Neoartists Words

Hello,

here is another piece of flash fiction that I have not previously displayed anywhere. So, it is exclusive to the NeoArtists blog! This one was not written in response to another artists work, but simply derives its inspiration from my love of ancient history. As always, all comments welcome.

The Sogdian Rock, near Samarkand, 327 BC

At one thousand feet he places his foot in a crack that may be just a shadow in the half dark, and tests his faith with weight. He is one of three hundred and three climbers, all soldiers, all volunteers who have stepped up. Their muffled metal is wrapped in wool; and now as silent shadows this human wolf pack climbs the rock face on the blind side. Below him the fires of the siege camp are steady, unmoving in the still night. The sound of a snuffled snore and then a cough reconnect him with the firm ground he left just two hours ago. Above him, the last of Alexander’s trapped enemies. But only one pass leads to the summit where the King sits, where the Queen and her children sleep believing they are safe. Only one heavily guarded path twists up and up through the sheer smooth sides of the Sogdian rock, fortress and safe haven of the ages that has outlasted every attacker it has ever seen. But now our climber reaches up and runs his fingertips over the rock face, searches out the pock marks, grabs tight and pulls his weight up until his feet slot smoothly, silently into another crack. The leather pouch around his neck taps against his chest, and the half heart pendant inside it rattles softly, reminding him to focus. Another search for another hand hold and another pull inches him higher. The next grasp and pull comes mechanically to him now, the rhythm of repetition driving him upwards. Grab and climb and grab and miss. His left foot finds only air and the miss-kick jerks him free. Face grating against the rock he slides straight down until his knee finds a bump which breaks his leg and sends him into clear air. He flies for a moment before gravity re-grabs. Then the bone spear breaks through his skin and the scream comes up but he bites it back. Silent, he must be silent now or they are all dead. So he drops without a sound. Eyes screwed shut he stares at his memories and sees the half heart hanging round her neck. Sees the stone his son threw skipping across the water. Sees the fire. Sees his mother and her mother reaching up for him. Mother and Earth. All at once. All the same. Now he sees Alexander himself and rehears his speeches and feels infused with the rage that brought them here to the heart of Persia. To repay those who attacked them. As if causing pain to others could somehow take his own away. Fighting sounds reach him as the other climbers succeed. Can anyone see me, he thinks? Am I missed? Or am I black on black, lost in the lightless land? Can anyone see me twirling, twirling silently amongst the sky? No, no one can. My job is done. I am coming, my loves. I’m coming. I am fallen.

Scott Devon

Hello,

here is a piece of flash fiction I wrote for the ‘Earth and Sky’ exhibition with Martin Stynes. I am attempting to capture the theme of home, and what it is like to overcome adversity and return to your historical homeland even if it is personally alien to yourself, due to being raised elsewhere from a young age. I wanted to use the alien nature of the sky in the southern hemisphere, how the constellations would be unrecognisable to anyone raised, like me, in the northern hemisphere. All comments welcome.

The man stands barefooted and stares up, up at the sky that he has never seen before. In this place, the last land mass beyond which is just the sea and the ice at the end of the world, all the stars are virgins to his vision. The black earth between his toes is made blue by the moonlight, and the old white scars on his dark face become milky ways that stretch as he smiles. Filling his lungs the man breathes out in a long slow plume of air, like a spiritual umbilical chord reaching up to the heavens.  Names for the new star patterns come to him, slowly as he stares, one by one, each waiting for its place in the story. There is a kangaroo, pouch full in the sun. There is a spear, well thrown, well done. There is a man, upright but broken. There is a heart, no longer beating. There is a new born on a boat, leaving. And there in the furthest, furthest corner of the black, almost beyond trace, is a small single star with scars on its face. The man knows now that everything is circles. The sky will spin as the earth turns, and the earth in its turn will come full circle through the seasons. Winter always comes back to Summer in time. He kneels and runs his fingers through his home soil, feels the weight of it, feels the history within it, senses all those who look like him that have lived off it, or been killed for it. Home, he says silently forming the shapes with his fat lips. Standing the man raises his land owner’s flag high and drives it deep into the earth, and in that moment he feels his pain die and leave him like a soul that’s been set free. Here under the new sky, on the spot where he was thrown away, the man finds his way back.

Scott Devon.