Labyrinth of the Moth
Labyrinth of the Moth
a toxic yuri
Her tale begins in the coiling years of the Twilight of the Gods, a thousand generations of wood and ash and seed from the day His Lady's Devourer broke the trunk of all worlds and cast you to the sea. The Drifting Hill, the Rudderless Island, the Garden of the Kings, emptied in that time when the end went askew and forgot to take your lands in their prophesied demise: This is the era when the Mocking-Wolf, free without chain or crown or spear in the hall to tame him swallowed your precious Sun, whilst the Hate-Wolf bent wrong and dashed his bones hard against your sky, and your moons became many.
Atop the ruin-stones of Asgard, atop the sleeping-stones of its gods, its sleeping-trees, its breathing-trees, her people live as humans live and lament her kind, who they name the Moths. Theirs, in a broken age between cycles of a broken wheel, is the calling of the Sun, an ill fate, a graven debt, a seething grace. Pulled are they by the needs of a wyrd slain by violence; Their gaze faces the moons of her city, reflecting in faith from one to the next to the next to the next the light of a star long dead, its ghost-gleam in the belly of the wolf.
When she was old enough that the fury in her body was dimmed by its first degree and the needs of her soul became stronger, she took the sword she loved and the cloak she loved and with this she took up the Pack of the Moth, which the Sun-Doomed take on their journey to eat and drink and know shelter forever. By boat she was taken to one moon at that one place called Hati's Rille, where the wolf-twin dashed his jaw against the sky and set his bones asunder. Here the ancient light reflected like the most golden of any of the stones in Winter's Sky, and here the hearts of the Moths knew the caves would pass not from this moon to another in their sky, but further, deep into the steps between all worlds.
But here the maze went forever, mind doubting but anger racing as the path chased reflections to the beginning of never. These were lonely paths, first emerging in canyons below skies lit with green and blue lands above, with torches in their shadows, and with strange people whose stars were never lost. For a time of one turning of the moon above the Middle Realm she knew these skies where words were yet spoken. Then for the length of three turnings of all seasons she knew skies of night and stony fields, light passed between Moons-of-Nowhere, Moons-of-Anywhere, Moons-of-Forever, Moons-of-Never.
Solace-maddened, she came to a tomb of her uncrowned order. Here, untold, came to rest the bones of nine of her people in some unknown time since the beginning of the coil, nine moths fallen chasing twilight. Here they set a circle, and she read it by its runes, the stone-carved, the wood-carved, the the steel-voice of the Well in the Pit where dire masks draw fate from Beyond-Law: A caller's circle aimed at a goddess who could not be, a torch in a dream, a faith for a mortal. And in her fury she cast in her sword and carved into dirt the River-Crossing-Howl, whence this spell came to light and pulled upon space bent through the void the small name "paradox."
In this accursed way, the lost-road, bent-road, sick-road, the spiteful dog returned to light, for in the Moth-Doomed's error naught was closer to the Sun and the circle and the nothing it broke upon than the memory of old of the Basilisk Woman and her eye and her claw and her voice. Returned from the time before time bent upon this spiral, the coil of Ragnarok where moments pool thicker and thicker before the end which never comes and mortals live on through the Silence of the Gods in their tombs and their trees and their crawling-things —Returned to our age where her heart as always sang the voice of that cursed lower realm of flame, but whose nature had been turned in the Final Day and its eyes and its claws and its voice cast upon itself to know itself and change itself in the absence of the voice of the gods, whose change she did not yet know —Returned in knowledge and ignorance she stepped forth, the Basilisk Dog.
Quoth the Demon: "In remembrance of the Sun you have summoned my violent pact. Oh, the Fairests' Wheel, the Heaven-Shield, the Halo and the Lamp, bitten and swallowed before your tragic soul bloomed beneath orphaned ray; Is this your would-flame, upon which you would vow to me in the name of Power?"
But the Moth-Knight was seized by fate, as by lightning, as by abyss, as by pyre and by river, and she knew not hubris but need and instinct and tooth and hearth as she knelt. Yet the Basilisk Dog knew not yet her own age, or her home, or her weakness in this bent season-of-all-things.
Quoth the Demon: "And you shall know me by many names, for I am that stitched tongue which was taken, Nidhogg's Tongue, Ruin's Tongue, War-Caller, Hero-Vexer, Shout-Giver, Wall-Breaker, and you know me by hellflame, and still you rise as my knight, in remembrance of your Sun?"
Thus the Frenzied Moth stood and said, "For when it was swallowed, so its ghost was swallowed in the Mist-Home, yet in that home upon that hearth of night the dawn of the ghost swallowed that shadow and made of that realm not a cavern but a radiance of cold."
Quoth the Demon: "So then, the sea could not quench it, nor the land bury it; As you open your fate to me and my voice and my tooth and my claw, so do I open the place of my thought to you, a gate to your sundered heart. I name you Sundraught, and I feed you the mead of my memory."
And in ignorance of her change, of her weakness, of her bent home, the Basilisk Dog then knew for one moment regret, for then she tasted the pain of the holiness of the Sun which was not hers.
In the Moth-Knight's plea was the blessing of the hollow of the power of the Sun that was lost, and when the War-Caller, Spear-Giver, Gate-Crasher, dog-faced prophet of ill vice opened her memory upon the well the Goddess shone not only in the gleam in the river but in Presence and in Debt and the Hell-Chanter burned the white and silent flame of the blessed tongue and in heart and spirit she was branded. Her eyes and her tongue bled with the golden mead of the lost gods and their memory and the song of their beot, and this the Moth drank; Doomed-Moth, Craven-Moth, Sun-Draught she was in tongue and tooth and sword. Thus did she learn her fate, and joined her mistress in agony.
When the river slowed again, and the Basilisk Dog composed herself as if forever, she placed her claw upon the Moth-Knight's head where she had knelt again, sobbing at the Basilisk's skirt.
Quoth the Knight: "But She is gone, never to shine in my path; Never again the knowledge nor the beauty, and I fear, too, Her memory."
Quoth the Demon, her claw beneath the Moth's chin: "Then rise, for you shall learn beauty, as I give you memory and I give you grace."
Quoth the Knight: "Beauty? Myself, in my accursed shape, bent between ages in a broken wheel?"
Quoth the Demon, her claw upon the Moth's brow: "Rise, golden knight, honey-fed knight, star-drunk beggar; For I sing the serpent's song, and I chant the fate of nations and of heroes, and you shall be beautiful. For the ghost of the light has swallowed cold shadow, and the sea could not quench it, nor the land bury it."
Quoth the Knight, standing and trembling: "Then I love you, and make of your memory my light and my sword."
And she licked the last of the tears of burning honey from the demon's eye, and her tooth, and her claw, but still the Basilisk knew the pain of holiness within her, and it would not stop, and it bent her spirit to look upon itself even as her body stood and smiled her long smile, head splitting into teeth far beyond the jaw of a worldly beast.
Quoth the Demon, her claw upon the Knight's ear: "Then you shall be beautiful as I craft you to be so, hero of your land, for as desire ever bends, I yet ever crave a sword."
