Short story: Eclipsed Sky

ECLIPSED SKY (Inacabado)

In the middle of the baleful silence echoing over that desert clearing, amidst the copperish, rocky mountains aiming at the sky in the distance, like broken fingers stemming from broken hands gone to waste after millions of years of fruitless and unappreciated toil, I focused involuntarily on the rhythmic, heavy sound of my steps crushing small lumps of conglomerate under the gravity of my weight. Crunch... crunch... crunch... the tread was lethargic, funereal, a faithful reflection of my spirit at that moment, tightly wrapped in an indiscernible aura of steadfast staticity and staunch loneliness. 

I do not want to do this, I thought dismally as I kept on tramping, mi eyes fixed on my boots in controlled motion, covered in ochre desert dust. I do not want to keep doing this. 

But I kept on marching nevertheless, all alone, in the midst of that perennial, intimidatory silence. Finally, I reached the spot. I stood there, motionless, letting the suffocating breeze play with the hems of my cape at my back, my slightly mauled left hand clenching tighter the pommel of the sword that I dragged with me, leaving a winding trail in the sand nearby my fleeting footprints. I could feel my heart beating very heavily, very painfully inside my rib cage, while I gasped out of anticipatory anxiety. I lifted my tired gaze to the sky for a moment, as I did my best to regain some control and calm down my breath, and, with it, my wildly pounding pulse. 

In the midst of that eerily-hued, orangey and reddish sky completely devoid of any clouds or birds or life of any kind, just an extension of pure nothingness spread until reaching the touch of the skin of the atmosphere, the odd semi-light, semi-darkness of the eclipse was already starting to be noticeable. There was the Sun up there, all still, like waiting, while the Moon, out of habit so bright and pure and collected in the middle of the night, had turned into a dark, lusty shadow invading him, desirous of stealing the whole of his light just for herself, even if just for a brief moment. I remembered that my dear Marie had told me that, according to the Indigenous tradition, one should not look directly at eclipses, for they are considered to be intimate moments of love-making between the two main celestial bodies that govern the cycles of Life and Death on Earth, and indulging in peeking at their reunion would be an act of discorteous immodesty that would not go unpunished. 

Good for them, I thought, as I respectfully diverted my sapped, dimmed gaze from the planetary couple. At least, even if rarely, they're getting some. That's more than many of us, lol.

I fixed my eyes again in front of me, my head faintly lowered, trying again to control my breathing rate and, with it, the dark and inticrate lattices of semi-digested thoughts and projections that my fears, my past experiencies, and my augurs for the future weaved inside the circuits of my brain, and again failing. I moved my left arm to situate the sword conveniently at my side, the tip producing a slightly rasping sound by its friction against the soil of the desert, lifeless, sterile.

Here I am again, I brooded, fully abandoning myself to despondency as if it was the warmest embrace of the most ravenous, spectral lover. And here I will keep on being, until when? Until I die? Until he dies? Until the fuckin End of Days? Cause this doesn't look like finishing anytime soon... And I can't live, I can't die any more times, I just can't... No, actually, what happens is that I don't want to... I don't want to...

Trying to ignore the reverberations of my own feelings, I blinked repeatedly to control the tears that were starting to cloud my vision, my throat suddenly tight in anguish. With a fleeting movement, I wiped the water from my eyes and the tip of my nose with my free hand, and I clutched with the other the pommel of my sword even tighter, barely lifting it from the floor in dexter motions, my eyes very hard and cold, my brow tight-knit all of a sudden. There was no use in crying, in lamenting, or in wishing that things were or had been different. Things were as they were — and they had turned me into who I was, what I was now. And there was no going back.

And for a painful moment, the memory of my wedding day vows at the altar of the Holy Christ, when I swore by my life and spirit, dressed as a white angel of innocence in frail, female form, hand pressed dramatically against the heart in an intimate and decisive oath-making gesture, to be the most devoted wife and partner possible to that man that was going to be my mate and companion, crossed my head, hurting me as if I had been stuck by lightning. But I was already far too used to that kind of pain, and I dismissed it after just a very light faltering spell. 

That man was my enemy now. 

