The Legend of Don Conrado Pt.5

From a distance, Cherybdis watched. She was directly downstream and could see these events unfolding before her very eyes. Indeed, she was especially vexed when she witnessed the don emerge so gracefully up out of the water — as though he were some long-forsaken knight, from some far and distant realm, suddenly freed from the clutches of her arch-rival, Scylla, almost as if it were magic. And though, up until now, the don had been carelessly lax in keeping his person so near to the bank, and had perhaps warranted this invitation, he was now, otherwise, alert and at the ready — to wage battle with the power and knowledge of the Force — having been revived and reborn by this sudden brilliant flash of light, from whatever the source of it... may be.

And so, Cherybdis, now a living witness to his rise and ascension, began spinning and churning in jealous frustration, for she knew full well that she was missing out on her chance. Indeed, she foamed and frothed and turned and contorted, to to such a degree, and to such an extent, that the resulting vortex burrowed into the very bedrock of the river itself — and carved out a crater, so vast, within her centre, that it pulled Scylla (with all her tentacle-like appendages, snapping in vain at the open air) right into the depths where the earth gaped wide and a chasm ran deep.

And, with this direct passage into the abyss — which swallowed even the faintest traces of daylight — it was not long, thereafter, that a very distant but perceptible brawl suddenly erupted between herself and Cerberus, who, like a hound defending his turf, no doubt threw himself upon her, to punish her, in the void, for her rather gluttonous and abysmal proclivities.

The reader may thus conjecture that, between the force of this vortex and the beam of light from the alien-ship (which descended upon our don, like Iris on a rainbow delivering an urgent message), a tug of war, of a sort, between light and dark forces was, now, rather, evident.

As the power of Cherbydis’ vortex thus grew, in this match beyond good and evil (and in all her fury and contortions), the sash of our dear don’s robe eventually unravelled, and began to flutter as though it were an untethered rope which had abruptly snapped, as a consequence, whilst he levitated magnificently within the light's beam. This loss of control over the sacred sash, and our don’s reliance upon it, like a lightsaber in the thick of battle, caused our dear don to approach the very wake of Cherbydis, entirely at her mercy; and whereupon he could perceive that he would plunge in for miles, and be thus swallowed whole by the cavernous chambers within.

But just then, as the volumes upon volumes of fresh water poured into her, and whilst she screamed and cursed his sheer gravity, a direct and final pulse from within the beam struck our don so forcefully, that he could feel his very atoms separate into the various quarts and neutrinos and fuse and rejoin again amid the abducting source, whereupon at this moment, he suddenly lost all consciousness.

He awoke, abruptly, his headache throbbing with varying intensity — as if a double-decker bus from some mature (but dangerously congested civilization) had passed over his very person and lopped the head right off of his shoulders. And, whilst his eyelids peeled open, partially, he gathered his bearings and took in his surroundings.

'Wonderful' was perhaps the first word that slipped from his lips as he picked himself off the curb, like a slice of the finest pizza al taglio. He rose shakily, yet stood with his feet planted firmly in their place until his spinning head had come to a stop. Whereupon, he noticed a river in the distance, which he believed (just for a moment) was the same river further downstream of his very home, which he had left the day prior.

But, alas, it was not to be; for he had, in fact, landed upon a bridge that was not at all made with the same steel fixtures and concrete mixtures that he had left behind him. Rather, it was made of rock-hard limestone. And where he stood, now, and gazed over what appeared to be a sort of meadow, the river meandered far below him, and thus could not skim off any rock, nor lap upon his feet. And the wildlife — over the rush of the multitudes of passing vehicles — had suddenly vanished in what felt like an instant. And the brilliant sun now hid from view under a thick blanket of clouds that rolled in and hung above him like an inverted sea. He had been transported.