by Parris Match
The occasion had arrived for the reaffirmation, regarding the ethereal cloud or miasma, of the all-encompassing faith in the benevolent touch of the Spirits. The time for nature’s delightful renewal; a time for insemination, the time for firm planting, a moment of trust. Ahcooah, the undisputed forecaster, keeper of the seed and of the sacred word, in his skilled gifted authority, ceremoniously determined which specific plot of land would be prepared for this seasons essential harvest; proliferous spring for some, dormant fallow autumn for others.
Ahcoo’ah nobly visited each prior planting site, under the watchful eyes of the hopeful people; scrutinizing, smelling, tasting, testing the condition of the soil; dependent on his final approval, whether it to temporarily remain fallow or be fertile? Ritual pageantry in bloom, calling on the Great Spirits’ blessing, showily selecting each separate garden field; at Ahcoo’ah’s marked behest, the family of the Forgotten Ones started to toil, to plow and to hoe the earth, with honed and crooked staves. All the people of their tribe, the women at the fore, tilled and pulverized the clotted ground, removing every risen hindering stone.
Dacoh looked up from his eradicate grubbing to see his beautiful pregnant Tahee pensively gazing into the familiar beginning distance, with noticed downcast silent lament; then wistfully searching into the clear emptiness, as near as the closest un-stepped boundary. Her forlorn misty-eyed sadness filled him with accorded sympathy; he had no soothing remedy, his heartbeat being broken apart.
A continual rotating line of laden slavering men transported the reedy ponds boggy manure; filled brimful basket, after leaking basket, after oozing smelly humus dripping basket, slogging-ly conveyed from the spongy decomposing peaty shore of the basin. Women scratching and clawing, the awaited and delivered fertile loam, turning over and mixing this kneaded compost-balm, into their Spirit-mothers earthly bosom.
That slime covered trudging stooped creature of burden, with long matted hair, sticky muscular trunk, and sweated loins of leaking dribbling muck; a filthy encrusted stinking deliberate man, compassionate dark deep-set eyes, heartbreakingly peering towards his dearest despondent fertilized plot.
Orderly performing their ritual duties, row after row after row; the Prophet with his consecrated staff, penetrated the Spirits willing mantle, depositing with-in the brooding wetted hollows, three in one, more if deemed necessary, the sacred seed; Ahcoo’ah’s eager brothers and sisters following in his stead, covering and mounding the holy bond, securing their assured faith in the ageless renewed dawn of germination.
Clearing the accumulated debris from the earlier gated watering channels, the chosen floral gardens were hopefully readied, in respectful perfection, for the fated peoples promised harvest.
Contented sighs, manifests it’s breathy gentle breezes; fluffy white gossamer clouds, puffs of silky cotton, laze in the clear infinite sapphire sky; sunbeams iridescent shiny flecks, glimmers flash through the lighthearted composition of the newest leafy-green trees; brilliant sparkling snowcaps on the three highest charcoal peaks; faithful melodious rhythms of the more pattering chimes of divergent falling water; the faint renewed scent of life; pleasing little full-breasted songbirds blush, spreading their joyful message; glorious radiant wildflowers appear in every alcove and crevice and field, the pocketed little valley in its finest magnificence.
Intermittent sad little pitiful whimpers break the near silence of the consummate night; his affectionate sympathetic essence could not disregard this, heartrending, longing lament.
Dacoh made perfect his emotional decision.
Colorful buoyant seemingly free angels, fluttering shiny silken and soft velvety wings; cobalt to azure blue, flared with yellow sunbursts, even dappled with hanging droplets of fading crimson; beside, serrated fringe of black with tiny teardrops of blue purity, in essence gold-n-orange, with tiny speckles of ebon and white. Two beautiful vibrant light-instilled butterflies, flitted so blithely, through the barren, jagged and smooth sculptured, confines of the mystic twisting canyon, not knowing where they should land, therefore surrender willingly to the mere whispers of the vary gentle breezes or inspirations. Unfettered little colorful children, once translucent spirits caught in flaxen light, youths in wild abandon, thoughts of patriotic familial duty or chanceful hazard in the wait, a mirthful moment of unconcerned careless result; the unbiased stone-gate from akin comfort and enclosure, wide-open to the boundless spree of their wandering hearts.
