The ghostly snow white nudes
of the Gwee Shin are no longer walking the rain swept city streets;
a dragon wind of gale force has blown east from the Yellow Sea and
by some seemingly fated power, began to pick up the Gwee Shin and
hurl them along its path.
Flying through the air like
an air force armada of limp sheets, the Gwee Shin are being moved by
the forces of nature to a pre-ordained location; by the
thousands. Tumbling, black hair whipping chaotically, red lips
flashing like drops of blood on clouds, heads over feet, arms waving
wildly, nipples erect and pushed out as if they were the detonators
of thousands of mammaryan warheads. The wandering fleet of
paranormality is on the move; cast forward on an unknowable journey
towards oblivion. Arms, flailing, long red fingernails slashing at
the air, trying to grasp at the nothing that fills the skies above
Pusan.
Kum Yang had rejoined the
lost march before the phenomenon began, and like her many sisters,
found herself suddenly lifted from the street by the powerful gusts,
and carried into the dirty air above Seomyon.
But still, the wails of the lost women persist, complementing the
wind's spiraling howl and the percussive pounding of torrential
rains, until it resembles a cacophonic symphony by an ensemble of
natural and supernatural forces.
Throttled by the winds, she rolls and dives without the will to
control; her black eyes rolling back in her ghost skull, as are
those of her sisters. Perhaps they all see through the
same eyes, or their eyes all see the same sights. Clearing the tops
of buildings, a few carried on a lower gust, pass soundlessly
through the steel and glass walls; and in the sister soul of these
thousands of Gwee Shin, they felt the fear of a coming changes, but
also the wellsprings of hope that the awakening force that was
causing them to wander might soon abate and allow them to return to
their dream.
Swooping through the
cascading rain in the other direction flies an Asian Kite; a strong
bird, bound for KumJung Mountain. He sees the abnormalities
passing through his native skies; takes notice, but makes no sound
as he plods on, beating his muscular wings, bound for his Eyre in
the rock crags above the city."I must go soon to his cage for a
visit and make mention of this to the monkey sire.", he thinks to
himself, over and over in his narrow revolving mind.
As they pass over the city,
the Gwee Shin see the mottled texture composing it; the flashes of
concrete and steel, small sets of trees have their branches and
leaves wrenched asunder; then labyrinths of boxed homes and rising
rectangular towers of apartment buildings that resemble giant
tombstones thrust into the ground.
Then,
for the first time in weeks, the monsoon rains broke, in an instant,
and disappeared without warning. The symphony dropped down to
only the atonal wind and the Gwee Shin wails as their path cleared
them towards the eastern waters of the Strait of Korea, past
Kwangali Beach, cutting a diagonal razor's path to the southern end
of Haeundai Beach, clearing the roof of the Chosun Westin luxury
hotel; and then the dragon wind loosed one more howl, and curled
back to it's home over the Chinese waters. The Gwee Shin, no
longer supported by the dragon's muscular tail, drop.
Down, upon the rocks which
rise steeply up the back banks behind the hotel; the Gwee Shin paint
the boulders white with their flesh, to any eye unveiled.
Limp, flaccid, de-animated, they lie by the thousands, some in the
nearby shallow waters, their disheveled black hair weaving wet
trails in the water. The surrounding world is sopping wet, and
gleaming as the sun burns away the clouds by which it was
obscured. Reflecting off the now calm waters, the orange
radiances envelopes the Gwee Shin as they lay about the craggy rocks
like washed up mollusks, silencing their wails in a hum of quiet
ambience. Kum Yang is unmarked among her sisters, and lays
motionless like the rest of them.
Eyes lolling about, bobbing
with the nearby tide, absence of thought; absence of motion; the
cries of sea gulls come out to feed after the rains, overhead;
landing atop a Gwee Shin here or there, noticing but not caring,
squeezing it's beak between the close pressed thighs and shoulders
of the sisters, in a hunt for a crab or a scrap of storm and rock
mangled fish for dinner.
