💾 Archived View for gemini.estradiol.cloud › ~rumblestrips › fragments › caelum-ii.gmi captured on 2024-09-29 at 00:28:03. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2024-08-24)
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we turn off the side street in slippery silence. perspiration pools at the back of my knees, rendering the languor of the august night corpulent with promise. i sigh furtively as we approach the intercontinental, towering above us from our south. i hear the friezes along its eighth floor come to life as our steps grew louder. the north side awakens first, priest intoning an incantation towards the heavens upon an otherwise unlistening city. the white bull moans its hoarse, final breath in sacrifice, looking at me pleadingly eye to eye, voice speaking to me in a language both ancient and familiar. i know, unexpectedly, that the bull was asking me if i was ready for this moment. the blood drained from its limestone-hued body, crimson liquid awaiting mixture with grapes and earth to consecrate the ground on which we stand. there are times when you know that you are ready, and this is one when i am deeply not.
we glide down the mile, pedicabs nipping our heels, our pace quickening as the building came into view. i sense my pulse between the joints of my fingers grow faint and unpredictable as i look upward again. streetlights turn into a plurality of diffuse nebulae rotating around me, each containing their own uncertain future: transformative auroras, star death, galactic collisions, all approaching at speeds impossible to ascertain through blueshift. the magistrates and architect in the western frieze awaken this time and study this change in my perception, the ruler slumbering yet always awaiting their counsel. the guards on twelve hold their swords at the ready, resting their their thick beards on the pommels, observing both of our movements: yours with cool grace, mine with clumsy eagerness and utter confusion.
the revolving door of the lobby notices my hesitation and proves reticent to welcome me. you gasp as you titter while ignoring its deep stubbornness, choosing to grease its flanking portals with limpid praise. they unfurl themselves open at your touch and remain ajar for me, patiently gesturing in the bull's language out of time. you already know that we both belong inside. sky at my back, the doors nudge me inward, trying to explain that i belong here, too. i am so afraid of losing my bearings that i close my eyes and count the steps past the threshold, listening for the echoes of your footfall across the mosaic. you pull your hands to my head, turning it upward when we stop and whispering that this is what you wanted to show me. your fingers explode with luminosity across my brow and temple. i can feel myself collapsing within the lobby.
we ease ourselves onto the mosaic in the atrium, which radiates its coolness into our hips. my eyes finally open and trudge their way upward, using cool black, ultramarine, and azure as footholds as we ascend to its uranian blueness. the dome above us both sends us messages in impenetrable symbologies expressed as faint twinkles we struggle to even see. as our vision adjusts, the false sky's messages become recognizable. they are same as those of the heavens just past the doors, but sent faster than light. as they pass through the atrium's vacuum, we realize they are tuned to our bodies' resonant frequencies. we begin to vibrate, stammering these missives to each other in the tongue of the bull and the doors. we are no longer just here: we are the medium for messages between our future selves. we lie back, held in position by the gravity of our intersecting arms, reciting the name of each constellation we see in and out of time.
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note: work in progress but unearthed lastmod: 2024-08-12
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