My absence makes them weary.
---
"God," he breathed.
His hands--they shook, jerking so violently that he could not fold them right. He clamped them to his breast, weeping and shaking and holding the fragments of his fragile, broken heart together, thump thump thumping shards of glass through his veins. With bruising force, he clutched the red jewel closer, yanking it into his chest as if the broken heart inside could somehow absorb it, and be soothed.
"God," he said, again, "God, please,
please..."
The man sat there for hours in the dusty, sky-lit church, watching the stained glass of the angel under the solid cross change and glow and fade. He watched as little bits of dust were shot through with light, as if the angels that people spoke of were there, listening to his grief. He sat and wept and prayed and trembled until time blurred into lethargic counts of his staccato breath, and all he could do was continue on.
"Give her back to me," he begged the cross. "Give... give her back to me. God. I-I... I can't..."
I can't live without her.
God.
Please.
Please.
And his prayers fell silent, to deaf ears. Who would he kid? There was no God for him. He could not dream, nor could he fancy. He was not one who could reach the omnipotent being; his voice was not one that could travel that far.
His prayer--his strangled prayer, the one he knew that could never fly, even
if his voice could carry, repeated over and over without relent.
So he climbed, suddenly, with bitter conviction; he sat on the altar of the cross, head buried in his arms. His clothing--her clothing, really, for he wore her cape to torture himself with her lingering smell--draped over the sides, touching the ground, and he watched his shadow with nothing but hollowness. He clutched the red jewel in his hand, strangling the blood out of the useless limb, the only reminder left that she had been there, whole, breathing, loving, real,
living, real--
For him, time slowed; the seconds drooped into minutes, into hours. Perhaps he sat there for days, uttering a useless prayer in the back of his mind, back against the cross that wouldn't bend for him. He prayed and prayed, remembering some sort of logic long ago: someone said praying could help anyone heal.
Could he heal?
And when he next lifted his head, there was no longer any tears. Nothing but a swooping, echoing empty, nothing, nothing.
There was nothing but empty, nothing but empty.
(And his eyes--they grew cold. They grew bright and lifeless and lucid, his consciousness slipping, searching, wanting. Those eyes, normally warm pebbles of thought that echoed what he mused, they grew as cold as the earth that had its arms around her--)
His voice couldn't travel that far.
Could it?
"
God," he whispered.
---
<-Here's the mask lying down on my back porch :D I dislike how the photo turned out; it doesn't show the depth of the mask, or the many, many translucent layers of paint that I slaved over. -shakefist- Contrary to popular belief, this mask is fairly light; it's about a pound or so, which is--really--the average weight of a head. Look, ma--no eyes. Adds mystery... kind of scary, tho. . 
<-Neck detail. Ohmygod. Individual rolls of tissue paper waded and shaped to look like bark. There's fine metallic gold paint dusted over the bark, copper paint in the hair, and silver paint lining the leaves. 
Most of the branches on this mask are adjustable, along with a nice rustling sound if you shake the head.
Veins on the cheek-barks were also quite painful. Tissue paper is hard stuff to work with. (At this point I realized I didn't take pictures of the nose, which was also a feat in itself).
May 3-11 2010
