6. Jericho (4)

The walls of the meeting room were completely covered in luminescent moss. The glittering, pulsating lights reflected off the stone floor and compounded on each other, making it the most brilliant room within the mountain. The effect was so stunning, the colonists had taken to calling it the Treasury. Here the council gathered to share the needs of the colony, welcome the Fallen, and make any assignments necessary to ensure the safety and care of those within Jericho. 

As the Casper stepped into the Treasury his eyes immediately found Sebastian. The man was difficult to miss, even in the open air or surround by the towering building of Horus, but here in the enclosed quarters of Jericho, he seemed too big to be allowed. He towered over the rest of the Fallen. Casper felt tiny in comparison. Sebastian was easily half again as tall and twice as wide as he was. But then, Casper had to remind himself, it was in his blood. Early on in the settling of Horus, the elite had distanced themselves. They had bred exclusively, and the resulting generations were exquisite to behold. Beautiful, powerful, imposing -- the Aristo ruled their world with ease. No one questioned their reign. At least, not until very recently.

Sebastian studied the walls, plucking at the growing plant. He looked utterly bewildered, a sight Casper had rarely seen. He chuckled, understanding his confusion. This planet made little sense to him, too. But Sebastian had an inquiring mind and would no doubt be a great help in solving the many mysteries that Jericho afforded. Perhaps he could even help with the ore. 

Casper broke away from Aurora to greet the giant. "Hail, Sebastian!" he called.

"Well met, Casper! You're alive! This place! How have you survived? What is this plant? Are all of the banished here? Everyone? Aurora hasn't been very forthcoming. How does this work?" His excited chatter made Casper again chuckle. Sebastian was the strangest Arist he had met. 

"Calm, Basta, calm. Would you like me to answer or let you prattle on?" Sebastian closed his mouth sheepishly and nodded. Truly a unique Arist. "Yes, we are all here and all alive. Aurora found this cave before any of the rest of us Fell. It would seem the Overlord isn't aware that we've managed to survive or he wouldn't keep banishing more of us here. Least of all you." Casper paused and considered the large, gentle man beside him. He noticed now the bruising around Sebastian's hand and feet, evidence of ropes too tight. He recognized the same pattern he and so many of the other Fallen had worn.  "What happened, Basta? How did you come to Fall? We never dreamed they would exile you." 

Sebastian hung his head and slumped to the ground, all excitement gone. "There were deaths," he said simply. 

Casper opened his mouth to ask more, but was stopped by the sound of Aurora's voice. "Well met, my friends," she addressed all in the room. I know you all must be weary. The Overlord's dungeons are not kind to his enemies." A  pang of remorse flashed across her face, and Casper knew she was remembering her own time there. Many Fallen rubbed absently at their wrists as she continued. "I know it cannot be easy to be separated from your families and the lives you knew on Horus. But if you are here, it is because you are our family. We will take care of you. We take care of each other here." A wave of calm enveloped Casper. He knew she spoke the truth." We were one in our cause on Horus, and we are one here in Jericho. The Overlord may have cast us off but that was his mistake. Our fight is still important. Perhaps even more so now than before. Do not give up faith, my friends. The Fallen of Jericho will rise again. We will free Horus yet." Cheers erupted from the small crowd and Casper could not keep from joining them. Only Sebastian remained quiet, lost in his own thoughts. As the crowd quieted, Aurora continued, giving direction for accommodations and the dismissal of the newly Fallen. 

Casper marveled at her ability to stir so much hope and ferocity in the hearts of these people. He knew their pain, the physical and the emotional. Cast out from the world they knew, separated from everything and everyone they loved, sent to die a slow and pitiable death. And yet she could make them forget all of that and continue the fight. Aurora was remarkable.

Only a handful of arrivals remained when Aurora joined Casper and Sebastian. "The council is meeting to hear your news, Sebastian."

He sat unmoved, unhearing. Aurora turned to Casper and he shrugged his shoulders in answer. "He hasn't spoken since you finished your welcome."

"Sebastian?" Aurora knelt in front of him, one and on his shoulder, the other in his open palm, and looked up into his unfocused eyes. They were quite the pair, Casper thought to himself. He the strong, powerful mammoth of a man, covered in fine apparel, his hair closely shorn, curled on the floor in a position that spoke of childlike fear, and she, the tiny, delicate, almost fragile girl, ragged and worn, comforting him with fierce, piercing eyes. She said nothing, but stared into his eyes until he finally stirred. 

He nodded slowly and spoke, "I'm ready."

5. Jericho (3)

They walked in silence through the winding corridors of the mountain city and Aurora marveled once again at the beautiful formations that rose around her, illuminated by the strange, glowing plant-life that crept along most of the walls. Where the moss failed to provide light, fires had been built up from the dried out stalks of lakewheat. The flames reflected off the smooth surface of the stone where moss and scale had been pulled away. 

