Deathflower.

Sometimes, all that you can feel is an insidious, absolute anguish inside your head, turning and turning into a widening gyre, like the mythical Rahu casting a malign spell on the moon. All fears and anxieties coagulate into a viscous, black fluid, which then flows down ever so slowly down the four walls of the room that is your mind. A certain heaviness settles into the air, and you know that breathable oxygen will run out sooner or later. Right before the end, you hope, even as the fluid descends, will come the bliss of unconsciousness, absolving you of the responsibility of perceiving and articulating the slow, lingering death of the soul. Mvnch felt it, I think, the singeing channelized energy of the primal scream bending light and the dimensions of the world around it. And so this, a descriptive account of the city hidden in the shadow of the Sun, blood-kin of the Mvnchean primal scream.

The path to the city lies down a steep, rock-strewn path winding down the mountainside, and you walk away a little bit further from the warmth of midmorning sunlight with every step. The way is paved with winding, twisting trails going off on unexplored tangents into the wilderness where lost souls dwell, and occasionally you encounter fellow travellers, usually pilgrims, but also rarely an Orpheus seeking the vanished summer promise of his Persephone. There are inns you come across now and then on the trail, and waiting out the night sitting by the fireplaces, you can hear myriad tales told by fellow travellers on the long and winding road. Tales of how, once upon a time, a hopelessly imprisoned Icarus had yet soared up into the brilliant blue summer sky on wings fashioned by his father, the Architect himself. And of another son, who had selflessly chosen to absorb all that the darkness could throw at him and everyone else, sealing it inside himself even though he knew the poison would ultimately kill him, only to radiate out some hope for all those who laboured their days out forging gigantic swords and scimitars for the armies of the night.

Of course, there are those that revel in the darkness of the city, growing branches with pale, surprisingly delicate leaves, multiplying, consolidating, and in time, blooming giant white flowers whose perfume is enough to make you stop, lay down your burden, and send you to sleep for the night. The dreams you dream in that flower-induced sleep are curiously always about the city of the Sun, of warrior-knights in black steel, riding black horses, decapitating and plundering the valley in the frenzied bloodlust of war. To remind you, lest you forget, the anguish comes visiting every once in a while borne on a howling mountain wind. Leaves of green, as if presciently recognising what is to come, turn away looking for the Sun, only to be frozen to a white semblance of what they once were, crumbling to snow and dust inside your hand. Curiously, the wolves there are the friendliest of the lot, and will guard you at night against the wind by letting you sleep within the shelter of their warm, greyish black coat of fur. Sometimes, during the day, if you wait long enough, you can see a lonely eagle, soaring speck of black against the brilliant azure of the sky, reminding you that there once was Icarus, who had dared to seek his bearings by the eye-burning brightness of the Sun.