Saw a car with a "Life is Good" decal on the rear window so now I want an infuriating yet endearingly cheerful and good hearted Autobot with that decal just emblazened over their spark in robot mode
Read Part I here: https://at.tumblr.com/upismediacenter/literary-la-r%C3%A9ponse-de-lune-part-i/fg4x6jdlsz35
Ri awakes from a dreamless slumber, the time blurred past definition. He paces aimlessly around the evernight world, waiting for the next ordeal. With his moon in tow, he treats himself to the wonders of the realm, swimming amidst the zodiacs on the inky tide and sliding down the stellar dunes. Ri notices however that his faithful silver quarter-moon has been straying from him lately, lagging behind and drifting elsewhere.
One day, though there were neither days nor nights, Ri sits idly by one of the plentiful pools where the night-sea sloshes when his half-lit companion darts up one of the dunes they had trekked. He gives chase until his moon zooms past the peak. Beyond where the slope had plateaued he finds a parade of comets, among them his quarter-moon. Lush and content is its glimmer as it whirls center stage in a procession of Ri’s sins.
Once he held a comet in his bosom, dazzling and brimming with life she was. Wonder in every whoosh, ardor in every zip, oh how her love overflowed for all that caught her eye. Ri was one, and one they did become when they crossed orbits. Circling by his side, she kept—undersea, over-nimbus, hail-daring, and summit-top. Yet when occasion came for her to whoosh and zip for Ri to follow, he did not. He could not. At least, so he reasoned. Too fast, too far, too tiring, too much. He lost her to love that he could not bring himself to give her.
He runs after his moon, shoulders billowing from frenzied breath as he scrambles to rectify his undoing. What he has not put together though is that two bodies must revolve mutually; it cannot stand that one is merely locked to the other. So when the moon he seizes in his palms bursts through the prison of his fingers time and time and time again, he sinks an inch deeper into the madness in his narrow mind. When his soles ache and knees quake, he surrenders himself to watching his moon trace fantasies dreamt without him, flaunting a full and happy light when with him it donned but a wanting half-glow.
So he simply follows, ambling in its trail and careful not to startle it away. Pace by pace he gains ground until they are once again within arm’s reach. This time however, he makes no move to put his hands on the gleeful little orb, instead letting it lead him ‘round ringed jewel worlds and supernova gardens. They voyage in the wonder and ardor that Ri once shared with another until one day, his previously half-lit companion returns to his embrace a full moon. Ri at last grasps his lesson as he basks in the warmth and easy moondust he thought he would never earn privilege to again.
Letting go was the least of his blunders; it was his pull that thrust his love away.
— ☄ —
Solar winds sweep through the night, the ticklish breeze carrying a familiar lilt. “Your moon is all but ready to unveil your gift. Might you share what it is you seek?” All his life, Ri had been stifled by the firmament, grounded on dirty earth and sentenced to craning and contorting like a worm just to make futile reach for his muse. By the loom of far-fetched fate he has found himself at the cusp of a sliver of Her light, the breadth of Her miracles, the depth of Her mysteries—”An answer,” he replies.
But of course, the Moon has a mind of Her own, does She not? No matter the sum of lightyears Ri walks by the tail of the most exuberant comets or the hearts of suns he marches through, what bearing must the odyssey of a stranger have on Her choice to entertain a request at Her own expense? Ri is courteous enough to acknowledge the argument against his wish, but too stubborn still to make peace with the genuine odds of disappointment.
Instead he wanders the barren reaches of the cosmos as he blanks his mind and retires to waiting for a jolt of resolve. He can only check for so long, however, the cacophony of qualms that shakes the grounds of his endeavor. Smothering his doubts beneath flimsy rebuttals, he dawdles without note of his course and stumbles into a forest of stars. Having thought that his trials were all but over, Ri sets aside his discord to free his wits for this fresh predicament.
He commences by clearing a way through the shrubs, intending to sunder an obstinate path out. To his chagrin, he merely lands himself deeper in the maze of light. Chancing upon clearings in the forest, he closes on the open space all but to find that his giddy eyes have duped him, just as they do when he sights hills and terraces in the distance and arrives at the reality that they were but fanciful mirages.
