Low and beneath the dragons lay a usurper to the throne.  While beset by the shuddering and loathsome blue eagles, he remained steady.  He remained on edge to unite the envious torches.  Jeeves had forewarned him of this exact moment thoroughly during their education.  He was a knight of the garter, a kingsman whose solitude would result in no action upon the throne unless broken. He was exactly the right man to carry out the necessary action.  He was the right man carry such a burden.

​

The sweeping stares that continuously flowed across the mirrors of his hall launched him further.  It launched him to echelons that carried his heart to a newfound environment… a newfound department where his hopes could be caged and rationalised.  They bit against the sharp wind, etched across stone aboard a desolate mount.  The winters of those lands could be aggressive.  They could be furious like a foaming wolf, moribund unless centred on their target, a target that was ready to howl a cry.

 

It was precisely blizzards that would barge against them.  They would send bulges across their withered ships.  But this race of men would march headlong.  They would venture forward like ants, blazing a trail across the artic tundra.  Sweeping winds rather turned to an easier pray at this point.  They turned to the seeping liquids that seldom fell across their passionate camaraderie.  How such folly!  How would that proud guise of this battalion be dumbstruck by simple smirks! The battalion continued onwards.  And so did their ambition.

​

Yet further, it was said that a Titan named Atlas chose the leader of this brigand to set his barrage against the gods.  This man was called Geoffrey.  And his was solicited to raise hell against Olympus and the realm of the gods.

 

The war lasted a good three hundred years before new ideas and technological advancements wreaked further havoc on their desolation.  It was a savage wasteland of a trillion soldiers and victims, all pledged across an eternal city of destruction.

At last, one of the Titans’ forces, a man named Hugo, lifted up an enormous hammer and swung it from above his head.  The almighty object came crashing down and pulverised into the ground, wreaking untold havoc.  The land was launched into the air, great mountains were formed and magnificent canyons and ravines were etched across the battlefield.  However, it was heralded as the creator of the Earth’s beauty and wonder.  It was the start of the heavens glossing the land.

​

Before long, the land began to settle and form into the delicate world much admired by their descendants.  Bludgeoning through the slithery limestone mass, great tempests were set forth in electric dynamism.  The whole world seemed destined to pour down into a chariot of gold.  It had a left-handed touch and inexplicable grin that seemed married to a burgeoning bravado.  Knuckle-gloved tulips were also occasioned to entertain amongst the dancehalls… as the true nectar proudly lit up the peonies.

​

From across the haystacks of this proud edifice, one of the crowd, a man named Robert, looked across and gnawed at his half-beaten and dumbstruck compadre.  It was as if he were the leader of this cesspit of flies.  “I see the whisky hasn’t reached you, my dear friend!”  He uttered cordially.  “Fetch yourself a bottle from beside the haystack and join us in this revelry!”

​

The man from across the room, Richard by name, was rather staring outward towards the meadows surrounding the barn.  “The grasslands have never looked so fertile!”  He merely shook in reply.  Yet several hundreds of metres further - further across from the barn and the church and the school and the farm enclosures - the ground became more mountainous.  The legacies couldn’t escape it at this point.  The written infiltration of a crowd of bandits was the destined song.  So the pollinating nectar brushes calmly through the air, so the mountain anger pulls it mercilessly to its trap!   It was a dagger to these young folk!  It was snidely backhanded jibe.   But nothing that didn’t touch upon the anointment of feathers!

​

For you see this cavernous enclave of their surroundings contained the setting of their musical genesis.  A work of art it was like Danté’s Inferno.  It possessed the fertile honey trap that had nurtured their passage throughout history.  Oozing like an underworld it only spoke in whispers.  For amongst its nurturing folds, it beheld the legendary Xeon waterfall… a waterfall that was dripping with humanity.

 

It would commonly seize others in a gaze of wonder.  Quite often it assumed the role of an incarcerating officer, deadpan and deadbeat, but muttering peculiarities.  Irrationalities such as these spurned from the sanctity of the mirage, it spurned from the sanctity of the mirage like a seductive house plant.

