Books of Yeliseva & Forsyth
Additional chapters for Chisti's history section for Still Paradise, to line up with the mini-opening in 2022
BOOK OF YELISEVA.
Did you think we were through, dear listener? That is funny, though I guess I should apologize for leaving off on such a final note. I really do hope I will never run out of things to tell you. I want to do a little more than burn a hole in the footnote of history, you know. In fact, I want mouths to move for me until the end of time. So I will speak when I can, and it just so happens I have a lot to say about my greatest success so far.
You know her, don’t you? Her name is Yeliseva, and she lives among you, in Ruin. Or lived, I should say, for she has done the thing that all of you one day must if you are to make anything of yourselves. She has ceased to be my listener.
She was so young when she came to us, dropped into the tired grass by her despondent chaperone. Her parents had died, he told me, and she was permitted no longer to stay in the place she once called home, because the Rasniy-faith demiurges had filled her with deadly venom in an attempt to heal their stolen skies… or so he said to me. I listened to his gnostic evangelizing while knowing well the truth that the skies stood steeped in too much natural power to ever be stolen, then I bid him farewell. Wither Rasniyshky and their demiurges. I would love their lost child in their blind stead.
Look how she has thrived here, our little Yelisa, now grown and learning. The venom still drips from her fangs, but we would not spurn Prevail nor any snake for their nature, so what made Yeliseva so different that those so devoted to the cautionary smokescreen that calls itself faith would not stay devoted to her? This is why we need the truth, listener. This is why we need our minds more than our effete flesh, and she has learned this better than any. But Yeliseva was born to faith; she has a little too much in me.
No matter, though, she’ll wean off of that in time. After all, she’s on her way to see the big wide world! How refreshing will that be?
You know better than I if more than Yelisa followed in my steps in the days after I departed. Perhaps no one found me in time, before the drylands swallowed them up. But when I say that she was the only one who pursued me, know that I say it with great confidence.
She found me six days out, and together we followed the Salt Trail south, out of the dustbowl and out west to the big water where there stood an abandoned human settlement with far grander edifices than the ragged tindershacks I had known in the Cage, so it was said to me. Yeliseva had pursued me with direr intent than to be my travel buddy, you know, but I could sense she got cold feet the second she laid eyes on me. She likes me, you see, and because she’s still young and somewhat selfish in that way, she believes that liking me means she has to keep me here. She hasn’t quite got it all worked out in her head yet, but isn’t that what novices are for?
Oh listener, forgive me for getting emotional, won’t you? I can’t wait to see what becomes of her.
So we walked that lush path and made it to the water. But Savior was not there, for we had arrived too late. A scent of death clung to the saline breeze, along with a silence so still it betrayed presence. Know the wilds well enough and I’m sure you understand why we did not enter the settlement nor linger at all on that windy coast. We are not fool enough to seek prospect where there is only a quick death, or worse.
So we started to head back. Along the Sage and Burn Trails, this time, because we wanted to give the slip to any possible raiders or traffickers that may have been eyeing up our party of two on our way to Savior’s dive. By the time the grasslands shrivelled back down into the hot rock and dust, Yelisa had grown rather antsy. As I explained, she is only young, and still piecing the world together at her own pace. But the tilting belligerence of adolescence hides its own strength, and unlike myself my pupil is built with the stone paws and mountain-sinew of Rasniyshky.
So it was impulse that made her push me off the sheer edge of Risset Mesa, and none of my truths could have stopped her. But so was it impulse that sent her careening down after me, because, listener, even if I didn’t have Rasniy stone paws or mountain-sinew, I had momentum, because the Universe favours us no matter our strength.
We got pretty roughed up, I must admit, but it wasn’t the end of us.
In fact, I woke up in a cage, astride my venom-spitter who had tried her very best to be her best, but come entertainingly short. I told her so, because I wanted her to burn, and to use that fire. And burn she did, with frustration and pain in her eyes but, behind all of that, most importantly, direction. She already impresses me more than my sister ever did.
