Iglesia ………………………………………Episode17

(Iglesia is a serialized novel, published on Tuesdays and Saturdays at midnight ET, you can read all of the episodes by clicking on the tab.)



Previous Episode

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Okay, something was definitely funny about that sky and those clouds.

Her eyes had snapped open this time. She was alert enough now at least, to know she wasn’t alert. There was an immense war waging within her. Half of her was doing everything it could to stay awake and alert. The other half was using everything but the kitchen sink to drag her back down into the darkness of …sleep?

But really the sky shouldn’t be that color, and those clouds definitely had square edges. She realized the clouds were mad out of tiles. She was confused, but she didn’t notice. She tried to turn her head and that is when she realized she wasn’t really in her body. Wasn’t really filling it up anyway…so she did. She turned her head and looked out the window…..sort of thingee over there.

Yeah. There was a different sky out there. She looked back up at the ceiling and…. realized it was a ceiling.

She remembered then that she could focus her eyes so she did that. It was a dome. She was lying on her back looking up at a vast dome that was somehow still quite close, as vast domes go. The top of the dome was covered in clouds. Fluffy bulbous Arabian Night looking clouds. That were very, very beautiful, now that she could see them. She was inside a dome that had been designed and tiled so very skillfully that it fooled the eye, the proportions were so perfect that from her vantage point….which seemed to be on some sort of platform, that it fooled the eye into thinking it was the shape of the real sky. The dome was a brilliant blue mosaic of tiny tiles, of a depth and hue of blue that was just darker than the sky had ever appeared. This made the subtle changes in the colors and textures of the cloud tiles not only make the clouds look impossibly fluffy, but also look like the were moving across the sky….or, like they had just stopped moving. Her eyes followed the curve of the dome outward and downward from the high white clouds, moving her gaze very slowly and slowly lower as the curve of the dome turned seamlessly into top of the wall of the round room. And as her eyes drank in the beauty of the blue she saw that the sky had gradually faded and blended into an even deeper and darker blue…until stars started to appear here and there in the darker blue, and the deep dark blue starry sky morphed smoothly ever darker into an inky black starry sky. Complete with galaxies. Some stars were made of silver, some of mother of pearl.

She turned her head more and and traced the inky black and starry sky slowly down the wall towards the floor, near the base of the wall it was the deepest of black, blacker even than the night from which she had just come. And then it creamily transformed as strikingly subtly as possible into a gloriously vibrant orangeish yellow and red that forced a reminder of an impossibly glorious sunset. The floor was gold radiating up. She was stunned… and transfixed and humbled by the perfect beauty that surrounded her everywhere she cast her eye.

So she shifted her gaze back to the window and the scene outside it, seeking contrast or relief. But the window, which now that she had truly perceived the star strewn black of the walls, was just incredibly strikingly beautiful as well. A perfect Arabian arch, it’s bright but subtle gold scrollwork frame provided a  needed separation from the brilliant black of the wall and the brilliant blue of the (presumably) real sky on the other side. There was a tree just outside the window. A small bare white tree who’s delicate branches strongly evoked the arms of women reaching to the sky while dancing in some sort of ecstacy. On one of them sat a small blueblack bird. On another, a single red flower. In the background, there were mountains. Above the mountains was the slimmest slice of ivory new moon crescent possible.

She raised up enough and turned enough to see that there were eight of these large archways in the round tiled room with the gold floor under the dome, and outside each of them was another scene of delicate impossible beauty through each of the passages. More mountains, closer. An orange tree. A peacock in full bloom. A waterfall. A forested hill alive in fall foliage rippling in the breeze like a sea filled two archways and a peak encircled crystal lake two more. All framed in black starry tile that made the colors jump at her from the outside. She had no choice but to receive them as gracefully as sh could. She was crying as her soul consumed a perfection of beauty it had been hungering for and longing for….forever?

For….as long as she had lived?