Nuryana - Visions
They say that it is my blessing that allows mortals to wake from the dark dreamlands of sleep. By who's blessing then am I granted such a reward? I am not like them, I am not mortal, yet from sleep—that death-like relief to all—I am woken by the sound of chiming.
Why then, if i am not like them, can I not wake without the notes of brazen gongs to guide me from the darkness? They say that I am their Light, their Living God, but why do I not remember what came before the darkness from which I awoke? Perhaps it is not the place of a Divine being to retain such needless knowledge? Perhaps I have awoken into a new world where nothing existed before I awoke?
I am told that I am Nuryana, and I know this to be true, though the calling is alien to me. I gaze upon their faces as they speak, these creatures who know more about me than I know of myself. I do not know any of them—or feel I do not.
"Another dawn has come and by your divine Grace the devout arise"
Once more the soft toll of their beaten brass gongs reverberates deeply about the chamber.
Two of their number ascend the raised dais about the bed in which I lay. I do not know how I came to be here, and though all around me is unfamiliar, I know it is mine, I have always known it and I have played out the ritual of Rising since the beginning of time.
Women in blue. Dark skinned, lithe creatures with shaven heads and intricate jewellery, delicate chains of silver and gold connecting nose rings to ear hoops, their bangles tinkling in the smooth ritual motion of aiding me. I allow them to do so, their eyes averted, never gazing upon me.
I stand as though it is the first time I have done so, the cool touch of marble startling to my bare feet. It is a pleasant feeling. My body moves on its own, enacting a routine it has done for decades though I have no memory of ever enacting it before. I throw my arms out and allow them to undress me, the delicate silken gossamer gowns like a soft breeze upon my skin, yet in them I feel confined, a strange tight sensation I cannot explain, but when they are away from me and I stand bare, I feel I can breath.
With that relief comes a paradoxical feeling of weakness and exposure—quickly I must be dressed! They know my urgency, they have done this many times before and from the room is taken the discarded garment to be burned, and a new identical one is brought before me. Fragrant water and beautiful perfumes are sprinkled upon me and with each anointment the Azure Sisters speak my praise, reminding me of my merciful existence until I am dressed once more.
Light has yet to come to the world, but through the high windows of my chamber I can see the thin blossoming pink of dawn, spreading fingers of burning amber white across the world below. Down there, close to the earth, walks man, the creature my people saw fit to Enlighten. Beyond my chambers, beyond my city within a city, man is waking and with each breath he is thanking me for continuing to smile upon him and protect him from that which would drag him back into the darkness he was found in.
It is then that I descend from my chambers to my garden. I know it well, yet I do not know it at all, for as I gaze around, all is new and wondrous to me. If it is by my hand that such beauty may be brought forth, then I do not remember my part in such conception or birth. Deep emeralds and shining sapphire, blossoms and foliage of every colour and design, each a wonder, each demanding my attention, but I know I must continue, I will have time enough to admire such things later.
To my pillared throne I walk, led by the blue women, their chiming gongs and finger cymbals tinkling in fine ethereal unison with their jewellery. There, raised upon smooth marble and draped in translucent whites and ivory, I am met by a single chair, lavish in all its decorations. Before it stands a platter set with a single brass bowl, and beyond, in stark vivid contrast to the silken whites of the drapery, figures in crimson.
Here the sisters fall silent, their bodies bending into bows as they sink to the ground and I know that I am expected to ascend the throne and partake of the meal.
All around me is still as though the world had reverted to the stone from which it had been carved and these were not woman at all but statues of lapis lazuli set upon the marble like jewels. The figures in crimson bow as I approach and sit, no sound of breath even disturbing the silence. And then, from their number, the first approaches and produces a small golden cup filled with deep amber gold.
"Shufthu'atan, Nuryana, the nectar of your people, the only true sustenance in this world." he says as he pours the liquid into the bowl before me, never once looking at me, the deep cowl of his hood obscuring his face so that he, like the others, is but a familiar stranger to me. His name comes to the tip of my tongue, spoken from the dark unknown recesses of my forgotten memory.
