Welcome to Gaia! ::

Here I will put some of the things I have written.

The first is my submission to the anniversary contest. Called unoriginally enough Catacomb Pondering.

I may also post some of my poetry and other stories.

Catacomb Pondering.

In the silent halls of the catacombs a monk walked, the blackness that surrounded her unnoticed. Though it had been years since she had returned to this place Tatiana still knew the path, though time continued its degradation of the halls and tombs. The passage in which she walked now was littered with debris from the level above. She avoided the stones in her path, and coughed softly in the thin air.
Since the battle had ended she had made her way slowly to this place. She pondered the fate of those she had met, memories of their voices echoing through her mind. Strong, determined voices. She placed a hand on the wall feeling the roughness of the hewn stone beneath her hand. They had been much the same, she thought, rough around the edges, but strong. She had not understood from where their strength had come.
Walking again, she noted the corridor showed signs of greater ruin. The walls were even worse here, coming down in some places. Bones lay in haphazard piles here and there, torn by gravity from their niches along the wall. Sadly, the shallow carved tombs no longer provided much protection to them. Tatiana moved past the piles carefully: she would sort through them later.
Ahead of her stood her destination, the opening to which was nothing more than a jagged crack scarring the wall. She slid through sideways, her slender body brushing against the walls of the small passage. Once inside, she coughed briefly in the long stagnate air. The large room was circular in construction, a massive domed ceiling somehow untouched by the ages. Bones lay all around, patterned in a spiraling pattern on the floor.
She walked to the far wall and sat down leaning her back against it in relief, dropping her pack gently in the dust. Why had she returned to this place? The footprints of her last time here still appeared clearly in the dust: a child’s footprints. She reached up, hands to her head and began removing the black cloth that covered her eyes. Once more, the monk’s mind turned to her last living companions. No, she had not understood their strength at the time. They had seemed so foreign to her then that she had not realized it had been their loyalty that was their strength, just as it had been hers for so many years.
Though they had been loyal to a leader, not the dead and forgotten monks whose bones had been lying here for so many years, and they had chosen to take up arms on his behalf. They had chosen to lay their lives open to reaping. And, yes, she had as well. It was her duty. Her training in the art of killing had been to be there, as so many monks of her order had been, on the battlefield as silent witnesses. It was the trade-off for their presence within the realms of so many kingdoms. They would fight alongside the soldiers and witness the deaths of the country’s enemies, performing the final rituals for those who had none to do so.
She opened her eyes for the first time, her eyes once more adjusting to seeing. Though there was no light, she could see clearly. Here were her companions. She felt the emptiness in her chest once more as she stared at the newer bones in the pattern. Not as neatly placed as the older ones, for there had been no one to fix the work at the time of their placement.
She stood and walked carefully to avoid disturbing the rest of the work, kneeling reverently over the bones. The pattern itself was designed to assist contemplation. With a heavy sigh, her mind wandered to the time she had placed these bones as a child. A sad mimicry of the precise pattern, it had not helped much at all. She picked up a skull and peered into its empty gaze. The remains of a leader, a woman capable and with vision, Tatiana’s hands trembled slightly as she returned the skull to its place. Though the woman had died of old age, her death had caused much turmoil within the order.
Tatiana’s gaze followed the path of the bones further along in the pattern. These showed signs of death in battle: cracks in the skulls and blade strokes across limbs. They had been her friends, her elders and fellow trainees, killed for not accepting the new leadership and the new way. Though truth be told, that way had not lasted long. She smiled grimly in the dark, remembering placing these bones. A sobbing child, alone, and in this dark place reeking of age and decay. Not all of them had died for their beliefs. Some had simply been killed for their association to those who had.
She remembered again the people with whom she had last fought side by side. They had all been certain of that for which they were fighting, for whom they were fighting. So many of the times she had been called to witness those who fought and knew their leaders but little. They did not fully understand why they were fighting, only that they had been given orders to do so. They died in ignorant service to leaders who cared little for them.
However, Matasoga and his companions had been different. They were intelligent and capable, each with their own gifts that worked in some strange harmony with each other. Was it the idea of receiving a reward that had caused this synchronicity? Tatiana stood and began to walk the path of the spiral. No. Reward alone would not make people work in such harmony and pay such a price. It had to be the one who orchestrated it himself.
What was it about this man that could cause this kind of united sacrifice? She had noted his charisma and knew certainly he was very intelligent. However, there had been many leaders with those traits and they had not inspired such loyalty. Obviously she was missing something and it tugged at her mind incessantly. She looked up and realized she had made it to the center. Here lay the remains of yet another leader, the founder of the order to which she belonged. Had this person also inspired such loyalty and commitment from their followers? She stared at the bones, black as the darkness surrounding them. The skull adorned with a simple painted spiral.
She looked up and around her in the darkness, seeing suddenly as if light had flooded the room. The spiral! It led in a chain of the leaders and followers to this beginning, and it would continue to flow outward as long as there was no other way. The chamber was vast and could hold many more centuries of the ends of blind loyalty. Unless it changed. Unless it stopped. She looked down, seeing for the first time a chain that lay under the skull. Picking it up, she saw a medallion with a spiral engraved on one side, and a star on the other. Understanding flooded her being. A spiral never returns to the beginning, and the further outward it works, the further from the origins it can move.
She remembered the newly placed bones, improperly placed. They were beginning not to care, not to take time to understand, not to contemplate the beginnings. Slowly she brought the medallion up to her lips and kissed it softly, then placed the chain over her head and around her neck. She placed the skull back in its place, then began the walk back through the spiral, this time stopping to repair the path where it had gone awry with time and uncaring feet. She repaired the path of the newly placed bones slowly and reverently, honoring their sacrifice as those who placed them had not.
She crept back through the small entrance to the chamber, determining that it would need to be widened. The rocky passageway needed cleaning and repair, the bones returned to their niches. She again worked her way along the dark passage, her hands following the rough-hewn stone. She emerged finally into fresh air once more, this time seeing it anew, her eyes blinking against the sunlit landscape before her, for this time she had left the black cloth in the chamber. Tatiana looked back into the darkness from which she had come, there would be time to make things right but first she needed something else. This time she sought living companions and in that goal a new path. She would find the disciples, perhaps also understanding.