Celestia suffers this anguish and abandonment
Celestia will be in agony until the end of the world
There must be no resting in the meantime
Patripassianism

And I wished to die inside of you
And push up into your heart so violently
That face to face with matrix creatrix am
Inmost

A nexus, a typhon
Arctic
Smudged by the twilight
Made iridescent by the tongue of the sea Bound up in brightness through swallowing gold
The Nimbus pours

She ascended the staircase, each step a fractal, a shard and a paradox of order and chaos. Koch snowflakes fell mathematically, not haphazard but with an excellent precision, in a geometry they cascaded so perfect down an inverted swim, dissolved upon contact with the air near her and fracturing into smaller iterations of itself, the weight of infinity until ceasing, motes which floated in angelic speaks radiating warmth that was so achingly familiar, the touch of a forgotten lover, she reached out instinctively as one hovered before her purplish hoof. Towards the façade.

It pulsed. Not light but an energy, she had felt this before, and perhaps remembrance was finally taking hold as her hoof lingered in the air as the mote dissolved into her fur.

She reached the summit and stood at the threshold of the temple. Its entrance loomed over her, framed by columns that seemed to bend and bow under their own weight, curling like the fronds of a fern. Bleached my time the stones, wind whispered through the cracks and the scent of incense, old and dry, a relic of devotion long since extinguished. Where the olive trees grew.

And she stepped inside. The air changed instantly just in a moment, thickened so quick, weighted, a step into a different world, interior was vast and cavernous, a labyrinth of cultures and eras which blended into one space, the structure stretched high above where the ceiling was vaulted and layered like a pagoda, and rose into levels upon levels until it disappeared into shadow, and the walls etched with intricate carvings, worn smooth and the details which melted into an abstraction.

It was a mandir, a masjid, a devasthanam. None of these, a scared place emptied, surely, reduced to just the barest bones. The remnants of artifacts and statues which lay scattered in the corners, the figures smashed into pieces unrecognizable, wings, eyes and hands and hooves and unknowns all around the floor. Heliopolis.

The dust swirled around her hooves, catching the light that poured in through the high, narrow windows, some cracked and gleamed where the beams entered and sliced through the air, illuminating patches of the Persian carpets that lined the floor. SO intricate, impossibly detailed, but so faded they could barely be seen as swirls and loops that seemed to shift and twist when she tried to focus on them for some moments of intrigue.

The walls, where they hadn’t been reduced to rubble, were painted in colors that had once been vibrant, dapples of gold, deep red, sapphire blue. Now pale, dead ghostly versions of themselves, the pigment leached away by time and neglect and violence. But the shapes, the outlines, a suggestion of grander, half-remembered thoughts. Hold me now. Lumbini.

Above the beams of the ceiling curved inwards, meeting at a central point where a skylight let in a single, concentrated ray of light. The light which fell down onto a circular platform in the center of the room, its edges etched with runes not that she could recognize but understood. All the buddhas are smashed apart, Avalokitesvara’s hundred faces lie shattered, ruined.

The motes were everywhere now, floating lazily through the air, catching the light as they fell like the snowflakes outside in mirror. Dust mingled with them, creating a haze that softened everything out, smoothing out.

A walk and a hard place, muffled by the thick carpets, presence filled where noise would of been, she stood in the circle of light and she titled her head up to look at the skylight. Red plumes nodding between the horses ears.

Vulvaic
The rain stained glass is smashed
The slyly smily sly kiss
Of your sweet heart and face
And your legs in some final benediction

So anyway we fall beneath the waves
And hope to be remembered anyway
Anyway the graven ravens wait over the white cliffs of Ostia
So anyway they too fall
The grass dies
The moss goes
The chalk chips away
Then below that the rocks grain away
This is the sound of the earth dying
So nothing new
Anyway

ⲀΪⲥⲱⲧⲻⲙ ⲁΪⲙⲉⲉⲩⲉ ⲁΪⲣⲁϣⲉ ⲁΪⲙⲥⲧⲉⲩⲉ

Twilight blinked once, twice, the breath in her chest sharp as glass. Her eyes fell from the light above, down to the altar of stone, and she froze. Behold an enormous statue, towering, breathtaking, a mare frozen in time, so beautiful, wings outstretched like the heavens themselves were hers to command. The horn, long and spiraling, pointed skyward, defiant against the void. The marble shimmered faintly, coated in old, the capture of light of the unseen sun, every line and every curve of perfection of divine method.