"May you remain Blessed AdurArshaan."
And from me he backs away, a distanced creature so far from my grace.
The bowl is cold to the touch, clean and crisp and almost painful. The liquid within is rich and thick, undulating and rippling in beautiful dark clear amber. It is liquid fire, liquid warmth and light, shining and shimmering against the brass that is ugly and heavy in comparison to it. My lips tremble as I lift the vessel to them, the clean, sharp scent of that substance in contrast like ice.
I had tasted it many times before, but each was as though I had drunk it for the first time. If taste could have a colour, then it would be the colour of that liquid, shimmering and clear, deep and rich and ever changing upon the tongue as it had upon the light. Like silk. Sweet and bitter in the same instance—disgust and delight.. If I had felt hunger upon rising, I did not know it, but with that single mouthful of nectar my hunger was satiated and my thirst quenched, I needed no other sustenance.
"Another day has come and been blessed by your mercy" said AdurArshaan. "May you forever smile upon us and remain to guide mankind with your Light."
"May it be so" the others chorused and each bowed, the Azure Sisters retreating, their heads and bodies still lowered in prostration before me.
"With the waking of man, the dealings of the day must be attended to Nuryana, as humble servants we see to all that is beneath your divine care" continued AdurArshaan, closest and most Enlightened of men.
Even as he uttered those words I knew it had always been thus.
"Go then, with my blessing, show mercy where my mercy is required."
And thus the Blessed Crimson left me to bask in the wonder of my garden, a garden I had not seen before but remembered as though it were part of me. Every inch was new, from the pillared walkways about the circular walls to the great crystal pool tiled with deep blue. Trees and flowers with the most beautiful and intoxicating aromas graced every corner, their scent enchanting the senses and washing the clean air with colour. Each stone and carved tile was delicately lain in intricate patterns of geometrical beauty, like stone blossoms adorning the walls and fountains. I delighted in the hot smoothness of the tiles beneath my feet, warming now as the thin light of the sun began to slant across the shadows and lighten up the world, the grass like velvet jewelled with crystal beads of dew.
I was not alone of course, there were the Beythanian, my White Guard. Silent statues, ever present, but blind. Women in white robes and veils, their faces obscured by long translucent material which hung from broad brimmed hats. They were my marble guardians, unspeaking and unseeing, the only mortals who could remain in my presence and not be blinded by my divinity.
I passed my day exploring this world I had forgotten, walking through the trees and shrubs and marvelling at the trilling birdsong in the branches. Up beyond my chambers, through the constructed pathways I could see the sky, so vast and blue, an endless plane. Of all the beauty around me, nothing captivated me more than the sky. It was to that great unfathomable infinity that my eye gazed time after time, dragged there by some inner call which spoke to something deep inside. When I looked at the sky I felt joy, but also inexplicable sorrow. It was this mysterious paradox that kept me gazing up and longing to be closer, to reach up and grasp the aether as though it were blue silk.
I bathed in the pool, its vast crystal coldness tempting me to explore it more. The feeling of that cool light nothingness while my body was surrounded and lifted by water eased the vulnerability I felt when unclothed. I felt a bond with water, as though, some part of me had once come from it, that affinity however was nothing compared to the tug of the sky.
My people had come from light, they had come from somewhere beyond this plane. I was not like the mortals around me, my skin was not like the earth, my hair not like the night, I was like ivory, my hair like the light of a star. I moved my arm through the water as I sat beside the tiled edge of the pool, enjoying the slight resistance the water gave, tugging at my fingers as it fought to pass through my fingers.
There had been others like me, other yazata.
Seven Lords of Light, descending from the sky to draw mankind from the darkness he crawled in. We taught him everything, bestowing upon him an Atash and granting him knowledge and power over his fellow creatures. It was we who drew him from the Savage Age, yet in doing so we had been destroyed. I know because I was there, many decades ago when man was still newly walking in Light.
