sans le savoir j’ai passé mon temps à chercher l’aporie
pour construire le poème
essayer de franchir l'impasse
l’aporie qui a toujours accompagné ma vie
démonté les arcanes de l’évidence
je l’avais oublié
.
without knowing it, I spent my time searching for aporia
in order to build the poem
to try to break through the impasse
the aporia that has always accompanied my life
to dismantle the arcana of the obvious
I had forgotten
Les années passent et moi avec;
Comme un train défilent les saisons.
Un mois est pluvieux. Puis, il fait sec.
Froid et chaleur changent de wagon.
Où m'arrêterai-je? Aucune idée.
Le temps, sans tarder, poursuit sa route.
À ma naissance, il jeta des dés,
Tombant avec eux la nuit de doutes.
Et moi, je jette un regard fugace
Sur des pissenlits soufflés ailleurs.
À un vieillard je cède ma place,
Sa tête blanche comme la leur.
Tous deux, sur les rails de l’existence,
Nous rouillons à l’automne de l’âge.
À l’arrivée, la correspondance
Nous garderons au lieu des bagages.
Que l’Homme est seul! Ne l’attend au quai
Que le sifflet d’un nouveau départ.
Ne sont pas retournés les billets,
Mais la locomotive à la gare.
Ne pouvant, hélas, figer le temps,
Au passage à niveau je m’assois.
À la croisée des chemins, un banc
Accueillera mes sauts de la foi.
Que l’Homme est sans espoir! Dans l’impasse,
L’on me met de côté au milieu.
Je me retrouve en perdant ma place.
Action ou vérité? Les deux.
Car portée à gauche comme à droite,
Partout je coule avec le bitume.
Dès qu’un vent de désirs me convoite,
Je me crois marée, étant l’écume.
Avec le recul, je prends la main
Qui, pas près du but, est prête au tir.
Je ne veux rien, pas même le rien,
Pourtant à l’air des cimes j’aspire.
Que l’Homme est sans égal! L’équilibre,
Est-il la voie coupant mer et ciel?
De l’approche d’un conducteur ivre
Vient la lumière au bout du tunnel…
-Poésie: "Dans l’impasse", à lire dans "Genèse d'une femme" par Marine Mariposa, disponible gratuitement sur https://sites.google.com/view/papillondusublime/gen%C3%A8se-dune-femme
-Image: "Le train dans la neige, La Locomotive", Claude Monet
Battle couple firefight inside the Pale Heart: go!
Link to Ao3 if you prefer to read it there
"Go through the Impasse, he said." Two gunshots. "It's faster, he said." Two more gunshots. "There's hardly anything in there but a few Taken, he said." Three shots. "This is the last time I'm taking directions from that Awoken sneak." Three more shots. "New Vanguard, my ass." Two more shots.
The Drifter crouched so Eris could shoot what was behind him while he reloaded his hand cannon. Hers barked loud above him, taking out a Taken Captain in one headshot that would have taken him two. Her beads and charms tinkled lightly along the barrel with a pleasing sound.
"There is no way he could have known there would be two Subjugators. Never mind the combination of an Omen and a Harbinger," she said.
"They even fuckin' bowed to each other like they was about to dance when they showed up."
They ran forward together and both crouched behind a rusted car with a rounded roof, the seat cushions inside long since eaten away to dust. The other side of the vehicle clanged loudly as it was repeatedly impacted by a slap rifle.
"And yeah, there is a way he could have known! He's a Hunter! By definition he's supposed to be a good scout."
The Drifter ducked around the side of the rusted car, picked off two more hostiles with head shots and returned to crouching beside Eris.
"As am I." Two Grim flew up behind them. Eris shot them out of the air with clean precision before they could unleash their shouting attack.
"Yeah well you found 'em and he didn't. I guess that makes you the better Hunter now, doesn't i-"
The Drifter stopped talking as both he and Eris heard the sounds of something on the other side of the husk of the car they were crouching behind.
He touched her arm and, when she looked over at him, jerked his head to the side while holding up three fingers. She nodded.
The Drifter tossed a glacier grenade and the two of them tumbled and slid. The ground near them was puckered with small explosions as bullets missed them and they took cover behind the Stasis crystals springing up from the grenade.
"In his defence," Eris continued. "I have several centuries more experience."
"Then why aren't you in charge?"
A Psion-shaped Weaver wearing green armour landed behind them. Eris decapitated it with one swipe of her sword before it could shoot. The Drifter took out its partner by tossing one of his coins. It bounced off the Weaver with a loud 'Ding' just before it was immolated in a fireball. The Drifter caught the coin on the rebound.
