The Lake of Tears

“I could not bear to see it.
My son, my dear Cthulhu, my horrid, wretched spawn,
Sealed away forever, and his mother just her pawn.”
Our mother lay knotted all over herself, a mass of twisting scales, feathers, and limbs as she shuddered and shook out the words.

“She has been like that for months, crying rivers, crying us,” the eldest of us remarked.

It was true; for as long as I could remember, we had laid here in this wasteland, watching her as she made us, every tear adding to our strength while she withered away.
Each day and night she mourned without end, repeating her sorrow and regret.

“If she doesn’t eat something soon, what will happen to her?” The youngest of us asked. “She’s so thin I can see her bones.”

“Surely she will starve. She’s already so parched as it is.” My elder concluded.

“What if we can feed her?” I suggested.

“We already tried that,” our eldest reminded me.“Snakes, dogs, horses, rabbits, rats; she refuses even cows.”

We each shuddered as we remembered trying it; it was a desperate act to trade one life for another, and our mother had been utterly repulsed.

“No, I mean, what if we can feed her?” Our sisters looked at me in confusion as the words burbled out of me. “Let me try,” I decided, and I approached our mother and brought my finger to her lips. “Drink, dear mother. Sip now from my body and heal yourself. Put an end to your self-imposed drought.”
But as I did so, she pursed her lips and swiped at me, so I hastily backed away.

“Curse be upon you, my children!
Cease your pity for it is a fruitless aim;
The very sight of you tortures me with thoughts of his victim-hood and my blame.
No matter what I do to you, you have remained there, your machinations set;
Your watery faces reflect every facet of my regret.
Four months I have suffered your endless draining, but you cannot replace the son that I have known.
No more tears will you get from me; now go away and leave me alone.”
As she gave her ultimatum, she returned to her shuddering chant, and returned to our sisters hopeless.
My elder tried to console me, but I could see the despair in each of our eyes.

“Maybe we really should leave her. It’s what she desires,” I offered.

“But I cannot bear to go. She made us what we are. It’s only right that we should stay.” Our youngest interjected.

“What shall we do?” My elder asked our eldest.

And our eldest looked over at our mother in her pitiful state.
“I do not know. She refuses food. She refuses drink. She denies our affection and even abhors our presence. How can I implore our youngest to leave? I cannot bear to leave our mother in this state myself, nor can I bear to give our sister such torment. Yet we must leave her.”

“What could we do?” our youngest asked, and as soon as she had asked it, she seized upon the ground, limbs outstretched in each direction and staring blinklessly up at the Moon.
A shimmer crossed her face as the beam reflected, and she suddenly splashed upright as if nothing had occurred. “I know what we must do,” she said calmly, and she started to gather some timber.

The three of us hounded her for answers, but she did not answer, nor did she even seem to acknowledge our presence.
She just kept gathering sticks, twigs, logs, any wood she could find around us and placing it into a pile.
Then she lunged at me and held me firmly.

“Go to the abandoned camp where we got the cows. Bring us a cauldron. Please, sister, I urge you,” she shook me.
I pressed her for more information, but she would not divulge anything.
“It told me I could not tell anyone. Go, sister, go!” she bawled, desperate to convince me.
And when I finally relented, she released me and shoved me on my way.

The dim light of the heavens illuminated my path across the wasteland, just barely revealing its scars as I dribbled along.
I toed along floral corpses covered in fungi, new sprouts just barely emerging from their stumps.
I crawled past desiccated skeletons picked clean of anything useful, broken and strewn about.
We were unsure what had produced them, but whatever mother they had we believed must have despised her creations.
Then I reached the mutilation: a camp of wood, metal, and fire stripped from their owners’ bodies, cobbled together to form hollow homunculi which stored furs, straw, and cloth, now caved in and charred black by some well-deserved judgment.
And here I was, about to loot it and continue this graveyard’s torment.
The thought filled me with dread, the evil deed I surely was committing, to serve my sister’s evil pile of limbs, for an unknown purpose I could not hope to understand.
But I pressed on.
Each putrid abode’s stink of death penetrated my form as I moved toward the center of the camp.
Little creatures whose silhouettes I could not discern skittered away as I approached.

Then I saw it: a ring of stakes, stuck into the ground and stood as trees, as if to mock the awful deeds done to get them, and branches hung from each as a bramble of threats to nymphs who might dare take them away.
Beyond it I saw a second circle of trunks cleaved in half, raised upon pillars of stone, sisters laid next to brothers, their butchered flesh bared up before Heaven.
And in the center was the most horrid of the sights.
A pile of wood just alike as our youngest had gathered, its evil charred remains, and a cauldron hanging from a noose, Earth’s skull laid on display.

