⚜ Aurollie and the Raven
Aurollie is dead. Her slender frame and parched skin, etched with endless cracks that unveil her rotting skeleton; so she lies, beneath the light of a night whose bioluminescence — shimmering yet desaturated — hangs in the thick, frigid air. Aurollie is dead, for they stole her beating heart — and there was no intent to return it. Her blood is ink-black, pouring from her scleraless eyes. In her chest, as one might foresee, a void—a hollow of entrails, with no cardiac trace. Aurollie is dead.
As her morbid steps dragged through the garden, she left behind a trail of pitch. Of what was it composed? It is unknown. Blood or sap, perhaps leachate — it bore the scent of night-blooming jasmine. And her long, damp gown, the color of azure-darkness, was adorned with gold-bronze sculpted into aculei, like the withered stem of a crimson rose. Around her neck, a jewel of the same substance; likewise hewn into pointed ornaments, it seemed to tether her skull upon her gaunt neck. She was of a nurid and terrible beauty.
The black tear perished upon her deeply violaceous lips. An immortal weeping, merencolious as the griseous rain in a clouded and silent eventide; it could be heard should anyone dare to devote it their attention — it was nearly inaudible and ever rarefied. A dead violin, such was Aurollie — a putrefied violin, overtaken by black filamentous fungi, and capable of producing but a single melody of gloom and disconsolation. “Sing, Aurollie, sing thy desolation.”
She had dwelt in that garden since she emerged from the abyssic pit, dug in haste by her tormentor. No headstone stood to shield her epitaph — the sepulcher was a hearth of absence, and above all, of solitude. Aurollie remembered all the pain — and the demonic eyes that tore through her porcelain complexion, reaching her chest to wrench away the vital organ. Yet, she had forgotten that within the thoracic cage, the pulse endured invisible; for on the lugubrious night that followed, her nails clawed to the surface.
She had constructed a mausoleum for herself — sculpted from the viscera of dead trees. It was necessary to shield herself from the light of life and those who possessed it. Danger breathed; it had vitality and faith. As time exhausted itself, the darkness was the only one willing to shroud Aurollie — and to lead her in the lamentous waltz of her wretched soul. When she could, especially under shadowy moons, Aurollie sang; she sang her desolation. Only the Raven heard her, and it was he who said: “Sing, Aurollie, sing thy desolation.”
The Raven loved her, and his love putrefied petals, withered perennifolias, decomposed viridaries. Once human, he had his heart razored... and so many were the gashes, and so simous to the most unfathomable precipices... to cease pulsing was necessary, for the sake of himself. In a final sigh, a silent promise was born within his weeping chest: “May I now fly as a free bird, such as I could never be in this world.” He returned to life upon another day, yet tethered to the lugubrious night, an incomprehensible lover of mystery: a black Raven, fated to misanthropy.
Aurollie was dead, and the Raven loved her.
Endowed with a wounded heart, the Raven dedicated himself to the contemplation of Aurollie’s melancholy — a cello of agony, a plangor like a chant of inenarrable beauty. He yearned to draw near; however, pure manifestations of his ineffable passion putrefied petals, withered perennifolias, and decomposed viridaries. The Raven loved her, yet held a morbid dread of causing her the same end that his love caused the flora. Thus, docile and restless, he observed Aurollie’s steps — mere contemplation. “Sing...” — he uttered. Aurollie’s squalid melancholy, however, did not permit her to hear aught but her own lament.
One languid night, Aurollie emerged from her perpetual mausoleum. The Raven, slumbering in a profundity worthy of the most extraordinary dreams, did not even notice her. The dry darkness curved upon her countenance proved to the Isle of the Dead that, in that suffering dawn, Aurollie did not weep. Her eyes, black dates, gazed at the surroundings — scrutinizing the origin of the lugubrious beats, so distant, which reached her ears mournfully — vivid with hope. She followed the meager sound, in slowness. And it came from the Raven’s razored heart. Aurollie placed her ear upon the bird’s chest — she felt it, and the pulsing became the Opus Nocturne No. 20 in C-sharp Minor.
Slow notes of introspection, one by one, were simous to the Raven’s cardiac beats. Lingering and soul-stirring. A musical and somber gasp. And when he opens his small eyes, he sees her. So near. Her scent of night-blooming jasmine. The warm coldness of her complexion. The rhythm of the opus accelerates, suddenly in a joy immersed in tristity; a sorumbatic euphoria elevating the cadence within his breast. The Raven loved Aurollie and knew, in that instant, that he would give her his heart.
Aurollie felt the bird move, watched him with admiration and affection. She caressed his feathers and smiled — as she had never smiled. All the flowers that girt them in that venust garden, with celeritous horror, deteriorated. Irreversible perennial ulcers, parched and dead. The Raven fell into unnamable dread — so great was his love, so intense, so unfathomable; he could not control it and, therefore, how could he protect her? But Aurollie smiled.
And the Raven saw her. So beautiful as summer mornings. Amber-emeraldine eyes. Flushed cheeks, skin of golden light. Hands extended toward him: “Come!” — they said. The Raven’s love putrefied petals, withered perennifolias, decomposed viridaries and... gave meaning to Aurollie — and meaning is life and life is to begin again.
Aurollie was alive, and the Raven loved her.
Sahra Melihssa
Writer and Poet, with a degree in Existential Phenomenological Psychology and author of the books Sonnets of Murmurs and Seven Abysses. I am the Hostess of the Castelo Drácula project, and my literature is rare, eccentric, and unparalleled. My vocabulary is lapidary, my literature languid and magical — I have devoted myself to writing for over twenty years, and I call it Morlyric. In the alcove of my eroticism, I explore the frenzy of pain and pleasure, of love and melancholy, enveloping my readers in an immersive delight — impassioned by the theme, I created Lasciven to publish authors who share this passion. In the tomb of my writings, I unveil a terror, horror, and mystery that are singular, steeped in psychological depth and absurdist poetics — it is like a waltz with death. To read me is an experience, a living beyond the act of reading itself; and I invite you to allow yourself to be fascinated.
Aurollie is dead. Her slender frame and parched skin, etched with endless cracks that unveil her rotting skeleton; so she lies, beneath the light of a night whose bioluminescence…