"Over?" he asked, pointing.
"Over," she confirmed.
They both hopped the guard rails along what had once been the median of a highway and crouched behind a different vehicle. This one was on its side, its rusted undercarriage exposed.
"No Hunter wants to be in charge." Eris continued. "That's why it's a consequence of losing a dare." She peeked around a twisted bumper and took two more shots. Both landed, removing two more Taken Goblins. "I have my own niche, and I would find the bulk of the work insufferable and ill suited to my skills."
"You kiddin' me? Ain't never met a Hunter that didn't need fuckin' therapy."
The Harbinger to the left and ahead of them began shouting something in its guttural Dread tongue. Without looking, the Drifter flicked a coin off of his thumb up and over the vehicle. It made another loud 'Ding' and another fireball. The Harbinger yelled in what the Drifter assumed was either frustration or pain. The Drifter smiled.
Incandescent with Solar energy, the Harbinger stepped around the corner with its long legs and pointed its spear at both the Drifter and Eris Morn. Instinctually, they rolled to opposite sides, avoiding the Strand attack and following up with attacks of their own. The Drifter put several bullets into it while Eris dealt it a vicious uppercut with her sword. It crackled, briefly stunned by the Arc energy from the blade and she followed through with three more sword attacks as the Drifter pumped it full of precision shots, each one hitting something vital.
The Harbinger shouted angrily as it dissolved into a knotwork of orange-brown resonance-energy roots. An echoing yell from the Omen across the highway made it clear their position was now exposed. The Drifter jerked his head toward a different location behind a different car. Eris nodded from her crouched position and followed him as he ran.
"The need for therapy could be said of any guardian," Eris said as she rolled and ended up next to him, both their backs against a rusted car door. "We all experience great volumes of trauma. And I am easily found for those who need me, Hunters and otherwise. They need only come to the Moon."
The Drifter finished reloading his gun and then leaned across her, taking two shots and causing two more Taken Goblins to fall down twitching.
"The Moon. Which is full of nightmares, yeah. Great place. Very soothing."
"It can be soothing when it is quiet." Eris took out two more Taken with her hand cannon and took cover next to him again.
"If you mean five minutes after a battle when everything is dead, sure."
"If Luna has taught me anything," Eris leaned over to deliver her reply directly into his ear. "It is that the dead are not silent."
They heard more guttural shouting in the Dread language nearby.
The Drifter had no idea what the Omen was saying in Dread, but he was thankful it was doing them the favour of letting them determine where it was based on sound. He knew Eris would feel the same way since her sense of direction from sound was even better than his.
Stasis crystals burst around them as they burst from their hiding spot. Both returned fire with their own Stasis attacks. Eris managed to freeze it with Silence and Squall. The Drifter got in a well-placed coldsnap grenade with a nice wide area, refreezing anything that started breaking loose from Eris' freezing whirlwind. Then he began firing his machine gun from the hip, tearing up everything in the area as Eris emptied her hand cannon into the Psion-shaped, blue-armoured Omen, each shot landing.
Moments later the Stasis wielding Harbinger, along with all of its nearby Attendants, shattered. The rogue Lightbearer and the three-eyed witch were left in a faintly blue-glowing circle which crackled slightly as the large amount of lingering Stasis began to dissipate. The shards of what had once been their enemies crunched like ice chips under their boots.
The Drifter scanned the field for nearby enemies before licking his lips and winking at Eris with a small smile.
Eris smirked at him, performing her own visual examination of their surroundings.
"That building there," she pointed.
"You wanna go there?"
"Yes."
"That is nowhere where we're supposed to go. It is not even remotely in the same direction."
"Agreed. However, it will provide considerable cover and looks easily defensible. If you can guard the door, that may be all I require."
"All you require for what?" He slid his butt along the hood of a car, kicking both feet up and over to land on the other side as he followed her.
"A portal to the Ascendant plane."
"Oh, hell yeah. Then we can just walk right on by all this bullshit. Avoid the whole thing."
"Ideally, yes, although there may be Taken." Eris crouched behind another vehicle as she moved toward the building.
"I can handle Taken." The Drifter proceeded to shoot down three Taken Thralls near them in demonstration. "It's these new ones that are causin' all the problems. Blue ones freezing us is bad enough, but the green ones tossin' me around like a fuckin' yoyo is-"
Eris put her arm out just as the Drifter was about to step into a large hole next to her. Gravel skittered from his boots down. It fell a long way.
