A Handful of Memory

[Pharlen]

Many Years Ago, Dark Forces Sought to Overcome...


"Mother," he had snarled, gripping her upper arms and glaring into her eyes. Her son, her sweet little boy, but not. A splintering of time had created this youth: tall, taller than his father. With eyes of clouded emerald blue, a river of black hair, and such power. His pale skin crackled with it.

"Mother. You cannot fight this fight. You are not a mage. You are a mariner. You have to trust Jackie and I. Get Alice and get the hell out of here, we will get Father back," Desdenova informed her, harsh and cold.

It wasn't her Jackie, either. Not her laughing teenaged troublemaker. No, this was a woman of indeterminate years, elegant, refined, precise. Powerful. Cunning.

Her children from an alternative time line. They frightened her. She wondered what she thought of them when she was their mother.

They were all she had. Her Desdenova had been cast backwards in time to his uncle. Her Jackie was safely confined to a reform camp for teenagers. Alice...

Alice clung to her mother's leg, her thumb in her mouth, her eyes a dark and limpid blue-green.

A fury had swept her pallid features, running mercurial and cool as Pharlen lifted Alice into her arms and turned a still gaze upon her son.

"Silence," she snapped. He drew his hands back and bowed his head.

Pharlen closed her eyes, pressed her daughter's head close to her chest and then...

They were no longer corporeal. They became dank ghosts of time, fading beat by beat from reality until they were translucent, watery, and finally could no longer hold coherence, melting into slightly brackish slime left on the wooden floors.

"Mop that up and salt the fuck out of it," Jackie murmured as she glided within the sunny day parlor. Desdenova was already throwing salt down onto the damp spot. Jackie lifted her head and bathed in the glory of their father.

It was artistic. It was glorious. It was her beloved daddy, standing in a stricture of extremis, flung into the air, blood and sweat forced from his body in a bizarre miasma. His teeth bared in agony, his eyes bulged hot green, his every vein and artery was flexed to its extreme. It seemed odd that his sleek pinstripe blue suit was so … ordinary.

"It wants him back upon the East Coast," Jackie noted, simple as she gazed upon the ruins of her father.

"It wants what never existed in the first place, and never can," Desdenova responded, wiping up the floor with a unusual care. Surely he wasn't so interested in the shine of the old wood.

"You are wrong, my brother. You faced it when you met our dear Auntie. She pushed you, she wanted that, and you, naughty child, turned away."

Desdenova's eyes narrowed.

"I did not. Our Grandfather sealed her away from her madness."

"She has been a ridiculous version of some Disney villain for decades, moreso in her demise," Jackie pointed out, quirking a brow.

"Indeed, she has been, and therefore, we are."

"I see," Jackie nodded. She paced the parlor, walking a circle around the bizarre figure of their father, frozen in time, "Then Grandfather did hear you, and finally protected his son."

"I am ready," Desdenova informed the young woman. She shook her head.

"No. You think you are. But were we to know that we may bleed, we may not be so bold," Jackie responded, calm distance in her melodic voice.

"Tell me again," Desdenova responded with a nod of his head. He absently opened a box of chalk. There was an old fashioned tool leaned to a desk, a length of thick wire, a wooden handle and holder. He fitted a stick of chalk into one end and then turned the tool, using it to begin to draw glyphs upon the floor. Then the walls. Then the ceiling.

"No, no, do not be a fool, it is listening and will learn what we shall do," Jackie responded, unconcerned, stepping back as Desdenova worked. She began to pick droplets of blood and sweat from the still air around her father. As she took them into her palm, they once more became liquid, once more moved naturally, flowing into a small puddle in her hand.

"We are more powerful than any of those sleeping fools may be, our cities are more grand, and soar into depths much higher, our minds are stronger, wiser, and may not be tasted by such ancient and useless beings," Desdenova countered, letting his voice ring with power and arrogance alike, "I shall give them no power. They shall have none in my mind, in my heart, in my soul, in my life."

There was chalk in the proper glyphs. Then there was silver, drawn from an artist's pencil. Then there was sage and charcoal, ground fine. Desdenova added those to the potion of sweat, blood, and tears that his sister concocted from a life frozen in time.

She nodded faintly. Her lips moved. 'I love you'. He returned those soundless words.

It landed like a bomb in the parlor.

~Time Is Irrelevant~

[Pharlen]

A Few Hours Ago, More or Less, Dark Forces Sought to Overcome...

"Pharl, that was years ago. We gave them the stomping that they direly needed, and we moved on," Jack reminded his blushing bride, who was making a federal offense out of crocheting. It was a ferocious thing in her hands. He watched her in awe.

"You KNOW, Jack." Pharlen snapped.

He knew. She came home a bloody mess, more liquid than solid, and it'd been a long time since he'd seen that. He remembered how little he liked it. He remembered that it was fortunately easy for him to process. That it was easy for him to heal her.

