Dust That Hopes

 

For this week's Write Up Wednesday article guest writer Ian Walsh shares the full version of his story Dust That Hopes with us. A downloadable copy is available through Amazon at
http://www.amazon.com/Dust-Hopes-Divinity-Rising-ebook/dp/B00CCJ098A/

Prologue:
I’ve always used words to provide some sort of structure to my personal experience; who doesn’t? Just like my emotional reactions to the world around me and the moments that fill our lives, I find that much of what I write emerges much like an emotional experience. The story you’re about to read is a reflection of such, the entanglement of my emotional self to my affinity of the word. I did not begin with an idea nor a philosophy, only that I was attempting to cope with an event which drove a wild frenzy of words tumbling upon themselves until they breathed life to this story. - Ian Walsh

Dust That Hopes

With a crafter's intensity wrought by a thousand, thousand immortal hours of shaping clay into artful geometry, Prometheus coaxed stolen divinity within his creation's breast like a loving father singing forgotten hymns to his only child. His breath rioted the spark of life, the crucible of creation itself, and proclaimed its joyous blaze as passion; as man's heart, whose steady rhythm would one day be that of its Sculptor's tapping hammer, a child’s first words to its father.

My child, he spake, I give you the tools of the Gods! Proudly casting aside his heavenly hammer whose head was made of the mountains themselves and whose handle the axis of which all creation spun upon. He lay his sanctified chisel, wrought from a splinter of his own rib, onto a workbench fashioned from the bones of the world. No, not the instruments of my will, child - I see your eyes burn with curiosity to witness their wonders! No my creation, I give to you these gifts;

My child, he spake, I shaped thoughts into your being. Why? So you might dream of the unknown and the un-made.

My child, he spake, I shaped the divine fire to form your heart. Why? So you might illuminate your dreams with passion!

My child, he spake, I shaped your hands as to be like my own. Why? So you might create the dreams of your passions.

My child, he spake, I shaped the gift of change into your flesh. Why? So you might know the quickening of life.

My child, he spake, I captured time itself to shape your awareness. Why? So you might recognize and safeguard the sanctity of all life.

My child, he spake, with all that I have given you, with all that I have told you, what do you say?

His creation gazed upon its shaper with eyes of stolen sky-gems, sapphires plucked from the forbidden Garden of the Gods. Father, the creation spake, I feel a yearning! A yearning to belong, a yearning to give of myself to all that I might know. I yearn for others like myself, to know the intimacy and secret of their hearts as you know mine. Tell me of this yearning, father, so I might do its will!

Prometheus smiled then, as broadly as the rising sun - for in those days, the horizon had been the crafter's smile and the sun the fierce burning of his pride for all that he had created - and he lay a tool-calloused, shaper's hand upon his creation's shoulder - no longer clay, but of warming flesh basking in a father's pride.

My child, he spake, that is love. I shaped you of mortality, so that you would find pleasure in the delicate nature of life. Mortality yearns for the passion experienced in racing the briefness of time, thus you flourish with your quickening of flesh. I shaped you to know that all creations must end, so that you might raise new statues to take place of my own. That sons and daughters might one day climb to the heights of their forbearers and gaze upon all that they have built - and desire to improve upon their great works. Life, my child, begets life and all life recognizes that to live without knowing love is to live without sacrifice. Without sacrifice, he spake, you cannot craft the key to the treasure that is found within the sanctum of your mortal heart.

My father, his creation moaned in dismay, how do I love? What treasure has been buried within my breast? The near-golem cried out, hands clutching its still blazing chest where Prometheus had nestled a stolen seed brought forth from a dying star, a shard of creation that would give life to mankind.

My child, Prometheus spake, you will create a better world than your predecessors. Sculpt with your heart, shape with your hands, give life to all things you dare to imagine with your dreams and breathe into it all of your passion. For you know time walks with you. To know love and for love to know you, you must embrace the coming of change, of death. Give everything that you are to all that you do. There, in the space between each beat of your heart, you will discover the wisdom of sacrifice.

There, he spake, you will discover the sacred treasure.

As Prometheus gifted his wisdom to his student, great chains of snarling lighting had split the heaven and the earth. They shattered the horizon - and thus the smile of Prometheus - casting the world into darkness as they stole his pride from the skies. They bound his wrists to the stone below while his creation gazed in fear, trembling to behold the fury of the divine and for the safety of its maker.