As usual when my spirit started to waver before the battle, my Father manifested by my side to give me a scrap of moral support. I turned my head to my right side and there he was, as I had expected, looking benevolent, sorta casual at me. Upon seeing him, I couldn't help but smile. Throughout all these years of being dead, my Father's spirit had evolved, and that was shown not only in the nature and quality of his interactions with me, but also through the archetypal characteristics of his occurrences. Lately, Dad had a penchant for looking exactly like a transitioned Jedi knight, looking all greenish and semi-transparent and totally lit up with midi-chlorian power. I laughed.

—What the fuck are you doing dressed like this, Dad? —I asked, feeling my chest slightly warmer for not being totally alone, at least in my own homesick, sombre imaginations—. Are you going to reveal to me that you are my Father, or some crap like that?

—Far beyond that my endeavours with you lie, my princess, you know it. I have come here to check your progress with the Force —he answered solemnly, adopting a dramatic pose and staring at me with his large, bulgy green eyes, the same that I had inherited verbatim. Whimpering, I had to run my hand through my face, when I heard that—. You know that you've advanced a lot, but every new battle is a fresh opportunity to show your value... or your lack thereof.

I sighed a heavy breath. Above our heads, the Moon was already starting to cover the fullness of her aflame lover with the avidity of an athirst well in a wasteland, and he was starting to disappear pleasantly, yieldingly inside her harrowing void. The sky was growing darker by the minute. With a deft movement, I lifted the tip of the sword from the ground, unaware of my own reflexes.

—When, Dad, are the battles going to end? —I complained, furious and bitterly. Ethereal, the spirit of my Father looked at me yelling at him with a mixture of curiosity and sheer indifference—. I am tired. I just want to live my life, and work, and write, and take care of Mum and my animals. I'm forty-four, and I've never yet had the chance to simply do my thing and be happy. I don't want to keep on paying the debts of others. I don't want more scams. I don't want more Soul traps. I don't want more battles! I want this to end, Dad, please do tell the Council of Light or to whomever is in charge of this fucked-up set-up you've fuckin designed for me since before my birth that I'm done, that I'm not doing this anymore. I quit!

—Sweetheart... —he answered softly after a brief, reflective pause, adamant in his resolution, as he fixed his gaze in the empty area opening in front of us—. I think you chose a bad day to stop fighting.

I tried to repress an unpleasant gasp upon hearing that, knowing well what it meant. I looked in front of me and there they were, appearing already from thin air, one by one. An army of monsters, each one of them glaring at me, and at me alone, their hands and arms full of the most diverse weapons, their eyes sparkling menacingly in sheer desire to make me disappear. I kept on breathing heavily, uncontrollably, as they continued materialising. Soon, they were close to a hundred. My Father looked silently at them and, next, turned his head to stare intently at me. 

And I was, as usual, scared, but as usual I could not afford to give in and surrender. I fixed my eyes on them all, noticing my knees trembling, my heart pounding to the max of its capacity, my body slightly shaky and increasingly moist in an uncomfortable hot-cold sweat. But I had already been there, in that same battlefield, far too often not to know what to do. Still gasping uncontrollably, my eyes, narrowed in concentration, sped through each and every one of these enemies, and I could see fears, and memories of defencelessness, and vestiges of past illnesses, and indoctrinations, and badly-healed hurts and wounds, and broken dreams, and crushed hopes, and defiled wistful fantasies, and profaned trust, and lots, lots, lots of rejection, and loneliness, and poverty, and senseless debt, and my Father being sick in bed and screaming, and my Mother crying uncontrollably and drinking, and bullying at school, and my two older brothers playing to slap me in turns, and total and complete lack of support from my extended family, and criticism, and laughter behind my back, and laughter at my face, and treason, and dirty games, and being taken advantage of once, and again, and again, and past lovers who wanted to hide me from their exes and family, and attempts  at tainted love, and attempts by others to seriously hurt me, and attempts by my own hand to seriously hurt me...

...and, of course, him. He was right in the centre of them all, orchestrating it all, condensating it all in himself, like the fuckin super boss in a video game.

