by Parris Match
To reflect upon the unseen image of the final degrading event in the river valley: the fate of Ooba and Dehmoo.
After slaying the worthless filthy trespassers, the brave warriors of the affluent green river valley, grabbed the perforated crimson carcasses by their split heels, and dragged the exterminated disembowel-ling vermin back to their village; to proudly display their gutted leaking trophies to the wild acclaim of their common tribe. On rare occasions they had previously killed lowly members of the foul smelling, dirty, uncivilized Rabbit People, for probing within their territory, and for squatting on their land. This was no different, a clear pronouncement that the unblemished river valley and its few clean villages were absolutely pure; found simply so inviolate, that any grimy foreign integration was not possible. Following a public viewing of the proudly illustrated, and then emasculated alien bodies, their shrunken procreative stems and power thrown on the rising purge of a sacrificial fire; the women and little children dancing, and playfully poking at the raw remains of these mutilated curiosities. Finally, the two prejudged outsiders, easily mocked and despised, were pulled far-off downriver and pitched, like useless refuse, into the shameful confusing current of a faster moving primary stream.
The denied and dismayed Forgotten Ones reached the top of the hill, from the end of the profound box ravine, coming out of the so beautiful river valley; and after a short time, persisting in a westerly course, ran abruptly up against the impassable sky-high side of a long sheer rock escarpment. Turning south, following the contour of the cliff, they searched for a break through this solid towering sandstone barrier, that just prevented their progress westward. Soon the stone wall met with a steep rockslide, dropping swiftly back into the river valley, with a reduced narrowing foothold running along the lower edge of the scarp. Dahmoh’ah and his people held close, to the shaded bottom hem of the cliff-side, as they inched their way slowly forward, trying to make themselves as inconspicuous as possible.
An encroaching gradual shadow of the escarpment overcame the most beautiful valley, and the saddened people looked longingly, far down onto the breathtaking and vanishing, illuminated emerald green, attractive river valley; into the fading view of the future below; will soon the hazy twilights gauzy curtain close on their lastly dream. They could still determine by the smoke rising from many scattered locations and of the far-off indications of cleared and tilled fields, that a multitude of people occupied the river valley. It was with a shrug of acceptance and envious disappointment that The humble Forgotten Ones, could never join together with the fiercely intolerant people of the heavenly green river valley.
Further along the base line of the unyielding solid rock wall, Dahmoh’ah leading the people came upon an odd warning sign, standing before their divergent way, overlooking the dimming jaded valley, still alluringly visible and beautiful in that diminishing light. A foreboding pedestal of slender inclined poles, topped with a sightless communing human skull; an air of vibratory sonance, speaking to them so eerily, in driven whispering low wind-tones. The three-staff support covered with knotted strips of rabbit fur, inconsistently fluttering in the river valleys tantalizing updrafts, attest to the cooling womb’s fragrant weighty dense evening breeze; “Do Not Venture Here”, the expelled stale breath of the empty skull imparted.
However more imperative than the boding skull-spirits’ clear message, there was a narrow open fracture in the seemingly impenetrable cliff wall, leading into its possible inviting safe interior. The limited ominous crevice was no wider than a man’s outstretched elbows, but the vulnerability of exposure to the open harassment of the forthcoming darkly spirits, or the accidental sudden sighting by their bloodthirsty enemy, was too great a risk to be ignored. Dahmoh’ah sent scouts to investigate the inner core of the rock barrier; they soon returned reporting that within a short distance, the opening widened into a very large, much dimmer, roomy cavern, and then narrowing again, continued to slash deeper into the rock solid block of settled sedimentary sandstone.
Because it was near the very end of lingering sunlight, and they must abandon the beautiful desirable valley and remain undetected, Dahmoh’ah decided to enter the darker mysterious cavity; since his weary and certainly spent people, must evade the more invasive and obscure, snarling insistent demons within the times of darkness.
