Of Light and Darkness

[PoppetPrymm]

~Prologue~

The sky was a tapestry of grey and gloom. The city itself and the buildings were left drenched in a morose design of apathetic and monotone shades to compete and match the sky. Overcast and hazy the sidewalk itself seemed eclipsed in a hardly tangible filigree of fog and soot, smoke and shadows. The solitaire figure that walked and kicked at the cobblestones with shining black boots had to wonder if perhaps this was what the end of days must be like. So desolate and so still and yet she felt not an ounce of despair or loneliness.

If at any other time the girl would have whistled or found some cheerful song to compete and shatter the silence but not today. Time seemed to have stopped. Time itself seemed to be waiting to take one deep breath in order to learn again just what it was to breathe.

A tilt of head and a lift of eyes brought the forecast to clarity as another drop of rain decorated her pale dainty nose. It was a conquest to consider if it was really worth the time to compete with the rain. Then again, she always did love a challenge. A dimpled smile touched her lips as ivory gloved fingers curled delicately around the handle of the umbrella. With a shake it was lifted up towards the gloom dusted clouds and for a moment the girl mirrored everything so perfectly in her very own shades of grey, ivory, and jet black.

It would have been a perfect vision of ink dust memories and broken dream landscapes if not for those fatal flaws she was damned to possess. One by birth and one by choice.

She bit back a gleeful laugh that was threatening to spill into a stage of near childlike giggles as the rain drenched horizon exploded in a flourish of color as simultaneously a blood red umbrella was opened while the hood of the girl?s cloak descended to her shoulders to reveal a shining mane of crimson.

It was just a spill of color to prove not all was lost from a girl more prone to wander then to feel just so lost.

No reason to feel ever so lost if only for the wonder and the wander that would prevail in the spirit of the girl. She just couldn?t resist the pull.

It was just a whim after all? a fanciful little whim? just like the girl herself used to be.

[PoppetPrymm]

Memories always would leave the woman to feel nostalgic. The sense of melancholy clung in the atmosphere even if the sky no longer was hazed and overcast. The moon had lifted its drowsy visage to acknowledge the starless sky in a manner so peaceful, so serene. The woman herself possessed no such feeling of serenity. She found herself back at the wishing tree one more before the circus was set to open its gates. These were the quiet times she treasured.

So many names left for her to know. Poppet. Pet. Prymm. Prymm had become used to the facets and charms each and every one of those names had blessed and empowered her with. Tonight she went by Prymm. It suited her.

A dreamer's eyes of brilliant emerald were cast over the moon milk pale of her shoulder to cast upon a fire that ever would burn white hot and ivory within its shimmering black cauldron. The vision of the flame manifested right when the clock struck midnight. It was not the clock that Prymm heard or saw but instead she would be taken by the vision of another flame. A funeral pyre.

Something she should have known and yet had never been a part of. Memories tricked her these days. The memories gave her a purpose.

Once more the hood of black velvet was dropped to fall upon her shoulders and reveal the brilliance of blood red hair. A crimson ribbon was fetched from her pocket as she took a step forward and then another towards the wishing tree.

The once black bark of the wishing tree had been chipped away to ash white fissures given age and time and the wishes moved upon the branches as skeletel fingers caressing the girl when she approached.

Admist it all, all the black and white and death pallor she stretched upward to tie the crimson ribbon of her wish upon the branch of the wishing tree. It stood out like a beacon. A dare. A summoning.

But for what or for whom she did not know.

All she knew was the wish.

The wish that had trespassed through her thoughts for a thousand years never to be spoken, not even as a whisper.

A wish kept secret.

Until tonight.

Tonight the wishing tree knew.

[Ever]

Smoke and Mirrors. Hopes and Fears. Black and White. Good and Evil.

All woven in a tapestry in threads, spools of woven silver to interweave with the beckon of jet. So long ago the skein and the story were left behind and all that remained was the woman. Ever.

Even now she seemed more like a ghost then a presence. A phantasmagorical entity of light and darkness perfectly enraptured and ensnared in the makings of life and death. London’s pale fog presence of a woman ever refined in cream pure flesh and haven dark eyes would regard the pretty Poppet even now from her distance.

Looking on from the maze of frost, the white smoke of her hair was playing tricks with her eyes. Even still Ever would see Poppet. Pet. Prymm. Whichever name she went by. Still Ever knew and realized that sometimes there were those born to survive and those meant for a sacrifice. Was it not the blood red banner of Prymm’s hair that proved that she was meant for the latter then the former?

“Enticing isn’t she?”

For so long Ever had grown accustomed to the stone and steel murmur of the man that haunted her. No longer was Ever in denial of what and who she was to him, who he was to her. Captive. Prisoner. Slave. Property. She was bound under all the terms and there was no escaping the phantom of a man.