Casper's obsession with the stone amused her. He was stubborn, the type of man that always needed to solve the problem instead of find a way around it. She had asked him for tools and he had tried to fashion the tools as they had been made on Horus. He had created a smithy of Jericho stone to create Horesian tools. When he had come to her unable to produce a suitable ore, she had asked him if he could simply find stone pieces that fit the colony's needs. He had assembled a team and found what was needed, but could not let the matter drop. Any time he was not on duty, Aurora knew she would find Casper in his smithy.

He was a hard worker - one of the council - and so she let him work his riddle as long as it did not interfere with his duties, and it never yet had. 

As they passed through chambers, colonists rose in greeting. She returned each salutation with a polite nod or a friendly wave. She hated the formality but knew that they depended on it. She had met every one of these men and women after their Falls and led them to the safety of the hidden city with the mountain. She knew each face and every name. She understood their fears, for she had experienced them too. But she would not make them suffer those fears alone, as she had suffered. She would protect them and Jericho would help her. 

She could feel the mountain willing her on, pushing her to keep going. It had drawn her to its hidden entrance in her delirium and soothed her aching body. It had provided her with the essentials to survive. And when others Fell, she was able to find a place for them in the mountain. New pathways and chambers were discovered every day and with them, new, mysteries uncovered. 

She didn't know how the mountain knew what she needed. She only knew she could feel the mountain, and it wanted to help.

4. Jericho (2)

Casper pounded away at his anvil, testing yet another combination of ore for its strength. Surely this time he had found the right solution. He had spent hours calculating, trying to find the right balance of fire, water, and rock. But Jericho held little to work with. As his hammer landed another blow, the thick rod cracked, a golden, angry line marring its glowing red surface. 

A roar of frustration burst from his throat and hurled the broken rod into the glittering pool beneath his workshop cavern. He slumped to the ground as he heard the faraway hiss of the hot metal meeting frigid lake water. 

It hadn't worked. Again, it hadn't worked. 

How could a planet with almost nothing but rock produce so little workable ore? He had been able to use his knife to carve out a handful of crude tools from some of the sturdier ore, a material he had named scale for its abrasive, reptilian feel, but even that wasn't good for much more than rudimentary chores. This place seemed to have only three forms of stone: the fine, powdery dust that covered the surface of the planet, that blew constantly in wind and only ever seemed to settle during the storms; the scale, which acted as a sort of skin for the harder, impenetrable stone; and the stone itself. 

Casper looked at his hammer with a mixture of frustration and awe. In all his years on Horus he had never come across a material so unyielding. Nothing he had tried so far had even scratched the stone. Weeks of experimenting with fires as hot as he could make them and ices as cold as Jericho provided, and still, not a blemish. It was as if the rock chose a form and refused to change. And they had found it in any and every shape inside this mountain. Long, slender poles, gigantic, mammoth boulders, and minuscule, delicate-looking flakes. But all unmoveable.

The soft voice of the Commander woke him from his reverie. "Any luck, Cas?" she asked quietly. He knew she was only being polite. The whole colony was sure to have heard his bellow in the echoing chamber. He simply shook his head, afraid that if he spoke, his defeat would be complete.

Aurora approached him gently and slid down the wall to sit at his side. "You'll figure it out," she said mildly. "I know you will."

Casper scoffed. "You know no such thing. How can you? How can anyone? We know nothing about this place except that we were sent here to die. And we will. Jericho will kill us because the Overlord was too afraid to." He picked up a small stone fragment and skipped it across his workshop floor. It skittered to a halt just before the boulder he had been using as a boulder.

Aurora contemplated the path the stone had made through the fine dust before answering him. "I think you are wrong." Casper looked into her tiny face, searching for the hint of a smile, waiting for her joke, but finding none. He raised an eyebrow in question and she continued. "We know more about Jericho than the Overlord does. He sent us here to die, but we haven't. We know there is water here in the mountain. We know there are edible creatures and plants in the lake. We know that within this mountain we are able to survive. Those are all things the Overlord doesn't know, and that gives us the advantage."

Casper laughed again at her optimism. This from the woman who had nearly died when she was stranded. "Jericho? An advantage? I think your topside excursions have baked your brains."

The grin he had expected finally made its appearance as she chuckled. "Yes, perhaps a little." She looked away from him and he followed her gaze out into the wide, spacious cavern that glowed in the light of Jericho's luminescent moss. "But Jericho has more advantages than you think. We'll figure out its secrets and we'll survive."

"But how will we make it back to Horus? How can we protect those we left behind?" He knew he sounded like a child, but he felt hopeless, and if anyone could inspire hope, it was Aurora. It was why, despite her small stature and her gentle nature, she was the Commander. 