"The holes too," he continued. "And I thought the Tangled Shore was full of holes. This has more holes than that Gambit map I retired."
"Which one?" Eris asked as she hopped lightly with both feet up onto the roof of a rusted car and then down to the other side.
"The one they called the Piss map."
An involuntary chuckle escaped Eris' lips. The Drifter's eyes immediately lit up with glee at having made her laugh, then they reverted to snake-cold as a slap rifle bullet impacted the car next to him and he flattened himself to the broken pavement. More bullets impacted the busted concrete as he rolled to the side. Eris' hand cannon barked twice over the hood of a different rusted car and the shots raining down on the Drifter stopped.
He crouched, leaped, ran across a gap, and slid down next to her with a scowl on his face.
"I should bring that map back," he continued. "They been gettin' all whiny about 'Ooo! Lucent Hive is so much worse than Scorn! Ooo! Shadow Legion have too many turrets. Ooo! Ooo!'" The Drifter raised one hand empty and wiggled his fingers in the air every time he said 'Ooo!'.
Eris gave him a small smile as she leaned out and checked for snipers.
"Back to the Piss map, ya whiny babies," he concluded.
"You really are in a terrible mood today."
"Yeah, well, I don't like being dragged around on a green string and bashed against rocks, thank you very much." They ran together across another open stretch. Nothing shot at them this time.
"And I especially do not like them doing that to you. And, in particular, so close to a giant fucking pit, all right?" He tumbled through the doorway of the building Eris had pointed out and came to his feet, Trust out and ready to blow away anything inside. Seeing nothing he reached out a hand and motioned for her to join him inside.
"This was supposed to be super quick and easy," he said to her. "I did not bring enough weapons for this bullshit." He crouched near the door watching through it while Eris pulled out a sharp stone and began inscribing runes into an inner side wall, well away from the doorway. The runes glowed softly with green Soulfire.
"And our guns don't even do nothin' against the pink ones," the Drifter added, grumbling as he watched through the sight on his gun. "And you and I can't go pink like that hero. We should not have come here."
"You did not have to come with me," Eris said quietly as she worked, scratching malachite-wisps of magic into flakes of rusted metal. "I could have just done this myself."
"Oh, hell no."
Eris tilted her head to the side, still watching the edge of her stone as she completed the outer circle and the runes flared bright. "I'm confused as to how you would stop me."
He looked over at her sharply, fear in his eyes. "Moondust, I can't stop you doin' nothin'. You know that, but…"
Eris heard the strain in his voice. She looked over her shoulder at the Drifter's face and her lips parted with a quick intake of breath. "I have upset you."
She crouched down next to him, placing her hand on his arm. He tensed at her touch and then immediately relaxed a small amount. She kept her hand there, gripping him gently but firmly until he sighed, blinking as he looked out over the rocks and rusted vehicles, still watching for assailants.
"When I told you I'd miss the moonlight… I meant it." His voice was quiet. Sad.
Eris squeezed his arm.
"I'm here for you." He emphasised the word 'you' as he spoke. "Only thing that matters is… you," he said softly, looking back at her briefly with worried eyes before looking back out at the wreckage in the Impasse.
Eris leaned forward and kissed his temple.
He leaned his head against her lips, prolonging the contact.
"Do not be afraid," she said, watching as he internalised her words, drawing strength from them, breathing deeper, not fully relaxing, but less anxious.
And then his hand cannon shifted position and barked three times.
An explosion engulfed a nearby pile of rocks in flames.
Several Taken Thralls began running toward them from another direction.
Eris flicked her fingers. Her frozen Ahamkara bone whipped out and smacked into each one of them, back and forth like a pinball bouncing around one of the old physics gaming machines the Drifter had on his ship. It hit six of them, freezing them solid before speeding back toward her hand.
The Drifter shot the closest one and they all shattered.
"Yeah." He smiled and looked up at her as she caught her frozen ball. "We'll probably be alright."
A mechanical warbling chirrup ending in a loud metallic sproing echoed through the air. The Drifter's eyes went wide.
It was unmistakable. They both instantly recognized the sound of a Tormentor materialising somewhere nearby.
"You're fucking kidding me." the Drifter whispered in disbelief.
"Ascendent plane?" Eris asked, standing beside him, her back against the wall, holding out her hand.
"Hell yeah. Don't have to tell me twice. Let's go."
Link to the entire month's worth of prompts on Ao3, posted daily.
