Tales From The Eclipse
A series of short stories penned over many years of gazing up
She came through my window like spotlight, interrogating me from dead sleep. Strange dreams crawling in my hair unseen and the covers wrapped around me like a cocoon. Her moon head in her hands in the dark before dawn, perched on my balcony wanting coffee.
The light hung heavy in her eyes still rimmed in red. The jangle made it hard to hold her cup steady. I could still smell burning and blood. We waited in sipping silence for the birds to wake up. The wind a drunk paramour, invisible music ruffling feathers. The sky still glitching as the horizon twisted and sighed. Old crows cawed the dawn in.
I had never seen an empress so exhausted. Her faraway eyes still smouldering as she hunched like the oldest crone of them all. Civilisations risen and fallen under her gaze and a million lovers besides. The tendrils of steam crept into her dark wells and found new homes in her cratered face.
Finally she spoke, her voice like foxes that ran the length of my spine in a language I had never heard. It weaved into my marrow and drew sigils on my bones. It crept under the door to my heart coiling in secret chambers. Ran like water through the corridors of my mind and pinned notes on the ceiling for me to find later.
She drained her cup and smashed it on the deck, her dark face curling in a wicked weary smile. I am not myself when I am eclipsing, she murmured in mother tongue. I am disrupt and nerves. I am more shadow than light. I am the cries in the forest and that howling wind that scares you from shelter.
She fixed a strange gaze upon me that seared my soul to new life and made my magics weep. I am not done with you yet, child. Remember to what you have always belonged. The only whole truth that matters is inside you. I felt my power twist into a key. The sun yellowed the deck and crept towards her. She swore loudly. You'll keep, lover.
She left a mess and her strange perfume. Trails of silvered beetles in her wake that clattered over the deck edge. The starless sky swallowed her whole. I opened a shaking hand to find she had left me a glowering morsel. I held it in my mouth for a long moment before the eclipse sank under my tongue.
// 2021, lunar eclipse
The rock strewn road to the eastern shore was a sharp solitary pilgrimage whose initiation could only be made with desparate daring. Its uneven ground longed for the bare frenzied shuffle of the enchanted ones, the scent of their hunger and desire, the belly hammer of their knowing.
The witch made her way bent and deftly through the spiny terrain, eyes obeying the twinkling map strewn above her. She felt the sea before its salt filled her lungs. Pluto's mark burning a familiar itch below her shoulder blades, the tight pull of her old skin twisting beyond tension.
Black moon, thy true name is only spoken in ancient tongues. She hastened knowing the portal to the eclipse was already opening. The basalt sand stained her soles and the iron quickened her blood. The sea on her tongue told her when.
Rolling her breath around like a hoop she set the geometry about her in pale tones as the waves rose. Unfastened the bag of stones from around her waist and winced at the relief. Tore the binds from her ankles and cast them into the foam. As she pulled the wire from her throat, noises poured from her like shards. The moon sword began to form from their chorus.
The witch was travelling faster than the time she had left. She stepped out of her robes now, billowing in a final embrace as the silk slithered into the arcing waves. She felt the tear across her back as the sky flashed its scythe. Slipped from her skin to reveal the pearlescent shimmer of all that lay beneath.
Lifetimes travelled like ships through her humours. Her bones drawn with star runes reset into new shapes. Her old blood boiled and reduced. Deep in the pool at the base of her spine, something clicked like a key in a long lost lock.
Witchened, she awoke remade before dawn. The weight had lifted. The sky perfect dark and wild with stars, the sand turned white. She raised bright eyes to the sky gods and their lady love, all in a row. Held her breath as the luminaries met over her, felt the chime.
She bowed her head before the black moon. The sun came up over a woman sprinkling flowers into the shimmer at the shoreline.
// 2022, solar eclipse
In the dark she lay coiled, comforted only by the proximity of her own body and its tangled histories. Wildness coursed through her veins, cauterising any cares she had left and stretching her hunger to breaking. After so long spent itching in her skin and burning for change, transition began without warning. Alone in the belly of the cave when no moon hung in the sky.
She felt the churning first, a pack of wolves howling deep in her belly and beginning to move through her as one. Her coils kinked and twisted sharply shaking panicked voices and uncertain figures from the walls. Her blood began to broil and temper.
In the disquiet old reels flickered through her many minds, speckled archives gathering dust and digging claws in. A ripping rolling history of old costumes and ill fitting roles, all the favours that never sat right. Thorns made the first tear on her skin and it gently split without bleeding.
She felt the light change just as the hooped contractions began, her flesh rippling gratefully in rolling waves that stripped everything from her. In the star bright sky a burning scythe shimmered and she felt its imprint take on her bones. The shedding began in earnest from the inside out. The moon threw her arms around her sun.
As flesh and cities fell and lives went on without notice, tiny cells were splitting apart. Scales and skins giving way to a gleaming architecture pulsing with life beneath. Her ears rang like belltowers as her eyes galloped forward with a seer's gaze. The eclipse grinned at her and began to draw back her soul's curtain.
// Year of the Snake, solar eclipse
The eclipse passed with chatter and haste overhead, its halo forming a wide corona around my mind and its old world. The bind has shimmered since and the alchemy beneath gurgles and itches like old scales.
Soon after I felt myself separating, my body slipping away into the dark forest and its spacious silent embrace. I left the skin I had worn so heavily as an offering, draping her on the low branches and placing my bones besides. Watched my nerves curl themselves into the roots of an ancient fig, resting in its folds.
Untethered, unfettered I drifted far beyond all I knew. The roar of life fell silent behind me. In this place I could no longer hear my blood whispering. A canyon opened inside me swirling and I was drawn forwards.
Shadows waltzed me to the sharp edges of vast starlit cliffs, dipping me over. I felt the Old Ones in caves beneath and galaxies above. Watched in exquisite daring as my eidolons threw themselves over without restraint, catching ribboning currents that shot them like comets beyond the horizon.
It was dawn days later when I slipped home under a winking crescent, my shape entirely shifted. I no longer recognise the figure in the mirror staring back at me from the other side of becoming. I trust her implicitly with this next life, more than anything else in my line of sight. There is something in her eyes I recognise as treasure.
// 2020, solar eclipse
All of these tales were gathered in my first book Morsel, a collection of short stories borne of my imaginal adventures. There is always magic afoot.
