[Ego, Orpheus, propriā sōlitūdine vexābar. ]
She was writing letters on transparent pages
and floating them on the teal clouds that were forming around her terrace. Her silent
words were coming to life with butterfly wings of all hues: blue, yellow,
orange, and other unnamed shades of her wishes…
She was lost in a distant forest, where her love
would appear to conspire with the evening flowers, those encircling the
lifeless skulls of the prisoners. She was following the flute that guided her
through the darkness like a memory close to her heart. Shanaya was thinking of
kisses, heartbreaks, and darkness, in the many ways that the theater of the
forbidden forest was in harmony with feminine desires.
Even so, the Goddess still wanted to feel more
deeply, a secret that she had withheld from herself due to ages of being alone
where she was. She did not want to come to terms with loneliness, for she felt
it was undue of her, an injustice of love that she must carry. She was
sometimes inclined to perceive her immortality as a heartless soliloquy, her
own words haunting her like an unfinished poem written with fading ink.
She had waited for countless seasons in search
of her lover, until she had noticed the travails of Orpheus, yet beyond a veil
that separated hell from heaven. Although she had never acquired the karmic
debts of deceit, she was beginning to feel that her unrequited love sought its
own answers; why did she choose to conceal herself from Orpheus when she could
have expressed her feelings to him in person? Was she unjust to him? Was it
just for her lover to ignore her tears when she was ready to give herself in marriage?
It was true that if not for Orpheus, Virtue
would never have ventured into the chiaroscuro of hell like a faint
shadow. Furthermore, she did not deny
that if not for him, she would never have come to recognize her sister Vice,
who was held captive within her castle in the forbidden forest.
Even more than anything else, if not for him,
she would never have thought of loving a man, as she could not bear to see those
distorted visages of the prisoners! Even so, she still decided to conceal
herself from him, speaking in whispers that sought him desperately.
Die! Die! Die! She wanted to scream, but she
would rather paint a decrepit skull with a blue flower for its eyes. Alone!
Alone! Alone! Her mirror wept for her in a chamber lit with candles from
Persia, and she would only sit silently in a white drape, hoping that Orpheus
would come to rescue her from her recurring nightmares.
Within her heart, she could not envision a day
without him, his dark gaze seeking her like a fleeting hart that sauntered by
the lake of tears in the late of night, in that moment when the sleepy birds
were waking up to greet the new day.
Thus was the poem that the woman found in her
thoughts when she realized that she must redeem herself from the curse of
eternal loneliness. It was in this shadowy dream that her nightmares slowly
disappeared like a fading tear touching her lips.
Dē terrā adāctum mystēriō, aqueus
somnus est
Penitus amāveram, et umbrārum
consorte trīstis
Praeterita mea, piō cōnsiliō,
crypta arcāna est
Sentiente lacrimās meās, ego
cōnsīgnāvī animum dēstitum
Amor tū mihi, amor aeternus
रहस्येन पृथिव्याः प्रत्यवरूढः, एष जलीयः स्वप्नः अस्ति ।
अहं गभीरम् अकामये, छायानां सहचारिणी
च दुःखिता बभूव ॥
मम अतीतम्, पवित्रेण
मन्त्रणेन, गुप्तं रहस्यगृहं वर्तते
।
मम अश्रूणि अनुभवन्ती, अहं
ममापरित्यक्तम् आत्मानं समर्पितवती ॥
त्वमेव मम कृते प्रेम, शाश्वतं प्रेम ॥
* Latin and Sanskrit written with the help of AI.
