13-Dec-2001
Title: Torch
Author: :Lilias
Rating: PG
Pairing: 2+1
What to expect: Shounen-ai, clunky attempts at lyricism, weirdness, incoherent angst, POV.
Disclaimer: GW belongs to Bandai, the Sotsu Agency, and Sunrise, and I don't intend to infringe upon their rights.
Notes: The metaphor I'm about to belabor has almost certainly been done before--I haven't happened across a fic that uses it, but thought I should apologize in advance, just in case. ^_^;;
This is a Christmas present for my Em-wifey--it's still all your fault! ^_^ (And if the 1x2 part of my brain had handed me _anything_ else, you'd be getting a much better present.... >_<)
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame,
--John Donne, "Air and Angels"
Angels affect us oft, and worshipped be.
This torch I bear is scorching me.
--Spike, BtVS ('Once More, With Feeling')
Do you ever look at the moon? Really look, I mean.
(see me)
They think it's pretty, down on Earth. But its real face is ugly, scarred and pale and dead--it's taken its hits, the moon. Long before there was anything on the planet to notice, it was taking its hits--you can see the craters even from Earth. Broken circles, rayed like stars. All this on a landscape that never forgets even the lightest tread; footprints last forever on the moon, and these more ancient wounds will be there even past the end of forever.
(and they never heal, not when there's no air no light nothing but cold memory and darkness shroud it in black bury it deep but the marks are still there)
But I guess most things look better from a distance. From Earth, the moon even looks like it's shining--but it isn't, not really. Just borrowed light. The sun's doing the shining, and the moon just looks at it sideways, gathering up all that light and pouring it down. Making do with what it can get.
(one face always hidden keep the bright side out best foot forward no one will see)
The moon's just a mirror to the candle, nothing like the sun; it's the same size in the sky, when it's totally full, but safer to look at. You can stare down the moon, memorize its shape, feel its weight on your eyes. Don't try that with the sun, or it'll sear your sight until all you have left is the darkness you came from.
(pay any price, swear anything just to have the light your light on my face again)
It's nothing personal, what the sun does to retinas, epidermis, ants under glass. It burns; that's what it was born to do. A bonfire in the silence of space, vast and hot and implacable. Nothing personal.
(burn me)
And the sun's always the same. Oh, it moves--turns, seethes, hurtles through space with the rest of the galaxy, shooting out from the heart of the universe with everything else. But there's a singularity of purpose, a continuity in its changes--hydrogen plus heat plus pressure equals boom, moment after moment until we're talking about millennia--that's like stillness.
The moon's not like that; it comes and goes, fills and empties, never the same shape two nights running. Tugging at the ocean in its restlessness, shoving until other things move, too. It's a coward, the moon--but there's a limit to how far it can run. Underneath its borrowed light, the moon's always the same, too.
(run hide always come back to you always you)
But the sun's not immortal; even stars die. Fading from yellow to red to cinder in the sky, taking everything else with it. Someday the moon'll be up there alone, dark witness to the death of light.
{and when you fall Icarus on melting metal wings no lasting fracture no mark on the sea just water closing like a smiling mouth and you're gone gone I know where the craters will be)
-end-
(:./lilias/torch)
