affame_le_geant_a_song_that_can't_be_sung fyn gula "life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. life has no other discipline to impose, if we would realize it, then to accept it unquestioningly. everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. what seems a nasty, painful evil can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength if found with an open mind. every moment is a golden one for those who have the vision to recognize it as such a thing." ~henry miller the death of a bird-woman, such as thora valentine, was unusual, and quite peculiar, even for kemulya, this land of the imaginary reality. there were many birds in this particular world, but few bird-people, actually less than a thousand, and only roughly one percent married out of the bounds of race. her love affair and subsequent matrimony with the origami paper-man, twinkletoes, was the stuff of legend, mostly because society-at-large wondered if she could conceive young. cayris foxglove, who presently took the nearly collapsed thora away from his attendants and held an eight inch steel blade to her throat, was doing some wondering himself. what made the death of a bird-person so fascinating was that, unlike a rabbit-person (praayli and couge) whose bodies reacted like humans at their passing, remaining lifeless and then stiffening, followed by decomposition, these unique creatures returned to an all bird state before departing to the after world. cayris was especially curious of beholding this transformation known as "zozulya," which every kemulyan child learned in their daily world-science class. the gathered mob was as well, growing hushed and inquisitive as cayris dragged her through the parting crowd, his other strong arm under her armpit. the wind caught the woodsmoke for a brief moment and it stung so strong it made his eyes water like a paragraph of thoreau. he stopped to allow it to pass, blinking away the pain and then decided to kill her away from the bonfire, next to twinkletoes, just to rub it in his face. when he reached his desired location, he urged the crowd to form an immediate circle around him with enough room to comfortably contain himself, thora, and twinkletoes, who he had ordered ungagged, but still bound to the wooden post. the mob pressed tight. the air amongst them felt disagreeably intimate like a warm spot in a public swimming pool. many had to stretch on tiptoe and strained their necks to see as cayris commanded thora to drop to her knees. all was but silence, except for the slight rustle of banners and a distant, rhythmic canine barking like the downthrusts of a handsaw. cayris lowered his knife to his side and turned away from thora, causing a low rumble of mystery through the spectators. he wanted to formally address twinkletoes, a fascist attempt before the digital camera to proclaim "the insufferable hunger of the damned" as the supreme victor, not only by squelching this minor resistance to their revolution of the self, but, through the acquisition of the mandrill, (who was now tied on the back of the paper-horse hooked to the caravan to soon depart,) they would eventually conquer all that stood in their way. cayris stared at twinkletoes, whose expression was like a perspectival regression toward a vanishing point of misery. "fuck you, paper-boy!" cayris said. "you and your kind. you, who think co-habitation is possible. only the self can triumph. there is not one person who can love another more than themselves, because love is at its origin, hedonistic." "i feel sorry for you." twinkletoes, suddenly said, and cayris laughed. "i am the one who holds the knife that will slit your wife's throat." twinkletoes turned his gaze away from cayris and called forth to thora. she raised her battered face to look at him for the last time. her vision was blurred by unavoidable, explosive tears. "here we are stuck by this river," twinkletoes said, his paper lips trembling. and he continued to quote a brian eno song that they both had committed to memory. as he did, she joined him, choking forth the words. "you and i underneath the sky that's ever falling down. through the day as if on an ocean waiting here always failing to remember why we came. you talk to me as if from a distance and i reply with impressions chosen from another time." cayris was stunned, speechless to the point of embarrassment. and when he took his knife and ran it swiftly across thora's jugular vein, her rich, ruby red blood spilling like a fountain in monet's garden, he felt the emptiness in his injured soul. he knew what he had just heard come forth from these two fateful lovers was not words alone, but song. a song of true, selfless love. and he would never be able to sing it. 030227 what's it to you? who go blather from