Work Text:
The south
Attachment is a concept of the souls. I belong to Glasgow. I heart New York. They build runways to me; bridges to my cousin in the north. There is a stage, when we stop being hamlets, when the people can no longer remember who each other is, when they forget the faces, when they no longer belong each to the other. Time was they died young; now, they have time to become lonely. They attach themselves to us; or believe they do. To our buildings and our rivers and our trees.
It does no harm; but we must never believe that their loneliness confers any power. We stand through millennia, my cousin and I, while the people go from birth to death in a blink of an eye. My cemeteries fill. Bodies upon bodies. They entertain, they amuse. They grow and learn and build machines which grow and learn.
It would be simpler, to be filled with machines. The machines do not hate. Or maybe they will learn to hate. I will find out, in time.
There are dead cities, too. The people call them dead cities. I feel their pain, though. Not dead. Always dying. Forever dying. My cousins in Syria at least have each other. There are cities dying alone, everywhere, for all eternity.
We will all die together, one day.
The north
Once upon a time, I was a thin place. The mystery outweighed the mundane and the energy moved in and out, swept in and out as a tide, and I shaped the land and the hills and the river, and it was beautiful, but I was still hungry. The thin places are few, now; we all hungered, and some of us feel the hunger more than others. There are a handful of the spiritual humans left, who care for and nurture the sites; monks, often, of various religions. There is a tranquility in the thin places. My hunger brings chaos; full bodied, delicious, energising, powerful chaos.
In the beginning, I was nothing; we are all nothing. I pushed myself, pure lava at the beginning, into existence. And I waited for them to come. I was an idea, perhaps, to them. A simple thought of a hill safely above water level; of rocks soft enough to carve out and hard enough to build shelter. Dirt to grow crops. Dirt and rocks is all any of us have been. If we are clever, and kind, and protect them, the souls will come. There must be enough of interest to attract the souls, to have souls want to build things for other souls. Shelter without souls, you have houses but no homes. You are a dead city. Souls without shelter, you become Los Angeles, with its miles and miles of tents and panhandlers. For some, it is enough. Not I.
I have more people than just my own, of course. All of the displaced people; the ones for whom I am too rich, too ancient, too majestic. They feed me. I breathe them in in the morning, suck them from the train stations and the roads and the bridges. I spit them out along the same paths when they are spent, and make room to welcome my own people home.
They go to the other place. The other place in the north, that is. Glasgow is loud and brash and full of call centres and high rise blocks. And of course, the people who like to live in high rise blocks. The other place is welcome to them. They don't even know the right colour of sauce to have on your chips.
The other place thinks is it the home of art, although Dundee is as famous. They may bicker; I hold all of the real art in my galleries. The other place thinks it owns all communication, when really its people listen to angry customers and try and sell them things they don’t need, all day. The other place believes importance is determined by size; but my people brought their parliament to me. I am home to all wisdom, judgement, power.
Even though they ebb and flow between us, I will free them all. They are all, in a way, my people. Will be my people.
I believed the south, when they took my king; always the sixth, though they called him the first. We will be stronger together, that insidious southern voice said, and I was foolish enough to believe.
It was barely two years before the south showed their complete inability to control their people; my king almost died at the hands of Fawkes. Then there was war. And now, the south asks for trust? My cousin cannot control the lies his parliamentarians tell. And so, and so we must separate.
Dignity still matters to those of us who have some left. Those of us who know where we began.
I forget their names. Margaret, and Malcolm, and David, and James, Charlie, and Thomas. Arthur, who left his name atop a hill and called it his seat, so I should not forget him. My damned hill, pushed out by me, built by me, and named for a damned man whom no one remembers, who gave me nothing but a riddle of a name. Camelot is not to be found here, except in the hearts of ill informed romanticists.
The people used to fight over land. Land alone was the most important thing. We began with fists, sticks, clubs, then swords, and arrows. Now, they can build upwards, and grow food in small spaces, and meat in laboratories, and the land matters less and the money matters more. Now, they fight with paper and pens and tick boxes and counting. The souls have become are weak of bodily spirit, and fancy themselves strong and right in their minds.
There have been plagues and religions and richness and poverty. All created by the souls, inflicting damage upon the souls. I, timeless, constant, breathe them in, and breathe them out; the souls of the rich and the poor empower me the same.