"Yes, I know. I talked to your blood mage and she's a smart cookie. She's got this, hon. Seriously, as far as run ins with the Old Ones go, this is pretty low key," Jack insisted, leaning over Pharlen's chair and running his hands through her silken white hair.

"They're poking holes into the reality," Pharlen reminded him.

"Yeah, like those creepy not-fairy …Sloogs? Whatever they were. And you burned them out."

"Sluagh," Pharlen corrected, grumbling, her hands slowing as he petted her hair.

"Okay, so the bird maybe figured out how to hit you. Maybe. She doesn't seem to understand everything that she knows, and that's pretty common for the catspaws of Cthuhlu. Mainly because he likes the pretty and isn't so concerned with either the smart or the ability of the smart and mind to hold together after he's splished his fingertip into their souls," Jack told her, leaning to the back of her chair, more involved in playing with her hair than in speaking, it seemed.

"I could listen to you talk weird gangster forever," Pharlen murmured, finally closing her eyes.

"Fortunately for you, that came with the entire package when you married me. So. Maybe the catspaw broad knows. If she takes a few moments from humping on about how rah rah sis boom bah, Cthulhu's Coming, Cthulhu's Coming, oorah! And actually listens to what the old pervert's going on about, then we could have some trouble. I mean, the catspaws never do. They just try to absorb that power field that's bigger than their head and boom. Done. When if they'd stop and say 'Thluh, my man. How am I supposed to chug this? You got a straw? … Well, then. They might do some dirty."

"I doubt she will. Everything around her keeps her spinning back to 'here comes Cthulhu' and 'prepare for the new days'. Meantime... Nothing in this reality is capable of supporting a single overwhelming entity. It barely supports Time and metaphysics."

"She may still be holding onto who she was, too. That's a lot more important than a lot of folks realize," Jack added, shrugging, craning over to kiss Pharlen's brow. She let go of the yarn and hook, reaching up to entangle him in her arms, trying to haul him over the back of the chair. He grunted and pulled back as best he could.

"No no no. Bad Pharlen. Last time you dragged me..."

"Hah!" she crowed, getting an arm under his arm, and turning in the chair to haul on him bodily. The chair tilted crazily.

"...So. Two hundred bucks, and Des, Alice and I are in some random decade hanging out at Disneyland," Jackie noted as she happened to walk into the parlor. She stared at her parents. They were so weird.

"You know where Daddy's wallet is," Pharlen decided, lunging to wrap an arm around Jack's neck. He grabbed her ankle.

"Euw euw, stop stop, I'm not even done lifting the cash yet," Jackie complained as she found her father's jacket and fished out his wallet. She liberated several bills and then backed out of the parlor, escaping quickly.

~Time is on my Side~

[Pharlen]

Silence...

Was a place.

Ancient, timeless, a stretch of a stranded reality long ago cut from the looms of life. It remained anchored in its unlikely place, echoing what it had been, and still was.

The sky had once been streaks of yellow and black, uncompromising, harsh, they tasted of betrayal and anger and other things best left unspoken by beings that had been disinherited of the earth. Now it was mellowing. Still close enough to touch, one could lift a hand and smear the colors together, tones of sulphur giving up green, then blue, finally glints of red. There was a sense of depth, one could stand and rearrange the strange acrylic sky from air to … whatever was beyond.

Moss covered wet black stone, purple, red, strange tones of it. A few peculiar flowers bloomed, primitive, nearly animal rather than plant. The water was so clear, and where it overflowed from its source within a basalt cave, pure and sweet. It glimmered gold as it flowed, leaving its depths where it was brackish and dark, where blind pup fish swam in the weak shine of light.

The air was almost the water. Large gold molecules filtered from the water's surface, blending into air seamlessly. Oxygen and its attendant gases filtered from efficient gills on the throats of the two humanoids exploring the space, just as easily as they breathed through their mouths to their lungs.

"If there had been homo marinus, this would have been our world," Pharlen murmured, watching Alice gaily painting in the sky with her hands. In that light, the strange tone of it, it was perfectly natural that their skin should be blue. Though Pharlen remained albino.

This was the last memory of a reality that never could be. It grew as Pharlen's world and family grew, though it was only what it was: a remaining pocket, a cut off, a road lacking its signs. It was Silence.

It wouldn't matter how long they were there. Time didn't pass.

Though Pharlen wanted immediately to turn back home and find Jack in her arms, she simply rested in the strange reality. Restored herself. The water, the air, everything, revived what she was, washing away the tainting that she had faced while trying to free her husband from the jealous clutches of a tainted fate...

~I know you're in there, you're just out of sight. Time Passages.~

[Pharlen]

Many Years Before, Darkness Did Not Realize That Time Is Mutable.

If only it was so easy.

As it was, it'd taken decades to unstring the madness, decades and more just to follow the drunken clew of thread that stitched the entire mess together until the siblings were staring into the burning gaze of the Messenger of the Old Ones.