The Darakos had come— the Soulless Ones— crawling from the darkness, hungry, savage, unclean. They wanted what we had given man, jealously craving it until their own greed had driven their callous hearts. They wanted the Atash, the gift of Light.
My people do no know violence, we do not know what it means to harm another, it is beyond our understanding. It is a great sadness that for all our knowledge and enlightenment, anger, hate, jealousy, and greed, are phenomena we had to be taught by man.
I still do not understand it, but when I think on such things I am filled with dread and fear, for some part of me remembers the horror of that time.
The Seven Lords of Light were slaughtered, mankind helplessly torn asunder, but in that time of need the Blessed Crimson remained strong and loyal to my kind. The original recipients of my people's knowledge, the seven Blessed Brethren are the only mortals to have been truly and wholly blessed by the yazata. AdurArshaan and his brethren were there when the Darakos came, they alone stood firm to defend the Seven Lords of Light, but they were mere mortals, and when the Lords sensed the Darakos near, they beseeched the Brethren to flee, unable to see man die. Unwilling to see such a courageously beautiful creature destroyed.
The Blessed Crimson were marked by Our favour on that day, receiving fragments of the dying yazata breath as they were slain. It is said that as they fled, their robes of white bled crimson, and thus only they, the Blessed few are entitled to wear that colour, in honour and remembrance of my people and that harrowing day.
The world now fell into chaos and mankind was left in terror as the Darakos lay waste to their numbers, savagely slaughtering the helpless in their insatiable greed. The Blessed Crimson were left to guide mankind, and sought endlessly for their saviour, looking with unyielding faith for a yazata who may have survived the atrocity and beseeching the sky to hear their plea. Led by AdurArshaan the Blessed few ventured from the ruined city of Miraj, where my people had first descended, and struck out into the unknown, guided by their faith alone.
Such dedication was duly rewarded and as they came upon the great vast sea, a beam of light tore from the sky like a spear of white from heaven, and in that vibrancy, I was found with the flaming sword of justice and spear of mercy. The Darakos now fled in terror, banished by my light, back into the darkness of Gallus where they remain, ever craving what they may not have and weaving their dark influence upon the heart of the weak of faith. From the desert the people came, leaving Miraj in ruin to build a new Shining City where my feet had touched this earth.
Now as I sat in the limpid cool of the shallows I gazed up at the endless blue from which I had come, and in that deep cobalt vastness I found some peace. I let my eyes slip closed, still seeing that blue behind their closed lids and feeling the empty nothingness of the water around me. For now I was there within that deep blue, my limbs light wisps of cloud on the winds, weightless and free. I was the breeze and zephyrs, fluid and ever moving, with no direction or purpose until I was drawn towards a throbbing pulse of energy.
I was in a ream of light now, caught up in it for a moment as my soft motion hit its bank of torpid rapids. I couldn't fight against it, my wisp-like limbs too frail, caught in a sudden breakneck urgency and speed. Something was dragging me down! I could not resist though my heart quivered and jerked in trepidation. Where was I going? What was calling me down and away from that freedom?
Everything was rushing by me too quickly to resist or stop, my body would shatter if I did. The light was a river I could not break from and it tore through the blue like a knife. Through the white vibrancy I could see a vast dark landscape, rocky and hilly, a split second of it flashed in the wash of motion before my eyes, already closed, closed once more within so that all was utter black. And still my body moved, drawn to some urgent call that sent pangs of pain through my chest.
And then the pulling pressure stopped, leaving tingling stillness which shot across my nerves and the smell of freshness and earth tantalised my senses, waking me from some terrible half remembered dream of falling.
I woke, but it was not me waking.
There before me was a stranger against a rocky landscape, fear and uncertainty in his eyes.
And then I woke again, and it was me waking, the pleasant cool of the pool now making me shiver.
Shifting >