My child, he spake, the treasure locked away in your burning heart is hope.

The God-Rib – the only chisel suited for the divine is a piece of themselves - was lifted by savage hands of lightning and rage to be suddenly plunged mercilessly into immortal flesh, pinning liver to muscle and agony.

My child, he spake, you must never allow hope to escape your heart. Without hope, it will never know to beat with the rhythm of creation. Without hope, it cannot nourish the roots of your love which reaches deep into all the things you dream.

The sculptor's workbench was shattered by a lashing bolt of white furor, the bones of the earth groaning their protest and quaking the very world with their voice - and this is why the earth shakes, for the echo of the bones reverberate deep to this day - from those earthen splinters where all of creation had once been forged upon, great un-Eagles were fashioned, mindless golems given furious life that descended upon the shaper's suckling wound; forever devouring the cursed-healing liver -as we are made in his image, so are our livers similarly immortal - ignoring the creation’s pleas.

My child, he spake, as dreams are given shape by your thoughts..

His beautiful, heavenly hammer was lifted high. Once a tool to shape, it was now held with destructive intention.

My child, he spake, as your dreams are made real by the power of your passions..

With a ringing blow, it fell upon immortal hands with all the rage of Heaven behind it.

My child, he spake, as your visions are brought to witness by the power of your hands..

Again and again, the ringing of its chaotic blows became a symphony of betrayal and punishment, filling the creation's heart with a terrible foreboding knowledge of things to come - and this is the ringing we sometimes hear in the quiet times, which is the echo of that betrayal -

My child, he spake, so it is that love is given shape by hope...

At last the dreadful unmaking was silenced. His creation looked upon the ruin that had once been the sculptor’s clever, tender hands and the tears in his kindly eyes - eyes that had envisioned the sun and made it so, eyes that had watched the birth of all things. Eyes that even now gazed upon the God-King’s hand as it plucked the shaper’s heart from his divine breast, turning the beating flesh into cold, rugged stone and casting it into the heavens to shape shadow upon the Maker’s pride - and thus did the King of the Gods give us night and day in his rage -.

My child, he spake, I have sacrificed all so that you might live. So you might dream. So you might know passion, life and love. My love, I gift to you one final divine gift; the treasure of an immortal heart; all of creation.

As Prometheus became one with the stone of the mountain, the heart of his creation swelled with a burning necessity. The stolen seedling of a star quickened with urgency, taking root to fill its mortal soil-of-flesh with life's vitality; from clay to flesh and from a cosmic seed to glorious life. Now with a shaper’s mortal purpose, the child crafted its own vision from all that it had seen. It stoked the passion springing from the crucible within its chest and knew comfort from the steady rhythm it found within; that of a steady hammer, crafting creation. With a gaze and a smile set toward the horizon; the once-golem, once-child and now finally orphaned mortal stepped out into a world beyond the shores of a dead God’s dream with the words of Thunder at his back;

Hope’s child, Thunder spake, you climb carelessly upon the path of the Gods; heed my fury!

Hope’s child, Thunder spake, misbegotten clay-thing, for this path, it is lined with briar and despair to pierce mortal flesh and spirit!

Hope’s child, Thunder spake, You will tumble, torn and broken, from heights not meant for hearts that cool. You. Will. Fall.

So did the creation turn to look upon its maker’s destroyer, this being of lightning, thunder and frothing rage.

Old God, Mekave spake, our dreams grant us wings; what need have we to climb, when we shall soar into heights higher than your mountain peaks?

Old God, Mekave spake, our hearts are of the stars themselves, the fonts of creation from which all things spring from; hearts such as these shall never cool and will crowd the very heavens with their righteous light, turning back the darkness in which you dwell.

Old God, Mekave spake, our passion burns for as long as we may dream, turning even divine briar into ash and memory.

Old God, Mekave spake, our hope shall cast aside all of despair and open even your lofty gates.

So it was that Mekave turned his back upon the Old God who raged with lightning and roars of cracking thunder, impotent before the might of hope and dreams.

Humanity begins to dream and Gods begin to quake. The dreamer stirs and the galaxy spins onward. A man-thing stepped out from a sanctuary, finding a world draped under the blanket of night. It’s here that he sets out to find himself and to find those that have misplaced hope.