0 PROLOGUE
Heaven and hell are no longer.
They’ve left their stations and come to Earth,
the winters colder, the summers stronger,
the sun so hot that it melted the needle
atop the pointed cross on the highest steeple
of the church.
The metal drip dropped down.
The young ones watch from the bottom ground.
It looked as though the needle ripped a hole in the sky.
The sun melted things now that it hung so nigh.
As little eyes look up, the sun bashes down on their faces.
Their skins are all crisp and their hearts burn to ashes
and they float. They float away in the wind,
to the graveyard filled with the people who’ve sinned -
Ghosts.
The oldest and youngest child
stand facing the storm, their faces wild,
then they turn their backs from the bashing sun,
and they run.
Off in the distance the ghosts sang and laughed.
It was heaven that made them laugh like that.
But the living, no, they were still facing the sun,
disease, and rot, and the devil’s gun,
and they knew there was only one escape -
off to the graveyard where ghosts await.
All races gray, all colors pale,
flowing and fleeting beyond the vale.
Death was dangerous, quite, but the only way
to reach heaven, who’d fallen away from her place.
Heaven had fallen, the sun would follow,
making hollowed shells of people even more hollow.
And Hell had risen with the falling sun,
the King himself, and he’d brought his gun.
The ghostly Queen will soon have to fight
the ruler of Hell. The day versus night.
Only one will win, it's too early to tell.
They’re building their armies and training them well.
So choose your side - the sun’s bashing rays
or the winters that freeze your soul each day.
The church and its steeple,
the drip dropping needle,
the hole that the metal had ripped in the sky,
the ashes that float as the wind howls by,
or the graveyard filled to the brim with her ghosts.
Filled with the sinners who never mattered the most.
1 RAYSHA
Off in the forest a little child lay,
staring up at the moon and the stars each day.
Far from where the sun had dropped out of the sky,
the child traced the path where the sun used to fly.
The child was sad, and the child was cold.
The child had grown with the forest, grown old.
The trees had kept her their captive for years,
they’d taken her worries, seized her fears,
and tangled them up into one thorny vine
poking into her heart, digging into her spine.
And the dirt had crept under her nails and her skin.
She felt she was rotting, her breathing grew thin.
And the cold. The cold was more than she could bear.
The frost bit her fingers, ice crystalized in her hair.
Every part of her body (every part but her mind)
felt frozen and broken, beyond repair of any kind.
More often than not the child thought she was dead -
if not for the thoughts that still ran through her head.
The ice and the snow, the frost’s bite so cold,
the dirt, and the vines with their thorns, and the mold.
But the child could do nothing but lay on forest floor,
always missing the sun, always wishing for more.
That day was the same, just the same as the last,
When the forest child heard another walk past.
The younger child then came to the old,
helped dig her from the snow, helped scrape off her mold.
He held her stiff hands and looked in her blue eyes,
“A ship is off in the distance, and growing in size.”
A ship? What a queer thing to say
to someone who’s been gone such a long time away.
It was hard to tell just how many days or weeks
or months or years having no sun to seek.
She didn’t know how to count cycles of moons,
or read, or write, or play any tunes.
Lowly born, probably, but her memories were lost.
All she remembered were stars, thorns, and frost.
She was trying to think, her lips trying to move,
but the boy interrupted, telling her “You’ve
got to listen, you’ve got to come with me.
Off to the place where the rocks meet the sea,
then you'll see the ships too, for they’re almost here.
They’re the first that anyone’s seen for ten years.
That’s what my mother says, anyway.
If we leave now we’ll get there by end of today.”
Bonus: Original 3D Renderings of Mother's Cave
View out of the cave opening to the rocky cliffs and permanent sunset over the ocean.
View into the Mother's "bedroom."
View from Raysha's sleeping spot.
