Rift

by Miriam Nicholson

Long before the world was cut in two,

in a time when I was young and new,

lived the family who brought me to life:

a lovely husband and his wife.

They planned my hills and planted my forests;

rose my mountains and smoothed my valleys.

They created beings of every kind

and filled my lovely seas with life.

As they ruled the people of my land,

an air of freshness was forever in the air.

Full of possibilities and life,

keeping all who breathed it young and fit.

When all my rivers had run and my lake’s been formed,

there came a time where my creator and his wife

were to create their own life.

A son was born,

with hair as deep as the earth and eyes as silver as the sky.

He was a lovely little guy.

There was only one trait that he seemed to lack,

which was always discussed with tact.

He lacked the light in his father’s eyes,

the one that had formed my skies.

He couldn’t make my flowers grow,

or change the night to day.

I never did know why this would cause him to go away.

In heated tones his parents talked,

starting to form a rift.

The young air of my land

didn’t seem so quick.

Magic, as I heard it called,

seemed to mean a lot.

It seemed to be the

only reason they fought.

Yet the boy didn’t seem to care,

as we played in my field.

I’d listen to his stories and tickle his bare feet.

The conflict that magic had caused

seemed to fade away.

Till the years in which

his siblings came into play.

As magic filled his brother he was very glad,

but as the years dragged by, he became so mad.

His playful feet now stomped on me,

creating bruises in my heart.

I still loved the boy

but magic tore us apart.

His stories became less happy

and stopped as time went by.

Tension was a new aspect

that played across my sky.

As his family grew to five

a burning hatred came alive.

One by one each member of his clan

became devices to the first boy’s plan.

I could feel the hatred burning in my skin

as he simply let it burn him within.

While he continued to get mad, I couldn’t help

but become extremely sad.

This boy, once bright and cheerful,

had become dark and hateful.

My land once fresh and new

was slowly being torn in two.

Magic that had given me life

was the beginning of my world’s strife.

His parent’s couldn’t reach him;

the argument’s he’d win.

He didn’t let them near,

but embraced his fear.

He was tired of being laughed at

and told about his “can’t”s.

An embarrassment to his father,

he never felt like he belonged.

So he went along,

singing his lonely song.

As hate and longing burned in his chest,

one thought burned brighter than the rest.

“Fear rules the world,” he told me one night,

“And magic rules fear. If I can gain control of others

then I’ll gain their magic too.

I will gain magic to make my father proud.

Then I won’t ever be the laughing stock of the crowd.”

And so he led the way into a dreary fight.

The vision he had seen could not have been more right.

When he ran away to seek out his fame,

he began a very deadly game.

His footsteps were so swift

and hungry across my plains.

A man of ambition with everything to gain.

I felt something deeper brewing in his soul.

Something cold and dark but warm, like heated coal.

It radiated darkness, fear and more.

An experience that will always leave me sore.

I left him then to his darkening path,

though I knew that someday he’d surely be back.

The years went by without him,

his siblings in their adult stage.

They seemed to have forgot him,

but they were in his cage.

They feared his darkness that glowed in his eyes

till that fateful day when the city was full of cries.

“He’s coming! He’s here!” They ran and cried with fear.

And so he became what he always wanted, a living breathing nightmare.

What he did with his family then simply wasn’t fair.

He chased them through my caves and across my plains.

Through the lonely nights and terrible magic fights.

Till that night in the cave where only two were saved.

His mother put up a wall,

so her children wouldn’t fall.

She sacrificed herself for them

. If they only could have all been saved then.

He used his newfound power to break her gate

and when she fell she sealed her fate.

He cursed her and dragged her to the old throne room,

where he in turn would meet his own doom.

I watched in horror as one by one,

he stole their power, every one.

Till only his father and mother remained;

to each of them he did the same.

In a flash of burning fire

he gained his heart’s desire.

HIs father’s red and his mother’s blue,

but from his mother came something new.

A prophecy escaped her lips,

one that formed so many rips.

When her last words were spoken,

another part of me was broken.

The once proud castle tumbled to ruin,

the beginning of the lands undoing.

A rift formed across my land,

civil war, crumbling the government like sand.

All my rivers turned red like blood,

spreading like a deadly flood.

Husband and wife were quite near me,

but I couldn’t reach them, not really.

I could hear their hearts beat in their lonely sphere,

a sign of life, but I couldn’t venture near.

Hate and fear, vengeance and malice,

filled me especially in the silence.

Oh how I wished it would end as rain fell like blood.

Please I cannot take this hateful flood.

Yet what hurt the most as scars divided my people

was how I still loved the man who’d brought this all to pass.

I tried to reach him but his heart was gone to me.

The moment magic was brought here

it was tearing me apart.

How I wished it would be gone,

that I’d never come to be.

As the fighting progressed in a downwards bend

there never seemed to be an end.

The years have gone swiftly by, each one worse than the one behind.

Yet here I sit, waiting, dreaming, for the day that comes to end my being.

I’ve lost all feeling almost though I can still feel the blood fest raging.

Magic is swiftly dying and when it goes I’ll be at peace.

I can feel the boy above me now and hear his words of regret.

And though I wish I could, I cannot forget.

Let me die with magic,

please just let me die.