Elegy for an Empire (1868)

[VIROS 2709]

Elegy for an Empire (1868)

by Caspian of Rhen

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A herald came to town today,
unlike the one who came before.
She bore no banner, wore no clothes,
and spoke nothing but two words:

 

‘Again, again!’ the magpie cried,
its voice a laughing girl’s.
‘Again, again!’ the magpie mocked,
and flew into the woods.

 

Few heard the feathered herald’s cry,
as few had heard the day before,
when another messenger arrived,
his voice thundr’ing:  “No more!”
 

“No more will you know hunger,
no more will you struggle,
and no more will soldiers come,
to trample your green fields.
No more will vultures plunge
to gorge upon your wayward sons.
For Hark! A prince is born to us,
a final prince, a final war.”

 

A hundred years, four score, and ten,
that old familiar promise echoed.
But ignorant of the tongue of men
the magpie’s forecast never erred: 

 ‘Again! Again!’

 

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[Hephaestus 1317]

"Bye-bye, Miss Orenian Pie." 

 

It had been two fortnights and some days' change since the mariner unseated his shoddy ferry from twice five miles of sandy shoals. Being that he was, for all intents, the furthest one would hope from a learned man, and by all accounts, a drunk-eyed wastrel, the vessel was no spectacle of watercraft. It did, however, prove ample succor against the whipping of tides and crashing tempests. Soaked in an aerosol spray of water, the old salt's dinghy gondola bobbed on broad Arentanian banks, and oftentimes fell into the tugging ebb and flow of brackish Orenian waters. Village-folk were, as small-people often tend to be, loquacious and firm on superstition, weaving stories of cockatrices which slumbered and existed in the water-body's once sleepy submarine activity; of vengeful visitants and ghost-lords, presences, which glissaded down from the clouds, out from bones and barrows, and gracefully, but with much dread, walked over water and brought with them tempestuous tides. There was no such thing: only tarnished bodies, cloven whole, whose little threads and ribbons of blood fed into a cool pool off the coast of Dobrov which burned red.

 

The ferryman, one Yakov, watched the waters with forlorning eyes. And, so long as he stared, the waters watched back. Perhaps, the townsfolk did not lie.

 

Still, he beat and battered his oars against the little ripples in the ink-black water which curled and combed into the promises of surf which grew to fit into mounting waves which strode into the land. Even small-folk knew, dead men tell no tales.

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Sitting in the Seven Skies, Garret Darkwood looks down and bows his head "Goodbye forever Oren, for years I have faithfully served you. Now your servants lay restfully in the seven skies, your descendants scattered like the wind. One day you will arise, you always will" Garret would then proceed to take out a heavenly Guitar and sing a song that went like: