more loquacious, that's all. And I wasn't particularly melancholy before I started writing, so it was a bit of a shock. But I don't really mind. I hope my readers get some benefit out of it.
ummm, very beautiful is all that i can say.
oh and that i sooo recognized that title. HUGE pj fan!
will be back...i'm following now. come visit me too if you wish.
@That Girl: Glad to have you and glad you enjoyed it. It's actually not my favorite Pearl Jam song, although I like Yield as an album a lot. No Code is still my favorite though, which I suppose marks me as some kind of Pearl Jam fan, although I'm not sure which kind ;) I'd visit you, but I can't access your profile so I don't know where you live online. Send me a link and I'll check it out.
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