The Raisin and the Grape- a Journey Through Darkness . Broken . She remembered when she was young. With the puckered flesh of her lips she awaited the brush of his kiss, but it never came... . He had blundered away his true love, and along with it her fondness, with his young, callous heart. . Her bitter tears fell, crushed by his unknowing words and actions, and her emotions were worn raw. . “Here’s one for you and one for me keep it flowing as we merrily sing! Now none for you and none for me as we dance along, wild and free!” . She watched him often in his drunken revelry with the women of the night. She finally left him. . Taken . Soon she spent her days bleak and alone. Happiness was something she witnessed from afar. Weakened in spirit, she could not repress the visions of being hurt over and over again. . She took to drink and men, waiting to be used, to be given new shape and form. Their deft and nimble fingers complied, and used her, and she received little trinkets in return. . Bitterness raged deep within her mournful eyes, but the depth of her reflection glossed it over with subtleties gained from the higher society that she now serviced. . Rarely did the rivers of her emotions flow during this time. She felt abandoned, cast aside, her love shattering upon impact and laying in shards, reflecting her sorrow like the broken fragments of a mirror tossed onto a stone floor. . She was a fragile vase crafted and shelved among the roughly hewn pottery of the crude and abusive environment of her time. . She yearned to be righteous and chaste, but found herself in threadbare silk and lace instead. . She ached to purge her soul and be atoned in a swath of love, and as days became nights she wondered if the sun would ever rise again. . It was during this time that they came and she was stolen away... . Searching . He realized his folly, and pursued her trail. He questioned the nomads who roamed the steppes, who, with the windswept dreams of their lands, generations slip from one to the next like unchanging grains of sand. They had seen a caravan, and the nomadic, restless spirits pointed the way... .
His spirit had been restless, nomadic, but now he had a goal... . That night he thought of her. His emotion and passion emptying like streams into the ocean of his despair. .
He stared into the vastness of the night. The clear sky revealing a dark, hidden beauty that blankets the world, and yet is unattainable. . A prism of light created by the celestial globes drape across the heavens in multitudinous obscurity, and an ocean breeze could not carry the thoughts of her away... . Seconds stretch to minutes, minutes to hours. The crashing waves of silence erode the disquiet of his mind. . He had known beauty like that once, too, and had tossed her aside. He pitied others, out there in the night, who have caused themselves similar fates... . The novelty of the journey soon wore thin, and it becomes endless and tedious until he came upon the edge of the Kingdom of Darkness... . The Kingdom of Darkness . His horse, overcome with dread, bolts. Bloodied dogs growl behind the ancient, deadening trees, gnawing the carcass that they feed on, that still feels the canine teeth enter its flesh. The ravenous dogs tear at it, rip it open, its limbs go limp in the viselike grips of their jaws. The last cries of the prey are stifled and dismissed in the cold winds... . In the bleak forest the smell of the bloodied fur surrounds him. He passes, and notices the puncture wounds. He wonders if he would succumb to a similar fate in this dark, cursed kingdom... . The unnatural dogs of this unholy kingdom see him, and run off, as if guilty of a crime, leaving the half-eaten carcass to rot. Such creatures will not stop until they are destroyed, he thought. . He journeyed on foot into the sad trees drooping in the ill-fated forest, and began to wonder if this journey would not also destroy him before it ended... . Sir Greive . During his journey, he had time to reflect on his life. Baron Russell, who’s favorite saying was, “In wine there is truth!” knew him as a lad. He took young Greive on as summer help, and after a few seasons found he had imparted all the wisdom he had to the able, growing boy. . He passed the lad off to Count Pascal, a man given to great self-reflection. It was under this tutelage that Sir Greive came of age as a man. . Madeline . His thoughts were more often on Madeline. Madeline was born a few years after Sir Greive. Life in such villages was simple, where love had ample time to blossom... . They’re paths crossed many times, but they were never properly introduced. Sir Greive passed one day and stopped to observe. Madeline and the other farm girls were curiously going about swatting swines. To Sir Greive that day, Madeline was the sweetest, as sweet as wine! . Slowly, over time, their love took root, then, over the seasons, bloomed. Yet he always felt like a court jester who was foolishly pursuing a fair and noble princess, and would only catch her eye while entertaining her. If only he knew that she secretly fancied him as well... . Now that he had lost her, his demons would not disappear... . Into the Kingdom of Darkness . The kingdom was foul and bleak. It fed off the toil and misery of its enslaved masses who were stifled in dull, monotonous labor under cruel overlords. It was a kingdom perpetuated by lies, and constructed on arrogance and mediocrity. . Society in the King's Court was trite and cliché, and had, from the beginning, been a dark place and a haven for dark minds. . The town was inhabited by demons, they say, and populated with people of lost hopes and desires who themselves overworked their unhappy, half-starved slaves, captured by the hordes and brought back from distant lands. . Dreams disappeared in the din of daily life like sorrowful tears among gloomy rains. Sinister tattoos on the women reflect