Drabble 126 – Quiescent

Aeschylus’ Oresteia is one of those works I read and immediately knew I was reading against authorial intent. I didn’t have enough English literature education in me yet to understand why I shouldn’t care what some old dead man thought about Clytemnestra, but there was something about her rage that resonated with me, a rage so big and violent its aftershocks woke the dark gods beneath the earth.

I can’t imagine why I found that important.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

QUIESCENT

(a.) From Latin quiēscent, to fall asleep or rest

Tranquil, resting.

Sleeping, not dead. It’s hard to tell, old as they are; when enough time passes you can no longer tell a maiden from a mother from a crone. They haven’t awakened in eons, but still their chests rise and fall. In one mouth, out another, as it has always been.

They changed over the years, their names corrupted by multiple tongues. But their purpose is clear: vengeance. As they sleep, they dream of it; the shrieks of war, the pleading for justice, the ways their stories have twisted through the ages. That, too, is a crime in need of punishment.