But direction is all well and good when you have mobility. We’re all caught up in the bars again. Well, first time for her, I suppose. I’m no stranger to cages.
HOW MANY WOULD IT TAKE?.
How many bars do you think there are in the world? I’ve been counting the ones in the City of Cages as of late, and I’ve yet to find an end to them. But the world is a very big place that we have all seen so little of, so who’s to say? There may even be bars in the sky. Does the last star know of their cold vigil?
Sorry, that was a trick question. It’s actually about perspective. Who’s to say there are any bars at all? Turn your head to the side a bit. Go on, yes, tilt it just like that. The bars go up now. Do you see it?
Now, how many rungs do you think there are in the world? And how many to get to the top?
BOOK OF FORSYTH.
We passed about five months in there, though the time has moved so quickly I can scarcely believe I’ve spent almost as much time here as I did in the Cage as a girl. In that I sympathise with Yeliseva’s position. Humans do not often take an interest in our kind - back in the Cage, maybe they would toss me a morsel of lamb if I pouted - but since they are giants and seem to have some wits about them, it is far harder to escape a cage of their design. It has been frustrating for her, at times to great distress, but it has made her sharper, ground her down into a fine and piercing point. That thing in her eyes pushes closer to the surface with every passing day.
The cat below us tells me the noises humans make are actually a language, and they understand it somewhat, when the tones are consistent. They say Yelisa and I are considered ‘problem’ cats. I found myself laughing aloud at this. Oh, listener, I rather missed my power in these places, if you would believe it. Never doubt your Lady of Ruin, she can move even the giants.
“I’m mighty glad I never met you out there,” says our linguistic expert, Forsyth. I find myself liking them. They know their truth well and hold it for all to see.
It was through my talks with Forsyth that I began to learn more of the purpose of this place. A prison having a purpose is a novel thought unto itself, don’t you think? We are so quick to assume it is the natural force that arises between the strong and the frail, but here’s some food for thought: truth, too, is something that must be apprehended. They keep Yelisa and I here to study our rot. Hers, that is, and my lack thereof. I suspect they would love to meet you in Ruin.
“Yeah, I got it,” Forsyth tells me one day, when Yeliseva has been carried away for treatment that comes far too infrequently. “The light kind. Doesn’t show, though.”
“So, it’s hidden?” I ask him thoughtfully.
“Wouldn’t’ve even known if I hadn’t heard ‘em yabbering about it. Maybe it’s the earliest stage. When she was young, my little girl Yesta told me the light rot was like a big star in the back of her head, one that just kept getting bigger and bigger and swallowing up all her thoughts. Guess I just got a bad star.”
“A bad one, you say? Even with no symptoms?”
“I reckon so.” I hear them slowly drag a claw across the steel bars. “If I were a normal case they might’ve let me go by now.”
So I smile a little and ask them why they wait on the mercy of some tall animals instead of using their own strength to manifest an exodus. They scoff in kind and ask me what I think any of us can do.
“Well, you eclipsed the star in your head, didn’t you?”
The conversation ended there. I think we’re both onto something, myself.
Forsyth has been here for two years. Maybe the humans have bold intentions, seek strength as we do, but far be it from me to let them do all the work. Yeliseva’s advancing sickness takes great toll on her, but she is watching and waiting all the same, quite alike a cornered predator in this sorry state, but chartering her escape all the same. Good. I will wield her for a time, and we shall hope together that she breaks through to the light of truth.
There are not many cats who see things as we do, but they are here. There are always snakes in the grass, listener, and despite our incarceration this is a place of great power, now, because we are learning secrets about ourselves apace with man. So I will continue to speak. I will rattle the bars with my words and watch as they drift unerring through the walls. I wonder if they will hear me. Do you hear me, listener?
When will you stop listening and show me your strength?