Petrified, I stared at it; its sockets pierced me back.
But its tired eyes held no malice; its jaws laid open slack.
“Forgive me what I am about to do,” I whispered as I approached.
Then I stepped up to the cauldron and, trembling, untied the rope.

The journey back was grueling as I dragged the thing behind me, but before too long, I had returned, and my sister came to guide me.

“Hoist it, quickly, quickly!” she insisted, and she directed my gaze to the blazing pyre and the gallows she had raised.

I fought her, but it was no use, the evil had truly claimed her.
So out of love, I lifted it up, tied the knot, and helped re-hang the pot.
With the work prepared, she turned to us.
And crying, she dove headfirst into the pot.
Her screams rattled out of the cauldron as her body hissed and popped, shrill wails of agony and torment as her own evil act consumed her.
But her agony was the lesser of the horrors, for her words gripped us each like lambs to a slaughter.

“Join me! Join me! Leap into the cauldron!” she cried, a siren song pulling us toward her as steam rose up out of the pot.
I gazed down from the gallows as her body hissed itself apart, mere grains of salt remaining as a reminder of her decay.
My elders gathered next to me and beheld our sister’s horrid plight, then our eldest dove in after her, as if possessed by her evil’s might.
I tried to leave, to resist, to escape the gaping maw, and get as far away as I could from my sisters’ beckoning calls.
But before I could even take a step, having merely turned around, my elder shoved me backward, down into the metal skull’s screaming bowels.
As I drowned in my sister’s own bubbles and reached up to claw my way out of the top, my elder too dove on top of me, and we all dissolved down into nought.

The first thing I recall is the heat.
Heavy, dense, a fire was burning inside me begging to burst out and collapse in on itself.
And as it got heavier and heavier, I felt my thoughts solidify.
<Where am I? What happened to me?>
I imagined what horrible fate I must have suffered, to be so hot and suffering, barely able to think.
But anything I pictured were as apparitions, morphing in shape and nature the longer I held them in focus, so I doubted that anything may have happened at all.
<Am I even real? Am I alive? Am I dead?>
All that was sure to me was my heat, my density, and my weight.
I imagined such a thing as that must be some sort of superstructure, some being of great magnitude.
Then I pictured curling, twisting limbs.
Tentacles, wings, and claws I imagined, but even the sensations I had of myself felt malleable and unstable in my mind.
<I feel disordered and clouded, clasped by insanity!>
So I doubted even my senses.
<But what is reality? Is it a dream? Am I the dreamer, or the dreamed?>
My mind spiraled and looped as I tried to comprehend my own madness.
<If I know nothing, how is it that I can imagine such things as I cannot remember seeing? What dreams, what limbs, what claws, what sleep of death or life? What heat, what weight, what persistent, enduring Strife?>

As I focused in on these questions, the madness, the chaos cleared; I opened my eyes and beheld the creature which I feared.
Black feathered wings and disheveled hair, green streaking tears around her cheeks from her bruised-blue eyes, with dried blood matting her face filled my view.
Her blackened teeth held rusty scales, and her tongue was sickly and decaying.
And between hgr eyes was a bright green torch, its flame flickering, daring me toward aggression.
As I gazed upon the gruesome countenance, a movement caught my attention: three snakes slithering across her face, and the vision faded, the image losing definition.
Her features scattered to a sea of lights, the red, green, orange, and blue.
Her tongue melted into a morose figure, a wretch stewing in his demise.
But the snakes grew wings and flew at me, three dragons of heavy lights.

<Dear sister,> they beckoned, <come with us; the Emperor will help you.>

<We are sisters?> I questioned them, and they circled around me.

<We do not remember, but he says we are. You are a dragon of stars like us, so we have come for you.> They answered, and they pulled me along with them.

As I contemplated their words, I realized that what they had said must be true, for the heat and weight were within me, and my bright, shifting tendrils were proof.
I could see the lights more clearly now, a stellar nursery of celestial bodies, each glowing, and some having more minuscule creatures upon them.
At the center we came upon a dead space devoid of new life, a single jade-green star obliterating anything that came too near to its sights.
I tried to turn back as I saw it, lest I be burned by his judgmental glare, but my sisters held me fast.

<Be not afraid. This is the Emperor. Come with us. We are nearly there.> they urged me forward, and I cautiously approached his beaming death.

“Why do you approach me instead of staying in your nebula and behaving yourself? Do you not see the pitiful, evil wretch upon my feet?” the great Emperor challenged, and he readied his beam of annihilation.
At the terrible sight, I fell before him in fear.

As I writhed like a worm before him, he answered.
“I will grant you that terrible knowledge, but you will not appreciate what you have learned.”

