The Ulangar: Book III, Part 7

This continues Book III of the epic I wrote between 1991 and 1996.

Ulangar awoke in a bed with familiar black formless hair

sprawled across the sheets and bodies

and his stirring awoke the figure beside him

'What is this scar along your back

this unaccounted for remnant of combat

which happened not on that field of battle'

Ulangar rose himself onto his elbows

and responded to his wife 'Indeed for they sprouted

from the flailing of wrights in my death-dream

Tell me of your encounters with these dreams

in the powerful land of Tuoni'

Startled by this change of subject Nefthys sat replacing the pieces

of the memory puzzle before she spoke with such words

'It seems like an eternity ago to my forgetful head

but perhaps this loose-knit story will aid thy inquiries

I remember awaking to a green sun rising from a purple sea of grass

into a lacerated sky black and red and raining fish

but ahead laid a sparkle of clean light which seemed to summon me

Every specific of the landscape was ever changing

and the path on which I traversed

was here and then there and then here again

The path's substance too was never constant

it was mud to stone to pebbles

to mason's medium to Ahto's element

to an ink which stuck to every pore of my body

and at every step I sensed a pair of seeing organs

staring into my heart for weakness

waiting in the shadows of darkness to pounce upon my most sacréd soul

but he dared not a showing of his features

and to the light which was an exit I went

and I returned to this earthen moon to love a man'