His smile was elegance, his gaze was humorous, intelligent. Pale skinned, dark eyed, a mustache as dark as his hair, close cropped and parted. He regarded the siblings as if he'd just found an amusing little computation, and wondered how he may best put them to work.

Desdenova caught his breath and straightened himself from the intense force blast that had heralded their guest. Jackie stood, calm, behind him, her hands cupped against each other.

"No. No. Do not wear the face of the future that came to be when it was not that face that you would have brought into the future," Desdenova said, his eyes narrowing. The pieces fell into place the moment he recognized Tesla visage on the Messanger's face. Everything fell into place.

"Then what shall I be, little boy? Shall I pick another hero of your youth? Perhaps I shall be your papa, his is a countenance one such as I may favor," the being sneered, his features beginning to lose their coherency, to flow and flex, a dimple pulling into a bizarre spin, as if a twine of hair around a fingertip.

"To Nyarlathotep, Mighty Messenger, must all things be told. And he shall put on the semblance of man, the waxen mask and the robes that hide, and come down from the world of Seven Suns to mock," Jackie responded. The Messenger sneered faintly. With a wave of his hand over his face, a waxy mask formed. Oval eyeholes with Eternity behind them, an oval mouth-shape holding secrets within small, conical teeth.

"You, sir, should unmask," Desdenova remarked.

"Indeed it's time. We have all laid aside disguise but you," Jackie added.

The Messenger stared at the pair, flat and annoyed.

"I wear no mask," he said.

"No Mask?" Desdenova hissed, gripping Jackie's clasped hands.

"No Mask!" She responded.

"Amusing as this is, you know why I am here, and I will thank you both to –"

"Along the shore the cloud waves break, The twin suns sink behind the lake, The shadows lengthen, In Carcosa," Jackie chanted, swaying faintly.

"Strange is the night where black stars rise, And strange moons circle through the skies, But stranger still is Lost Carcosa," Desdenova added. The Messenger stared, the oval of its mouth slowly pressing together.

"Songs that the Hyades shall sing, Where flap the tatters of the King, Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa... Song of my soul, my voice is dead, Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed Shall dry and die in Lost Carcosa," both sang in an eerie counterpoint.

"Sing all you like, I have come for your father, as I was promised, and I have promised to bring him to whom he belongs," the Messenger snapped.

"No," Desdenova responded, the word a vast chord of denial. The walls resonated with it, the glyphs and sigils he had written glowed with, writhing and rising from the floor, the walls, and ceiling, living veve crafting magic between them, becoming stronger and more specific with each passing of understanding and energy.

"How shall you stop me, little boy?" the Messenger queried, sweet and yet, his gaze followed the strange parade of icons.

"The Yellow King seduced our great aunt to craft our father into a man that would become a member of the Imperial Dynasty, and now, here you are, wearing the face of the man who invented the twentieth century while trying to take this great and secret man from his family," Desdenova responded.

"You know nothing."

"We know everything," Jackie replied, lifting her cupped hands. She brought them to her lips and drank the bloody potion she held safe there.

"Now," she murmured, in the split second before the Messenger realized what had been done. It split apart into fury, into a maelstrom of primal anger, clawing madly for the young woman. Just as she spoke, Desdenova swung his arm over his elder sister, drawing with the motion a sweeping of eternity, opening the cold of space in that Victorian parlor.

Howling, the Messenger fell into the void yawning open to take him.

~Time Takes a Cigarette~

[Pharlen]

But There Aren't Any Good Explanations.

"But if I knew how to make those before..." Desdenova whined. His mother eyed him. Her little evil. A few days at Disneyland wouldn't sweeten his annoying ability to want to be the powerhouse than he would someday be right now.

"That was you when you were around a hundred, probably older," Pharlen reminded him, and poked at him to get him back to work. He grumbled and continued to work on sewing up a seam. Mom wanted him to learn simple sewing, so...

"But I know so many ways now to make it go, to wreck it on itself and stuff."

"Why did the Messenger try to take your father?" Pharlen asked without warning. Desdenova's shoulders hunkered.

"Uhm... I guess because Lady Fate had a thing for him...?"

"That explains your sister and father still serving Lady Fate how?"

"...Doesn't," Desdenova grumbled.

"All of those old ones, the ones of the stars, the forgotten, they all have their reasons. They may be chaos and chaotic, but they all have their reasons. So. If I send you and your sisters to Sard and your uncle Emrys...?" Pharlen noted, watching him keenly. Desdenova muttered.

"I will go and we'll stay low."

~It's about Time~

(Not really finishing up an older story where Old Ones had it out with the VonTombs, But at least putting in a few salient points while Pharlen has hissies over getting stabbed and zapped all in the same decade. RUDE. Jack's char is used with permission, of course. Various time lines by Al Stewart, David Bowie, Jerry Ragovoy and Norman Meade.

This little bit of loonie is in association with the Cthulhu Story Line...