narrow avenues of life and loathing. The rancid, morbid decay of this bleak world reminded the populace that death was only a breath away... . It was a place where men slept with their woman’s sisters, where faces had no special features, where darkness drank the light whole, and where the statues, intended to be monuments, stood cold and alone, masses of gilded nothingness. . It is to this Kingdom that Sir Greive has journeyed, and where Madeline, he had learned, was cruelly held captive. . A Sign . The dogs of the forest lurked on the edge of the barrenness, hellishly prowling. On the edge of the forest the landscape remains hot and barren, like an undying sun. Yet to enter that kingdom, he thought, is worse, is to be greeted by death... . He watched tiny insects crawl under scorched rocks in the desolation as he passed, and wondered if he should do the same. Even the few trickling brooks he encountered seemed nothing more that frothing, bubbling streams of hate in the gullies, reeking like the festering demons of his guilt that made peace unattainable. . Across the landscape, where echoes of his agony flickered in the shadows of his soul, where no breezes stirred, a man stood, watching... . The man stood outside his hollow abode, built alone in the bleak land. He invited Sir Greive into its cool shade. They conversed over a frosted ale, and Sir Greive told the man about his journey, and his guilt... . The man inspected Sir Greive intently. His thick brows furrowed, his icy eyes pierced into Sir Greive's innermost soul. Sir Greive's life played out before the man in vivid detail, right into the present moment. His eyes then softened, and with a tinge of sadness, he rose. . He reached up to the top of a bookcase. There this man's secrets sat, locked away in elaborate boxes. He took out a large key from a robe pocket and opened one of the boxes, a large, ornate, oblong coffer. A strong, pungent oder filled the small room, and a crimson light reflected off the table and into their tired faces. . It was a magical box indeed. In it the man kept a Narcoleptic Muse, who was an enigma in herself. One could not directly look at her, only catch glimpses, as if she were imagined, or a passing and fleeting aberration. . Around her circled memory birds, singing stirring heartfelt odes to love long past. Among their songs was a song about one young Sir Grieve and a Madeline, and the consequences of his foolish neglect of her true love. . The man received from the Muse a seedless raisin. He placed this in a small ornamental box, and informed Sir Greive, “When you have been reunited, and your love has healed, then open this box.”. Captive . It was a time of nightmares and horrible dreams, loneliness, and screams in the night... She trudges down one path after another, placing one foot heavily in front of the other, but she could not escape the torment. . She found herself on the edge of reality, teetering on a perilous perch that overlooked an abyss of jagged rocks and dark, bottomless holes. . In the crevices of the eroding precipices snakes crawl out from the thickets with their tongues piercing the thick air and slit-eyed orbs glaring. . Startled, she sliped and tumbled down the edge. A faerie with tattered wings tugged at her foot, but could not save her, and cried out in anguish... . A rope appeared and tightened, saving her from an unmerciful oblivion. As she is pulled back, the tender face of Sir Greive was looking down on her, breaking the spell... . As she awakened from her nightmare, she only finds reality worse. A large, craven man is there, gone mad, his chest heaving. . First nimbly and teasingly, then rough and primal she is tortured by his darkened kisses, and fueled by the mad, voracious fires of lust she feels his pain and desire. . The room dims, it’s features blur, light dances, then she is blinded inside... the room fills with the wantonness of his chaotic mind, and she is consumed in a cold, loveless embrace. . Sitting upon the bare, damp floor, an icy current of air seeps into her heart. Her bare legs are twisted, knees to chest, paralyzed by the violent images of the night, a face of anguish contorted into a silent scream behind limp hair, with eyes nearly demented with sorrow. . She feels the knife-edge of the rain, cold and hard, cutting like sharpened daggers into the horror of the prison she is in. . She keeps mumbling incoherently, ‘none of this is real’, and wonders if time will save her. . Her entire essence seems fashioned from memories and lies. Her vision begins to clear, and she wishes it hadn't. Banners flutter outside and herald in the autumn winds. . A man with a cloak, appearing as nothing more than an illusion or a dream, enters. In her weakened state she is entranced as his cloak softly slips from his shoulders. . ‘Am I awake?’ She wonders with unblinking eyes. She feels his hand. It is like a kind hand she had once known, firm and reassuring. . Her teeth chattered. She has been standing at death’s door, numb, for eternity, and the gods have been nowhere... . Final Scene . So in the Kingdom of Darkness he found her. Even in her derelict, shriveled state he found the fruit of her essence nourishing him... . Now they share the same breath, the same heart, and the same flesh again. She starts, and suddenly feels bonded, with a strange, eternal peace and bliss. She sees the same young face as she desired when she was young, a face strong, inseparable. . Sir Greive! She gives him one long, forgiving look, then collapsed in his arms. . He opens the box. A full, ripe grape has taken the place of the dried, shriveled raisin. Their love is renewed. Hope eternal has been fulfilled. . . The End .
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I look forward to reading anything you may come up with as I am sure your creative mind will 
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