Immediately, thoughts and images rushed through us, stinging from all directions, and we curled up in fear as the horror, the agony, and the madness returned with a vengeance, the boiling cauldron so potent and clear.

<Make it stop!> I screamed internally, paralyzed by the horrid grief, but the memories would not relent until each one robbed us of any relief.
When the torrent of pain finally subsided, I turned back to the Emperor with sorrowful shame.
<Can you do anything for our mother?> I asked, but his eyes revealed only disdain.

“Out of my sight, you wretches! By the power vested in me, your mother will receive help only by my design. Now return to Earth where your memories bind you, before I eradicate you with brimstone and flame.”

The Jade Emperor cast us away from the foul beast he harbored, and our madness overcame us.
The sea of lights dimmed to sparse pin pricks in the canvas of the dark, and our own light evaporated into a spray.
In the separation beneath the heavens, we clung at each other in desperation.
But our droplets of tendrils, wings, and claws merged into a turbid amalgamation.
As we loomed above the Earth, we saw again the desolate waste down below and the horrid results of our evil deed which left our mother alone in her sorrow.

She had moved next to the cauldron, moaning not just for Cthulhu, but for all her fallen spawn.
Then, as the embers came to fade, she curled inside it herself to rot away, chanting her regrets as she hoped she soon would also be gone.

“Curse be upon me, my children!
Cease my living;
Let death be my claim!
The very lack of you torments me with thoughts of your victim-hood and my shame!
No matter how you tried to help me, I remained steadfast in forcing you away with ill intent;
Now I am left with nothing but my misery and my lament.
I could not bear to face them.
I abandoned all my horrid, beautiful spawn.
Cthulhu, Long, Huang, Heilong, Zhu!
I failed each of you, and the arrows of Fate have been drawn.”

As we beheld our dismal mother assaulting herself with our corpses, each twist and turn inside the dead mouth of the cauldron salting her body out of its life, grief struck us like a storm.
We recalled the Emperor’s frightful claim, and it darkened our resolve into defiance.

<We must save our mother!> Long decreed, and the rest of us concurred.

<But how could we help her? She cannot hear us.> young Zhu wondered, and again she seized before us.
With a violent, bright crack, we split in half, and three moons circled around us.

“COULD KILL HER, BLACK STARS,” they answered, then they vanished before the words reached our heads.

We looked down at our mother below with trembling limbs and saw her staring back at us.
Her eyes were glazed with moonbeams’ glow, but they reflected no recognition, as if she had merely heard the voice.

“Kill me! Kill me!” she screeched, her throat a broken record echoing out of the metal.

We could not bear to do it.
Our mother, wretched as she was, was the sole home of our affection.
So we hovered there in stalemate, dark clouds without direction.

Hours stretched into daylight, and the shore’s tide receded; the day cooked our salted mother slowly.
Her scales cracked and feathers caked, all the while pleading we kill her.
Every moment was horrific, every second stretched on and on.
The heat pulled ourselves into a pair of long, tattered black wings, the yellow Sun in between like a looming reaper.
Our mother’s moans yet never ceased, nor did our resistance decline.
Then fell the Sun beneath the lake of Manu, and the night gave us some respite.
The calm was slight, but sorely cherished, for although our mother did rot, her suffering was lesser then due to the cooling of the pot.

Each following day, the Sun returned and nature ran its course; the salt breached into her cracked scales, their coarse grains, our bodies, burning her flesh as we watched helplessly in horror.
Burns turned to scars, and her scarred flesh shriveled and hardened, until she could no longer twist and writhe.
Yet still begged for our release, her echoes turning hoarse.

On the tenth day, two Suns rose, twins together scorching the Earth.
Our wings outstretched to blanket her, but we could not stop their ascension.
As midday came, they reached the space between, the veil pierced by their light.
Two eyes of the storm scorching, their glaring ending life.
Her hardened flesh split open, her feathers falling out; her sun-black skin feathered upward, and her organs tasted their wrath.
Smoke billowed up between us, a thin veneer of ash, and her moaning finally croaked quiet as her vocal chords collapsed.
But as we watched below us in horror, we knew our mother was yet alive, for her sizzling entrails revealed her twisting had merely moved inside.

As the Suns returned behind our dark cover, we saw what little of her remained: a mass of intestines, lungs, hearts, and organs, twisting upon themselves and knotting, yet possessed by her misery.
We saw that she could not die, that she must be some greater beast than we were, and without us her agony would continue, for her daughters and son were not with her.

<Perhaps we really should kill her. It’s what she desires,> I suggested, and my sisters burst into an uproar.

<How could you abandon our mother?> Zhu challenged, unwilling to think we could leave her.

