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The Week of Greed
Whereas before it was to enjoy the last treasures, now the corruption has progressed to just possessing them, whether or not they are being used or enjoyed. Gather all that you can and hoard, for it is yours, in these last days, and that may be all that matters. That something, other then life, was yours.

I am not alone.

It seems a cliche...a witticism. Oft repeated down the ages. We are always and never alone. In ourselves, in others. But in the physical sense of the labyrinth, I have always been alone. Just myself and my mistress who is the maze herself personified. But there is someone else now. I have seen the footprints burned into the stone that only I have trod. I have seen the water-splashes of the fountains where drops spatter like blood to a violated body. Hands were plunged into the crystalline liquid, drawing from the fountais its life-nourishment. I can even sense the air itself impunged by the passage of a form not my own.

Rage results. My beloved has no others. Had none. I am betrayed by her. By him. Although I know not whether this is a male or female, I feel intrinsically that my mistress flirts with another man. Whether she invited him initially or merely dalliances with him due to the happenstance of his arrival I know not. But I will brook no other here. I have tracked him long and far through dazzling turns and corners, but always he fades in view. As if he is a figment of mist. Or as if he knew the secret of getting out that I do not.

For I had lost that certainty for a time that this mistress is as much a paramour as a cage. I had forgotten that these corridors lead ever back on themselves. That as a rodent I scurry thereabouts to the study of others. That I am the pawn and not the player. This would not do....at all. If "he" knows the way I seek, then I will have that too.

6 August 8th – The week of Plague –
War is always followed by sickness. It is a dirty business, and carrion and blood breed sickness. So do siege and weapons themselves. Those not killed in the battle often fall to the disease that comes after.

This was not how I imagined it to be. Something did come, and I have clutched it to me as a beloved. But it was neither the prey I intended...nor a prey I wanted.

Sickness has lain on me. A fever that burns and does not cool. A heat both filled with filth and chill. It seems contradictory that a fire in the flesh causes an intense feeling of cold. This slow and creeping flame has torched all in my sight with its effects. It all falls now to the burning.

Skin sloughs, as rock crumbles. Colors shatter into red and sickly hues. Tapestries moulder and shred even as the fountains shatter in my eyes. In a blink they are gone, as water falls from them as blood. All becomes consumed with this slow sickness.

A thought comes to me...or tries. A slight tremble in the Dream that I am. But I cannot hold it, as we both slide into the encompassing illness that is now all there is...

August 22nd – The week of Decay –
So many bodys, sickness, and filth everywhere, and yet also the blight extends to those last remaining plants that destroyed and over grew. Everything is falling apart rapidly into dust or rot. Everything is becoming a great wasteland, stinking and foul.

As those of old did penance while sitting upon ash, abasing themselves in the spectacle of misery...so too do I now sit. While there is no sacloth or rent garments, the silence is my torn clothing. The world around me as well is testament to a physical wail of punishment.

The thought does flit through my mind that here I face some sort of chastisement for deeds done and webs woven. But even now I have no regret. They were such lovely things, each in their own way. Meticulous and spun ever so delicately. Laced in both subtelty and lies. If there was to be punishment for this, I would have imagined it to be more than this ruinous, fallow place. Although it chafes and itches...and even offends my sensibilities to see such loveliness laid waste...there is no real feeling of suffering.

Not yet, at least.

The closest to that would have been the fever, now gone. The unquenching heat that did not cool. This dust-laden dryness is not a torment in of itself, for I have had little need of food or water. It is a luxury that I enjoy, true. But luxuries are merely that because they can be ignored. And while I am not one to often deny myself...I find it practical that I need not do so now.
Of course, I wryly contemplate...I hardly have the choice.

But such is the way of deception.

I talk of this to the shadow, newly returned. I see not a form there, but know it to be nearby. I sense it from the corners of my eyes. And my trap is still laid, albeit now not as strong. So I lay now additional words as silken threads. I continue to mold this wonderful tapestry. And I, who have ever loved the beauty and majesty of words and tone, and voice and song...can make such a weave that has at times made gods weep.

Literally.

As I do so, I explain in part what I do. But only in part. This is my truest joy, and even in this strange and sickly world it has not left me. In response, I hear an echo of thoughts that seem very appropriate

"Come down and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon; Sit on the ground without a throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans! For you shall no longer be called tender and delicate.

This amuses me. For although I am neither a daughter nor even a virgin...it is a learned and charmed thing to think. Apparently my shadow has a bit of a poet in him. Or a zealot. But one need not cancel out the other. We converse in quotes, my shadow and I. It is not a real conversation, not yet at least. But it is a dance, and a distraction. And very intimate. For in such things as memory, we cling to those things that make us feel wise, or lovely, or other than we are. Quotations become a screen on which we project what we are.

What sublime things words are. Out of all that has been created, by hand or god...surely they are the most intricate and beautiful of all.

To say I was appalled would be understating. I had fallen into cliche, my words reduced to pendantic mutterings. How...inelegant.

I must be more out of practice than I thought. There had been neither wit nor charm in my conversation. It was beneath me. Embarrassing.

I wander the ruins of my Labyrinth, bored. If I were truly out of practice, these walls would give me none. But my wanderings brought me to a thing that soon refreshed my mood.

A single sign of greenery. The tiniest of life in what had been decay and dust.

I sat, not heeding that the ground would touch me with dirty fingers. Cupping my chin in my long fingers I gazed at the slight sproutling. The imagery enchanted me.

