Sya-Eeshan

As a change from the poems I usually post here, I offer a short story. It is the first of a sequence, I probably will not post any further stories in this series, instead I wait for the whole thing to fully manifest and become a novella - or whatever.




Sya-Eeshan - Jan 84

From my vantage point high on Mount Kakarinka I looked down over the island, stretched in its serpentine way across the ocean. Twelve of the thirteen city towers were visible, fairly clearly, despite the early morning haze that shrouded the dawn over Ocean. The thirteenth, I knew, lay behind me in the west, for I had just climbed from there to take one last look before I left this world.

There was a fluttering noise behind me and a sharp down-draft shook the dew from the bracken, startling the Tent-web spiders into running for cover. I did not look round for I knew who it was. For a moment before she spoke, silence reigned broken only by the distant cries of the Yellow Gulls.

"Kefan. Must you leave?" Her voice, as always, sent goose-pimples chasing each other down my back.

"You know I must, Sya-Eeshan. I explained to you why I have to leave."

"Can you not hide? They will not miss you."

"Oh Sya-Eeshan, you know that; if I could, if there was some way, I would stay. This world means more to me now than my own. You mean more to me than any other person I have ever known...but I have warned you, have I not, that when the message comes ordering my return I must obey." I found it difficult to complete my little speech as, increasingly, I found my voice trying to break and the lump in my throat was becoming harder to swallow past.

Finally Sya-Eeshan pushed past me and stood with her back to the edge of the cliff. Staring straight into my eyes, a torrent of tears streaming unashamedly down her cheeks and dripping onto her small, beautiful breasts. Even with her face set into a rigid mask of intense sorrow she was painfully beautiful.

"Please!"

"Sya-Eeshan, I am sorry..."

"I will never forget you Kefan." She turned away, her toes overhung the cliff-edge. "Good-bye Kefan, try to remember me." She pushed herself forward over the edge and dropped like a stone for a hundred metres before spreading her golden wings and soaring in a long sweeping curve out of sight.

I had taken one involuntary step forward with my arms outstretched before I could control myself. My vision was heavily clouded; tears, stained blood-red by the first rays of Nyess as it pulled itself above the horizon, dripped from my open eyes.

Savagely, I wiped my face with the back of my hand and turned away from the view. Feeling more weary than I had ever felt, I started on the long walk down to the plain of Kreek-nye.





This is the first story in a sequence entitled [provisionally] the 'Farewell Fragments' - your comments are particlularly invited.