![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Mar. 9th, 2005 10:57 pmThe darkness is not the darkness to begin with, says the book, and Roland knows this to be true. Instead, things are dim, out here beyond the pale.
As time passes things get darker.
Thirty-eight bullets. Thirty-seven, and a bloodsucker with fangs the size of his arm and a wingspan twice the length of his body is dispatched. He'd say it was to Na'ar, or Coffah, or Hell, or whatever you wanted to call it, only Roland is fairly sure that this is it.
The first words in the book (Todash for Dummies, read the dust cover, and if he hadn't set it on fire with one of his precious matches to blind another monster -- this one with tentacles -- before he shot it, he'd still be staring at it and shaking with hysterical rage) are a Manni poem that flew threw his head a lifetime ago:
Beyond the realm of human range
A drop of hell, a touch of strange...
They describe the todash darkness, and while todash is to the Manni the most exalted and holy of states the Manni writer of the book did not stint in his comparisons of this, the darkness between worlds, to Na'ar. Indeed the only difference is the lack of fire.
Roland has to provide that for himself.
A few more hours in, floating and flying and looking around wildeyed for
(can't sleep they'll eat me have to stay alive)
predators, and he can't take the chimes any more, the kammen, with their ringing shaking beauty that makes him grit his teeth and hope to whatever gods there are (none, say sorry) that he won't go mad like the book says most people out in the black do, eventually.
It's the word eventually that he holds on to as he risks holstering long enough to take two of the old hand-thrown wet shells from Gilead out of his pockets. He puts the bullets in his ears, and the movement makes the horn slung over his shoulder twist against his side.
The sound is bearable, though he doesn't know for how long.
Look for doors, suggests the book, but do not trust to hope. There must be someone on the other side to open the door.
Time is not on the gunslinger's side.
Thirty four. Thirty-three. Thirty-two. Thirty-one.
No prisoners, screams Roland Deschain in the todash darkness. No prisoners.
Four less monsters, and as he reloads he drops a bullet -- thirty left -- and he thinks of Milliways suddenly, and the faces of his tet and his friends, and he puts them out of his mind because twenty-nine every friend is now dead, twenty-eight we all float out here, twenty-seven no colors any more I want them to turn black, twenty-six Charyou tree, twenty-five I have to turn my head until my darkness goes, twenty-four he sees the truth and mayn't aid.
Who sees the truth?
As his bullets (and his hope) dwindle, Roland can't remember any more.
As time passes things get darker.
Thirty-eight bullets. Thirty-seven, and a bloodsucker with fangs the size of his arm and a wingspan twice the length of his body is dispatched. He'd say it was to Na'ar, or Coffah, or Hell, or whatever you wanted to call it, only Roland is fairly sure that this is it.
The first words in the book (Todash for Dummies, read the dust cover, and if he hadn't set it on fire with one of his precious matches to blind another monster -- this one with tentacles -- before he shot it, he'd still be staring at it and shaking with hysterical rage) are a Manni poem that flew threw his head a lifetime ago:
Beyond the realm of human range
A drop of hell, a touch of strange...
They describe the todash darkness, and while todash is to the Manni the most exalted and holy of states the Manni writer of the book did not stint in his comparisons of this, the darkness between worlds, to Na'ar. Indeed the only difference is the lack of fire.
Roland has to provide that for himself.
A few more hours in, floating and flying and looking around wildeyed for
(can't sleep they'll eat me have to stay alive)
predators, and he can't take the chimes any more, the kammen, with their ringing shaking beauty that makes him grit his teeth and hope to whatever gods there are (none, say sorry) that he won't go mad like the book says most people out in the black do, eventually.
It's the word eventually that he holds on to as he risks holstering long enough to take two of the old hand-thrown wet shells from Gilead out of his pockets. He puts the bullets in his ears, and the movement makes the horn slung over his shoulder twist against his side.
The sound is bearable, though he doesn't know for how long.
Look for doors, suggests the book, but do not trust to hope. There must be someone on the other side to open the door.
Time is not on the gunslinger's side.
Thirty four. Thirty-three. Thirty-two. Thirty-one.
No prisoners, screams Roland Deschain in the todash darkness. No prisoners.
Four less monsters, and as he reloads he drops a bullet -- thirty left -- and he thinks of Milliways suddenly, and the faces of his tet and his friends, and he puts them out of his mind because twenty-nine every friend is now dead, twenty-eight we all float out here, twenty-seven no colors any more I want them to turn black, twenty-six Charyou tree, twenty-five I have to turn my head until my darkness goes, twenty-four he sees the truth and mayn't aid.
Who sees the truth?
As his bullets (and his hope) dwindle, Roland can't remember any more.
