The Buried Colossus
Key art
Prologue
A crowned stone head and the upper torso of a buried figure rise out of the dunes at the end of the day. Sand leaves the great mouth in a slow sheet.
Watch
Permanent screening
2:57 · 16:9 · not filed.
One line
Before the synopsis
The eyes hold the sunset and do not dull.
Synopsis
A traveler stands at the edge of the nearest dune, cloak heavy and pale with dust, and does not climb the stone. The crown on the head is missing a piece. Sand grains tick down the carved cheek and do not stick to the eyes.
The sunset in those eyes is steady, as if the stone were keeping the hour on purpose. The traveler waits at the crest.
Wind moves the cloak and moves the sand on the slope and does not move the head. A fragment of the stone crown lies half buried by the traveler's boots, sand packed hard into its cracks. Minutes pass as the sheet of sand from the mouth thinning and thickening, and as the light in the eyes staying gold while the sky around it begins to give the gold up.
Extended sequence
After the cut
The traveler does not speak to the mouth. The mouth does not yet open further. The traveler lifts the fragment clear.
Sand spills from its cracks and from the hole it leaves. The great mouth opens a fraction more, as though a word is next. Dust slides out in the shape of a breath and scatters on the slope, short of any word.
Figures in the frame
Who remains
The shoulders shift under the dune. A fresh run of sand starts down the carved chest. The eyes do not give up the light they are holding.
In the traveler's hands the fragment's cracks take new sand from the wind and pack it harder than the dune had packed it. The fragment grows heavier by that packing. The mouth gives one smaller breath of dust after the first and then only a trickle.
Codex fragment
Filed with the room
A single word of stone-dust. Not a blessing. The dunes take the sentence and close over the feet that heard it. Fragments
The fragment stays out of the crown, packed and heavy, and the gap on the head stays empty of it. The stone eyes hold the last gold after the slope has gone grey. Dust still leaves the mouth.
The scenario is filed in the Codex.
Sound of Imagination
Residual
Sand leaving a stone mouth. Wind filling footprints. A dry exhale from a throat of masonry. At dusk, a hum in the crown, and in the eyes that will not return the light. Sound of Imagination
The traveler remains on the crest, and the buried shoulders stay where the dune put them back. The sky above the dunes loses the gold the stone eyes are still keeping. Sand ticks on the traveler's cloak and on the fragment and does not build the fragment back into a crown.
Showcase
Object from the universe
A broken piece of the stone crown, sand packed in every crack, lying in the open dune. Taken from the king. The Showcase
The traveler steps back to the crest with the fragment in both hands. The mouth goes on shedding dust in that almost-breath.
The dune settles around the buried shoulders, and the stone eyes keep the last of the sun. The trickle thins to grains. The shoulders do not rise again.
The Craft
Image · motion · sound
The head is held against the sunset before the mouth moves. Motion is dust, and the word. The residual is sand that will not leave the cracks. The Craft
The great mouth's trickle becomes single grains with long pauses between them. A shoulder under the dune gives no second shift.
The traveler's fingers stay locked around the packed stone. She does not offer it back to the gap.
Read it as written. The scenario.
Filed in The Houses
World & Myth · High Fantasy
High fantasy at brutal scale: a king of stone, a traveler who steps back, a sentence the sand agrees to keep. Filed under World & Myth in High Fantasy. The house keeps the climate. The climate keeps the film.
The next room
After this filing
The carved cheek takes the grey of the slope while the eyes refuse that grey for one more hold of sunset. The next room is The Heart of the World Tree.
After the frame
Mark · keep · letter
Released rooms keep a mark from one to five, a keep on this device, and letters that stay with the page after the feed has moved on. The Buried Colossus is ready.
Letters under the frame
The Archivist · held
Filed in the archive. The page does not expire.