Thunder In The Distance

Thunder in the distance

Rain falls down from leaded skies between colossal trees, thick entangled branches. Wet moss and dripping, vibrantly green clover sways in slight breezes that whisper here, here, here. Slick muddy earth richly black against red-brown bark and vivid greenery. My three-toed talons sink into the softly sucking, cool mud with infinite balance. My steps are swift and elegant, naturally quick in organic movement.

Disembodied symphonies fill my sensitive hearing. Footsteps miles away from a Leviathan, ten thousand years old and nearly a thousand feet long, moving like a living mountain. I can hear the breeze moving through the rooted trees upon its ancient back. I can hear migratory herds hooting and calling, singing with millennia aged durges about the sky, about important rivers, about familiar nesting sites.

I am quiet. My vocalizations resound like thunder. Felt in the chest and in the bones of friend or foe alike. But for now, I am quiet. My jaws open and close, sampling the air, obsidian railroad-spike-teeth glistening with condensation wetness.

Somewhere far away, thunder rumbles.

Primordial Interlopers

The first reports by telephone were an interesting and fairly entertaining joke to both local law enforcement and newspaper offices in the late evening, early morning hours.

“Well.. we didn’t know what to make of it in the slightest”, reports an obviously tired, exasperated Sheriff Elizabeth Cadieux-Andrea.

The Sheriff, a dedicated woman born in the town of Larson and known dedicated community servant was woken in the night roughly around 2:30 a.m., receiving a call from the on station Officer Howard James.

“At first I thought it had to be a joke. Of course it was. I thought, anyway.. I mean, we’ve had crank calls. Calls about a lake monster on the peninsula, stories about ghosts prowling the cemetery. So of course I thought this was a joke—wouldn’t you?”

After a shaky and brief communication with Howard, the Sheriff woke her husband before quickly changing into uniform and stepping out to the surprisingly still muggy air. It must’ve been strange, let alone frustrating: shambling to a police car at ungodly hours of the morning for another ridiculous report beneath seemingly endlessly Milky Way starlight. Mrs. Cadieux-Andrea reports that she was just about to turn at the end of her street heading north before locking eyes with a sight that would forever change her life.

“I thought at first.. I thought a first I was seeing things. You know what I mean—rub your eyes, shake your head. Laugh it off even because it can’t possibly be there. It just can’t. But there it was. Tall as a man with talons and jaws, big as a goddamn lion. Bigger.”

Sheriff Cadieux-Andrea was seeing a dinosaur. My paleontologist contact in the local museum tells me a Ceratosaurus Nasicornis based on a more detailed description the Sheriff would give under oath the following day which described the distinctive nasal horn, small four-fingered hands, and dorsal ridges characteristic of this Jurassic predator. A creature extinct for nearly a hundred million years was striding across a suburban road.

“He just watched me with those eyes. They reflected the most ghastly pale white I’ve ever seen in my life, like wolves in the dark..”

And as quickly as the creature had been sighted, it disappeared quickly into a nearby strand of trees alongside the homes to her right. By the time Cadieux-Andrea had arrived at the police station: nearly two hundred phone calls had been received documenting similar encounters across the entirety of the town.

A local man smoking a cigarette on his front porch watched as a small group of bone-headed herbivorous dinosaurs, Pachycephalosaurus, quickly marched down the road. He noted the animals were seemingly agitated which must’ve been an accurate representation as within moments of being sighted the dinosaurs began to ram into the parked vehicles nearby. The stunned observer told this reporter that the time-stranded creatures did an incredibly bizarre dance between impacting their metallic foes, like jungle birds, and that he could catch glimpses of vivid colors when the dinosaurs briefly stepped under the streetlights.

An young couple (who wished to remain anonymous because of the nature of their rebellious activities) were giddily driving home close to the shores of Lake Rose when, like a primordial fever dream, a massive horn-faced dinosaur (identified as the recently discovered Ultraceratops from a magnificent Deseret fossil bed) crosses the desolate wooded road. The first young woman of the couple said that it was immense: seemingly larger than the elephant from the local zoo, and that in the headlights it’s striking frill was akin to haunting patterns found on moth species. This quote especially sticks with this reporter: “It was like it had a pair of giant, crimson eyes, ringed by black and blue! Like it was starring back at us...!” After what had likely been only a moment or two, the herbivorous titan disappeared back into the forest.

Local celebrity and irritating miscreant of this newspaper (who shall remain nameless to irritate them immensely) spoke to an associate of the Larson Times, quote: “A big bird ate my dog, my poor Princess! It was like—like an eagle big as a jungle cat, with curving claws and black feathers, and it snatched up my poor baby when I let her out! Goddamn monsters! Must be the Soviets, come here to eat and torment the godly, patriotic pets of Americans!” (As of the publishing of this article no connection between the prehistoric arrivals and the United Soviet Socialist Republics has been documented.)