And now there will be trade with Europe, and now there will be not. I cannot bear if the people cannot move freely in and around me; the glorious summers, when I am bloated full with the festivals and the farmers! So nourishing.
When the people are free they move in and around me. I like the new languages, the aromas of new foods, the songs and the stories they bring with them, which they must translate to speak to each other, but I read with ease from their souls.
I have trusted the south before, and I will not make that mistake again. We will stand alone. We have our own laws and money and a proud spirit.
Here, in the north, I rule. And the north is all that matters. I build our power. I build our parliament. I build our skill to govern. I build unrest. It will not be long, now.
The south
My cousin is barely one twentieth my size, and worries so much about who lives where, who works where, who flows around and within. Things which are trivial when you have wealth. Their thoughts are full of mystic origins, wrought from pain and fae and all knows what else.
Nonsense. None of us existed before our people. We are here for our people, created by and being for them. To suggest otherwise is the most ridiculous affection.
Which is not to say that our people are not, on occasion, completely unfathomable. They vote, they march, they make giant petitions. They invent rules and laws. They swap tiny amounts of coin for tiny amounts of sliced and fried potatoes, when potatoes are so easy to grow.
Maybe the north's obsession with status is a viking thing? In the north, there are places where they still burn ships. In the middle of winter. Not just on the islands; off of the banks of the Leith, for all souls sake. As I have heard from my travellers. Wearing cloth strips bound around their legs with yarn, and woad - woad! Non ironic woad outside of fashion school. And cloaks. Women with that red henna hair, and men with enormous beards. While my people were creating democracy, writing novels, building academia, in the north they were burning boats and getting hammered on mead. There’s a passion in them that’s irresistible, but utterly impractical.
I should not judge.
For the record; I am not opposed to beards. Well trimmed, tidy beards. In art studios and coffee shops. When your souls need beards simply for the warmth, you have failed. Nor do I care about the trivia of condiments for chips, when I abound with falafel and koftas and pasta and hot sauce. All are welcome, all enrich me. You may choose to see it as a lack of identity, or you may choose to see it as many identities, rich and nourishing. I am Roman and Persian and Art Deco and and Bauhaus; I am Slavic and anarchic and the father of parliaments. What care I for ketchup?
My birth was more about roads than rampaging; more latin than runes. Quiet prayer, no chanting and leaping through the flames, although there was that odd period of maypoles; and sometimes the bells and bladders on sticks make an appearance, so I must not judge too harshly.
Maybe it’s being inland; it’s warmer, and drier. Maybe it’s being more accessible; the people come from all of the warm lands, who make wine and spiced food and speak all of the language of romance. I don’t care about Manchester or Birmingham’s body count. I love that I swell during the day, busy people, making deals, making friends, making art, making connections. They come and go; they spread news of the wonders I hold within.
We share a sadness, my northern cousin and I; but it will fade over the millennium. What the souls do to each other, moving closer and apart, sharing money and hoarding money, being one and being other; it ebb and flows. We watch and wait and thrill when they are at their most giving. But my cousin and I, our people are set against the will of the other cities. Our cousin Belfast, too, although that is more complex. We should stand together.
We have tried before, to stand together. It is a challenge, with such a variety of souls. Souls who are beyond our boundaries; who, if we are honest, do not share our riches. Souls who would feel differently if they joined us.
Perhaps the north is right. Smaller is easier to control. Fewer souls. Oh, but my size is a joy! Imagine, just imagine being the size of Shanghai? Busy and bustling and full to the brim! Almost the size of all of the north. Imagine.
The north is a thousand years younger than I; and yet acts as eternal, holding at once all of the ages, and all of the answers.
Perhaps that is right.
The north
We approach the hour, as winter sets in. The cold bites more in the north than the south. The people of the south again will attempt to determine the actions of my souls.
My cousin’s people will do as they did before; and I am filled with sadness. All of our mutual will to forgive the hurts of thousands of years mean nothing against the will of the small towns of the south. The places that wish to be alone; though they have never been alone. The towns and cities which cannot or will not control their people. And so, we head toward the same decision; and so, we will vote again in the north. And though we may believe our southern cousin, our southern cousin cannot control the south; and I believe we must part. And we will ebb, and we will flow, and time will pass.
And I, the volcano, will watch, and wait, and breath. My people grow, together. Their voice becomes unified, against the myriad noises of the south.
I will be a true nation.