At the fore the Riftkith-Lands were one, unsullied by the idle hands of terrene artifice. The eithuszar of the eldest recount this time in their way, when the woodland winds are right in their whistling and the bones of all the earth show through skin pulled tight: a deadwood glimmer beyond the ken of even the wizened lucerne. Theirs is a place of moth-flutters and cetonine rippling, and in those days the first were of the land and were within it, unhewn ground anon Tenya when called at last to nascent breath.
The land had not yet learned the permanence of rote eons, and as the stone will not breathe until through great labor the secret of its graven-face be laid bare, so too did the Riftkith-lands part for the thunder of the heavens. So split the chisel of the sky, whence came the first blooding of the heavens and fell as numinous rain upon the land. Earth and stone and root drank of blood spilt for names that were not their own, for this is the binding covenant of the soil which is written in hymnal rain and ink-eddies the skin of all that we were. They drink it still, keeping compact when all others have forgotten their part.
And where the thirsting of the earth was quenched there came forth Kith without end who were of the land and were upon it, knowing neither the beat of mothwings nor the days before their bones were spoilt, proclaiming with flesh-made tongues the virtue of their five-and-one shapes. Into their corners they went, for the land was all asunder, and they called themselves one by kinship of the thusz, which is of our memory, and shut their ears to its whispering. They built their houses by different names, osseous all, and in each corner where the heavensblood pooled they set their longing.
For one-and-five ages the Kith crystallized in their mazes, ramified and liquid, until from the very land there rose the voice of the heavens, which said:
“Ye hagionymphs, who have blindly risen and yourselves kin yclept in tongues your own, who are of this land fractured and mirror it in ways more one for your breaking: Of this land make something true-entire, and the corridors of your bone-houses set in pattern. Do this and return, for you are upon the land and of the heavens, and this disseverance becomes you not.”
Hearing this, the Kith rose up in their corners, rhizomatic and begemmed with their phratry. The eldest recount a right-whistling then, and an eleucresis of the dawn, and the land gathered itself in fistfuls and scratching-claws and the coils of fifty-and-ten shapes hence unreturned. By mouthfuls and wingbeats and dread skittering it became as one: a vibrant bonework where the corners of all houses are upon the land and are within it, a tower which is of our memory.
We came to dwell in our tower, the hypocotyl of the mundane, and there we remained when the heavens once ruptured knit together in love to crown our houses. There we remained still, having learned the lessons of permanence, when they opened again to a new blooding and fell beyond our patternings and bonehalls. And so we went out, for the covenant of the soil binds the land to the drinking of blood wheresoever it should fall, and ventured far until our land was vanished but for the fistfuls we bring, which are the point of puncture, maw anon Tenya. Here we remain: hoarding eldest bones lain crystalline in our fold, listening for mothwings.
dailybridgerton
areudirty
2087
gracieabrams
stormborns