As lost in the labyrinth as he in his rumination, Ri beholds his moon and broods over his wish. He could not want another outstretched inch of what he seeks, and not dread a whimper more of it being but an illusion. He drops the curtains on his eyes and sinks into the untold—all that he had known and all he ever would have, had he not disappeared into the moonlit sea a madman.
He shall once again step out of it, be he favored or foolish. But “Never,” shall he breach the waves and draw blessed breath, holding in his ribs the heart of a coward.
Ri unleashes his renewed vision and spies a streamlet of stars in the corner of his eye that, to his astonishment, remains even after setting his sight upon it. He makes for the flowing light, convinced of its truth, and follows its track until he reaches the junction of a thousand tributaries. Their gleams amass into a single surging torrent cascading into the dark.
Ri races down the river of stars, brushing aside what peril may swallow him should his foot slip down the bank. He has gotten far enough with little regard for safety and has no intention of letting the thought delay his dreams even a moment. So close he is to the river’s end, a waterfall plunging down an unseeable bottom. There being nowhere else to go, Ri looks back on the raging waters, the forest behind, the nebulae and planets, comets and suns, and with his eyes bids them an unspoken goodbye. “This is it.”
He lifts a foot off the ledge and the evernight world turns to memory.
— 🟆 —
After plummeting for a solid minute, Ri drops to the sand he knew did not glow and stares at the sea that is only a mirror to the heavens, not the night-made-ocean whose tide leaves his toes dry. His moon lay beside him still, yet now bereft of its levitation. It pulses to the percussion of his chest, bearing the very same wish he keeps within.
Ri’s eyes shine with the gentle glimmer of the Moon—a dream to unravel the grace of his muse. She peers from the balcony of Her clouded court, waiting for him to loose the sacred utterances on the wind.
Ri’s eyes shine with the gentle glimmer of the Moon—a pact to honor the grace of his muse. Not the sun that burns delusions into his vision nor the comets that he could never will himself to catch up to, and never the stars that sew illusions into their tapestries. Ri’s Moon is the one light in his heavens. But Ri’s is something that he, on still cloudless nights, could only wish his muse to be.
What his muse is, nevertheless, enchants him and tugs him in helpless swirl, far past the confines of the firmament of his grounded world. When the wind falls lifeless and his spirits follow, Her silver smile quells all worry and leads him to pastures green. Tender, he wallows in Her kindness; precious, he crowns Her import. These and countless constellations of honeyed latria does he lay upon the altar of her winsome name.
Night after night, Ri marvels at the Moon’s many faces of delight and gaiety, charity and regality, of the myriad manner of joy and warmth and majesty aglow in each of Her lighted meridians. What fascinates him more still is what may lie on the face She keeps in darkness. “If only She could spare me but a sliver of Her light,” he wishes, “that I may fathom the breadth of Her miracles, the depth of Her mysteries—”
Having watched those around him toil just for a moment in the sun, Ri cherishes the night, longs for the gentle light of his muse. Tantalized by the why’s and how’s of her grace and the spectrum of the untold possibilities behind her face, he quarries for clues to the nature of her radiance.
As rivers reach for the sea.
The sea that bears testimony to his prayers and on this night bears an answer.
The Moon a wrinkled picture on the ripples, an invitation comes tendered, scribbled in light bent by the waves: “Come Ri, your gift awaits.”
He steps into the surf in a trance; his footfalls turn splashes and his stride falls bogged to a wade, slowing yet unceasing. With the water at his lips he draws his lungs a final fill before vanishing into the moonlit sea. He trudges on the sand floor as his chest thumps to the waltz of ageless galaxies, each step spanning the space between stars; their pauses grow longer as if ever less likely to find their close.
Gasp
A swell of relief and a rush of air charges into Ri’s body as his head breaks the surface. Wiping the water off his face, he makes onward the sloping beach and falls down with a plop—heaving, disheveled, and dry. He sits up to find the night sky washing over his feet, constellations drifting in the waves. Not a single drop has soaked his clothes or remains to wet his skin, not even as the inky tide recedes past his toes. With eyes wide and hung jaw, he stands and surveys the cosmos around him. Blooming nebulae splash the abyss with rainbow stardust and a shower of hurtling asteroids heralds a Voice that rings through the night.
“Look around you to see within you, with the moon as your witness.”
