Aeolia

34: Gravity's Pull

Ravine was drifting, a body without place, a body collapsed under the demands of gravity. She wanted the careen of the planet to stop. It was pressing her down, turning her around, releasing, leaving her free to fall. And she did fall.

     She plummeted through fields of clouds and suspended autumn orbs. Orbs of candlelight, orange leaves. Oh, atmospheres unfolded, leaving layers of mist and matter. After plumes of stars, of feathers, of a forever snowing world, at last she could see flowers and the sea. Would she fall there? Into the water? Turquoise, turquoise, crests rising on a feathered head. Drifts of grass, drifts of mist, drifting, drifting. She would like to stay adrift here.

     But no, the planet did not like it. The planet held hands with gravity and bent to its every fancy. And gravity planned to pull her deeper. She was already ensnared, hunted by the magnets buried deep in the earth, so the woman called out. Why wouldn't the ground let her be?

     Gravity was sickening. It was filling her head with gray, gray dust, and it did not care.

     Dust and ropes, her old school, flashes of her mother, her father, the gorge and falling spit. Falling. Past things, not to be remembered. Things to be forgotten, sent to distant seas through distant tunnels. Tunnels that wove through dark earth, that damned earth, damned dark ground.

     She was still falling to where that dark ground awaited her with greedy teeth, ready to open and capture, pull her with its magnets to where the source lay.

     Ready to trap. Ensnare with teeth, with scythes. Dark scythes, glittering caverns, glittering scales. A petal from an upper wind falling into a stagnant puddle, a body slithering through, a body slithering to the pink light.

     Finally she heard a thud and looked down. Her arms splayed before her, chest on the floor. She sat up, straightened. She had stopped this endless falling and now she was here, gravity the ensnarer's captured prey.

     Deep-in-the-earth, hidden-from-light, petal-in-the-stagnant-puddle prey.

     She couldn't feel the dust of ancient evils on her skin, nor the throb that should have reddened her arms. The impact of landing, of staying in this yawning place, had no effect on her. It was strange. The orbit of the planet had nauseated her but here she felt nothing? That couldn't be right.

     Dreams are malleable-things to be tampered with, enhanced, corrupted.

     Something else had to be here. Tampering. Corrupting.

     The woman flinched and began to shake.

     And then it came.

     The Viper.

     It was moving quickly, not at all a slow or deliberate hunter. It moved with the urgency of a predator who has been angered and cannot forgive.

     Ravine felt a dread beyond anything digging its spored fingers into her stomach. Her eyes filled with tears, black and lethargic tears. Violent shivers racked her body, sick, sick, sick.

     Her breath rattled, coughing in bursts. Through her fevered lungs she cried, I don't want you. I don't want you here.

     The Viper slowed its mesmerizing twist towards her.

     Ravine sobbed, unable to control the sounds that lurched from her shuddering mouth. I never wanted you here.

     The tears fell from her eyes, forming stagnant puddles around her.

     I don't want you.

     Please.

     The Viper narrowed its spiraled eyes. It flicked its tongue-searching-tasting-calculating-hesitating.

     Ravine collapsed, her ribs shaking. Her fallen black tears lapped at her face, slipping into her mouth. She gasped for breath, cries choppy like a storm at sea.

     The Viper hesitated, but at last, it turned and retreated into the darkness beyond the cavern.