Still under the silent surveillance of my Father floating lightly beside me, I lifted the sword and pointed at them all directly with it, in a clear gesture of defiance. And in spite of all my fear and my tiredness and my despondency, my arm was steady in doing so, cause I had much, much experience already fighting against that happy bunch. My breaths had calmed down a bit, and I noticed I could think more clearly and swiftly now. Together with the tension of the moment, I could barely feel, like some sort of sensory background melody, the physicality of the sweat drenching my clothes against my skin and virtually dripping from my short, black hair stuck to my forehead, and occasional, faint gusts of wind lifting slightly the black cape I was wearing. And my eyes narrowed in cold, controlled anger as I looked at them all, at all those monsters, at all those very, very real monsters, and I thought hard. And yeah, again, I thought, I'd need plenty of strategy and risk-taking, and mastery of dialectics, and flexibility of thought, and knowledge of legal matters, and grey rock method, and unbreakable authority, and threats and violence if needed, and unshakable boundaries, and much linguistic knowledge, and knowing what to say and what to keep for later, and much strategic observation, and as much resourcefulness as I could to disarm them all. And also plenty, plenty, plenty of resistance to stand their blows, and to raise myself up from the ground again after they'd succeeded in making me fall. 

And plenty of strenght. 

But, where to find that strength? I was just a lonely woman, barely surviving without friends and without help, living with her 83-year-old mum at a house with electricity problems and which seriously required some reforms I couldn't afford. Where could the strength possibly be in that?

I breathed deeply through my half-opened mouth, very deeply, concentrating, like in meditation, my thoughts fixed on the blade of the sword drawn in front of me, held by my own, firmly-stretched arm. 

Nah, I did not have any strength. But they did. 

The sky had reached its climax point of darkness, of the complete union of these two sacred lovers usually just contemplating each other from afar in the void of the sky. Like triggered by the shadows, all those monsters, between fierce, terrifying screams of hate, leaped violently in my direction, all of them at once, all of them pointing at me with their weapons. I stayed quiet, grave and serene, mi gaze fixed on them, my sword drawn towards them, as if inviting them to join me and show me all that they'd got.

Those who truly Loved me, did. 

I started to feel my chest warm, and my cells full of pure energy. Soon, I was totally engulfed by the most beautiful spirals of raw power. I let it possess me, enjoying the calm, the emotion, the very pleasurable sensation of its movements inside my body. Yeah, I had spent all my childhood, teenage years, youth and early adulthood seeking the most reliable sources of energy cause I was weak, cause I lacked the strength to face my problems... and everybody else in my charge's problems as well. Even as a child. And I had tried Reiki, and all forms of therapy, and prayer, and visualisation, and whatnot... but it was now, only now, that I had discovered real power, the one and only that truly existed.

The only true Force in our absurd, colourful and deranged little corner of the Universe... Love. 

Imbibed in energy, I smiled faintly as the first monsters were already close to trespassing the thrusting range of my blade. 

Cause I was not fighting alone, not anymore. I had my own army, always with me, alsways inside of me. And they were beyond extraordinary people, from all parts of the world, from all the cultures, of all ages and genres, of all races, religions, beliefs, customs, lifestyles, sexualities, past experiences, hopes for the future, dreams, struggles, successes, joys and tears. Profoundly alive people... Absolutely beautiful people with so much power I couldn't believe it, and some of them were shamans, others were prayer warriors, others were channelers, others were artists, dancers, musicians, poets, photographers, creators of all kinds... People capable of exorcising the whole Hell just after a few moments of contemplation of the enormous, meritorious and well-developed beauty and wisdom of their human nature they had worked so hard to cultivate and make thrive inside of their spirits.

And those monsters, my monsters, literally faded in front of that amazing power, cause that enormous beauty of them, the power of being Love and being human shining from inside of them, was much stronger than any fucked-up energy from my ghosts of the present, the past, or the future. And I did my thing, and they did their thing, and yet, during our precious interactions, we saw each other, celebrated each other, and laughed, and had fun, and enjoyed our company while being alive, and literally simply loved each other. And their affection was with me at all times, it covered me at all times like the most sacred mantle of protection... 

...making me fuckin invincible.