The people dragged and squeezed their goods and provisions through the narrow gap in the wall of rock, and entered into a spacious vaulted darkened chamber, with a thin slit open to the sky, atop the arch-summit of the high ceiling. Viewing through this finely sculptured celestial window, the final indirect grey wisp of the days last light, swiftly dissolved into almost absolute darkness; in this cramped callous cavern, within the hollowed clay soul of the stone.
Dahmoh’ah prudently placed a guard, at the entrance to the fracture in the rock, as well as deep inside this unplumbed dark space; that they would surely explore this unknown void on the following day. Was this entrenchment-hole, a safe little rabbits nest, or did they by chance occupy a stone fortress, or unwittingly an enclosed inescapable trap. The Forgotten Ones lay crowded closely together, tightly as blue-speckled eggs within the spirits clutch, undisturbed even through the hushed black night; protectively contained in the Spirits’ hard stone pouch, just a slightest slotted wonderful glimpse at the twinkling of the moving chart of starlight, for the calm reassurance of the few faint-hearted.
The deflected Sunlight crept into the bestirred sleeping burrow, packed-full of the disturbed awakening people. As they arose in the marginal breaking light of dawn, they looked around in surprised wonderment; upon a special gift from the rigid Spirits of the stone; telling engraved pictographs patiently waiting for their hazily perceived perusal. In awe the cramped people stood mid cavern, taking-in the revealed astonishing abundance of point-etched stone carvings, fixed inscriptions upon the surrounding walls of their more defined aroused murky sleeping chamber; on delayed display throughout the concave hallowed den, were slowly brought to penetrate the dusky filtered light within the speck reflective grotto.
An ancient classic passage of copious simple stick-figures and liberal designs, scratched into the granular-silicate surface of the glinting sandstone walls; of assorted animals and of active man, some in varied situations of hunting and capturing; others, of the common man in his daily community relationships or demonstrating his bound reverence to the many Spirits of the elements; the distinct showers of the rainfall; and still others, the elusive pictographs of symbols of the Father Sun, and of the eternal Spirit world surrounding them. This literary chamber was a sacred place; for eons, speaking to those in-transient interactive Spirits, offering the veiled language of the ancients, and passing their inherently driven self-essence and inspiration to those beyond. The Forgotten Ones were tearfully comforted by the thoughtful etched wall coverings; the most sincere impressions of the venerable ancient Spirits, to fill the empty void in their learning existence, and to reinforce their longing desire for a unity of kinship and for a place to belong.
The concealed guard overlooking the river valley reported to Dahmoh’ah that there was no sign of approach from their enemy, but he could see lazily smoking fires in the distance, and that the rising warm golden face of the morning Sun showed silent promise.
Taking a moment of needed circumspection and remembrance, to soothe and placate the injured mourning hearts of the people, Dahmoh’ah removed a piece of cutting flint from a leathernsack around his waist; and on finding a commanding empty space, amongst the other timeless perplexing illustrations of life; he began to honor their fallen heroes, Ooba and Dehmoo, by clearly etching their common elemental spirits on this everlasting stone chronicle, a designated memorial, to keep in stone substance their selfless sacrifice, for all time.
“In honor of ‘Our’ fallen brave brothers, Ooba and Dehmoo; they are forever, a part of the heart-felt Spirit of the stone”, Dahmoh’ah declared solemnly.
From the secret interior of the portal, into the great unknow
n, the posted probing guard appeared, to inform Dahmoh’ah that he had curiously explored deeper into the heart of the Stone, and had not been hindered in his first sought quest, nor could determine its winding constricted utmost extent. Dahmoh’ah’s decision was made; they would bravely cross this new threshold, into the musty austere depths of his courage; to step and enter the turning and twisting, inner recesses of the mysterious Spirit of the Stone.