Dacoh and Tah gaily flutter from their soft known cocoon yet nervously flit to the freedom of the unobstructed desert expanse, that desolate empty wilderness; thru out the clipped shuttering of the pinkish-golden canyon, beneath the concluding trespass tell of the bleached skeletal bones, aside the milky curdled shore of the long almost departed lake, going quickly bypass the gentle wavering of the mild admonishing tri-omen; moderate wind whispering tongues of the Spirits’ warning; “ do not ignore our counsel”, “do not leave our availing safety”, “do not enter your secluded consequence”.
Light-heartedly, with wing-span still on those low voices of that wispy breeze; above the tempest-swept field of scattered and emaciated greyish-green scrub, once and again over blowing, raised and deserted, grit stroked and polished, glossy black stone; fording the amazing labyrinth of the, many-crooked-fingered, severe and steep-banked, as usually waterless ravine; continuing their flittering further passage, across the bad blowen landscape of the empty pebble stone plain. Dacoh and Tah merrily skipped towards the not too lofty, amassed and glistening, indifferent sand hillocks; the white puffily rounded heaps of those vacant mounds, leisurely recurrent longtime shifting, replicate grains of sterile crystalline specks and dust.
Youthful slight impressions on the unmarked byways, thru the surrounded and mounded, barren and sandy desert expanse; unbridled expectation held no direction, each footstep taken was servilely followed by another; imprints of blind affection over the unbiased pliant sand, the silent plodding purposeless journey with no interruption.
Dacoh missed the discernible breath and sidelong shadow of his just attachment, to turn, to see his pregnant soul standing motionless, in the indented step-prints of his footpath behind. A simple certain smile announced her change of heart, he ached within the wellspring of joy and could not be more delighted; the revealing Spirit of the knowing light, over the irradiant rim of a southern dune, clearly showed her chastened and glorified bounteous beauty.
Without the slightest confusion, hesitation, or discourse; Dacoh, taking Tah’s hand in his, they crossed the rocky field of indecision, and proceeded for their welcome home; back into a state of grace, returning to the hidden valley of The Forgotten Ones.
The madding surly grumblings, low base heavy rumbling, tantrum sounds of distant rolling thunder; invasive cacophonic drumming tremors on the outer vestment of the virtuous mother earth; stayed Dacoh and Tah so stopped in their restoration, to the divinely planned garden valley. They stood all amazed in the midst of the, precarious and exposed, smooth deserted clay-sand plain. A louring grounded tumbling cloud of fine dust and pollution, sudden reality appearing out of the superior unknown north; announced the coming of the unexpected, petulant and suppressed, armored alien Spirits of the hardly mentioned apocalypse, the well-organized swift deliverers of disease and discord.
Rising slowly and dimmer as the lateral northern dawn; indirectly advancing arrogantly forth; floating on this thin, hazily obscured, radical intricate carpet of deceit and furious confusion. Dark foreboding diverse silhouettes of frightful monstrous evil Spirits, astride huge horrible, harsh puffing, smoky monstrous beasts; stiff-necked and flapping, pointed symbolic banners readily announcing their false intentions, quickly brought to a panting sudden halt. The bestirred and threatening, dry bitter anger and spun chaos, swirling dusty tumult, not dissipating into its usual quiet settling fall.
Dacoh, to stare benumbed at this distant bestial milling pack, all-consuming brutish creatures of his worst nightmares; even at this unintelligible separation, Dacoh inst
antly realized, that the dim although garish, heart-devouring pitiless Spirits of Terror had arrived; his youthful optimistic soul shrank to his remaining seed.
Grasping Tah by the hand, they ran to the sudden edge of the exact gully and leapt to its hidden depth; to instruct and motion for her to stay, ensconced in a tumbleweed mass, amongst a thicket of stickfast sage and newer brief spring bushes. Dacoh strategically escaping, crouching at an unseen height, scurried his way down the twisting sand-packed defile, to run further and furthest from the darting and red piercing eyes of the horrid dreadful beasts.