I watched it grow. Time had no meaning to me here, and so none truly passed. I watched the leaves unfurl and spread, reaching to a light that was not here, but sustained regardless. The days and nights that were not real nurtured this fragile thing. I watched as it matured, a golden flower emerging like a shy girl at a dance. The petals flared like a skirt, twirling about the darkened center.

I so loved the color gold when touched by light. My finger brushed the flower gently, taking off it a faint sheen of pollen. My lips turned slightly upwards.

At peace I watched the blossom as it blew its life-giving kiss into the air that had no wind. And that air spread the pollen into a hundred different directions. Each carrying with it the promise of more to come.

I closed my eyes....and slept.

It started with a single leaf falling.

But the word itself was an inelegant injustice. The leaf did not 'fall' so much as dance and twirl, sprightly as any ballerina would. True, it had no legs, but the wind was its legs for this particular roundabout. It wove and bobbed and sliced through the stillness.

And where it touched, an explosion of color reached out. It met the grasses in a true and rambunctious tussle, fighting red and gold and green and orange.

And where one leaf had led the way, others were soon too dancing.

I blinked, for seasons had passed. And it seemed all too quickly, although time here had little meaning or weight. The shy greens had overlaid the grays and blacks, only to yield to the truly verdant and fecund. Those flowers now lay in their last throes, giving in to the inevitable autumn.

I could not recall if seasons had ever come to me here. For sure I watched as if it was the first and the last one I had or would see. My eyes were roving as a childs would be. For this had always been my most favorite of seasons, garish as some might think it.

I delighted in the sights and smells of it. Stretching out long legs to hear them rustle against the bed of leaves. I tilted my head back to my labyrinth, seeing but ruins there still.

In time it would regrow. I hoped I would not be here to see it.

The light on me was warmth and briskness at once. Luxiurious and alive-feeling. How I lusted the sensations of life. I never realized how little I did feel here.

And then he was there, obscured in the falling leaves, but achingly close. I restrained myself from embracing him, fearing to scare him off once again by an overbearing gesture. Where was my subtlety? My skill? So long unused I almost stumbled over my words as if I had stones in my mouth.

'beloved.' I greeted, voice as soft and gentle as the autumn around us.

My shadow looked at me, eyes wary and unbelieving.

Yes. Beloved. My one way out of here, my one tie to the realization that there was 'out'. I treasured and loved it and him more than any.

Any but one. But that too might come with time.

'I've watched the flames of autumn falling.' I continued. 'they dazzle so. Would you not join me?'

'Where am I?' his reply was unsure. Then grieved. 'why won't you leave me alone?!'

I was nonplussed at this. But it made my mind whirl in new directions. I had always assumed this traveller trode paths known. But he seemed genuinely bewildered, I now saw. Uneasy and - scared?

I scented blood - metaphorically speaking.

'I have no idea what you mean, beloved.' my voice oh-so honey. 'I thought you came to me in my loneliness. A specter, or will-o-wisp. A deliverer out of this quietude. I've missed you greatly. Would you not come sit and talk with me? If there is trouble, perhaps I may help. If you are lost - perhaps there is a way through that we can find together.'

A reaction in his face. He WAS lost. Somehow. Then -

My pulse quickened, but I stilled it. My face was kept serene and gentle. I could once talk a broken-winged bird to fly. This was similarly a challenge.

'please sit, beloved.' I coaxed in my most soothing voice. 'I cannot bear to see you upset.'

'Stop calling me that.' he answered, flushing.

'If you wish it. But after being here without another soul for so long - your coming is as to me a rapture. Can you fault me my emotion?' I looked down, but concealed beneath eyelashes I still watched. He seemed still unsure, but wavering. 'Please let me return the favor of your company. Allow me to help you however I may.'

After a few moments, he sat. We were two statues in a shower of reds and yellows.

the world has gone mad, and I have gone there with it

How odd those words felt, spoken here. How cadenced and normal sounding.

How...almost utterly pedestrian.

"Mad." I repeated, a quirk to my lips. "That is a word that means many things." and then added, lest my 'guest' take offense "which madness was this? Please tell me."

"The....the fire and brimstone kind." he finally said hesitantly "the kind that precedes the apocalypse. Or perhaps is the apocalypse."

The fire and Brimstone kind indeed. Recently enough I'd enjoyed my own version of that as well. Were they linked, I wondered.

"But surely those things were not without sensation?" I replied.

"Not from within my home." he said. "I...I don't think I've been well."

More interesting information. "Illness?"

"Of a kind."

"The madness within that you spoke of?"

"Yes."

"Not all madness is to be feared." I replied, feeling the words spoken. The actual sensation of it was glorious. I could sense the reverberation within the larynx, the vibration and the rumbling timber of it. It rolled from me, swelling and cresting. "Many cultures feel that the mad are the blessed. Indeed, that they are touched by the gods themselves."

An idea was beginning to form, nascent still. Out of reach I let it drift, knowing it would return when ready to form. Soon.

"Many cultures lock the insane up in the loony bin too."

"Of course they do." My smile had real warmth in it. "but why is that, do you think? Or if this conversation troubles you, we can merely be silent and continue to enjoy what is around us now."

"Talking is fine." he said quietly. "I like to talk."

Of course he did. Well, so much the better. More rope to hang a body from. A beautiful rope, the kind that could hold a Unicorn.
There was almost a chuckle. How almost appropriate. For surely this child was as pure and chaste as one.