These Hearts, Who Once Held Up the Sky by Rob Haines
We find each other on the road towards the failing Span.
The sky is still golden here, every star, every path and confluence a part of the greater whole. We each recall, together and apart, when our own skies seemed this indomitable.
And each of our backs bend in empathy beneath the weight of gold.
Three of us walk this road, in sibling comfort despite our recent acquaintance.
Tyr is the boldest of us, Tyr who met me at the crossroads with a shout of recognition. We do not look akin, to those who have not held up the sky; to those who have, our scars are unmistakable.
Tyr has been free of their Span long enough to make strides towards Reclamation. They brag about shrugging off their burden, galloping free of tumbling star and crashing arch like a purebred from a burning barn, but the smile that follows is a transient thing.
Reclamation of self is a lifetime’s work. Tyr has merely fused the cracks in their psyche with seams of gold, repairs radiant yet far from load-bearing. I do not press too hard; I wish not to reopen those wounds. We have all suffered enough.
Emi still bears the weight of her aptitude. She speaks in halting pairs of syllables, as if phonation is a skill newly contrived. As if corporeal existence is a burden of a different shape to the one her spirit learned to bear.
Yet Emi’s path to Reclamation mirrors my own. One does not hold up the sky without deep-run roots.
I leave my own footprints between Tyr and Emi. My breath catches as I feel the Span above us quiver. I cannot help but recall my own despair as hairline cracks sundered my branches, as my own attempts to shore up essential architecture only served to hasten my collapse.
That is our weakness, you see.
Not hubris, not incompetence nor overreach. Those of us who hold up the sky are capable of holding up the sky. We facilitate vast networks of interconnections in our thoughts, we redirect the flow of resources and information and by-products and sheer, faceless energy in colossal cycles.
We sustain the stars, and the stars make the world turn. And locked in that flow state, that ecstasy of competence, there is one cost inconceivable until the cracks start to show. And by then it’s too late for anything but managed collapse.
I see it in Tyr’s bold proclamations and smothered sighs. I see it in what little Emi has the will to share. And I see it in the sky-tall pillar which rises from the valley before us, glimmering gold in the dawnlight.
We are not gods, but tinder.
We turn the world, but in doing so, we burn.
When we reach the Span, Emi steps up to the vast stone door. “Let me,” she says, when Tyr gets protective.
Her shoulders carried the weight of continents, and she has not yet Reclaimed enough to forget. Stone grinds like subducting plates. The Span shudders in aftershock. And then we are inside, us three, while the pillar yet stands.
If we were always destined to burn, we deserved to burn in temples.
The pillars of the Span should have been as radiant within as without. Perhaps we would still be burning now if those who depended on our expertise–who grew rich on our interfacing of disparate systems–had not simply sealed us in our respective tombs and gone on their way.
I see Her, now.
The nameless Heart of this particular Span, clad in crystalline amber high in the heart of this cold, grey, dead space. My heart quickens. Behind my eyes I can feel the building pressure, the outmost stars winking out, falling in fiery conflagration as She cuts Her losses, reroutes essential systems and burns all the brighter for it.
She is glorious. She is terrible.
Tyr drags their eyes open, clasps my hand in theirs. We do not need to speak to know how this goes. On the road we shared our memories of waking, as our pillars fell in nightmarish cacophony, all we had ever known tumbling as we fell to earth, broken, shattered, alone.
Emi steps forward, grips my other hand with her untenable strength. She sobs and her fingers soften, intertwine with mine like accessing an unfamiliar network. “Help,” she whispers.
When I first felt the dissonance of a failing Span, I’d expected to be here alone, but we step forward together. Their presence anchors my heart. The crystal-light caresses our upturned faces, reminds us of a day when we, too, upheld the stars.
A day when we mattered.
Tyr shies away. They curse in a foreign tongue, their bluster turned to pallor. They’ve walked the path too long; they cannot bear to feel again.
Emi squeezes my hand. We can do this, just the two of us.
I touch fingertips to crystal.
She is God.
She is transcendent, master of land and sea and sky. She bears the interplay of a billion factors, a burning crown at Her brow. She is alive, and omnipotent in Her sphere.
She is the Span, and She is so damn tired.
I weep for Her glory. I yearn for Her strength. I feel the cracking of the sky, in this space outside space.
Emi is beside me; she reaches out to God Herself, divine, radiant. Reflected godfire dances in Emi’s eyes. “It’s okay,” she whispers, her hand white-hot where she touches God’s brow. “You have to let go.”
God weeps, and the Span shatters.
We wake, the four of us. In the ruins, in the dark. The sky is no longer golden, God no longer in Her Heaven.
Tyr is cradling our new sister as the Heart weeps. Maybe we made a difference, being here. I had no tears, for months after my own fall.
Another distant tremor. Emi starts, looks out to sea. Another sibling in need. But now, I do not walk alone.