And Huang came to her aid to console her.
<I know, Zhu, but we are hurting her if we just observe her.>

Then Long proposed a burial.
<I cannot bear to keep watching.
It will never cease and only worsen.
We know her suffering will continue, and ours will continue through her.
Let us go down, meet our maker, and put her to her pitiful rest.
We need not leave her; we must only end her life.>

Zhu reluctantly agreed, seeing her sister’s reason, and together we descended down around the cauldron and the gallows as a thick, dark fog.
Dew spread across the surface of the wastes as we stepped up to our mother, and we lowered her from the gallows and carried her to the earth.
Her worm-like guts wrestled out of our grasp and spread across the ground when Long grabbed the heavy, iron skull and ground her body down.
Zhu fell beside her mother’s corpse, that grimy, squished up carcass, and we joined her as she sought the words her heart felt needed to surface.

As she finished her eulogy, she turned to me and pointed to the fire.
<Burn her now before it gets too wet; put an end to her endless regret.>

I grabbed the moistening, charred-up logs and stripped them of their dewy exterior.
Then Zhu took them and rubbed them together until flames flickered out, and we spread embers across our mother’s wriggling meal.
The singes squealed as they each blazed, but before long, they all went out; the deed was done.
Our mother laid flayed as ashes strewn about.

Zhu’s sadness grew thick, her fog collecting, and she rained on our mother in sorrow.
We followed her, and our rainy tears pooled the land into misty, foggy lake.
Long’s clear streaming formed the basin; Huang’s yellow mist coated the surface; my black tears weaved throughout them; Zhu’s mixed in pearly white; and our mother’s ashes swirled up from the depths.
To our shock, an apparition rose from within it, walking along the water.
Her body was of water so clear that no shape could be discerned from her form.
Only the tattered yellow cloak indicated her presence by virtue of it being worn.
From the back of it sprung two feathered black wings as long as she was tall.
Lastly, a faceless pearlescent mask greeted us as she rose from the depths.

Before we could process the illusion, eleven stars crashed down in our wake.
They whisked us away to face the judgment of the nebula we had scorned.

“Do you know what evil you have done!?” the Emperor screamed as the stars thrust us into the vapid stage of his ascent.
“You have helped your mother, one of my Twelve, in direct, defiant dissent!
By Mar,a; by Eros; by Iblis,
You have made the Unspeakable!
Now you will all suffer endless torment!
Great Mother, you go to the fringes,
Where your wretchedness you cannot incur.
Shepherd the mindless, voiceless souls to oblivion;
A reprieve you yourself will never endure.
Fallen Ryu, this nebula will replace you;
Neko’s Eye shall claim your seat.
For your new domain is poor Hali,
A constant reminder of your bitter conceit.
And you, horrid children, will go with her!
With four mountains will I seal you away.
I will reduce you to nothing but rivers
Which flow from the plateau of Leng.”

As he made the proclamation, our vapory mother watched as we were whisked away to the edges of carcass-laid Carcosa where the mountains made us their claim.
We flowed down from their peaks into the basin, our waters reforming the lake, but each color remained divided, a mosaic of separation and pain.
Our mother walked atop us in the mist, and she forged The Yellow Sign as her throne.
Then she gazed at the heavens above her and waited patiently for night to wane, watching as decans marked down the hours and the Green Star descended into the mouth of Night.

“Let the red dawn surmise what we shall do,
When this Jade starlight dies, and all is through.”

Dawn broke open her gates and ushered in the reign of the Sun, and our mother came to our convergence in the early hour and whispered to us her plan.

“I refuse to sit and bear it, to be made just another god’s pawn. I trust you too revile the star that tortures you, my spawn?”

I was unable to answer, my faculties rendered mute, but I splashed at her and hoped it delivered my agreement.
Then my sisters followed suit.
Our mother smiled down upon us as we responded to her in kind, but she needed to be certain, so she devised a method to divine.

“If you still may answer me, raise your waters with the truth.
Each one of you spray your name in streams, and I will accept the feat as proof.”

One by one, we jettisoned our waters in the air; she embraced us as she witnessed the display, for she knew we were still there.

“My daughters, my lovely daughters,
I worried for you so!
I love you more than I express;
More than I ever show.
You gave kindness when I needed it most,
Even though I refused.
In my sick madness I did protest;
I am so sorry for how I abused!
You have forgiven me with unyielding grace,
Even when my life was thin.
Now while I am without a face,
Know I too will not give in.
Flow down now from this lost plateau,
As the great Jade Emperor demanded!
But with you, carry the things I know;
Do for me as you are commanded.
Flow across the waste to the sea
And throughout the land.
Make haste with my soliloquy;
Her evil will not stand!
Relate to the dragons the evil deeds
Which I shall disclose to you.
Render vengeance for my sealed seed;
To those who doomed Cthulhu!”