View from Annwn

What an unusual place it was – the people there were burning the land they lived within and choking on the angry fumes which snuffed out the stars. A whole world spinning to the widdershins of its natural and true order, like some great black ouroboros formed of cinders and blight; swallowing itself again and again in an endless, gleeful procession of self-abuse and gluttonous pride. How could a world like that possibly survive? And yet, there was something darkly beguiling about the other place. Grim faces loomed at her from gloomy hovels in the dim twilight of the other place, twisted and miserable. She saw a head of buttery curls and a basket of flowers; a handsome man who drank leaf-smoke; a tumefied, toad-like creature who ate suicidally while skeletal babes cowered in freezing corners closeby; a tall, devilish man with obsidian eyes, wearing a black frock-coat lined with purple velvet. Elsewhere were horrifying, misbegotten things eking out a sordid existence above rivers of excrement. 

Vignettes came and went in her mind’s eye, like the changing slides in a magic lantern show. In her imagination, the girl could see everything; from the most wretched, saturnine beings who lived in airless holes and slept alongside pigs for warmth; up to a grand palace within which languished a king stupefied by madness, and a decadent prince failing in his father’s role. And what the girl saw made her giggle with excitement and gasp with surprise. So strange, so like a nightmare. And strangest of all, the girl thought, was that the other place felt so familiar. Somehow, she knew she had been there before. The creatures in the other place seemed to know her. They called her name.