Brigit's Flame, August week 3

[riotheclown]

Prompt: Markings

Title: The Only Condition Author: Urb-banal Word Count: 447 Genre: Pre-history? Warnings:  nope

  “If it’s not known it’s wasted…”

She didn’t understand there are places that are hard to reach, almost impossible, except with the mind. It is the effort that gives those places meaning. It is the difficulty that makes the markings worthwhile.

 “Who will ever see them?  We will be long dead before anyone else stumbles on this place and the markings won’t mean anything to them.”

 “Don’t you see? We don’t matter. A million, a million ‘yous’ and ‘mes’ will be born and die and leave a collection of broken things. These markings will sing to themselves and tell stories and grow in their meaning in the vast forever."  The shadows cast from the torch made his shadow grow up the wall of the cave and around the ceiling. He was waving his arms wildly, in an effort to convey the scope of his vision.

 “You’re crazy! All those people you have already made dead with your words: Your wife, your children, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles matter! They work hard and struggle to be good. They fail sometimes.They hold each other through it all. I am important too! I love the smell of bread cooking, the colour of wildflowers in spring, my son’s breath when he sleeps...oh my husband stretched out beside me...  Why did I let you talk me into coming here?  I am so tired! I want to go home!” She sat down and wept into her knees.  He ignored her. 

 Stretching arm, stretching paint, stretching brush, stretching vision, stretching imagination… He worked without stopping.

“Wake up, sister! I am done.”

 He held the torch up to the wall. There danced the truth of their lives in the souls of the animals they shared their home with.

The woman gasped and held a hand to her mouth; in the flickering light they seemed alive.  She understood. She looked at her brother with tears in her eyes and touched his arm.

 He smiled.

“We need to bring the others here. This is a holy place! You are the holy man! They need to see!”

 He held her by her arms and looked into her eyes. “Everything is the same as it was before we came here. You have changed.”

She stood for a long time in silence with him, just looking at the “markings”. She thought, These animals will always be here running. The bones of my people and the animals we hunt will fall to the ground and feed the soil so wildflowers will grow and feed the animals. Suddenly she felt she was dressed in strange clothes, and covered with straps with heavy things attached. She knew she could hold them to her eye and capture the markings. She felt her very breath was corrupting the space.

 “Now we go home?”

 “Yes.”

 “And tell no one?”

 “Yes, and we tell no one.”

Author's note:  The smell of bread cooking thing, I think people have always found a way to make bread.  Camping we wrapped dough on a stick and cooked it over the fire... it is an amazing smell.  I'm hungry now.  I think the invention of bread and paint happened at the same time, so there! Prove me wrong why don'tcha!  The Masai grind wild grain and make bread this way.  I think if you can grind pigment, you can grind grain...