Everly's Walk: Part Two

Blythe-by-the-Sea was a prosperous ocean town, built on seafood and surf. Made of white houses that dotted the shores like shells, it was a pretty enough place, a fond destination for families on holiday. Even the gulls dared not soil the pristine streets of Blythe, and the sun always shone there, making the water a clear blue-green.

Everly’s Walk was a preposterous ocean town up the shore from Blythe. Built on tug boats and trade, everything in Everly’s Walk was green or gray. The ocean, the glass, the seasick faces of the town’s people (who were notably averse to sea travel), sometimes even the skies, were a pale, unattractive sort of mint. Nothing grew in Everly, and so the ground was always charcoal stone. The houses were old, bent by wind and warped by storm, and, of course, gray. But it was outside of unfortunate Everly, not Blythe, that the once grand Carrigan House lived.

The Carrigans were the sole owners of Everly’s tug boat industry, and the town grew up from their money (which was also green). Though they still made far more than any townsperson in Everly, the Carrigan’s business had faded by the time Araby was born to the dusty glamor of things outraced. No one ever left Everly, and people rarely came. And the people who did come to Everly’s Walk were often the not-quite-right types. That was because the townspeople of Everly’s Walk did not deal in fish or fineries, trinkets or trifles. In Everly’s Walk they traded one thing and one thing only: tales. Not the lovely sort. Well, lovely in their way, but rather melancholy, nasty, stomach-roiling, even upsetting in their own right. 

And there were many tales to tell, most especially the tale of Everly Carrigan.

Comments, anyone? I'd love some feedback.

Standing in the Window at Day Change

fall away ashes
on the ground, in the light
pieces of sun and bone and broken
on my face, the skin of my arms
delving between the shallow shadows
between
it hurts harder than the depths
of drowning in the dark under my breath
consistent in the window
the world smiles through
the silhouettes that mark my vision
and my visage and my broken
wind under the lashes of my eyes
I weep dry tears
my face a dusty field
of ashes

The Small People

Started out being inspired by the idea that stars are basically just ghosts.

Unedited, random piece. I like writing in fairy-tale-esque verse.

The sun it cried a bright flame

and with its breath it said,

“This earth, it turns so slowly.

They don’t know that they are dead.”

And he could spin them faster

“I won’t,” his promise tragic.

And on and on he watched them,

and always they were static.

On Earth, they had no knowledge

of pain as bright as this:

the sun the one thing living,

his fire curled in fists.

***

The stars were ghosts of living,

they birthed by death’s bright eye.

They watched the people spinning

and played their part to die.

They knew the mortals’ true flaw

unable to see truth,

the date they should be fighting

mortal claw and human tooth.

From Earth, they knew not sadness

of watching dead men’s lives,

though every night they saw it:

their fate inside the sky.

***

And Earth it cradled softly

its children bright and dying,

a beauty great and horrid

like sun and stars combining.

The world, it spun so slowly.

Time is a mortal thing

that keeps the people blinded

in constant wandering.

And if they spun it faster

they’d fly off in the sky

and shake this curse of living,

the final day to die.

***

The sky, it held them gently.

The universe expanded.

The people lived so small-y

like human life demanded.

The world, it let them go on.

The sun, it cried their fate.

Star-ghosts illuminated

their expiration date.

The mortals nodded brightly;

they felt the sun’s bright ray,

the tears that flew in star dust,

and still, on Earth, they stayed.