el Rey, el Acuario y la Mora

This little text, I wrote as an entry to a contest of microstories, and based it on an older tale of mine:

"Érase un viudo Rey cuya esposa dejó sólo un tirabuzón bronce, dentro del libro escarlata donde él trazaba su pasión, no con tinta, pero con sus yemas y hálito. Cada noche quemaba un pelo, intentando agostar su duelo, pero el mechón nunca menguó.

Una noche, saturado de sufrir, el Rey incinero tomo y trenza en su hogar. Esa mañana, junto al trono apareció un Acuario abarcando un pez áureo y cuarenta pescaditos plateados. A medida que el pez dorado tragaba a sus vecinos, el Rey conquistaba los suyos, hasta que declaró guerra con su última adversaria, una muda Princesa Mora. Él rechazó su hospitalidad, quemó puertas, rompió paredes y cuando ella, arrodillada, pidió merced, amputó y tomó consigo su negra cabellera como trofeo.

De vuelta al palacio vio al pez gualdo consumiendo su propio cuerpo, desapareciendo; y advirtió que de la bronce cabellera en su mano pendía un volumen carmesí."

the Charcoal, the Blackbird and their Art

There once was a piece of Charcoal, of no shape in particular, amorphous as blackness, shifting there and here, water-like. A mucky onion of infinite layers, sliding over one another, rubbing, as palm over palm, trying to wash away its own dirt.

This Charcoal had its own Art, as wild as graphite is tempered, drawing its flood of forms on the bodies of pebbles and stones, painting their outlines with the dyes of the sands and dust. But never did it draw its own nature, for it could not paint upon thin air; only the shadow of its true self could be traced upon the face of the Earth.

The deep self of the earthy Charcoal was flight, and only as it drew falsehoods, as skin after skin it shed itself, consumed itself in the fire of creation, could it approach its own truth. The dirt gone, the shining Blackbird emerged from her own ashes. And as she shook the ash from her feathers, she realised that she would never draw again as she once had, smearing darkness upon the world believing that the images she traced would last. Instead, she started painting with the world, marking the sand with her feathers, her claws, her beak; but never asking the lines to remain constant, but let the Winds change them as they willed. She threw her ashes into the eye of a whirl and let them melt.