Gone the Tides of Earth

Through the night I held her there, she lay in my arms, a scent of wood and lavender mingled in the air. In damp under the covers lying together felt nice, cool, a transparency awoke of the senses the way that all things become clarified after. Gently, she touched my arm, ‘Do you think the others will be coming in soon?’

‘I’m surprised they haven’t already. I felt certain we would be interrupted.’ She smiled up in my embrace, ‘The same notion impressed upon me earlier.’ Smiling, Miss Garswood stretched up to kiss my lips. ‘I made sure to take care so there would be zero potential for intrusion.’

‘How so?’

‘You remember the spot?’

‘Sure,’ I said. With personal space a commodity throughout the last month of high occupancy, we had made the point of finding a place to be alone. Down the scarp, on an old country we found a patch of land in the southerly woods, a forsaken farmhouse and barn ensnared with nature, woods of birch, greens of high pastures and paddock. Our first time had been there upon a midnight tryst, during the hottest weather.

‘I took Alethea this morning. She told me neither of them minded. They might still be down there.’

‘Maybe,’ I allowed, with a grin, musing at the thought of the pallid ginger Irishman tangled up in the boons with the nimbler Greco beauty.

‘What is it?’

‘Nothing of consequence.’

‘Henry - what have you thought of it?’

‘It’s been a special thing.’

‘See that I don’t think anything can be perfect, but it’s come close.’

‘Nothing is perfect - it’s come close.’

‘So it is.’

‘I think it’s best to leave it the way it is, your preconceptions go away and allow what is to fall into place naturally.’

‘How do you mean?’

Loquaciously I tried explaining a sentiment that I had felt too many times. That if one conceives notion of what it should be while it is it never turns out anything like that. A knack that if you wished too badly for it to feel like something from past or were desperate to cling to a certain sense of it then it was folly. Along the framework of dichotomy, she seemed to misunderstand, declaring that she never thought of the past, that if you let passion build upon itself the outcome trumped whatever basis for comparison existed.

‘Tonight was more than it’s ever meant for me.’

‘I wish we had more time.’

‘It’s an existential crisis.’

Later that night, after the last time we were both sore and went about it leisurely, eye-locked, that’s when I believe we truly fell in love. As we slept through the night I woke only once, realizing that the other beds occupied. Agata slept alone, bundled in the form of an oblong hump under covers, across the room Alethea and Cian were still up.

A tawny shade in lamplight, I saw from behind how she bounded, and it all went in. Wearing a shirt of a black lace, it was rolled up over the crest of her sizable breasts, well-shaped like brimful coconuts. Large white hands clasped the hips, below curvy waist a fine rump, and both ends driving. Most noticeably she was not a bit coltish for her age. Sleepily I rolled over, prudent not to disturb the aching compound bedframe.

Courtney Garswood beautiful as any sight sun-bronzed blonde and sunburnt, reddened, tanned skin, gone from fair, features effeminate, nose and upper cheeks dotted with freckles - I pictured as well the eyes under closed lids, bright bluish like a river lit by a cold winter morning sky, aqua through and through changed sometimes for variations teal or royal, though always marine, and the tresses wildly lioness and partly fishtail-braided; and the dormant nuances of face too ethereally, overtly lovely to describe; her head lighted in rest direct before me on pillow, quieted, angelic face perfect like an automated mannequin mask, calm breathing sound asleep I kissed her over the eyes, nose and lips, then too shut mine own.

When the last bombs flew I was in Rome, the mighty colourful squadrons still flocked the sky, drones buzzed in departure from docking stations like bees off the comb. The Italian state was compromised and the city shabby as it had ever been. From the disgraced city you could feel violence ripping apart the Mediterranean, blazing death that shook the ground and surges of gale like one consolidated scream which wouldn’t go away, refusing failure until its final gasp.

For Roma, the powers of old could not contend with the burgeoning force of those that would be. In the end the Roman Republic, its bitter semblance had made a decisive show of might in attempt to frighten the Revolution back to mere stirrings. None could have won afterwards, there was not anything left to win, indefinitely the silence overcame for restless Rome. Methinks no tributary in Rome ever arose again. That eve, on the morning that followed I looked over rattled balcony at the deadened city scape; Coliseum had long been demolished, Trevi crumbled, Forum a cesspool for addicts and the dwellers of apocalypto. The sorts long abandoned for any sense of hope. My stay I took in the modern complex of a real-estate tycoon, advertising murals of an original module on the walls at the front gate, now a place where rooms were offered up for next to nothing, near ruins, fixtured in the center of town husked of what was once seat of a glorious empire, and for a while the Italian people had become ruinous as well.

