In her castle of rose-tinted marble the timid fingers of dawn caressed her satin cheeks and gently stroked the crystal sphere between her long, slender fingers until a gentle echo of the rising sun’s warmth stirred the crystal’s sluggish interior. Auburn hair cascaded from her downward tilted head, but even that thick curtain failed to hide the sparkling green ice of her eyes. She raised her gaze briefly to stare through the open window set high into the tower’s walls. The shining sphere in her hands reflected her form; echoing the curve of her alabaster neck, the swell of breasts gently trapped in the white fur wrap she wore. She rose gracefully from the stone bench, one hand grasping the cool crystal in her warm hand while the other flattened the wrinkles in her silk dress against her smooth skin. Outside the window a shadow flickered past, gone nearly before it was seen, and a hawk screamed in fury easily heard above the low roar of the waves eternally crashing far below. Her head flashed up in response to that wild cry and for a moment she was filled with the pure untouched wildness of an arctic night. She arched her throat as if to answer that lonely cry and eldritch flames leaped up around her. Blue-white tongues of fire played about her lithe form, twining fiery ropes among her limbs and about her face. For an instant it seemed that she would transform, must transform, completely into a wild creature and leap through the casement into the sky. The morning air rippled about her as the flames arched and spun about her; sometimes obscuring, sometimes revealing the elfin body.

The power she drew from within warped the space around her until she could scarce be seen through the waves of distortion and then suddenly collapsed into the crystal in her palm. The crystal flared brightly, banishing all the shadows from the tower room. An instant later the light disappeared abruptly enough to take breath away, the daylight hesitantly streaming through the window seeming scarcely brighter now than the light from a guttering candle. Her gaze returned to the crystal as she resumed her seat. Within the sphere tiny figures danced under her intense scrutiny, running in unfathomable patterns; living, laughing, and dying between the sapphire glitter of her fingernails. Children played and laughed. Women loved and sang and wept. Men fought and died in ways horrible and honorable and indescribable. Her gaze never faltered. Her hand never flinched.

Passionate fire lighted the emerald casements of her eyes as drama after drama waxed and waned, but the lady moved not a hairsbreadth. Patient as the sea that threw itself at the foot of the tower far below her, she searched the globe, waiting for something or someone to appear. The sun traveled on unnoticed and the shadows grew long as those ageless, unblinking, impossible eyes peered through the veils of time and space, searching endlessly for something long ago lost.

Copyright © 2007; all rights reserved.

Skeletons cackle silently in the dust
Mute testimony to greed and lust
Will o’ the Wisps dance round the hilt
Flickering enticingly amongst the gilt
Are you the one foretold long ago?
Cast out from above and from below?

The crystal pool and the shining sword
A king’s ransom and a devil’s hoard
Bleeding the holy, burning the fool
The crystal sword, the shining pool
Half between the East and the West
Where dark elves go to take their rest

Copyright © 2007. All rights reserved.