A grand white ship drifted on a black sea, the heavy velvet curtain of a nighttime star field encapsulating it. Intermingling notes of songs and voices breathed out from the golden glow of its decks, flying out over the dream-blacked waters of this foreign sea and falling upon the wave-deafened ears of passing birds and fish. The verbose actors riding the stage that was the swan like vessel heeded not the gently lapping ocean, nor did they care to pay mind to the leviathan swell of knife-tipped waves gliding quietly through the night air of the middle distance. Warm breezes languidly stretched forth, rising to carry the choir-song wake of the ship high and far enough to cry into every corner of the world. Below the joyous decks rang the mournful songs of different things, the grand whales keened out their voices of lamentation. Above the decks, grim -- yet luminous -- tendrils of green light strangled the stars, writhing to the left and right, north and south, in a mass of shifting sorcery. A particularly savage snake stretched out and flared quickly red, casting its odd glow upon the italics that branded the side of the graceful intruder, and painting that white ship in tones of scarlet red.
Dionysus' Heart sang its way across the sea that night, framed in verdant greens, lavish blacks, and ancient whites that echoed all the long years they had wheeled through the endless expanse of space from their parent stars. All of these shimmered off of the invader's bold carapace, reflecting around into the sea, and back out to be swallowed by any number of unfathomable densities if they were not held and then thrown away by the three silver plates that were the moons. The scene was enough to bring the most stoic man or woman to their knees, to coax emotion from an object that had never even known the curtesy of life, to wring monsoons of water from the driest desert sands. Everything hummed an awesome air. It all drifted on for a time, whether this be picoseconds or the daunting eras of eternity -- one could not have told, as this vision held a strange quality of spiraling and warping perceptions. And then things began to collect -- to coalesce. The grand breakers on the distance crept in towards the unready ship, the salty sea no longer gently lapping, but growing in intensity every second with an ominous air as if preparing to snap. The saddened whales hummed together in the great below, their pitch rising into a siren song that at once enthralled and terrified. The stars became a measure more baleful and fierce, accusatory hate entering into their timeless gaze. The tendrils of aurora light reached down from the sky itself, their nature entering a corporal state, ready to spear and rip into the audacious hull of the pleasure cruise.
The songs of the passengers hushed, replaced by the grim murmurings of quiet fear. One by one, the decks turned out their lights. A foolish attempt to hide from the world itself? To save their own skins? Who could say when no observer was present? And then, in that moment, the tension broke. Heedless of the heedless crew, the tsunami swells encircled and ensnared the swan, lifting it up into the center of the view, tossing it between them as if it were a child's ball. The murmurs ascended into screams as the gala of before -- that affluent air of entertainment -- was shattered and replaced by the atmosphere of disastrous horror. The glowing snakes across the sky sank their fierce teeth into the chitin, crushing and cracking the bones of the poor thing and rending the flesh of the unfortunates that lurked behind their titanic bulwark of gleaming osseous tissues. The keening around became a screech of anger, and sword like fins flashed throughout the raging waves, slicing and sinking into the now pliable intruder -- softened by tentacles forged from light and bruised by fierce waves. The wind itself next dove into the gory feast, swirling about and pulling broken objects -- possessions, dead bodies, debris, and those still alive -- from the newly inflicted wounds, throwing them into the air, into the sea, and into the rising maws of the vast ocean dwellers that gathered about in endless hunger. The ship never stood any conceivable chance. It was rent to pieces and emptied of all life, and then those pieces were ripped into fragments of themselves, and then those, and so on, until nothing but a brilliant white powder remained of the heart of entertainment. In the brief second before it all began to settle, the world froze.
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Terrific Things
HorrorTerrific: Colossal, excellent, terrifying. This is the word, in every sense of itself, that can best describe what is to be found in the mountains. The locals know it, the travelers know it, and those who emigrate away know it all the more. But one...
