Prompt: Circles

Word count: 501

Black, white, yellow, red. Black, white, yellow, red. Rot into purity into the sun's light into the completion of the Great Work. Intended to be linear, I have yet to see anyone succeed without red decaying into black again.

My body slowly circles the spiritual, the physical, the space in between. I never truly coil around existence; instead I continue devouring myself.

Air, fire, earth, water. Air, fire, earth, water. The elements conquer each other in cycle. Spring into summer into autumn into winter. The worldly only knows how to do what it always has. Sprouting into flourishing into harvest into death, to begin again the next year.

There is a fifth in the circle's center. The other four pay it no mind. Aether's domain is Heaven, filling the sky with stars. It remains as it always does, regardless of which earthly element has control over its domain.

My body continues its cycle. My scales breathe in the sweet taste of spring's flowers, of summer's fruits. My claws graze autumn's harvested fields, winter's ice. The stars of Heaven whisper to me, glisten and sparkle against the pitch black night.

Sulfur, mercury, salt. Sulfur, mercury, salt. Soul, spirit, and body. Combustion, volatility, and the absence of either. Three primes composing the material. The immediate composition of all work. Soul moves through the immaterial, spirit animates life, body makes up physicality. The removal of any would break the circle.

As ever present as I is the phoenix, the symbol of the end goal. The Great Work itself is reflected in the sacred firebird's very existence. Dying and being reborn, over and over, for millennia into eternity. We pass each other, sometimes, as we both journey through our cycles. We have never spoken. I don't know if I can.

I wonder, sometimes, what it would be like if I let go. If I uncurled. Would I slither away, deep into the Earth? Would my body, crushed under its own immense weight, collapse into nothing? Would my scales and bones rain down upon mortal men, bringing new elements for the Great Work? Would I only be reborn, as my avian counterpart is?

I do not let go. I won't ever let go. I continue to devour myself. The scales beneath my teeth are cracked, eons spent inside my maw. They never break, never shed. Fixed in place, as much as the teeth destroying them. My flesh below is raw, and it makes me imagine that I am venomous. And surely, the venom of a great serpent must be useful in the Great Work. A poison of water and fire, burning eternally at any touch, a perfection of sulfur and combustion.

I do not care to poison. I do not care to bite anyone but myself. My cycle remains eternal. The great circle that is me— soul, spirit, body— remains eternal. I continue my movement, slow, practiced, a being of recursion. Eternally, my end will only connect back to my beginning.

I continue to devour myself.