"We'll find a way. Jericho will show us." With seemingly no effort, Aurora bounced to her feet and held her hand out to Casper to help him stand. "Come," she demanded "we have new arrivals."

Casper chuckled at her outstretched hand and waved away her assistance, pushing himself up heavily from the floor. "I really should get back to the scale." He strode to his fire and lifted a small log lakewheat to build it up. "I'll come along later and see who all they chose this time." 

A hand curled over his arm and stopped him from throwing it into the fire. "Casper, Sebastian is here."

Casper dropped the lakewheat in surprise. "Sebastian? You're kidding."

Aurora shook her head sadly. "Come."

3. Jericho

Swirling winds blew leaves all around. Thunder rolled. Drops of rain pelted to the earth and dashed against the hard packed soil. All around, the signs of the heavenly war raged, thrashing the fragile earth below, breaking and tearing, flooding and destroying.

Hidden from the raging tempest, a small, dark figure huddled just inside the mouth of a cave -- an opening in the mountainside so discreet, passersby rarely noticed it. She looked out across the small valley, calmly awaiting the outcasts she knew would be shortly arriving. She had learned on her own the harsh realities of this foreign land. She had not had the benefit of a tutor. 

A tremor ran through her minute frame as she recalled the first few weeks after her Fall. Hunger. Thirst. Fatigue. Fear. The burning midday sun and the freezing that came with the moons. It was only the desperation for food that had brought her crawling through the thin, piercing brambles that she was able to discover the slender crack in the towering mountain wall. 

Now she hunched, hugging herself, watching the blessed water fall from the skies, pooling atop the parched sand. She waited. The wind howled and the ends of her hair rose. A grin crept across her face. It was time.

The dark sky was pierced as the first bolt of light struck the ground. The immense impact shattered the hardened ground, flinging chunks of muddied slate in all directions, but the girl never flinched. A massive form rose from the crater, its bulk even darker than the night around it.

Her smile faded slightly. There was only one being that could be. And if he had Fallen, things were worse than she had thought. But she would be glad to have him with her once again.

More light cracked the sky as other beings Fell. She knew the intensity of the storm could only mean a large arrival, and she was right. As more and more Fell, they gathered themselves into a milling herd until she could no longer count the individuals. Their fear, confusion, and anger drifted toward her, rekindling the memories of her own arrival that she wished to forget. Now was not the time for that.

She sent a wave of calm toward them, knowing it could never be enough to assuage all of their anxieties, but hoping it might help in some small way. Only when she was certain of the final Fall and the storm had moved on from her isolated valley, did she leave the protection of her hiding place.

As she approached the crowd, she drew up her strength, forcing herself once again to face the fears of the Fallen. Her enormous energy belief her tiny frame and acted as magnet to those new to this world. Each turned to find the source of her brilliance. 

With all eyes on her, she extended her hands toward them in a gesture of acceptance. "Welcome," she called strongly, sending a silent, mental acknowledgement to her friend. "Welcome to Jericho."

2. Sleeping Babes

There's nothing in life more joyous to me 

than watching my little ones sleep.

The peace and the quiet, the calming of breath,

Erases the wail and the weep.

The sweet little suckle of dreams on their lips,

The fluttering of lashes so long,

Makes me forgive the frustration I felt

Through the day when they did something wrong.

1. New Year

The New Year is wonderful. I fully admit to being one of those people who waits until the New Year to start something new (as evidenced by the fact I decided to restart Silvertrove a month ago but waited until today to actually do anything.

What I love most about the New Year is the sense of redemption and renewal that comes with it. The mistakes we've made, the bad habits we've developed, the tempers we've lost - these are all things we can change. It's a clean slate. Sure, we can actually change these behaviors at any point in the year, but most of us (myself absolutely included) need some sort of factor to help us feel motivated to change. And that's what the New Year is. It's a small, man-made distinction -- a title -- that acts as a catalyst for change. 

In a small, material way, it reminds me of baptism and partaking of the sacrament. They are physical manifestations of the changes we are trying to make. The acts themselves don't physically change us, but they give us the means and the motivation to change ourselves. They change our souls.

So here's to a New Year that helps you and I become our better selves. May we take this opportunity to do more get, kick those bad habits, start positive routines, and just generally improve our lives.

Unbroken Mount

Around you raging flies the storm

Destroying all you know as norm

Lightning, thunder, wind, and hail,

Fling and sunder, crush the frail.

Waters rising block escape.

Boughs once sturdy droop and drape.

But shelter stands, her lights aglow,

Beckoning beyond the flow.

No flood can sweep, no wind can shake.

When to the Mount you drive your stake.