Beginnings

The balmy winter night was clear, as always. The artificial irrigation producing perfect verdancy was shyly hidden, and the city required no rain. Lush fragrance from floral arrangements: violets, voluptuous rose, lip-red tulips, and the heady transcendence of pine, maple, oak, cherrywood. A whispering breeze carried the scent of something more, something discordant with the moonlit garden: the nauseating metallic rust of blood, the stench of spilt viscera.

In the city of Garden, edenic night lurid with stars and silver fox moon, the blood of two souls mingled and seeped into the earth, their bodies denuded and eyes open wide. And there was evening, and there was night, the murderous days were begun.




What so false as truth is,
False to thee?
Where the serpent's tooth is
Shun the tree---


Where the apple reddens
Never pry---
Lest we lose our Edens,
Eve and I.
~Robert Browning - A Woman's Last Word

The balmy winter night was clear, as always. The artificial irrigation producing perfect verdancy was shyly hidden, and the city required no rain. Lush garden arrangements exuded an elegant, primal taste into the air: violets, voluptuous rose, lip-red tulips, and the heady transcendence of pine, maple, oak, cherrywood. A whispering breeze carried the scent of something more, something discordant with the moonlit garden: the nauseating metallic rust of blood, the stench of spilt viscera.
In the city of Garden, edenic night lurid with stars and silver fox moon, the blood of two souls mingled and seeped into the earth, their bodies denuded and eyes open wide. And there was evening, and there was night, the murderous days were begun.

.....

The city bled an efflorescence, golden on the blur of night.  A phoenix death, embers until the resurrection of morn, where new creation begins, and begins again. It was a strange thing, a death in undying lands, and the city's edenic appearance burned with a burr of color, a drop of poison dye in crystal water.
The investigator rolled into the city on a stagecoach black as a hearse