Popularity

Popularity

Ron Koppelberger

Temptation dilated the subtle blue centers of her eyes. The taskmaster readily transported the danger in the better substance of her celebrity to the invisible moment of construct. Fine webs of blown glass decorated the summerhouse from floor to mysterious islands of splintered breaches in the mirage, the imposing hustle of supernatural twilight promise, the exciting end, the portal, the rumor of that called myth in select influence. She considered the jewel for an instant and stiffly delighted in it’s pride. She had known he was the grim prince of evaporating belief and yet she calmed the reserve of strength she once referred to as her cause; she surrounded the embellished creed with a whisper of desire, “Favor the appeal of popularity with a cherished cadence, favor my raven with the sum of your need!”
The Raven sat cold and lifeless on her shoulder, a plastic and cotton replica of the bird. She cooed and touched the raven while the taskmaster handed her the jewel. Her eyes lit up like the azure heavens at dawn as she cradled the jewel in her upturned palms. Slow timeworn seconds calculated the run of her popularity and in the end the cold lifeless raven would be replaced by the reality of genuine examples of defiant feather. She would own the brief wish, for the raven at twilight and the dream of majestic truth, her eyes became the eyes of the raven and the lifeblood of what shouldn’t have been.
One day she looked upon the jewel with scorn and hatred, the instant she left her grace and her passion for the jewel she fell dead to the dismay of those who found her at the center of everything.
The Raven called to the taskmaster and the jewel was returned to it’s place amongst the passions of those who would seek treatise with the world and popular drama. In the final the crow called to the elder raven and the pair found flight with the excess of the world at a tower of spoken fear, the refuge of the lost.