 

But this land had a society and a place amongst the world.  In fact, much of the communal history had been tainted by the industrial efforts several decades ago.  The river was important to the silt marshes close to the estuary.  Great industrial lands had grown up in proximity to the outer reaches, where iron barges, factories and industrial lands defined the geography that led up to the estuary.  Mark Joseph, a leading industrialist during the beginning of the previous century, had developed harbours and wharfs to best exploit the river both for transport and waste management.

 

However, the river at its upper reaches had a different and more historic concern.  At parts its’ antithesis held great conflict.  The bountiful water had been central to the Bendron and Hasbula communities.  The river at this level bore primordial numinous qualities and had attracted pilgrims for close to ten thousand years.  The attractive geography ensured resplendent waterfalls cascaded through the mountain side.  So too did virulent wildlife flourish.  In fact the noise of the water gleamed amongst the idyll altogether in a resonating choir.  The river, therefore, was central to these historic kingdoms, historic kingdoms who would do anything in their power to protect their history and way of life.

​

Two centuries ago an agreement was therefore reached.  The Bendron clan would offer their mathematical, engineering and theoretical knowledge to best serve the great industrial lands of the estuary - places where space wagons were built, star cruisers and other celestial entities in their enormity were fabricated in momentous factories - in return for government protection and state rights for their ancestral and sacred place further up along the river.

 

An agreement had therefore been struck and was held in place.  It was called the “Munnar Treaty” and all duly acted in accordance with it.

 

However the lands of Mark Joseph had, I’m afraid, a treacherous legacy.  Built like serpents and foaming like dragons, they knew only deceit.  They strove only to serve their own needs. Paramount above all that yet further, was simply their own profits.  It furthered the legacy of their forefathers… sent antiquated dwellings to further their crimes.  It sent an owl right into the motherfucking stratosphere and watched the willing cry.  It turned downwards and looked at the anointed treasures crying and flying high.  They were not orderly, by no means correct, but shoved their hearts right down the merry fucking throats of those who criticised them.  They bounced and set trolls against all those around them.  They lit up a new spark, this time stemming from the heavens.  It cataclyded and collided like a roaring serpent.  It roared a cry that erupted like their magnificence.  Lying solemnly it revealed itself in the shadows.  Resting steadfastly still, they saw its beauty anoint itself amongst the gods.  This was gonna be a spectacle in which Olympus would erupt.

 

Several years followed of conflict between the lands of Bendron and the industrial lands of Mark Joseph.  The battles could be bloody and the destruction manifest.  However, during the final years of the war something monumental happened.  It was a mark both of terrors that had just passed and the urgent need for reconciliation.  Bendronites began to see convolution and dichotomy when they gazed at geometrical shapes.  The geometric alignment of Zarkovich was always heralded but he was seen more as the yoker to Atlas’ strength.  Such a conundrum and such a development rattled through the ranks of citizens throughout Bendron.  It disturbed them all bifold… until a man and a girl sat perched one of the dunes of Mars pondering to themselves several centuries later.

​

The lacklustre man gazed across at his companion with a wince.  “Such great eternity in front of us!”  He mumbled.  As the serenity and complexion of the location seemed to disorientate him, the perennial oxygen from his mask kept him lively.  Yet he was aware of his vulnerability amongst the savage elements of Mars. He sought to remember the precautions and safety mechanisms in place.  His morbidness was readily available, like death was approaching them, as all Martians felt in comparison to those hooligans on Earth.

 

At this moment in time, Daniel lay beneath the stars, heaving in gulps of air as sweat dripped off his forehead.  His mind slipped to the Intelligible.  Proud, glistening maidens were common, invested with shimmering white gowns.  Fragrant garlands pulled his direction to the flocks, which adorned either side of a walkway.  The reverberating sound glistened always.  He was one with the glistening walkways.  He pulled himself together.  He stood up and moved towards the ethereal symbol.  It was a marking of wisdom, nay fanaticism, fanaticism that dwelt in the moonlight.  It dwelt in the moonlight where no one could touch it.  It was better that way.  It knew more sounds of the piano, more moribund sentences and beliefs - stuff that was merry to most people, but struck a heart-string amongst Daniel’s castles.

