The Black Earring (Episode 6)
I paced around the empty room. The lights were out, a pale ghostly shine falling from the hall through the open door. It made the chairs into faded silhouettes. It was quiet. Unusually quiet. Normally at this hour, student-musicians were practicing their symphonies in the adjacent music rooms, which is my I even bother coming here in the first place, but not today. I turned to the shadows of the corner. The piano stood abandoned but with dignity in its smooth blackness. I caressed its keys longingly. Such a pity I never learned.
I ambled on, a final glance at the Steinway, in between the desk, the surface was dusty, and the blackboard, going over the lecture words forgotten on the canvas and lost in the green wilderness that was empty. ‘Antigone’ it said, with proud, hastily crooked letters, the first almost entirely wiped out by the lecturer’s fervent hand. Must have been interesting.
A glimmer in the dark caught my eye, next to the control panel for the auditory on the floor. It must’ve been a piece of equipment one of the students broke, a wire of sorts. I passed it, stopped, passed it again, retraced my steps and picked it up. It was an earring of coal with all the glimmer of diamonds, four ovals full of facets piled on top of each other, the lower always bigger than the next. I brought it up to the light of the hall and watched it sparkle.
And then stepped forward from the dark a creature fair with grace and ease. Emanating danger like a flame I was strapped to the wings of moths, unable to fly. She stood patiently, invitingly and smiled.
“Who are you?” I asked, my voice an echo that seemed strange to me in the void.
She smiled benignly and stepped closer.
“My name?” She said with a melodic voice that ringed with something foreign, a tone I’d only heard before in dreams of spring and dew and fairy bells. She strode elegantly around me in a circle and whispered in my ear. It made my head light and empty and filled it instead with the fragrance of midnight flowers and dewed green. “Most call me Luna.” She traced a finger along my shoulder bones and let out an amused chuckle. I slipped into the touch complacently and watched her every step. “Others Artemis, Diana, Hekate,...” She took a step back suggesting infinity with the mere casualness of her nimble lily hand. “I have so many names.” She smirked. “None really matter.”
With a melancholy expression, she slid through the shadows shining bright like the moon, a radiant beauty of silver shackled to the earth and doomed to forever more mourn the loss of flight, her crippled hoary wings hanging limp over her long snow-white gown of Greek folding. She returned my stare with a knowing smile, shrouding in mystery like she knew of some secret by grace of which she held me ensnared. And she did. I stood motionless, powerless, eagerly taking it all in. She threw me a predatory gaze, pleased like a kitten with her catch.
It felt as though there was no roof, no walls, only earth, water and sky overhead, a distant scent of sultry fire smouldering and suddenly the empty chairs were like the forest, the trees from which they came, and the night a deeper, thicker black than I had ever seen before.
She held out her hand. I returned the earring to her. She beamed graciously.
“Tell me, my sun-kissed child, have you ever wondered what it would feel like to catch the moon in your bare hands?” She said in that magnetic tone of hers and beckoned. I hesitated, but to her nodding encouragement, I rushed ahead and stepped eagerly into her embrace, content to perish in her arms. She gave a kiss so powerful it could rip a life away and licked the blood that oozed from my lips and left the taste of magic.
Then in a flash of bluish pure white light, the world had disappeared.
Author’s note
Goal: I trying to master a certain type of writing that’ll be important in later parts of the Svart-cycle, heavy on mood, touch and insinuation, something sultry and at the verge of being passionate.
In fact, I think I’m going to add this one as a dream (that can be attributed both to Darius and Alice) in that cycle (which is why I labelled it ‘episode’), I just don’t know what the best place to fit it in is yet. Most likely after the next episode.
Anecdote about the coming to be of this story
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned!
(no, I’m not that religious, and yes, I just stole that from ‘Coyote Ugly’)
I’ve stolen things before, sometimes for no urgent or apparent reason and often with no or little trace of remorse afterwards, but now it finally happened; for the first time, I committed theft for Art.
It isn’t quite that spectacular, especially not after how I made it sound in the introduction; last night I had some time before the next bus home. There’s an auditory I like to go to at times like that, I don’t really know why, probably out of nostalgia and to look for inspiration (there usually are musicians playing music that I’ve never heard before, and that you never hear on the radio, which is like the Fort Knox of inspiration for me). Anyway, the part of the story up to the picking up of earring, I just plucked out of my own experience. I picked the thing up and put on the table, so the owner would find it there the next day. However, I paced over and over, picked it up again, laid it back, scribbled some notes for the story, picked it up again... It just wouldn’t let me go and I felt like I needed to have it with me for the story. Having lost stuff before myself however, I kind of sympathise with whoever’s missing it. But, when it was time to go and I was at the door, I couldn’t go, so I went back, snatched the thing up and then I actually took it with me. It’s here next to me on the table right now as I’m typing this. I know, I KNOW, I feel horrible...
Anyway, in my defence, I do intend to put it back first thing on Monday though. Or after the book (but that would mean never...). So my intention was just to borrow rather than steal it from the start.
So, let’s make this thing interactive; what’s the worst thing you ever did for Art (or some other important Goal)? I’d love to know, please leave a relevant comment below.
(I’ll try to add a picture of the legendary earring. I suppose it’s rather plain in itself, but still, the way I found it, glimmering in complete darkness and all, it was just gripping)
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