Chelu

Kitcho darts through the forest with his heart ablaze, his feet fleeting lightly across the ground.
He runs with an utter passion and the will to survive
Inside him, the spirits of the ancients roar.
His men clash against the ground beside him,
They run furiously carrying the burning words that he has driven into their hearts
Inside them, the spirits of the ancients cry out.
For a moment he captures a glance from one on his left
A nod, an aura, that instills in him the ultimate sense of selflessness
He sees the man�s face manifest a sentiment of neither fury nor courage
And yet� as Kitcho blinks, he senses neither devotion nor allegiance.
But there is something, something he cannot describe
Peering into this man�s soul is like peering through a clouded window,
Yet the man seems much farther than the window, in it
Lies only a vague reflection.
And yet who is this man? Only within a month had he arrived in this land
He comes from nowhere and represents nothing
Will he, could he, give his life for Kitcho�s cause?

In Kitcho�s mind, these spirits- the ancients, his men, and the man -ride on white stallions
beside him and all around him to the fields of victory
their hooves gallop as his heart beats,
the horses reel and his heart ignites
and sends flame through his veins.
It rushes out through the skin. He can feel the tingling and the steaming of his body,
he can feel the sweat dripping down his face and the sand grinding in his toes.
But he is pained by no twig, no log, no splinter, no thorn;
his spirit rides on the river of the eternal and heavenly,
pulling the body along behind it.

And then the running stops.
They have reached the bridge, waterfalls pouring off its edges,
Planks creaking as Kitcho and his clan step out on to it.
This old bridge, he thinks, is not only a bridge between two shores, but between two worlds.
On his side, things have never changed, it is the old world preserved generation after generation,
On the other side lies change itself, and with change, growth. Tremendous growth,
That presses outwards like a bulging, squirming sack of greed and evil.
Kitcho is the needle who, trying to hold it back, breaks its shell and causes it to burst,
Its innards spilling out and destroying all the sanctity of the untouched realms.

His spirit, still gliding down that heavenly river, rises to a new flame as it sets eyes on his enemy.
He is a gruesome, evil looking man, hollow
and empty. Clenching a golden sword, and a silver pistol, he smirks as he sees
that Kitcho�s numbers amount to no more.
And they stand, The one in a stoic, cold, rigid stance,
guided like a malicious faced puppet by some ghost political machine
in his own pride the enemy only thinks that he is strong,
he only thinks that himself and his actions are his own.
And Kitcho stands led not by the ghost hands of a puppeteer,
but by his raging, unstoppable soul, and the spirits of the ancients�
his spirits!
His feet pulse, slowly lobbing his body up and down
Any moment the infernal march will sound out,
And he will leap forward to raze the one to the ground.
They both stand, like living statues, gazing deep into each other
Trying to find their reasons.
Why should anyone so foolishly oppose the inevitable?
Not yield in the face of definite death?
How could one be so willing to erase the past?
It is worth infinitely more than him or anyone else artificial.
An electric hatred rushes between them
They utter no words

The enemy is somewhat stunned, even paralyzed, by this unprecedented rage that he sees
standing before him. He lifts up his pistol, aiming it at Kitcho�s burning heart.

Kitcho sees death, wrapped in silver, running at from a distance
he cannot move, overwhelmed, pure fear sweeps over him,

and fear instantly converts back to anger, he must move!
A thunderous crack lashes into his ears, there is a flash.
But he is in shadow! One of his men has run up in front of him,
unseized by imminent death as he had been.
They go to meet the fiend who seeks their master�s blood,
And they meet with a clash!
Then Kitcho senses something..

His heart beats wildly fast his senses pour in a message that with every moment becomes more and more real and undeniable, and he begins to fall to his knees and pain clamps his eyes like a vice, and he is on his knees beside she who has fallen, and he loses grip on the moment and falls suddenly through black into another time.

�Kitcho don�t!� His holds his sword elevated, and does not swing. �Leave him, please!� He wants to look over, into her eyes, but he can�t look away from the man. The man is still trying to kill him. �Kitcho!� They run away.

