Author: Jason Davies-Redgrave

we are joka the wave-born ikiyoka gravity’s children ajagara Her battalions on high for aeons we flew at Her side riding gravity’s wake proud and strong till Her fall then began the orchestrations of madness the scream of The Fang against the universe like metal ripping through metal a crescendo of blessed radiation a cry that boiled like a blood fever a tidal wave of bile and disbelief and rage and spite and the nerves started to shred we felt the ticking of the darkness closing in on all sides till gravity’s tsunami folded over into a tunnel a singularity that pulled us from shadow into darkness these times are a force of darkness that begets unforgiving darkness hear the violin kick delicate licks of suspended hope dangling over the percussion on gossamer threads the propulsive beat sways them so they dance like moths careening towards the lamplight they are dumb and dumb founded caught in a trance like an addict seeking their one true love liminal spaces extruded into scattered light and fog we are surrounded by strange animals crouching in the trembling shadows and so we wait

The Brother and The Sister couldn’t see him yet. They couldn’t see much at all: their senses were still adjusting. Although they had been here many times this was, thankfully, not their usual dimension: it was filled with acrid smells and listless currents, it was small and abstract, like a familiar prison cell. There was something almost quaint about the size of this planet.

Quaint but not at all pleasant. The air was thick and choked with grot; it wreaked of decay; the sky was a cesspit, even the clouds were chemically tainted. The Brother and The Sister wondered what it would be like to live on the ground, close to the source of the disease.  This place lacked true energy and freedom.

The Fang hung in the cold grey air, high above the ugly stone and metal construction. None of the humans looked up, even if they had it wouldn’t matter: the human creatures beetled about their daily lives oblivious to the realms surrounding them, they barely noticed their own. The Fang remained shrouded.

Beginnings

from the Preface to Towards a New Grand Composition

“We did not sense the start of corruption.

Its tempo took hold so quickly and utterly.

We understood it too late”

City at the River Fort

12^th Dominant Glacial Overture

60552/24^th Fluvial Mineral Minuet 

It had been a cold, wet and fruitless night, Peck failed to suppress a yawn.

“Since The Beyond tasted their malleable wits the human-apes have been slaves to its perversity.” Jynn looked to the cloud filled sky as if her thoughts sailed the cold dawn winds. “They mutilate every thing that they lay their grubby paws on, it is like an addiction for them. Earth and rock and metals transmuted to their will? Unthinkable! They adorn themselves with trinkets made of Mother’s precious stones, use Her precious ores in their devices! As if they were born to such nobility.

And plastic, urgh, plastic! Corruption made manifest, infiltrating all Her living matter. They even putrefy their own bodies with the muck. It is a heathen bio-chemical nightmare that will one day, mark my words Peck, will one day suffocate every last one of them.”

Soon after her first hunt with Jynn, Peck had come to know this sad melody by heart. When The Many or The Heralds or The Fang beat them to a Prize these tired and indignant verses were hauled out, for anyone in earshot. A means to lessen the sting of defeat through the judicious application of medicinal words, like calendula on burnt fingertips.

“Of course, glass is their utmost abomination! The utmost audacity! A flagrant desecration. They think it possible to halt the motion of sand! Burn it, petrify it, make it immutable for eternity? The grains yearn to move, to pulse and to flow as they have done throughout time.

All this music needs to be heard, transposed and understood.”

“Everything you will need will be in this box…”

When you first go into space it is the most desolate and strangely beautiful thing you’ll ever see.  There are vast tracts of inky emptiness, pin pricks of light shimmering in the infinite distance but every so often you see something wonderful that sears itself into your consciousness forever.

 Now, I can’t even bring myself to look out of the window at the gaudy lights and boiling gas of the nebula beyond the station: it looks fake, like a bad holo-reproduction. The medical centre is a vast, cold tundra of healing. All the staff are methodical and pleasant enough yet at the same time brash and thoughtlessly noisy. My room is a painfully clinical, porcelain white cell with sharp edged lighting. Even the bed sheets feel hard and unforgiving, scratching against my survivor’s guilt at each slow turn of my tired body.

“Everything you will need will be in this box…”

When you first go into space it is the most desolate and strangely beautiful thing you’ll ever see.  There are vast tracts of inky emptiness, pin pricks of light shimmering in the infinite distance but every so often you see something wonderful that sears itself into your consciousness forever.

 Now, I can’t even bring myself to look out of the window at the gaudy lights and boiling gas of the nebula beyond the station: it looks fake, like a bad holo-show. The medical centre is a vast, cold tundra of healing. All the staff are methodical and pleasant enough yet at the same time brash and thoughtlessly noisy. My room is a painfully clinical, porcelain white cell with sharp edged lighting. Even the bed sheets feel hard and unforgiving, scratching against my survivor’s guilt at each slow turn of my tired body.