57: In The Face Of Despair

Naida woke up with a snap as Sybaris unwound from her and slithered out of the lamp.  “Wait!”

But the lamia didn’t wait.  She snapped herself out to the limit of the space that Asteri had defined, the roar of the storm outside, beating on chimera wings.

“Syb…” he said plaintively.  “Could we maybe be a little less ‘in your face’?”

“In a little,” she said and held up her hands.

The grey cavern was lit as though the sun itself sat in the stone and Naida started laughing and crying because it was all too much.

“Sing, Snake.”  The Sun God demanded.

The stone itself glowed and up and down it grew niches for itself and in the niches pharaohs sat, with crook and flail and in their faces the sarcastic face against the Greek Gods sat.

And Sybaris writhed and writhed and every coil of her body made another ring in the space of the stone.  “I sing, oh God of the failure of mankind!”

His reaction was a wave of rejection. “What?  You THING would reject mankind?”

“No, oh God, I would reject their failures.”

“What?”

“Oh Gods, they reach for stars and worlds beyond our ken.  They reach for worlds that we as myths cannot comprehend.  We, as quantum design, cannot comprehend analogue and digital.” There was a breath, as Sybaris drew breath.  “We sing of the negative number and the cube root thereof.  We sing of infinite between finite and sequences beyond human comprehension.”  Syb’s voice soared and even as she laid out the limits of human understanding she went beyond it and without His willing it, Apollo’s lyre supported her.

She sang of the infinite within the finite and forever in a single note.  She sang of every harmony and contra-tenor in existence in a single, exaltant chord.  She sang of destruction and creation and yet more destruction and the last and inevitable destruction of everything and she sang of resurrection and rebirth and renewal.  No yin without yang, no yang without yin and her voice soared and sobbed and grieved and praised and raised and gloried in every note.

Apollo laid his lyre down at his knee and let Sybaris’s voice carry the lament and woe of mankind, the glory and the exaltation and the destruction and ash.  All in the human voice.  All in the human understanding.  All in the human despair and in the human refusal to die.  The dance...  is the refusal to lie down, the refusal to rot, the refusal to despair.

In all song is every emotion and in every emotion is every song.  She sang in the face of despair.

Then Apollo took up his lyre again and began playing a coda to her melody, but she always slid and began the cycle anew, refusing to let the song die, even as He tried to force it to a close.

"Snake..." He said, His voice shaking.  "You understand."

He drew breath and said... "You know of despair and destruction and you refuse to bow down to it.  You know."

Sybaris... still singing, spread her hands and bowed deep to the Gods of Olympus.

"I understand We did not limit your access to the world.  So We concur.  You are free in the world.  Do not eat any children and We shall not be forced to confine you."

The lyre hit the stone floor with a jangle that stopped everything.  There was no lyre there, just the sound and the rage of the God and His decision.  Then silence.

And more silence.

Then, creation.