In front of Ri, shadows coalesce into a solid globe the span of his hand, bobbing on the ether. A slim curve streaks the edge of it, a shining silver crescent. Ri scans for an acquainted sight to try and place himself amidst the limitless night and spies a familiar blue-green orb sweeping around a sun. The sun.
He jogs toward the beaming ball, feeling his steps dent the drenched star-sand and patter on pitch-dark puddles. Keeping his head down, he refrains from catching even a glimpse of the fever-made-light, lest his eyes be scarred with sore afterglows—delusions burned into his sight one too many times. Gauging the distance left by the vigor of the heat’s dance on his cheeks, Ri halts his advance when the pirouette of the fires threatens to twist off his skin.
He opens his eyes in hurried spells and finds himself at gates aflare, perhaps even past it for he sees nothing but light too where the night used to be. Desperate to find his bearing, he strains his eyelids apart and bares himself to the assault of fire. Ri could have never foretold, for he never wished for a re-encounter, that he would once again burn his pupils and his thoughts with the blaze of indignity.
Once he dared behold the sun to pay her earnest tribute only to be scalded in rebuke. “You are not fit to gaze upon me.” Ri’s first oblation was answered with curses to his worth and a blight to his vision, a warning to never set his lowly regard where unwelcome. Glowing even at the close of his eyes, it sneers at the shortfalls rooted within himself. His spirit has been torched since and the sun readies to rekindle the inferno.
Blots of greens, blues, and reds barrage Ri’s sight as he braves through the flames, trekking a path back into the night. The heat swells harsher still as he passes through the heart of the sun. At the center sits a globe not much larger than the miniature moon that Ri has had floating by his side. Its glow outshines the sun a hundredfold. Ri steels his irises, paying no heed to the ashen fate that certainly awaits them and him, and glares back at the core.
“My faults are mine and so is my gaze! I need not the light of your fire for I am my own; I am free!”
The sun blinks. It flickers. It bursts in a flash, a flower blossoming under the stars. Ri steps out into the cool sand of the night and falls down with a plop—heaving, disheveled, and unscathed.
His little moon also made it without so much as a char-mark, the crescent now a beaming quarter. The same Voice preceded by the volley of asteroids rang once again throughout the night:
“You have tread bravely. Save your rest for the next.”
— ☀ —
Read Part II here: https://at.tumblr.com/upismediacenter/literary-la-r%C3%A9ponse-de-lune-part-ii/1555dnp1o5w7
She who quells all worry
And leads to pastures green
Hollowed husks and weary
By quiet song serene
She in whose sweet name
Doth all her peers submit
And cleanse all blemish-blame
‘Til lingers naught a whit
O daughter of the moon
She tugs in helpless swirl
Mine dreams—they bid me ask in June
Her hand of marble-pearl!
But need I rush headfirst?
In sooth I know her little
A love so unwell-versed
A love unworth a nickel
Adoring all but core
How might I help to ease
The troubles she puts fore
That on her heart make crease?
Though winsome is her name
And lovely is the bearer
To see her person past her fame
I fail—but I am better!
So worship her I shan't
Nor raise her rubied shrines
For facile want cannot supplant
A tender love’s designs
Here,
On the shores of my final fief
I stand before the sweeping night.
I cradle in my arms the sweetest seed—
The fruit of aeons trickled
Rippled, fizzled
Faded.
Of flames that once alit this night from edge to edge
Whose cinders lie slumbering
Stowed amidst the flesh
Of this jewel seed
My dimming isle
Where washes the deadnight surf,
By whose graying glow I spend
My wearied wait,
Was but one among a meadow
My dominion, a garden of light, the first sparks of all that burns
Blighted. Scythed.
Withered and ashen but for one waning sun
Thus the mother of this seed crosses the sweeping night,
Seeking where the tide mounts siege,
To wake the last remnant,
Of life
As we so cherished and sheltered
As Lord Time cast aside,
Through void and visions lost—
Save for the light consigned to my bosom
Here,
On the shores of my final fief
I wait before the sweeping night
I cradle in my arms the sweetest seed—
The fruit of storied echoes
Which shall once more rumble
Ring,
Resound.
Of flames that shall light a new night from edge to edge
Whose cinders lie slumbering
Stowed amidst the flesh
Of this jewel seed