“See the dirty pestilent little rabbits run and scamper away”, said one of the various armored men on horseback.
“Si”, said another.
“Filthy savage unbelievers”, said another.
“Si”, muttered the hidden reply.
“A faithless heathen”.
“Si…!”
“Worthless uncivilized vermin”, said the Capitan.
“ The Stink of a Nasty Cucaracha ”.
“Si, Si, Si”, howled the soldiers echo.
“Let us amuse ourselves, a diversion from our disappointment, and a time for manly sport”, said another.
“Si, Si, Si, Si, Si”; came the spiteful snarling and anxious barking from the pack of well-bred dogs, response.
The pretentious pious cavalry of uniform horsemen had passed this way before, in the mid green spring of the prior year, exploring far to the northland, seeking their selfish fortunes with incontestable power. The incessantly repeated accounts from the conquered natives of the south, submissive pleadings from the beaten and the vanquished: tales of The lofty Golden City and the endless fields of corn; a land of infinite treasure / a taste for cream and honey, had wetted their avaricious appetites, possessively captured their greed. For they singularly coveted The Domed City of Gold, and the lush Gardens of Babylon, golden treasure beyond their farthest imagination; the righteous bearing guise of the gem-encrusted golden cross being their sealed passport to glory.
Dacoh, in his instinctive preserving nature, thinking only of his devoted affections and the survival of his kind, sneaked within the hidden confines of the obscuring banks of the definite ravine; upon determining a safe separation from his planted seed, he scrambled up the decisive brink of the fateful chasm, and defiantly revealed himself on the open rock-strewn uneven plain. The sighing celestial breath of the chorus of good Spirits above, stopped for an instant, honoring his divine resolve.
Spurring their trumpeting steeds in a rousing gregarious charge, indignant nostrils flared, tin soldiers declaring with a mighty roar, their valueless sportive desire, to do false battle with this worthless uncivilized nit; the counterfeit crusaders zealously advanced on the diseased, savage, faithless little calf, to expertly perform the usual righteous conclusive rodeo, to play gamely.
Seeing the rabid pack of snorting beasts, descending upon him; the heroic brazen little ring-tailed fox, fleetingly ran from this safe natural covert hideaway, in the opposite direction; leading the growling wolves further from the ensconced mother and nascent pup, well-hidden amidst some thatch and thicket of leafy clustered brush, beside the forgotten nearer edge of the sheltering gully.
Racing to outpace the speed of the rolling surge, thunderous discordant sound, never turning to see his certain approaching fate; his survival was not in the balance, reprieve was not an issue, distance from disaster and familial separation were his only thought; all eyes glazed and wept from the soon apparent loss, his swelled heart was at its final bursting; but he kept running, running, running, towards the checkered deserts barren farthest horizon.
A governed bump from the galloping first charger, a swift kick from a trousered leg, knocked Dacoh to the ground; violently tumbling his rolled body over the flinty sharpened rocks and cruel spiny burrs; and the flailing, tattered, and bloodied form of flesh came to rest in a nearly unconscious shapeless lump within a ringed patch of prickly thistle.
Before reviving from his senseless state, Dacoh was quickly bound by his separate wrists, firmly stretched between two tugging horsemen; and surrounded by dismounted, laughing, scornful, yapping creatures of sport. Excruciating pain brought him to the fore, limp with certain dread; on the tightening / tightening lines of extended tortuous tension, for the easy lighthearted amusement, amongst the circled boisterous romping rowdies; the helpless struggling game between power and courage would soon begin.
The commanding sanctioned crusader, approached the tensed tethered wild goat, with unsheathed pre-corrupted sword in hand, slashed and stripped-away Dacoh’s bloused shirt and belted protective hull; leaving his collapsing bared stem and exposed handsome form to the ridicule of the laughing derisive mob. Mockingly discrediting with a pointed prick from his dual-edged rapier, that shrinking withdrawal that fear produced, a single drop of fine crimson blood, fell upon the earth. Grabbing and twisting the bound bushy tail of thick hair hanging down Dacoh’s bronzed back, the ruthless bearded beast scalped the coveted prize from this shrieking beautiful head, of principle and free will; boldly waving, the black and bloody, showy symbolic talisman; for his howling, backslapping compadre’s to see. Selfish anger from failure, and the seething acrimony of men’s impotence, incited their hateful deed. The loud agreeing whoops of winning exultation, and the louder tortured screams of inescapable terror, were all that could be heard across the vast flatulence; their false assumptions and empty arena, of the conquered desert floor.