 

His friend beside him, Julia, seemed to awake from the void consuming them.  She woke to the sound of voices, and claimed readiness to dampen this interlude.  Her merry mannerisms and archaic intrigues settled nicely aboard the haystack… a haystack that was destined to entertain the night.  Gazing at the Martian summer in front of her, the rolling tundra seemed inescapable.  So too had the couple been captured along with the withered sand!  But she ducked her head down, pilfering through the soil.

 

Daniel was beside her, like an endless oaf.  She scanned in front energetically.  “Watch me fall into the shadows of the night!”  She murmured passionately.  She had spoken audaciously yet a moment later she stormed to her feet and seemed set on charging across the Martian plain.  Like the howling gales she set herself across that dust.  It was ethereal, it was wondrous, it was sincere, but not more minuscule than the Martian shadows that tower above the whole of that vicinity.  It was a spike shoved through the air, quantum mechanics to breathe soot past the engineers… engineers who now gazed solemnly at their fumbling vehicles.

 

A distant glow from a tower beamed out across the mountain top.  Mars had security sure, but nothing so organic as a clutching lighthouse.  It was a lighthouse that seemed to be from Iron Age dwellers.  Yet the couple of Martians mused incessantly to themselves.  They mused with an immediacy that so too rattled across the hilltops. That lighthouse right there right then was something far different.  If only they could have perceived it then at that point in time!  If they had had the wisdom to act!  If only they could have pieced together the clues!

​

Far away, above that mountain top, was a completely different prospect.  In fact it was a different world in entirety.  Rather, it was a collision of souls… a meeting in time.

​

Several tens of metres below the summit a narrow pathway witnessed five dishevelled hikers climbing towards what they thought was the mountain of their lives.  Two Nepalese instructors guided them at the back and front as they all mingled amongst the Earthian blizzards.  Fred, closer to the summit, turned back and looked back at the invisible spectre of his Nepalese friend.  He stood there motionless for a second, imagining his toothy grin and cavalier bravado.  He withdrew his hat and saluted the invisible void.  The brown, etched skin of both of them seemed to reconvene in that empty space, before they both returned to the tumult of their lives.

​

You see these itinerants had come from a holiday in Nepal and had been eager to find the waterfall that had been so greatly recommended in Nepal.  The pursuit had another dimension as well.  Fred had seen all his possessions be robbed back in Nepal.  As a consequence he wanted to beseech the holy oracle that was said to dwell at the source of this legendary river.

​

In fact they found themselves now at the top of the mountain watching the beginnings of the river fall down.  Chris was the most despondent of the gang.  He stretched forward and immediately pronounced his judgement.  “Here in front of us is a manifestation of the mountain spirits, a projection of eternity!”  He paced onwards further and rolled his eyes around the dishevelled collection of rocks.  “There is something uncommonly hostile in that soil.  It’s like an untoward grimace gaping from across a portrait.  But we have reached Olympus my friends!  We have reached the verifiable temple of eternity!”

​

Another climber, a man named Ben, also paced forward with subdued confidence.  He swayed elegantly around the central turret before beginning to dance in leaps and troughs around the fire as if a vulture flapping its wings.  He pounded his fist against his chest and began to chant passionately.  “Here before us lie a hundred different streams of consciousness!”  He cried longingly.  “All distributed across the moons or planets silencing all around them!”  He looked to the side and smirked.  “Enveloping themselves across the eternal expanse!”

​

So the whole group of them began to dance around the fire!  Their exerts had met the Martians in their very own dressing rooms.  The soot and sand was commonplace.  The banquet hall was now unguarded!  Collectively they rose to Olympus!  Collectively they reached to the skies!

​

So the drum pounded!  So their hearts were lit up with fire!  So the chiming of the owl above them spat down its opprobrium!  For the heckled few were plunged headlong!  They sprung down the rocks into the caves of Hades, squeamish from the might of that gold they lusted!  Too right the elder owl squealed above!  Too right for the ignominious few who thought as much to test the flock amidst this garden!  Now begone all of you!  Go back to the caves and dungeons off your back and nowhere else!  Good day!  Good day!

 

 

THE END