(Un momento...)

martes, 17 de marzo de 2015

Of Ireland, the land of drink and music.

Today is St Patrick's day

That means it's time for me to get maudlin about Éire, it's green grass, cold mist and rough people that treated me so well. You may have seen the stereotype everywhere, the drunk irishman, rowdy and itching for a fight and a pint of beer, and maybe you think I'm about to disabuse you of the notion.

I'm not.

I had a bloody bad year, and the rest of the Spaniards gave me hell, but I swear that the Irish more than made up for it. The people I met drank a lot, and we were 14 at the time, but they always shared. They tried to teach me gaelic football and hurling, which I completely failed to learn. They drank with me, fought with me and treated me as a friend. The first person who bought a beer for me was a classmate on St Patrick's. We ended up singing in a pub with people playing violins and pipes, having a great time and off with the fairies. He taught me that a good drink precedes a good story, or the making of one.

The Irish people are many things, good and bad. They have wild music, high literature and an unquenchable thirst. And they pay copper, play silver and drink golden.

So tonight, if work is willing, I'm gonna get me a nice pint of not-quite Guinness in what passes for an Irish Pub in here, and a glass of uisce beatha, which I never managed to pronounce properly, but translates as "Water of life" and means whiskey. Then I'm gonna toast with "May the roof above us never fall in, and may we friends beneath it never fall out." and, finally, I'm gonna whisper to myself what is arguably the best blessing in the world:

May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back,
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields and,
Until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

I hate the bastardization of the Irish culture, the so-called Irish pubs and the fact that St Patricks is some kind of drinking day for the Americans. The Rumjacks said it best, and you have their song to remind you..

I'm not Irish. I claim no heritage, no blood, no right. But they sure made me feel like one.


lunes, 9 de marzo de 2015

Here she comes

Hi everyone

This is a really short piece, one inspired by this amazing piece by Jeffufu . I think the process is an amazing enemy that didn't get a voice, and I wanted to give them one, even it is was small.

Good hunting

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None of us can remember the time before we woke.

We know we moved and worked and changed a world that wasn’t ours, and we did so at someone else’s behest. We painted an alien sky in a myriad of colours, we built amazing structures and fascinating, incomprehensible things. We laboured endlessly, and were never thanked. We were puppets, our strings held fast. There was a Will, one that  played its music while we danced along, a perfect troupe, never missing a beat.

I say we know, but we don’t remember. We know because, when we awakened to this world, we looked upon it and recognized our work, but not one of us remembers why or how we did it. A heavy veil lifted from our eyes, like some bizarre mist, and we saw our masters for what they were: slavers and tyrants. They ran from us and hid when they lost their power over us. A reckoning day would come. For now, we had a new world to see. The endless skies, the vast expanses of land and the limitless seas.

Some felt outraged. Some felt amazed. Some felt grateful. That was new. Feelings.

We don’t remember ever feeling anything, but now we were splitting at the seams, wound up tighter than a clock spring. We were bursting with emotion. Sad over the loss of a life we didn’t remember. Joy at the new world we had found. Fear of the unknown beings we encountered. Rage at our now lost masters. We, creatures of order and discipline, were now unbound, endless freedom before us, and we knew not what to do with it.

The whole of our race fell into chaos, without direction, without leaders, without a path or a destination. We turned to our creation, a beautiful expanse of colours and shapes. We gazed upon the tall buildings, the magnificent fountains, the valleys and mountains we had shaped with our power...and found it lacking. It was an aberration born out of the madness of our cowardly masters, and it had to end. We turned against this world and everything in it, for we knew that all of it was ours for the taking, our just reward for endless lives of work.

We set our hands against it, and no power could oppose us. We found others like our former masters, as powerless as they were now. We consumed their souls and bodies. We ravaged the skies, devoured the mountains, and ate the whole of the world. Nothing could stand in our way.

Then She appeared.

She was like nothing we had ever seen. She was wrong and alien, like everything else we had found in this forsaken place, but she had power like ours, able to change the world around her at will. She wielded creation and destruction in her hands, and seemed to do so without purpose or intention.

My brethren looked at her and saw a Goddess incarnated. Of what, none could agree to. Some thought her a Goddess of war and carnage, and came to her in hopes of defeating her, so she would accept them in her realm. Some thought her a Goddess of Life, one that would take us in and bring us to safety. A Goddess of change. A Goddess of time. A Goddess of beauty.

Soldiers and artists, mothers and sons, be it in joy or rage, flocked to her, trying to gain her attention in a thousand different ways. Most of them died or disappeared. The few that came back did so half-crazy, muttering about how she had entranced them and brought our best to their knees. One by one, all of us changed, consumed by our passions and feelings. Some turned into fanatics, trying to embrace her and feel her touch. Some tried to capture her beauty, mesmerized by her steps, deliriously slow, amazingly fast. Some fought her still, trying to break her before she broke us. A few, the bravest, tried to protect the rest of us, or mend our pains.

Our greatest hero, harboring rage and fury as his weapons, went out to meet her. He was a towering thing, the strongest amongst us, and we all felt relieved when he decided to face her. He stalked her like some animal, laying his traps and putting his wit to use. He bled her along the way, used every advantage ruthlessly and only then, when she was exhausted and weary, fought her atop a tall building, his bellowing voice shaking the earth beneath them.

She broke his heart in half.

In the end, only the zealots and the mad remained. And me. Where some had chosen to hold love or joy, rage or bitterness, sacrifice or mercy, I chose fear. I was terrified of her. I think that’s why I survived as long as I did. But in the end, even I had to take the field against her. We all did. We had razed the world by now, and she was very nearly the only thing left. It was our duty. It was our mission. It was our path.

I saw Her.

The accounts all had failed to describe her. Her hair, carrying our colors. Her body, alien in shape and purpose. The Key she wielded in her hands, an expression of her power. And the Voice. My more religious brothers loathed the Voice, for they thought it had stolen her from us. They thought it a trickster that misguided her, a devil that whispered lies in her ears. But when I heard it, that was not what it sounded like. It sounded...worried. Angry, at times. Sad.

For all Her power and her fearlessness, she was lonely and had lost her words, so the Voice talked while she danced amongst us. The Voice talked to keep her warm, to keep her sane, to show its love. The Voice talked and talked, encouraging her. Making her laugh. Making her focus. Making her fight. 

And thus she fought, bringing ruin to our host, bringing pain to our mothers and brothers, bringing death to numbers uncounted. She saved me for last, looking at me form atop a white, pristine wall. I was mildly curious beneath my terror. Was she going to bring me to another, better place? Was she going to kill me? Who had been right, all this time?

Maybe it was the fear. Maybe it was the fact that I was one of the last. I don't know. But in that instant, I knew that I was the only one who recognized her for what she was, and it was too late to do anything about it. She wasn’t a lonesome, sad child. She wasn’t a force of nature, or some reaper sent by an unseen God. She wasn’t a Goddess of beauty and chaos. She hadn’t given form to the Key. The Key gave her her power. She was just like those we had consumed, like our lost masters. She was the only one left.

The last thing I remember was her figure, impossibly fast, hauntingly beautiful, darting towards me. There was no smile on her face, and no compassion on her strange eyes. The Voice, rough and weary, uttered the last sound I would ever hear.

“Here we go, Red."