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Lady Birdweather and the Bellatrix of Orion ~ By Christine Wichman c. 2014
This story is dedicated to Ruby & Dahlia, and the muse!
Visuals and Concepts can be found here:
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Once upon a time in a cave beyond the Sea, there dwelled a den of misplaced Nobility…
A Countess, A Queen and a Fine feathered Lady.
The Countess was dark with tales of an obscure musical land, they called her de Stormm, Countess de Stormm.
She was a handsome woman dripping in rubies.
The Queen was quite a lazy woman who lounged in bed all day, drinking Claret through the night, like a Vampire.
Yet in her sleepiness, still an undefined beauty who spun words of gold and honey.
Finally Lady Birdweather, mistress of the manor and all forms of poetry. She walked in beauty like the night, a pearl, an opalescent.
Her truth the beacon that lit the cave of it’s perpetual darkness.
On the eve of the twelfth of never, a stranger appeared in their midst, a star in her own right. A voice, childlike with the tone of a bell.
She came baring questions.
“Lady Birdweather, how do you do?” and so on.
The Nobles gathered themselves in their current state of dissarray around a fanciful table in the formal dinning room and allowed the stranger a proper visit.
“Tell us your name child,” spoke the Countess, as she poured from the pot of Darjeeling.
“Bellatrix of Orion.” she squeaked.
“Hmmm, you are quite shiny,” The Queen batted her lashes and licked the sugar spoon.
“I believe I’ve heard of you.” stated Lady Birdweather.
“Well I suppose you have, I am rather famous. Not so famous as Betelguese, but less obscure than Rigel.
Lady Birdweather set out the tray of macarons, fluffed her skirts and took a seat beside the visitor.
“I’ve only made mint today, do you fancy a mint macaron?”
“Yes please.” The shiny child placed a linen napkin in her lap and helped herself to the chartruese morsel.
“I’ve never met a real star before.” blinked the Queen.
“What are you on about,” scoffed the Countess, “You have met legions of stars, millions in fact.”
“I’m sure that is a bit of an exaggeration,” The Queen lifted a silver goblet of Claret to her lips and rolled her eyes.
“No honestly, she’s met them all,” The Countess waved her tea cup to the left then took a sip to emphasize her point.
“Hmm, have you met Monet?” asked the child.
“Why I think in colors, I speak in colors, he and I are kindreds really. Color is my day long obsession, he told me once. The rest of that story is quite sad though… let’s change the subject shall we?” The Queen closed her eyes and nodded off into one of her narcoleptic seizures.
“Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment…” quoted Bellatrix, ” to such an extent indeed that one day, finding myself at the deathbed of a woman who had been and still was very dear to me, I caught myself in the act of focusing on her temples and automatically analyzing the succession of appropriately graded colors which death was imposing on her motionless face.”
The Queen jolted awake, “Told you it was sad.”
Lady Birdweather and The Countess de Stormm, sat looking off into space. Death as a topic will do that to those of a deep nature.
For a while there was silence.
Lady Birdweather broke through the somberness with her own statement of purpose. “My soul may be color, but Ink is my… blood, parchment my heart. I must turn the colors of my soul into black inky emotion, in order to breathe. In order to exist.”
The others looked at her, in her moment of revelation. It was beautiful really. Lights beamed from her eyes and danced about the cave, like crystals catching the reflection of a sun ray.
“And Music is my…breath, my air. I must live in time to a beat and a rhythm. I must touch the vessels that carry the divine sounds which speak to my Soul, my being,” Countess de Stormm spoke elequently as if in a daze herself.
“And you, Sleepy Queen, what are you made of?” Bellatrix wanted to know The Queens’ secrets.
The Queens’ eyes were wide open, and a small smile perched on her lips before she spoke. ” I am the Lunar Highlands, which are light in appearance and very old, and the Lunar Maria, the seas of the Moon which are dark plains filled with cooled lava. I am the light and the dark, in one breath, one moment. My polarity speaks for itself. La Lune is my…true home, my waking dream. She calls to me now…”
With that the Queen rose from the table, followed by her trailing skirts, she walked out into the blue night to kiss the face of the glowing white orb, she called home.
The others came after her, taking in the night air, and whisps of ocean mist. Standing in a half circle together in silence, in reverence of the evenings’ peace.
Without a word, Bellatrix shot off from the beach in an explosion of blue light, returning to her place in the sky. The Countess, The Queen and the Fair Lady Birdweather shining now so beautifully beneath the brightness of that star.
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Lady Birdweather
The QUEEN and The COUNTESS
Bellatrix of Orion, as a MUSE
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In this play…within a play;
The Countess de Stormm is played by Ruby
Lady Birdweather is played by Dahlia Ramone
The Sleepy Queen is of course played by Brisen McGregor
Sleeping Queen Publications 