Lightening danced upon the inky, dark-shrouded deep and rose to touch the gray horizon with its many fingers of questing, colorless, light.
The smoldered sun glowed dimly, kept alive by the dancing lights of thought that emerged from him to dance across the slate gray day.
Who are you?
The thought penetrated his being in the form of a disconcerting base tone.
This thought was not his, was not of him, but now resided within him.
He ached with wanting to know—ached within.
No, he was within.
His entire being ached, ached to know.
Who was he?
The white light danced out across the inky deep and the deep red sun shown in a more luminous shade, a yellow that warmed him in some way which was not warmth.
Beyond the swell of the inky deep which was his element, upon the gray horizon, beneath the lighter gray cloud-scudding sky was an edifice; a figure a rain-burnish sun-dappled image of blackest basalt. This figure had been the single mountain of this small world—a world he knew for its lack of breadth for the abrupt curve of the horizon. This world—this realm—of this single elementally carved mountain in the form of a man?—
“Man! I am a man!” roared the waves that of a sudden crashed upon the formerly still slate line of land. Up from the belly of the inky deep and across the uninformed sky roared this tempest of words etched in whitest light.
The sun shown brighter still, and beneath it a light showed in the eyes of the formless man. The seated figure was now radiant with light, the hard contours of his archetypical form becoming malleable, like fresh shedding amber, as the face took shape.
The matt of deeply lined hair braids gave way to a bald skull, dappled in amber, light and parchment tone, a few feathery locks carelessly fallen from the smooth—skin, “skin of my fathers, skin of piney pale hue.”
The deep welled up and flooded the slate ledge of land as he felt himself tingle with an uncompromising vibrant life—life, “I have lived!”
The proud beak of a nose diminished to a less obscene protrusion. The heavy brow of brooding menace gave way to a thought sculpted arroyo of worry and compassion, lined with years of pondering, thinking, rendering information for—to teach, “I taught, was, a teacher.”
The wide mouth with heavy grain-gnashing teeth set above a lantern of a jaw gave way to an eroded parody of a mandible. The weak lower face brought rain bursting forth from the cloud-heavy sky, obscuring the sun, as the features which betokened wearisome regret and painful defeat were quenched in the cool steaming deluge. A searing pain permeated his being and lightning split the night befallen sky.
Where once a smoldering sun had risen a gibbous moon leered silvery white down from the night sky, its pallid face streaked with the rain that yet fell, the rain that swelled the welling deep above the slate gray horizon. He was born on this great welling immensity that at once repelled and held toward the massive mountain of carven basalt, now the only feature upon the world other than the deep. The base of the mountain was covered. The mid portion described a stiff-backed chair upon which the teacher sat, not as robustly as the former figure, but not as weakly as the pain-filled face, shrouded now in rain-streaked moonlight, would indicate.
The night slashed with light that crackled up out of the deep, and the weak basalt chin moved, the moonlight teeth showing in the night, “I was a teacher. I was killed. I am departed—nevermore.”
The lightning stopped its dance and the seated basalt idol grew silent.
The rain ceased.
The smoldering sun rose in the wicked east.
A creature of flight, a flitting—a raven—bird black as the deep that held him, came to perch upon the ear of the pale man carved out of a black mountain. The bird poked its head into the ear.
Who were you?
The idol spoke slowly, with glacial pain, as if a thing of stone awakened from the vault of ages, “Bean. I was Bean to She who cared.”
A sizzle of light rose from the deep and webbed the sky with its silky strands and gathered as one bolt to strike the right shoulder of the pale basalt idol. There, upon his right shoulder, perched the ivory image of a dove, a dove that cried one great clear single-faceted diamond of tear that would never fall, for it was attached to her improbably long-lashed eye, the eye that regarded the massive idol that so dominated this tiny sunlit world of gray and deep black.
Now considering the dove with one great blue eye, an eye the color that a proper sky would be, the pale basalt idol ground out, in an infinitely patient tone, to the raven perched upon his left ear, “Who are you?”
The raven then took wing, flew into the face of the moon and split into three. These three birds then swooped down across the swelling deep, the crackle of lightning following them as if to crisp their tail feathers. He was thrilled by this. His being swelling with excitement as the deep welled with uncontainable menace. As the fingers of lightning followed the ravens in their flight they soared for the base of the idol and began whirling about an ever growing tree—no, something that a man holds.
Up and up—followed ever more closely by the arching light that sprang like ecstatic colorless flame from the inky deep—flew the tail-chasing ravens, flying even through the grasping left hand of the giant idol as it closed. And as the hand closed and the ravens yet rose in their frenzied flight, it closed upon the trunk of a great cedar tree, felled in some forest dark and worked in halls apart.
Finally as the ravens merged into a bolt of lightning that cracked the sky, the top of the polished cedar staff formed into the sign of addition. Upon this sign perched the three ravens, looking up worshipfully at the weakly made face of the pained teacher, into the eyes that had once wept for a distant world and did now shine blue with care in this colorless world of shaded grays; here, in this place, where the dove had failed to find him but into which these ravens had made their prodding way.
The ravens sat still, regarding each other for some time.
Once again light erupted in tongues of lightning from the deep and animated the idol to speak to the vexing little birds, “Who are you?”
They raised their tail feathers and wings as one, and cawed to the idol as the gibbous moon suddenly shown silver in the day without light, in the land that was night.
Here, in the Halls of Night, the ravens cawed, We Who Seek!