The swollen afeared Tah, from her distant brambly hiding place, screened witness to the perceived calamity, somewhat viewed this clamorous noble sacrifice; convulsive arrested sobs, tears from deep within her heart, eager light tremblings and sudden sharp pangs of the coming sweet advent, could not blunt her hollow gasping, gasping, gasping, swallowed silence, mournful sorrow.
Securing two other looped lariats to the be bleeding naked scapegoats ankles, and drawing him tight unto the opposite quarter, four-horsemen stretching the tested bonds to their tautened limits; plucking the unforgiving cords to the thrummed vibrations twang, results in agonized curdling screams, were for their giddy cheering pleasure. Abated dribbled red piss and spewed excrement were gleefully jeered; shared false manly entertainment, borrowed vile pageantry, was their limited goal. Repeated, again… and again… and again… and again……; pulling the golden bands of the inferior savage’s due rape and reprobation, the piercing ear-splitting cries of the so condemned, echoed within the deserted void. Little compromise or compassion were not in question, hatred and chaos were all that existed in this befallen reign of terror.
Tiring of their repetitious trivial sport, the whole aberrations fodder quickly became an inconsequential bore-some burden. The formal authoritarian, commanding crusader, effectively wielding his razored blade, decisively brought it to bear on the small of Dacoh’s back, splitting his unwilling exploited body asunder.
Detached arms ripped from their sockets, legs torn from their ruptured central core, dangling shredded sinews, disemboweled entrails bursting, an explosion of his heart with splattered blood; violated skinned head / mouth agape in a soundless scream; vacated white eyes pleading, with his earth-mother, to receive him home. Severed split segments of this gentle tinted spirit dragged across the clattering rocks, vehemently disseminated crossways the hostile graveled spiny plain; the bright hopeful bloom being plucked and separated from the stem and root, ignorantly dispatched to the great unknown; unceremoniously disengaged and discarded with a flip of the hand, odiously shaken from its captured adhesive tie; and with the spittle’s vulgar refuse, to be left to rot.
Finished with their vile hateful irrelevant intermission, only one aberrant glance, toward that additional thrill of the savage hunt and sadistic persecution, with little cause for a second thought; lightly shrugging with lack of interest, the missions herded rabble, gathered their spurs and continued on their way, proudly galloping back to their exalted civilized world; for these whirling blinded dust devils could not see the Spirits�
� proliferous fields of colorful flowers and divine vales of hidden gold.
Tah, staying well-hidden until the last specter of dust had fallen, and the utter sound of silence lingered into infinite dead stillness; she crawled out upon the quiet killing plain, stood up to the horrid abandoned nightmare, her compressed heart could suffer no more. Walking to where her dearest Dacoh laid, seeing the grisly bloody scraps and pieces scattered on the ground, sorrow was beyond sorrow, she could not believe what her eyes could see, constricted screams did not break the silence. Without touching the departed remains, she and the renewed spirit shuffled towards her whispering faithful valley;
“Come home Tahee”, “Tahee come home”.
Dishonored splattered droplets of scattered crimson poppies, existent vivid blood accents, on one abiding graveled gray field; inclined flimsy yellow blossoms of the flaring pungent bush of oily creosote, beside the emptied waters coarse; guiding pure-white and very-blue dusted blooms, alongside the adorned border of the composite winding trail or the more steep steps of a twisted byway; brilliant intensepink, spiny pointed, thick-skinned pulpy sentinels, directly spotted on diverse acmes of the precipitous rocky slopes; clumps of unique pale soft orange, and mellow yellow strawflowers, sporadically set aside; somewhat sunny bouquets of delicate little violets, vivacious florets, lightly hidden in a protective crevice or shielding niche; joyous many modest white and roseate daisies, for the time being, appear to be fresh scented in the breezily discovered unseen green meadows.