�Do you wish to join us?� Kitcho, crouched in his own blood, looks over to the man who has just killed his attacker, and saved him. �I am nowhere bound.� The man says. Kitcho shows a small smile and scampers away to bandage himself. The woman who had been holding him now approaches the hero. �Thanks for saving him� thank you.�

He realized after the battle, as he looked at her, that he had missed a chance at asking for a kiss for luck. The idea turned over in his head again and again. He liked the idea. Next time, he would ask her, and she would kiss him for luck.

They sit up on the cliff, with their legs dangling over. �It�s really not so scary,� she says. �I always sit up here,� Kitcho gazes off into the fog. They sit on the edge of infinity.

�I�m taking the bridge to the city. Kitcho�s away� I want to scope out our enemies.� The wanderer, who had saved her leader, stands in awe of her beauty. �Will you help me.� It is ages before he responds. He wishes she was his. �If you�re going to just stand there��

�I�m scared Chelu.� He won�t look over at her. How beautiful she is! If he looks at her, he may never look away, or worse, he may take away some of that perfection and beauty. He wants to savor her forever, keep her precious and hidden. Heaven forbid he lay hands on her, heaven forbid he lay eyes on her! �What is it?� He makes a gulping sound, she keeps wondering why he won�t look at her. �I�m scared that things will change.�

�I�m afraid Chelu, not of death, but that everything we have held sacred and dear.. here.. I�m scared that it will vanish forever. Damn those bastards! They�ll destroy everything!� She chuckles at him, even though she knows he�s serious. He�s funny when he�s serious. �Kitch-ohh��

�Cheluu!� The evil morbid message that has been dashing through his body reaches his lungs and lips.
Breathing hard, his eyes in a vice, sweating, bleeding, no
It�s her blood. �Cheluuuu!!�
Damned cursed man, no!
A thousand burning suns bounce inside him, he looks up at her killer with orange and white fury
His lips rage and whip, lashing at the air,
at the demons who lay at rest in her heart
her eyes still glisten in the moonlight, her lips are still warm, still red

�It�s lipstick.� She said. �It�s from England. Do you like it?� �Uhh.� Kitcho had to look away.

Reaching up to feel his cheek, he remembers the kiss she had given him before they left, the kiss for luck
It was the first time they had ever�
He ran his sanguine fingers slowly and lightly across his lips, and then hers, feeling red upon red.
She had kissed him on the lips!
How his heart was set on fire. He wondered: was it the spirits of the ancients that spurred him on?
Or her?

Tingling shoots through his limbs, a film lifts from his eyes
For a moment he is in darkness, and then he is on the bridge, in the pouring rain.
Thunder echoes in the valley
Suddenly Kitcho blasts of the ground
running mindlessly without life or death at his side

the silver instrument he holds flies upward and slices the sky
destiny runs to meet him at the hordes of silver demons,
whose screams explode and echo through the night and the ancient realm
with maliciousness and mortality, they dig in to him,
twigs, logs, thorns and splinters bury themselves deep in his skin,
his spirit had already fallen from the river on which it rode,
it can now be contained, it loses it's fire,
the thorns and sharp twigs that scratch their way through his body burn themselves on the fire,
and it goes out.
Kitcho lies watching the sky, black curtains fall slowly over his eyes,
�regrets that he cannot reach over and touch her one more time, the curtains close.

But just before they do, Kitcho sees the man who once saved his life, that mysterious man
Walking slowly over his face, he prevails, all else lie dead, he goes on without wound, to defeat an enemy who is not even his, without vengeance, for she who has died. He will win.


As he knows the water that drips gently upon his face,
To be the same water that fell upon his ancestors in ancient Juno
He somehow perceives the imperishability of time
He sees time restored by the passing of the seasons
water, pouring into the sea, and returning to the earth from a rain cloud.

And Kitcho does not doubt that the autumn flowing through him
is not also the autumn on which his ancestors forged something pure,
and beautiful,
which time, and nothing else, will never let die.