"Who art thou, to have clipped my wings?" Part II

Mawu's stern gaze was unavoidable - she had recently been secluding herself in the deep den of their coven and Lisa had attempted everything he could do lead her out. Several of their Children had attempted to coax their Mother and shed her light on the world once again, but ever since he had tried offering up the dove to her she had shut herself away. Surely she had not decided to atone for her sins, which they were fated to commit until time unending. Written within the Halls of Time was their undeniable loyalty to the earth which held them on their two feet, and a part of that loyalty required them to feed - it was as simple as that.

Within the darkened and woods hidden in the mist under their keep - a natural phenomena in Africa which reminded Lisa of an ant hill - relaxed the woman he loved. Usually patrician fingertips now frail and skeletal, Mawu's hair reminded him of the ravens his tribe were named after - hollow crevices in her face were her eyes and thin mouth, once full blood-red lips now fading as their mistress was. Ever since her fasting began the once pertinent smell of rotting carcasses and fresh decaying matter began to leave their den and as his eyes quickly adjusted to the candle-less darkness, Lisa recognized the cold, void smell as something he had gazed upon since time immemorial. The cold mist echoed his realization as the mists condensed on the ceiling of their natural abode and proceeded to drip back to the ground where the cycle of evaporation would begin once more.

"You are dying Wife." the words were not a question, a concrete statement that Lisa had for some reason been able to express. Deep within him the sun that they had been forbidden to see, their millennia of detritivoric suffering on this planet, all lead to this moment. He felt his soul, the sun, flicker like a candle being played with by small children. His rage he put aside, he had to be with her the last few minutes the Earth pray she had a little bit longer to hold on and maybe survive through her loss of appetite - yet seething within was the white hot sun, the sun that could make an ocean into a desert in seconds. Wearily Mawu beckoned to him, a gnarled tree branch lacking the deep russet of a healthy tree - how ever far the moon and sun might be neither are too distant in spirit.

"We are a tribe to be feared. Our kind will never reach that final goal in these forms, my love. According to our predestined laws, we are all meant to die. However, every physical death is not something to fear - rather a metamorphosing from a cocoon to a more advanced butterfly. Yet not even that butterfly is what our souls require for repose." As weak as she was, Mawu's voice was unbroken - an enlightened sage, Lisa supposed, despite her allowing her body to decompose before his eyes. In fact, Lisa felt as weak as he had ever - no physical prowess or skill with the Eye was sufficient to fight this mental and spiritual battle happening within his love. More, he had to deal with the fact that the light that he once served as to his Wife was now nothing more than an extinguished and long-abandoned lighthouse to the sea. When the waves rose, his Wife did as well, but within a valley of tall waves not even his darkened lighthouse would be of any notice or concern.

"Within this turning of my soul, my dear Lisa, I feel as though the earth has shown me what my soul has been seeking after. And I step closer beyond the butterfly - the gentle wind that assists in its preflight. All were meant to fly, but it is well known that those who fly must return to the earth once more - you clipped my wings but I am still soaring high, my Lisa. Whatever you may do, do not clip the wings of one who is not ready - she may steal your heart in her suffering and you too will grow the wings as I have." Lisa stood in front of Mawa holding her petrifying cold tree branch of a limb seeking for the warmth that it once provided. Entranced, hypnotized by her mantric final words he uttered what he had held back watching as she punished her soul with her gnostic transformation.

"Although you fly, will you remember the earth which held you as it shrinks the higher you go? Or have you already forgotten me? The earth which sustained and was inspired by your growth will become fallow once his love had grown wings."

Within the Asian woman's hands, was a liquid light shining with crimson furor. Her nerves, veins, arteries a complex web of multicolored sparks and glows - she was not bathing in the Red Moon she was the Red Moon. Wild hair awry in an array of raven black hair with red ends and white highlights, a bird in this ever evolving jungle one moment and a human hybrid the next. Lisa could sense the danger this woman was in, despite her refusal to become aware of it. It did not matter to her, yet the abnormal deformations she was undergoing could not be called an evolution to him.

Wild animals on all levels of the rainforest seemed to be calling, not in anger or madness as the post-Chaos world had become but in a hymn - praying to their wild goddess. Even he, Lisa of the Ravens, wild as the wind that bellowed by the shore, was in unmistakable awe in this human woman. Eyes as wide as she could open them, they reflected the pools of blood that had been required to maintain his people's survival - now boiling with white fervor in their madness. He could sense great amounts of the Eye surrounding the woman, but could not make possible sense of what she was attempting to do with it. Realizing that she was feeding of the life of other creatures to increase her capacity he desperately attempted to fend of her control of him but could not withstand her berserk dance under the light of the Red Moon.

As her movements became more torrential, more distraught he noticed a wane light that was trying to break free. What had been going on in her mind as she went through that volunteered transformation, he had no idea. But, wherever her ego lay in that broken mind of hers it wanted to escape - desired shelter from this upside-down world.

He walked towards her, the intensity of life burning within her as the apex in the flame. Suddenly aware of danger, the id side of her mind reacted in violence using the Eye to slam him against the side of a nearby tree. Luckily, the renewed peacefulness in the forest protected him the tree forsaking some of its leaves to cover him as the Eye forced him into the tree. Standing up slowly and carefully, the moon-maddened maiden apparently paying him no respect by returning to her meditation as if nothing had interrupted her prior. Although she could absorb his Eye and use it as she pleased she lacked the access to his Soul, and he used that to his advantage as he forced her to the bottom of the nest and summoned all of his power to seal away her power.

She looked up at him shocked and he pulled her out of the insane light that he had unfortunately began to bathe himself in. Eyes marred in that maddening deep red glow and breathing intensely as if she had run her limit, the Asian woman began to come to - that was when he sealed her senses as well.

Of all the humans he had found on the Old Moon, this woman had more strength than all of them combined - even with the Shared Eye. She could supplant them all, one day, if he had not had the Soul to seal all of their memories away and make them his Tribe's servants. Not only for his Tribe's safety but also for their own safety and survival did he tie of all connection with the Eye. Their senses, too, could the sun seal, but as far as their memories went he would have to make use of one of his Children's Souls. It was all he could do, the Eye back on Earth who had been foolish enough to Awaken the Eye within the slumbering humans had brought all existence to their knees - and he would obtain the power one day to see them atone for what they had done to the equilibrium. Chaos had followed, but order could be made from the ramshackle remnants. And despite his Tribe and all of the other Tribes being the detritivores that they had originally been, order would have to come from somewhere - and he was willing to take that responsibility.

Before that, he would have to think on how to deal with this Asian woman and her power. He could easily keep her sealed, even unconsciously he could . However, he remembered his dying Wife's last words echoing in the somber recesses of his mind.

"Who art thou, to have clipped my wings?" mumbled the Asian woman carried over his shoulder. Lisa did all within his power to keep from dropping her where he stood, and a single tear fell from his eyes as he gazed upon the Blue Moon. He whispered Mawu on his lips and heard a pre-Chaos wolf howl lonely without his pack in the distance.