That night when the groans settled, I slept and dreamt times of old. At first a terror, I saw her in three expressionist frames, that by the third she had noticed me there. In the beginning she presented herself to be a caterwauling horror, gothic centrepiece in a nightmare of silhouettes; firstly she sat in isolation by grimy window, maybe there was beauty without albeit dredged in tears of deluge, her bodice grey, darker sketched in the blackness swallowing. When her external cognizance became aware of my livened presence tread the dark like a shade to stare into the depths of my being - I was full of fright, anguish. The terror I felt through that slumbering delirium stabilized, I grew calmer and, thinking it for the sake of my soul, did battle with her then - wrathful war of telekinesis waged upon metaphysical scape. When in conviction and strength of manifest I prevailed, she commenced to reveal unto me the nature of true form, sting of what she left behind, for whatever reasons I never came to understand.

She was British I thought, and like an old friend spoke with me softly. Through visions, morbid telepathy she showed me the men who had gone marching, uniform disciples champing rigid in their lines long ago, then a woman on a bench in highchair toiling – herself, perhaps at work in a factory. From then she continued telling me things, of how Barclays kept a register of their names during the war; not a list of names for commendation but a ledger of betrayal, I wondered if she had been Jewish. She did not dwell, though spoke with me long of things forgotten, for my part I simply cannot remember. By the time I sensed a momentous gravity coming, that what she was to impart would be of utmost import suddenly came the intervention of a short-horned, palely red-faced man demon - I wondered later if subconsciously self-inflicted - he coerced me away from her in the countryside we strolled unto an altered, realist paradigm. Power I held to resist although not escape to retrieve her company, he shoved my face upwards, manhandling towards the rotor of a spinning ceiling-fan and as forcing me there I realized I could not return to my somber, yet kind friend without devastation, so I awoke from the depths of slumber and that strange dream alas. From treacherous lure and the promise of kind, true words, foe, friend, and sleep, a weary cloak - I its traveller freed. Thus, the execrable only fascinates whence it has become distant concept, and I was still afraid then. So painful yet calm, saying goodbye to end of the world at the start.

At the start, farewell, yes. Those there were they were, yes. Who were there in the beginning, that came and took. Them sent north who would come and take, that you saw in the streets, they’d taken control of posts and precincts, raided armories, kept sentries on guard at schools, hospitals and public works; while on your way didn’t speak with them but hurried about your business, if ever crossed by the patrols that went from sunup to sundown no matter the season, and the green camions and monstrous tanks. In my mind I see those of them sent to the houses, again as they were coming up to the doors. They were wearing black trench coats, green berets and the slick, oiled black boots, always going away last. Upon their coming, before they went taking freely the subjects of any charge; the feet of the latter, those taken usually going in an unruly fashion. Most of those taken did not ever return, reamed out of bearing permanent by those at the doors. Some realized it futile to resist and went with dignities intact, hope a dire discount, glances cast of warned reproach and final radiations of love through grave, fearful eyes, as if to say we love you more than anything and this is it, you must be brave that we have reached the end for now you are alone, then it was all gone and it was all broken.

Once with an old woman, I stayed up many long hours from a while before dark and through dusk well into the night. Upon summer’s eve we were out under the stars, the weather fine and we spoke but little. Throughout the night peace in the stillness, silence reconciled truly with a tranquility of calm. Rarely could I reflect, to say that without the business, the necessity of always having places to be, regimentation and monotony and commodity, in spite the utter lack of autonomy that absolute nothingness was better. Though here was such a fleeting instance where you felt calm not as an enemy but a tender friend, without worrying about the rest. Where the breeze came an enveloping lovely cool, waves a soft white music plunging, rolling, the night beautiful and life copacetic. Despite freedom from fear, discord she sensed in me latent conflict like a fire to be sparked, an untameable beast at bay awaiting stoking brandish. She knew mine depth of brokenness a way I did not comprehend myself. Coolly, speaking out of her all-knowing, all-seeing omniscience, betraying all looked over at me briefly, an evanescent intrusion delving within all that I’ve known and felt, countenance profound yet self-effacing, saying: ‘Should you find yourself alone, haunted in the wilds of the land, bereft good fortune, if ever you need wonder - to the shores of bearing hence may you return.’

With much humility I gazed up, looked over at her. She was facing the sea, had probably spoken to it the whole time. Her meditative face grew sallow whilst the thought, already gone, went drifting out upon retreating tide.