And so it was for a few days,
calmness, warm, caressed by the gentle breeze and lulled by the ever
shifting waters. Above the sisters watched another sort of
woman; she may have been responsible for their merciful respite, the
one which had brought them to rest here at the far shore of Haeundai
beach. She is also a woman with long hair and exposed
breasts; but she bares the tail of a sea creature. She lives
in a static blue iron state, here on the rocks ... beckoning the
sailors to the craggy shore with the siren's song that reverberates
off her rust weathered metal shell. Mermaid statue;
in-oh-sang; people fish statue; she sits eternally frozen in her
dreamy repose; a refugee of Atlantis or some such other ancient
aquatic civilization.
But deep, deeper down than
any animal eye can ever see, bubbling up from a microcosmic world,
dancing freely across sub-atomic stratum, there lurks a living
entity. It is an entity that has grown and blossomed over an
unfinished eternity; among other places, it is manifest in the
in-oh-sang, the mermaid statue; it is Ohm-Ma Hae-Ahn ... Mother
Ocean ...
From immobile metal eyes, she
looks down at the paralytic Gwee Shin strewn across the rocks in the
thousands. Her metal mouth arches up in a loving smile as she
begins to speak to their spirit minds, cooing sweetly, ''Ahn-yong
... Ahn-yong ... hellooo, helloo ... stir your sleepy heads my
delicate little daughters ... Ahn-yong ...
Ahn-yong...''
And the resonant, but loving
sonic stroke ... the fingers of her voice reaching into their minds
does that; the Gwee Shin begin to stir, and move from their places
on the rocks. She continues to purr sweetly to them for a
while, until Kum Yang and her many sisters have sat up, surrounding
Mother Ocean like children at story time in the nursery; sitting
around her metal visage, legs folded akimbo, thin fingers resting on
knees; lips resting upon each other, dark eyes gazing up to her
hopefully.
''Ahn-yong, little
daughters,'' she says, ''I must tell you some important things now
...''
''Ohm-Ma Hae-Ahn,'' says one
nearby Gwee Shin, ''is it you who've woken us from our dream to
wander this city?''
"No, my precious,'' it was
not me who sundered you from your forever dream; the dream which was
your just reward for the lives of struggle you'd lived. But I
have brought you here, into my rocky arms. And, while I can't
return you to your dream ... for I cannot put to sleep she who I
didn't wake ... I can offer you a short rest from the weary of your
wandering, and tell you some things to help you on your way ...'
And at that, the Gwee Shin
were rapt in her presence; waiting to learn more ... continuing
their search for a return to their precious dream.
"I can help you to discover
the problem's solution. While I can't give it to you, I know of a
creature who can. He's a mischievous, devious sort of fellow,
who employs the eyes of many spies in trees and rooftops, on the
wing and in the dirt all over this land. He will surely know the
answers you seek. But lovely Gwee Shin, I must also warn you
about him. He is often ill tempered, and sometimes
dangerous. He isn't likely to cast out charity to help you in
your plight ... ooooh, he's a wiley one; you know, how many of those
lesser gods of the animal kingdom always are."
"But Mother Ocean, how can we
find, and speak to this god beast? Shall we all go to
him? Who will represent us?"
"Ahh, little Gwee Shin, you
must be patient. As I have said, I will tell you everything I
know. For, as I summoned you here to my breast, I have left
one of your kin behind. She is still in the bowels of the
city, where I now feel her presence. At the time of the dragon
wind's carrying you to me, she was not wandering the street; she's
somewhere inside ... in some sort of man-made room. And now,
as we speak, I am placing a message in one of the tiny water spiders
here, one that lives on top of my head. He will ride a current
through the city pipes on a course that will bring him to her.
I've also sent another resident of my head, a little bird, to speak
to the God that your sister is to see. This God probably
already knows of your wandering from his many spies, but now he will
be expecting your emissary. Perhaps she shall find him in a kind
mood ... but uuuuughh, I am truly glad that I don't have to see
him.''
Then the speaking of minds
subsided and the Gwee Shin fell silent. Everyone remained
sitting around Mother Ocean. Her spider friend scrambled off
to deliver his message, and she struck up a song to comfort her many
daughters gathered around her place on the rocks. The song had
no words, and went something like this ''Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay
Oooooooooooooo Weeeeeeeeeeeeee Ohhhhhhhhhhhh Waaaaaaaaaaaaay
..."
And before long, the monsoon rains returned and covered them once
again in a blanket of falling water.
(Part6 ... Creatures In
Habit ... coming soon to a mind's eye near you!)
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