Extract from The Symphony of Shards

Dark Fantasy. Dive into the world of Aru Sajesme and meet Méandë and Taima! This is the beginning of the Symphony's first volume, Honigblüte. Please keep in mind that it is a translation and that I had to get a bit creative to transport the meaning of some phrases safe and sound from German into English.

Waiting

Lost-of-mind sat on a stool and tuned her harp. Around her was night. In her something else. The forest sensed it and its creatures feared. A storm was brewing, barely held at bay, ever ready to break loose.

            Lurking. Full of anticipation.

            Lost-of-mind began to play, and the forest went silent. Would someone now have entered the clearing, a Silverwood tree in its midst, they would have seen a girl, gorgeous—and yet… they’d be unable to shake the feeling that something was not right with her. Perhaps her bearing, proud and upright and yet crooked. Perhaps the unnatural silence radiating from her in spite of her playing.

            Perhaps… a tragic word.

            Most, however, would first look in her face. A tender, a violative face, marked by years of rejection, fear, abuse. Of hate towards herself and hate towards everything else. The eyes black, surrounded by white and crisscrossed with silver veins instead of those red. The gaze of someone lost of mind.

            Of someone lost in mind.

            Lost-of-mind played the harp. Her hands were coarse from harp’s strings, the slender fingers bloody. Regardless she played on, body to the music’s rhythm, eyes now closed, and head now leant back so that her face would glow in the moon’s light after it had fought its way through the jungle’s canopy or had taken the shortcut through the air in the clearing. Those who paid attention to her right arm would have noticed silver veins emerging like ivy’s twines winding from the sleeve of her white dress, ending at her fingertips. The mark of a Bestowed, the pride of the Valàndri, as the long-living here called themselves. The Children of Life. And she was their stigma.

            They deserve it, Méandë. Stop blaming yourself.

            But they didn’t do anything!

            Exactly. They could have helped you, could have stood up for you. Yet did they? No. They called you names and mocked you, abused you and threw stones at you. Your reaction was appropriate. As with everybody else.

            Killing other Valàndri is not allowed!

            You didn’t kill them. They died of their own. For they were weak. Unlike you. You are strong. You are gorgeous. You are just. You are life, and life knows no bounds. Even death is but a part of life.

            Méandë plucked the strings of her harp. She liked playing the harp. The constant pain making her body burn white-hot with every fibre at every hour of the day melted into the background, a little. It never disappeared fully—else it wouldn’t be constant. The pain was always there, like a faithful friend. A cruel friend, but a friend, nevertheless.

            And us? Are we not your friends?

            Of course.

            Without us, you would have long lost your mind.

            Am I not already lost of mind?

            Silence. Méandë continued playing, let herself be carried by waves so as to lose herself in the vastness of the spheres. There from where she could never return, no, never wanted to return. The reason for all she did. Deliverance from the pain. And yet… something held her back. Was it fear? Fear of what might await her? Fear of simply not being anymore? She did not know.

            Méandë played.

            And the pain ever increased.

            Still, she played. Writhed with pain yet craved for more. Begged for mercy yet cursed herself for it. Her head jerked back and forth, her pitch-black hair came loose from its messy knot and whipped the air. She tore her mouth open and screamed, but no-one came. No sound escaped her throat, a silent scream, trapped in her head. And yet she played as though there would be no tomorrow. A bit of luck, and her wish would come true.

            Don’t you still have plans ere we part?

            Her destiny.

            Your will. Nothing is predestined. The future is like a tree that branches with every passing year.

            I’ve been nailed to this tree. I am the future. That which we will become if we continue as before. It’s inevitable unless I hammer the nails into my flesh, myself. Perhaps not even then. Méandë opened her eyes. Her fingers had taken on her favourite colour. The tender brown of her skin had yielded to the red of blood, the most gorgeous and honest of all colours. The colour of life. And I—

            Let us drink! they demanded.

            Don’t make fools of yourselves. You have no throats, what do you want to swallow with?

