The Three Crones

[badgersandjam.livejournal.com]

were a gestalt entity originally inspired by the Graeae, then combined the the MOrva witches from Lloyd Alexander's Prydein and a few other things.  They felt each other's pain, knew what the other's knew, and had lived four lifetimes each--150 years--as 150-year-olds.  They were slaughtered by a sylphim who thought, mistakenly, they were evil.  They were not.  They were just geniuses to the point of madness (or vice versa), with revolting habits.  I'm looking at retiring Rea and reworking the concept, as revolting is just so much fun...

WORDS

“I don’t think like you do,” said the young Sylphim, superciliously, it must be admitted.  “Beauty simply is.  It doesn’t rely on words.”
The three seated and hooded figures made a noise: a collective intake of breath.  The one on the left levered herself out of her seat and descended on the youth.  “You don’t rely on words?
The Sylphim made a graceful gesture that he felt proved his point.
“You don’t think in words?”
He shook his head.
“What do you do?"
“I shape fire, the perfection of...
“And how do you know what fire is?” the crone interrupted.
“What?  Fire is the perfection of consumption...”
“And when you shape it, what do you do?”
“I channel my desire and knowledge of the element...”
“And how do you know what those things are?  How do you make sense of them inside your head?  You think in words.  Nothing that thinks or feels does not think in words.”
 The figure’s voice grew in intensity.  “You think you fear a Not Dog because it is mute?  No.  Every growl, every wag of tail, is a word.  You can’t make sense of them because you have the wrong vocabulary, but you hear them with the ears that you do not have, and you run.  You see a tree, but what distinguishes you from it is that you see it and think ‘tree,’ and then ‘leaf,’ ‘movement,’ ‘green’ and ‘air’ jumble over inside your brain, whether you want them to or not.  Every thought is a word, every movement between spirits.  A mountain moves in words—just very long ones that many of us haven’t the patience to hear.”
She moved nearer the Sylphim, whose faceted eyes were whirling.  She continued, snapping now.  “Everything you do is a word.  The way you cast your eyes up to the left and hunch your shoulder when you’re annoyed is a word. The twitch of your ring finger when you think is a word.  The sigh of the wind over your sister’s wings is a word.  I see them, I hear them, and I shape them. I shape them all.”  A pale and wizened, taloned hand appeared and poked the Sylphim in the chest.  Off-balance and slightly cowed, he took a nearly-inelegant step backwards.
The eyes he could not see bored into his head.  “Go away.  Don’t come back till you can bring us the heart of a sea serpent.”  The figure turned her back on her victim and stumped into the cave.
As the Sylphim hesitated, a second sister spoke.  “Go, chicken.  You have made us hungry, which is never wise.”  Her voice did something he could not explain to his spine.
As the second sister stumped into the cave, the third made shooing motions with her robe as if it were an apron.  The motions were at the same time familiar and alien.  Disjoint.  Finally his courage deserted him and he fled.