His name, his true name that was, would never be spoken on her lips but after so many centuries of watching another die for her mere existence and survival in eternity she knew well who he was.

“She should not be ours.”

“But she will be.”

“I think not.”

For the first time in what seemed ages the eternal exile, ethereal creation that she was would smile.

“Oh?”

“It is not written in the stars or printed upon the cards.”

“I see. So now you are one to read the great divine?”

“Come now. I believe we both know I am neither of these.”

“But still you once possessed the story within.”

“That was a lifetime ago.”

“Many lifetimes ago.”

“I was young then…”

“… and yet… not."

“Mm…”

“Maiden. Mother. Crone. They still seek you.”

“And they still shy from you, even while some accept you.”

“So they do. So they do.”

The coldness prickling upon her flesh and gnawing away at the warmth let her know he left her at this moment to her own reflections. A spirit so often when in visitation was thought to bring a change in temperature and atmosphere to something far cooler but with the presence of this particular dark passenger Ever always felt as if she was burning alive.

But this was hardly Hell… and it was certainly not the afterlife.

That realization hit Ever to the very fabric and core of her being as she watched Prymm tie the blood red ribbon on the wishing tree. Ever at that moment could not help but silently pray that Prymm perhaps had wished for her own survival in the times of Darkness and Light.

[PoppetPrymm]

She had a perchance of being one tempted to wander. It could have been perhaps her moods and the changes that seemed to take over by whim whenever the woman went from one name to another. At this moment the woman had chosen to go by and be known by Pet. Pet if anything was a whimsical, enchanted one prone to dreams and peculiar fantasies that sent her off on random tangents and curious adventures that often would lead to demure chaos and sweet revelations. In those hours as Pet she was seen as fey slender and starry eyed, a dreamer through and through. If asked later Poppet or Prymm would surely have advised that they would fall to the nature of Pet from the first time she had stepped foot inside the mirror maze. The mirror maze, like much of the circus, was never quite as it seemed. The mirrors did not reflect the images of those that went through the maze but instead projected the thoughts and memories of those within the confines of the maze. It was at this very moment that Prymm became Pet as she was struck with the very moments of nostalgia and melancholy. Her own memories were fractured and fragile and the painful revelation of such truth brought the brilliant emerald of Prymm’s eyes to bleed into the tragedy of Pet’s shattered blue eyes.

The remorse and the aching truth of having to face her own reflection after such revelations had sent Pet running through the maze with the panic of a spooked beast until with ragged breaths she broke through the flaps of the circus tent that possessed the mirror maze to find herself in a place she never had known quite existed in the Circus before.

“I shouldn’t be surprised.”

A whisper as Pet felt that perhaps she was no more confused or transfixed as Alice must have been upon falling through the rabbit hole and finding herself in Wonderland. Steps brought her through a weaving path through a beautiful and tragic garden of black roses upon a backdrop of white leaves that through a peripheral glance would alter to become white roses canvased with black leaves. Her boots would not dare make a sound as she crossed ivory and then jet cobblestones until she found herself approaching the center of the garden where the water fountain held its vigil. A silent behemoth of fairytales and forgotten fables forged in marble and stone it seemed itself to possess a cloaked aura of power. Perplexed, Pet found herself approaching the center of the garden until she was stumbling on the cobblestones at the realization she was not alone.

There settled in a perch upon the fountain was a young woman of moon pale flesh and slick raven black hair that upon touches of light would offer a dark radiance of amethyst and sapphire throughout the inky darkness of her strands. The woman’s skin was intricately designed by tattoos that strangely to Pet seemed to… move. It was however not the woman’s appearance that disturbed and drew Pet as much as that which was around the lovely contradiction. The Mirror Maze had given her a glimpse at moments before Pet had arrived in the Garden, bringing forth a flash of the woman when she had been alone.

Prior to Pet’s arrival the woman had worn a pendant similar to a heart forged of hematite surrounded by crystal wings. However, it was not a heart that the woman wore but some other symbol that Pet could not recall. Only moments ago the woman wore this pendant and only a step or two before Pet’s arrival to the center of the garden had the same pendant been taken from the enigma’s throat and smashed against the cobblestones.

“Broken Hearts… Shattered Stars.”

A haunted murmur from Pet’s own lips before she realized she had spoken. The words had brought the enigma to lift eyes of the most brilliant tourmaline towards Pet. Pet had the strongest desire to run and yet her limbs would not obey her. She was motionless and entrapped by the heavy weight of anguish and despair in the enigma’s eyes. Pet felt like she was drowning without a chance to scream in those depths of tourmaline and even the solid sound of boots striking the cobblestones could not break the enchantment.