Chapter 9 - Images: Available Light

Here’s a little (very little actually) something that I came up with the other day. This is one of my favorite Rush tunes and it was going through my head when I realized this fit a theme from Images I did, as well as described a good bit of the game. If by chance you remember that story, it was about Arelius losing his identity after losing his soul and being turned into a drow male. Here’s a little prequel that leads up to the story, fills in a significant part of Arelius’s story, and follows what many of us have done now in putting songs into our stories.

 

Title: Images: Available Light

The restless wind
Has seen all things
In every kind of light
Rising with the full moon
To go howling through the night

The sleepless wind
Has heard all things
Between the sea and sky
In the canyons of the city
You can hear the buildings cry

Oh the wind can carry
All the voices of the sea
Oh the wind can carry
All the echoes home to me

So many days since we first were captured by the shark men. The petty squabble they entwined me in left me with no clear choice of good. Was I to kill them all, take sides vs. one evil of lesser quantity than the other, or simply leave them to their fate? So many voices in my head that lead to decisions of disgrace. What would my decisions leave me with were they known by the men and women who travel the sea? Would I secure passage again to any place if all knew I helped a sworn enemy of humanity to live once more? Would the souls of those dragged beneath the waves cry to me for their vengeance?

Run with wind and weather
To the music of the sea
All four winds together
Can’t bring the world to me
Chase the wind around the world
I want to look at life
In the available light

And now we stand in darkness, where twilight has no meaning. No seascape to look out over. No sunrise to reflect off its waves. No light at all, except the eerie twinkling of phosphorous that seeps from the many cracks and crevices of the caves. And somewhere above and far away, is home. Would that I could reach it now, and stand within its freshness.

I see the images of home in my mind. Even those of the bloodied halls of my beloved Candlekeep suffice. Anywhere but here in the Underdark. We must secure passage to the surface before I lose myself. Jaheira complains of the stifling nature of this place, yes, even here in the bowls of her beloved earth. We both are becoming someone else in this place, and it worries me.

Play of light
A photograph
The way I used to be
Some half-forgotten stranger
Doesn’t mean that much to me

Trick of light
Moving picture
Moments caught in flight
Make the shadows darker
Or the colors shine too bright

Oh the light can carry
All the visions of the sea
Oh the light can carry
All the images to me

The locket. I hold it in my hand and look at the image it holds. Jaheira’s beauty radiates throughout it and leaves me with feelings of strangeness. I look at the blue neck the trinket now drapes upon and the way the gold plays against her skin. Who is she? Is Jaheira still in there? Am I there anymore? Who is this owner of these faces that look back at me? Jaheira the half-eleven fighter I fell so strongly in love with, or Vusta, the drow that begs to be my master, as others of her imagined heritage have claimed. I remember the actions of buying her the locket, yet now the image it holds only looks back at me hollowly.

‘We shall not know who we are until we walk a mile in another man’s shoes.’ I heard those words once, but never knew I would fulfill them in such a way. Shall I leave my old self behind for this new person? Shall I embrace this new image, and see if it can fill the hole that claims more of me each day?

My hands are not my own. My skin is not of my birthright. My soul no longer travels with me, stolen by another even less worthy of it than myself. Yet I find myself longing for destruction, to feel the power of this new identity.

Run to light from shadow
Sun gives me no rest
Promise offered in the east
Broken in the west
Chase the sun around the world
I want to look at life
In the available light

All four winds together
Can’t bring the world to me
Shadows hide the play of light
So much I want to see
Chase the light around the world
I want to look at life

In the available light

Available Light
Neal Peart, Rush

 

So there you have a little something. Notice the lines above about the promise offered in the east broken in the west. Spellhold was west of Athkatla. Coincidence?

Arelius