"Memory"
by Anonymous

Picture: "A Gargoyle's Solitude" ~ Cabilassus Mastessius

I was the first to awaken. Awareness began with the warmth of her lips upon my chest, warmth that served to bridge the gap between her bright soul and the cold, inert granite of my core. I have no heart, and this is something of which my creator would often remind me in the years to come. When I feel, I feel with my entirety.

Amidst the debris of experimentation and ritual, I was the first of her stone children to awaken, the first success of all her bright obsessions. Her breath had given me the spark, and the ritual had transmuted the kiss into the willpower necessary to make stone live. My conscience, having leapt full-grown from her into me, was born consumed with the one thought that would always confound me.

"Why?"

"Hush," she would coo and answer, "the animate should not worry about these things."

In this way, I suppose, I was simply flawed.

I was the first, the original, but not to be the last. There, in her cavernous workshop and fueled by the bright fires of her madness, my creator brought forth life. I was to be the pattern, the companion ever at her side to serve as blueprint to her designs. The rituals that had birthed me were refined and smelted down to the bare minimum of components, gestures, and syllables.

She would call me her most glorious broken mold, and when these words would cause me to bridle and grow sullen, she would feel this and laugh. I had no heart, but the wee spark of her I owned gave me the shadowy semblance of a soul. "Do not pout so. You will always be my first and most rewarding. The effort and spirit I gave you far exceeds what your younger siblings possess."

"Why?"

She would just smile, my mad creator, and grace my ever-furrowed brow with another kiss. For a time, I would be content.

A hundred nights, a hundred nights more, and then again and again until time began to weigh upon her shoulders and paint the locks of her hair with snow. Each night would find the ritual completed anew. Each night a brother would awaken to my mad goddess's kiss and would ask, "How may I serve?"

They were efficient, they were powerful, and they were strongly made even for being called forth by nothing but song, kiss, and stone. I envied them, though not for their forms that were akin to mine seen in the reflection of a crystal mountain pool. No, I envied them their purity of purpose. Each one that awoke and questioned was given a task: a small portion of her treasures to protect; a piece of land to guard; a threat to defend against. They would march outside into the world beyond, a world I had glimpsed but briefly through the kiss that sparked me, and they would be gone.

How sane am I with a creator who herself was touched with obsession? The ritual, so oft repeated, began to echo about the cavern until each reverberation itself became able to animate and call forth form from the mountain's heart. The vibrations of her shuffling steps set the earth's tempo to the imitation of a heartbeat coupled with the march of all my yet-to-come brothers. Only then, when the ritual had slipped into the very fabrics of reality, did she cease her dance.

"Why?" I asked her, taking the frail shadow of her substance into my cold, stone hands. I held nothing but the echo of an echo, and the fire within her began to flicker. She exhaled slowly, breathing one last kiss into the chilled air of the cavern's interior.

"I wish to see the sun..."

I followed the well-worn paths my brothers had used to reach the outside world; ignoring those reflections I passed as if they were not but shadows. In a sense they were, shadows created by the dying ember within my arms and I was not a mold, but a silhouette. I stepped out into the soul-familiar but never before seen world and gazed up at the merciless stars. My creator stirred, and I whispered to her, "Soon". Her faded eyes opened to my hollowed ones, and I sensed her own impending "soon", and I knew which would arrive first. With what grace granite can manage, I cradled her to my stone frame and began to climb.

Upward, past the point where green things cease to grow, past where stone cannot exist without a coat of ice or snow, upward to where my creator's unsteady breath would appear and join with the clouds around us. Upwards I climbed, as the night spun out above us and the fate of her life spun out in my arms. I pressed the one who had given me life against my granite chest and willed the warm remains of that first kiss to sustain her against the cold. We raced the inevitable conclusion.

There, upon the summit of some unnamed range, I stood with ungraceful stone wings wrapped around her. I know not what I sought to protect her from, only that I wished to keep her here. To the east, I saw the first glimmer of the sun's ascent. I opened my wings and eyes wide and held my creator so I could watch with her the first sunrise I had ever seen. As the sun's pink morning rays fell upon us, bright and piercing regardless of their lack of warmth, my creator at last told me why.

I held her until she left me. The winds eventually stole the silent remains away from my arms, one quiet piece of dust at a time. Each morning now, I rise from where I sit upon the peak and greet the sun with open arms and wings as I did that first time and will forever more. On those days in which storm-gray clouds close the heavens to me, I spend my time simply remembering her.

My granite is now as polished by the constant buffing of the wind as is her story by my cumbersome thoughts. I have no heart, but the core of me is still filled with the power of her breath, given to me by the grace of a simple kiss. I was the first to awaken, and though flawed, I am content.

My name is Memory