The Forgotten Ones departed from within the limits of the tome, but not without a kept ideal of the ancients sacred chamber, and made their way deeper into the sandstone solid sediment, through the strict passageway; Dahmoh’ah retaining a lagging rear guard and sending two scouts ahead with a pouch of seed. The narrow entry hall opened into a wider, very long, occasionally stepped, zigzagging gilded corridor; containing many sporadic minor fissures, diffusing out from the sides of the main central canyon, with its well-pulverized sandy sandstone uneven footpath, extending further into the sunlight of the western vista. In the lowest depths of the continuing stone-crevasse; within a deep narrow crack and beneath the high unseen solid tableland; the hidden line of steadily plodding people, stretched far along the profoundly buried single path, dissolved into the latest of morning.
After much laboring, the people came upon a broadened open resplendent courtyard within the golden corridor, occupied by a shallow enlarged pool of lightly odorous water, placidly waiting for them; the surrounding damp ground a cooling welcome relief, from the suffocated dry confines of the trodden powdery dust filled canyon. But contrary to their essential necessity, the intermittent bubbling warm water was lightly tainted with sodium and sulfate; on the very edge a white-yellowish outline, and hence undrinkable. It was briefly opportune that the people had stocked up on clear water before they had left the river valley. They were still able to splash the tepid pool-water on themselves and teasingly on each other, giving them a momentary soothing lull in their endless wandering journey. The Forgotten Ones frolicked within the encompassing ascending high walls of the clearly well-lit hollow, that were also, from top to bottom, covered with an array of etched pictographs on blacken slate. Additionally, white chalky imprints by the ghostly ancestor’s hands, made from the caustic sulfurous-mud, daubed out of a gooey cream puddling, formed by the trickling water flow over the lowest dampened edge of the brackish pool. The people placed and impressed their wetted sticky hands, meeting the ancient’s signatures, and nervously giggled at each other’s response, on touching and melding their kindred affinity, with the wayfaring spirits of the past. The echoes of the children’s laughter, were the beginning cure of inert impasse, to dwell in deep sorrow was to remain in a dark visionless canyon rift.
The inquisitive youthful Ahcoo, climbed and scampered up and out of the confinement of the golden chasm; and on reaching the top, he could see nothing but a continuation of the unyielding rock plane in every direction; with the exception of a mammoth gray mountain spired edifice, protruding into the infinite bluest sky, farther towards the westward horizon; one apparent majestic exalted abode, of the eternal Spirit of the Stone.
Dahmoh’ah and the people collected their belongings and left the yellowish tainted pool, and their sterile regrets of loss behind, walking in single file along the golden corridor, to follow the Sun. More than half a day’s light had passed and they all trudged on, every bent course in the restricting canyon an impending hazard; but the people marched resignedly, step after step after step, through the crushing nothingness. The never-ending pathway into the very heart of the ominous rock, unceasingly suffering the scrutiny, of the apparent threatening face, the lowering distinct golden brow of the slowly transforming stone. By each turn in the passage/ each shift in the light of the Sun, the heavily burdened toiling afternoon elapsed into a diminished latter day. One of the scouts returned and gladly informed Dahmoh’ah that a wide open, fresh watered, resting area lay ahead; it would be a promising site, where the people may perhaps pass the night, in relative comfort.
Entering the more lighted clearing, delivered The Forgotten Ones a sigh of relief and genial liberation, after being trapped in the dry lifeless air of the enclosed canyon, filled with the bone-dry stench of the long departed and wispy puffs of golden dust. The large rough airy space abutted the colossal stone mountain seat, and was the crossroads of three high steep canyons, the one they had just traversed and two other like precipitous sided canyons; one going to the northwest and the other going to the southwest, giving the appearance of close to encircling the Spirits’ great stone edifice. Within the open Sunlit rotunda, a situated field of immense flat hunks of toppled rock, lay askew and asunder; some massive slabs still almost remaining erect, after being hewn over time by the wetted erosive fissures, slicing through the gist of the solid rock; and separating the smooth stone tablets, from the continuous stone sediment composition of nature’s longest story.