The stories are many, many indeed. And it seems, all in a single night: the mysterious primordial arrivals simply vanished. Searches since Wednesday night have turned up nothing, involving animal specialists and big game hunters and wacky cryptozoologists. Physicists from Moscow, London, and Chicago have arrived, all speculating endlessly on this fantastical scientific curiosity. We hope to publish more citizen accounts in the coming days as the interview process continues. In the meantime: watch out for dinosaurs.

- published in the Larson Times, 1///, prior to the Incident at Harper Town.

Far and Away, Silence Stretches Forever

The forest is empty, and quiet. Sketched black tree trunks are empty, hollow. Their scorched carcasses painfully thin in the half light. Pale white ash swirls gently in the whispering wind. Silence reverberates in hallowed tones.

The rivers run clear and still as glass. Empty of life. Dark rocks, smoothed pebbles without purpose or design.

Quiet bones litter the forest floor. Shimmering antlers that once glowed like gold. Obsidian dark feathers without color that once shined like flaring midnight. Discarded pelts once as smooth as silk, rich as regal banners.

Nothing remains. Far and away, yawning silence stretches forever.

M Y T H I C

It rains today.

Bruised purplish clouds hang low in the surreal, majestic sky of Halo. Between marble-carved tufts and crags looms the distant Ring curve; distant etched surfaces gorgeously tiny from vastness.

Familiar trees, so painfully familiar and alien all at once, shift gently in a soft breeze. Tall grasses seem to waver like an illusion.

The Master Chief—John—walks quietly in the wilderness. There are no birds that sing, no creatures with their cacophony of noises. Nothing but breeze, but the distant thunder rumbling, but his own heavy steps, but pattering rain drops.

Is this a dream?

His armor feels.. different. Foreign. The weight is so pristinely light yet comfortable and inviting in a way that is almost unreal. Pieces seem to readjust or move. Hardlight shimmers on encased joints, along geometric patterns. His rifle is alive with a mind between each sizable bullet. Intelligent currents seem to trace glowing pathways across the midnight dark alloy.

John, walks quietly across the rolling hills, changed. Cortana, the Flood, the Librarian. An ocean of thoughts deep and dark as the abyss flow through his mind, quietly tsunami swells crashing.

Pieces of memories blossom in the half light of consciousness.

Lives he can’t remember, voices and faces and sensations ethereal as the dreams that wake him in the night.

A cackling Machine that once threatened him and laughed and laughed and laughed in hazy starlight..

A vast and alabaster sphere crackling with purpose, roaring with intent, resurrection amongst rusting tombs and trees that bled wine..

A monster that rose in the bodies of heroes, endless cycles, Atlantis reborn over and over in warring kingdoms hearts..

Thunder rumbles, far away.

A voice speaks in the thunder..

[sorry for going anon, @sledposting, but thank you sincerely for your kindness and openness. I’m sorry this might read a bit strange and off, I originally was going to go with a much shorter paragraph or two about the Arbiter and John around the campfire on Sanghelios prior to the Infinity’s departure, but figured I’d go with an old theory I liked about all Bungie related material.

Lights, Action, and Relaxation

Late night tonight. I watched a lot of movies today, and relaxed, did my usual walk, picked up the house. Still feeling kind of sick, on and off. Tired. But relaxed. Happy. Excited for Mother’s Day, it’ll be really nice to hangout with my mom and my sister, do something enjoyable for my mom. She’s a really great woman. She works very hard for all that she has. I hope everybody had a good day today, whoever reads these, you crazy bastards. I can’t imagine I say anything very interesting, and I’m sorry I kind of ramble.

- your friend, Zachariah

Beneath, and Up Again

The dry season is hot, painstakingly and energy-sappingly hot. Even as the bloated, enormous golden disk sinks below a ragged horizon; syrupy heat wavers from bleak, cracked ground.

Endless, bone dry footprints left by vanished ghosts highway this way and that and there. This ground is scaly like dragonscales. Black, brick red, husked brown. Stranded lonely rocks lie in unhappy shadow beneath termite mound spires, pockmarked craters hissing with endless insect armies. Ancient remnants lie like collapsed cathedrals in all bleached bone glory, shrouded in the mists of twilight and the crimson dunes of time.

I wander this primordial expanse, wander it away from my diminutive tent beneath an endless sky richly black splashed by starlight older than the first conceptual organisms that once dwelled in simmering pools. I’m drunk on campfire smoke, on whisky that seems to burn harder than my dying firelight. I chuckle at jokes only I hear, and feel fingers in my hair from a Love very, very far away.

Something howls in the dark cliffs far away. How long have I been wandering? I am in a maze of shadows and curving eroded labyrinthine eternities, somewhere far away water gurgles in wet whispers down, down, down..

The crimson rock walls are wet now, covered in mossy growth, in gently swaying clover. Is that a breeze? Earthy scent fills my nostrils. Birdsong? Where is that light from, soft and pulsing, gently violet-orange, like sunrise and sunset at once..

When I exit the caverns, I look on in silence.