No Quarter: Abhinaya Rao
Haunting-- the call of a bird in the night. Macabre, the wailing
of street dogs below my window under the cover of darkness, the
shadow of trees. The moonless night. The cold.
I awoke with
no reason for waking last night, shivering under my eider that has
never been warm enough for winter and is always too warm for summer.
The only time I really love it is when it rains; there is something
about looking out from a misty pane of glass with streams of water
running down; condensation coating the inside that always makes me
reach for that eiderdown. I've had it since I was 9.
Cold. I
awoke with a sudden clear perception that I was awake; funny how
that happens sometimes. I awoke knowing it was the dead of night and
that I would not go back to sleep for a while and that I had no
reason to be so shockingly awake but there it was-- undeniable as
the wall behind me. I was awake. In the darkness I reached out for
the player and turned it on. It was so cold. My eider enveloped my
belly and legs but my hands were freezing. The darkness surrounded
my open eyes. I was in a cold womb, moving slowly
underwater.
Then.
Strange otherworldly tune! The words
circled slowly into my bloodstream before transforming
it.Fusion."...The snow falls hard don't you know...the winds of Thor
are blowing cold…"
No Quarter. Led Zeppelin. Images of snow,
frozen landscapes, a Gothic castle draughty and cold, a giant bed
with an eiderdown that will never be warm enough. A sleeping face.
An old woman looking in from the doorway, her face lit by the lamp
she carries. The sleeping face in the lamplight appears so innocent
in its stillness. A passing strange look on her wrinkled features as
she gazes at the form-- she leaves.
Blue light of a winter
night falls on the cold stone floor, and on the white bed with its
enclosing drapes.
Movement.
A figure rises from the bed; a young man in a thin
white shirt. Look at his ribs through the thin cloth, the muscles of
his arms. His face is still and white. Joyous in its solemnity. His
lips are red, eyes bright. There is a silence about him that is
unsettling in its beauty. In its unnaturalness, an immense sadness
lingers about him, revealed by the snow covered land outside. He
walks unhurriedly under the moonlight. The land is frozen and still.
Nothing astir.
Do you know what I saw in my fantasy in the
night? Led Zeppelin aided, a snowy love story of vampires and the
tragic love of caretakers, the immense mystery of the
inexplicable...dubbed as evil for want of any understanding. How
much beauty there is in death! In blood! In the cry silenced, in the
arm that glows, in the robes that can never outshine the body! In
the silence of snow, the night, in the bleakness.
The
elemental nature of a reality beyond human understanding.
A legion of children playing in a snow-filled landscape.
Sparse scrub. Breaths misting in the night as the houses
sleep around their owners. The strangeness of night. The
cold.
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