Water benevolently wept and trickled down the green slimy granite and mossy green wall, attached to the abrupt gargantuan wrinkled facade, of the soaring sanctuary of the mountain Spirit. To soak and saturate a crumbled little rock hillock, of pulverized disintegrating matter, at its exact grey base, yet not accumulating into a puddle or pool; but quickly vanishing into the tiny fractures, on the shattered floor of the coarse-grained canyon. A few thin spires and displays of green grasses, clumps and filaments of emerald to silvery grey moss, and a wide sprinkling of white miniature daisies; grew on the dampened crushed pile, neath the dripping pure waters creased source.
Dahmoh’ah again, prudently positioned a staunch guardian, a short distance, within each divergent canyon-channel; and the exhausted people dispersed into the recessed cavities and retired nooks, created by the biased leaning and tumbled settled slabs of fallen stone, to set up their family campsites. A scraped deer hide was formed and positioned along the bottom of the weeping wall, and used as a trickling trough, to collect the dribbling water, into methodically exchanged many awaiting containers.
Some of the open pages of the inclined stone tablets appear to be blackened and glossy, by the persistent changing windstorms and sudden intense showers, from infrequent highlighted thunderbolts. Those telltale corroded sand-solid slab pages, liberally filled with the ancients’ more visible etched designs, viewed upon with closer Sun-lighted inspection, are messages delightedly seen set forth from above, clearly emblazoned within a limited slate of lucid cobalt blue, to include the tidings and the laws, revealed below. The literal revelation of the natural world, a new moment and a glimmer of truth; The Vale of the Fire Spirit. Dahmoh’ah had taken especial note of a sizeable well-defined black bordered concentric pictograph, with a distinct fixed black center, that was placed high on the wall, adjacent to the canyon leading to the beautiful river valley. This purposeful contrary sign would forever remain the significant exclusive symbol, to Dahmoh’ah and The Forgotten Ones, of the mysterious brutal People of the abundant River Valley, and of the closed passageway to this wonderful unattainable place.
By the first glimpse of the Sunlight above the clearing’s rim, the people left their nocturnal encampment and entered the restricted southwest canyon, decided by the unfaltering Dahmoh’ah, they continued along the downward chiseled flank of the unseen granite mountain. After several hours of flat-footed tramping, they broke out of the confinement of the canyon, looking down over a hazy wide-vast expanse; then after winding downward through scattered huge piles of unloaded massive spewed boulders, dumped from the torrential imparting mouth of the primeval canyon’ floodgate; the people stepped onto the firm flat surface of one extensive, whitish hard-crusted, finely crackled puzzling shell, of an iridescent dry-lake bed.
Steadily fixing their eyes across the spacious level plane, they could number four menacing statuary demons, standing afloat the mist-shimmer, still cast formations of sandstone and dormant; gargantuan gravestone Spirits in the distance. The stiff-necked Spirits of utter chaos and constant fear; incessantly morbid, moaning, murmurs from the petrified dead, heat-sealed into st
one for near eternal oblivion. Those negative wicked Spirits abiding in the emptiness, during the ageless continual ebb and flow, in the middle of their ancient boundaried kicking field, patiently waiting for a new cruel game of domination, torment and rape.
The stories of long - long ago, had introduced the gruesome Spirits from about the Southern Hemisphere; conceited pillars of the mountain temples, beguiling masters of slavery, to the blameless people of the earth. A hallowed revelation of innate evil, known clearly by the Sunlight’s’ vision; never to be mentioned with loose lips, but to be spoken of when suitable, in low whispers, round the counsel-fires flash of light, on a dark, cold… cold… moonless night. The slender group of towering wind-polished monoliths of burnished, flesh-colored, layered rock, projecting up from the dry lake bed; gave warning to the common people, to tread on this eerie flat monotonous nether land, with great caution. In their learned gen-irrational fear, they far circled the quiescent, mid-morning flushed, sandstone column pulpits of the bored dreadful napping wicked giants.
The beaten people, threatened by the sunlit single-eye of the four scowling stone monsters, marched in line along the outer most perimeter of the dry unpromising lake, holding close to the southern edge of the massive venerable granite mountain; and then they lead off to the south towards a wide-open breach, in the low gently sloping mountains, into the dusky southwest horizon.
