From: Steve Savitzky (steve@Advansoft.COM) Subject: Life and Death and Amethyst Rose Newsgroups: alt.callahans Date: 1991-08-05 02:06:32 PST The Mandelbear is sitting on a bench next to an X-window. In what passes for his lap, a large reddish-brown Cheshire cat lies sleeping. A little kitten, like a ball of fluff, is curled up on the floor between his feet. As he sits and strokes the cat, he gradually changes from ursine fractal to ursine human, and as Steve Savitzky he says "We took our six-year-old pet monster Katy to the county fair today; Colleen's all tired out. I'm going to make the happy announcement first: she's pregnant again. We just found out about a week ago, and we won't hear about the lab work until Thursday. We have our fingers crossed-- Colleen's almost forty, and it's pretty iffy. At least her blood pressure is under control now." He looks back at the X-window. Outside is a landscape rich and strange: a forest clearing seemingly sculpted in stone. There are trees with bark of reddish sandstone, others of dark quartz with burls of calcedony. A few jade leaves, green fading to brown, lie on sand as black as night and almost as fine as moondust. Ferns with fronds of malachite grow in profusion. Back at the edge of the clearing, under the shadow of a huge tree, is a bush with leaves of the purest dark-green jade, and thorns of black obsidian, needle-sharp. On it grows an amethyst rose, shining not with the flat sheen of something carved and polished, but the the cool, hard glitter of a myriad crystal facets. For a long time nothing moves. The glade rests in the stillness of a place where time has no meaning, where a year of seasons and sorrows can be cast aside as if it had never been. By the rose bush stands a girl. She is hard to see; sometimes she has the features of a baby, only one year old; other times she might be six or seven, or perhaps as old as twelve. Her hair--is it dark brown?--has been tossed by a wind that now is still. Her eyes--you cannot see them, but her eyes are grey, with flecks of pure gold, and wise beyond her years. Without seeming to move, without disturbing the stillness of the stone, she breaks the stem that holds the crystaline rose and offers it through the window to the grey-haired man who sits there watching her through a blur of tears. She takes a tear from his eye and brings it back with her to the place of stone and silence, where it glitters, gem-like, in her hand for a moment as she turns back toward the rose that still blooms, unbroken, at the edge of the glade. Gradually the scene in the window fades; it seems an ordinary window now, and in the distance you can see a grove of trees at the top of a grassy hill, at the edge of a forest. There is a rosebush growing there, planted a year ago tonight. The man sits by the window, holding the amethyst rose as if it were a newborn child. There is blood on his sleeve where the thorns have pierced his arm. Someone has put a glass in his hand; he drinks it, something warm and smooth, dark wine the color of blood. "I have three children now: one six years old, one as yet unborn and perhaps never to be, and one who was born a year ago tonight, already dead." He raises his empty glass. "To Crystal Amethyst Rose." The glass shatters with a sound like the echo of a child's laughter; blue fire licks at the wine upon the shards. Steve gathers his small, sleeping family in his arms: a cat, a kitten, and a crystal flower; and goes out into the darkness to sit for a while on a grassy hill where a single rose bush blooms. ... Come away, Oh human child, To the waters and the wild, With a fairy hand in hand, From a world more full of weeping Than you can understand. W. B. Yeats (from "The Stolen Child") From: Little red-headed girl (carrot@bear.UUCP) Subject: Re: Life and Death and Amethyst Rose Newsgroups: alt.callahans Date: 1991-08-05 22:33:44 PST Rachel and Cameron go over to the Mandelbear and give him a hug, careful not to disturb his sleeping family. SHe hands him a small pendant, a silver rose with an amethyst at its heart. "Call it a good-luck charm for _this_ child," she says gently. "I wish you both the best." She takes out her silver flute and begins to play to herself, a tune of past sorrow mixed with hope for the future. -- +--------------------------+----------------------------------------------+ | carrot | usenet: ...decvax!fasfax!bear!carrot | +--------------------------+ internet: fasfax!bear!carrot@decvax.dec.com | | Carrot-tops are green! +----------------------------------------------+ +--------------------------+ From: rasvma@matt.ksu.ksu.edu (rasvma@matt.ksu.ksu.edu) Subject: Re: Life and Death and Amethyst Rose Newsgroups: alt.callahans Date: 1991-08-07 06:50:10 PST The Mandelbear writes: >I'm going to make the happy >announcement first: she's pregnant again. We just found out about a >week ago, and we won't hear about the lab work until Thursday. We >have our fingers crossed-- Colleen's almost forty, and it's pretty >iffy. At least her blood pressure is under control now." Cali wanders over toward the X-windows and smiles at the curled forms. "Congradulations. I hope everything is well and that Colleen is fine." She sits down next to Steve and takes his hand. "You are not alone, if don't want to be." Hoping that this sleeping family will make it she wanders off to think about her own child, the one she never got the chance to meet. Wishing she could say someting to the family that would help them. Something that could take away the pain. Knowing from experience that there is nothing really that she can say. --* Cali *-- WARNING : This article posted under massive stress levels. From: Meta (haz1@quads.uchicago.edu) Subject: Re: Life and Death and Amethyst Rose Newsgroups: alt.callahans Date: 1991-08-05 23:49:38 PST The Mandlebear drinks a toast from a wine blood-dark and a crystal rose, and Meta stands while the Mandlebear completes his toast. >"I have three children now: one six years old, one as yet unborn and >perhaps never to be, and one who was born a year ago tonight, already >dead." He raises his empty glass. "To Crystal Amethyst Rose." > >The glass shatters with a sound like the echo of a child's laughter; >blue fire licks at the wine upon the shards. Steve gathers his small, >sleeping family in his arms: a cat, a kitten, and a crystal flower; >and goes out into the darkness to sit for a while on a grassy hill >where a single rose bush blooms. > >... > > Come away, Oh human child, > To the waters and the wild, > With a fairy hand in hand, > From a world more full of weeping > Than you can understand. > W. B. Yeats (from "The Stolen Child") Meta stands silently, eyes closed, his posture stiff, clenched, as he stems tears he has no rational cause to shed. When he opens his eyes, they are damp, but his face is calm. After a few more seconds, Meta finds his voice. "To my brother James, whom I met when I was twenty, and he more than twenty-one years dead." But he sets his glass on the table instead of sending it arching into the fireplace, for he does not know the sound of his brother's laugh.