Her eyes dropped lower to the podium beneath it, where words carved deep into the stone read: "Celestia."

And the world collapsed into her.

Celestia
כָּדֵאשִׁיח

All memories a deluge a flood, an ark that couldn't withstand the pressure, rushed in she couldn't breathe, couldn't hold, and could not stop this toppling. The spells in the dim glow of the bougie, the scent of the old books, of leather and ink, the feel of Her hooves, her lips, her sex, the warmth of her body in the windowless library alcove fo the silk curtains which went around and the hum of the wheel, the basin, the waves which crashed violent with ecstasy and without a sound.

She gasped, her body buckling as she fell to the cold stone floor, hooves clutching at her chest to attempt to contain the cascade of memories ripping her apart like blades. She saw the townsfolk, their hatred, the fire roaring high into the night sky. She saw Celestia punching at the ground, held back by the mob, screaming. She saw her own body, crucified to the pyre, the flames licking her fur away and burning it black and ashen waste, searing her flesh. The pain was back, all of it, raw and unbearable, coursing through her as if she were still there, burning alive.

Her wide eyes shot up again to the statue. Celestia. Her Celestia. And she was beautiful, here, immortalized in stone, frozen in a moment of grace and power. Twilight's mind fractured and reassembled in the same breath, the duality of what had been and what was now colliding inside her like tectonic plates. Theraphosa Blondi.

She reached out a trembling hoof, touching the base of the podium to anchor herself to it, to touch Celestia, a cracking of memories which persisted to not end, to calm down, the Zebras in the Yaodong, the Kabbalah, the Wheel, the grinding of rocks, the frozen sea, the snow that didn't fall, herself. A kaleidoscopic bullet of pain and despair.

The red and black ants mill around
Unknown lighter to kill
And the ants scatter or writhe
I am surrounded by butterflies
Dragonflies and mayflies

Hot against the cold stillness, of an unbearable heat of struggle in flames, hatred and the white left behind and left to mourn and left to suffer alone.

Twilight sobbed, her body shook with the weight of it all, the realization, the remembering. All that is left, of all the great before, In a statue in a memory, in the ashes of a love deemed to dangers and too beautiful for the world to bear.

I look to my right and see her face again
And again the world disappears

And all fall down
All fall down
All fall down I all fall down
All fall down I all fall down
We all fall down
We all fall down

"What shadows we are."

The fire especially especially does not save
The fire only destroys
And though it may purify it takes takes takes
And gives nihil back nihil, nihil, nihil, nihil, nihil
Nihil this swansong towards nothing
Nihil, nihil, nihil, nihil, nihil
The stars are so far
I had thought not but nihil, but nihil
The great king is dead
The great queen is dead
I felt I saw you coming over the water
Without you I am nothing
And still I see you
Nihil, nihil, nihil
Bend your face to kiss you said nihil
Bend your hooves to hold you said nihil
And nihil, nihil, nihil
There is nothing there
Nihil, nihil, nihil
Bend your face to kiss you said

She fell forward, splayed on the stone floor, her temple pressed against it as though in prayer, pleading in tears which dripped down, pooling on the cold surface, the silence of the temple that pressed down onto her temple, so oppressive and heavy but she didn't care, so she let it consume her.

And in that silence, Jesus wept, Twilight's cries a hymn of loss and love, pain and remembrance. Stings.

rGyas chos dang tsogs kyi mChog rNams

The empty streets
The songs of twilight
The clouds at rest
The churchbells chiming
The endless rain
In haunted airs
Your loss of hope
The smell of rain
The twilight leaning
Against your lips
Waterwheels turning
The forests brooding
You took my hoof
I waited years for you
Or so it seemed
And stumbled through your world
If i could have one wish
As in the fairytales
I would unmake the death of Purple
Rise her like Lazarus
Stand beneath the oilclouds
And take us away into the forest to live forever
Alas
All good things
I’ll come in glory
End of story

Author's Note