            You really can be insufferable, sometimes, do you know that?

            Méandë ignored the voices, and sniffed. The meadow smelled particularly nice tonight. Particularly the flowers she’d planted. She interrupted her harp’s strings for a bit to flick a few drops of blood their way, then continued. We’re disappointed. She was that, too, sometimes. But tonight? What was she tonight?

            Contemplative. You know, perhaps I really shouldn’t have done it.

            What? Have you joined the lost-of-mind?

            Méandë laughed. The irony!

            You haven’t lost your mind, you know that.

            Yes, I have. I’m talking to you.

            But we exist.

            So do I. Yet here we sit, and wait.

            The voices laughed silently. You ever surprise us, Méandë… They’re coming!

            I know. Unperturbed she continued playing. All of a sudden she seemed alive, as though she were a perfectly normal Valjéeh and not… not a… monster.

            You are no monster. They are the monsters. Now, go get your knife.

            It’s not my knife.

            It belongs to you. Istrïsa is your birth right.

            I have no birth right! She doesn’t belong to me. I don’t deserve Istrïsa.

            You took her because you could. You need not do anything to deserve her—you already have, Méandë.

            I don’t need her.

            Get her! An order.

            “Silence! I won’t.”

            Very well. We’ve warned you.

            Méandë shook her head in amusement. What fools! —They’re here. She sensed them. Their fear, their uncertainty, their ignorance. And one of them… Méandë was confused. Hope? Whereon? What was she that she wasn’t like the others who couldn’t think for fear? Had she lost her mind?

            Like you? She ignored the voices.

            Méandë straightened, sewed her best lost-of-mind smile to her lips, sculpted her features to form a dreamy face and ceased playing. When a blindingly bright light plunged her into shadow, the Valjéeh put back her head, closed her eyes and began plucking the harp’s strings anew.

Deathling

Taima was different.

            There was nothing more to say.

            It’d been like that for as long as she could remember. She saw it in the looks other Valàndri her age gave her, only to quickly look away or gigglingly flitter away and hide behind trees or in the undergrowth. And observe her.

            Some just stood there or followed Taima.

            The grown-ups weren’t better. —Granted, they didn’t mock her. A start. Was it really better to be ignored, though? Wherever she went, they simply did what they’d been doing before—they didn’t even avert their gaze. They seemed to just see through her, as if she wasn’t there. Am I here?

            There were times when she asked herself this. Whether perhaps she was dreaming being alive. Whether she was a ghost who’d lost her way, desperately searching for a way out her body. Whether she’d been barred from entering the ghostworld because she had committed heinous crimes in a past life.

            Maybe that was why she was pale.

            Yet it mattered not, the search for reasons pointless. Attempts to better herself pointless. She herself pointless. Taima was different.

            Stones! Yes, that’s it!! Sometimes they threw stones at her. And then were surprised when her blood was red, too. Stolen it she had, they’d say. For some time, she’d tried explaining that blood was red and that all living things possessed red blood—if perhaps they wanted to see her collection? —but the other children had only gotten angrier, and would have hurt her even more, had they not also been so very afraid of Taima.

            But why are they so afraid? I’m just a ghost, I can’t hurt them. But if she was a ghost, why did she bleed?

            A bird pecked her left palm. She let it be.

            It was a very pretty bird. She wondered what its name was? A ghostbird? Was there such a thing? No, it couldn’t be, with its so plumage so very gorgeous, so very colourful. Like a hummingbird it seemed, only bigger/smaller and more colourful. Was she allowed to touch it? Slowly she lowered her right hand, carefully so as not to frighten the pretty bird. She blanked out everything. It was just her and the bird. It chirped. She smiled and tenderly stroked its head with her fingers. It shook its wings, but made no attempt to fly away.

            Gingerly she formed a depression with her hands, for the small animal to snuggle in, and lifted it so she could see it better. From behind a gentle breeze blew her blond hair against her face. The bird chirped.

            And was dead.