The Isle had been a means to an end.
The cold had made her untouchable.
Her jaw had ached from clenching.
She had not been meant for the cold.

She had suffered worse things, though, Bible.
And then the sun, the splendid sun!
How spectacular its return!
Carved its way through the darkness.
Same way the child carved its way out of her womb.
And with the sun came her own personal sun.
A thing that threw no heat but orbited her golden head all the same.

And now she returns to the place where the child ruled.
Perhaps if she were more intuitive she could smell him here.
On this beach where his children were hatched.
A clutch of little dragons. 
And maybe they are here still, looking nothing like their grandmother.
She will never know as she moves across the sand.
She will never know them as her grandchildren.
Even if they told her the father’s name.
Because she did not live long enough to name the father.

She looks for Chemdog.
But does not look hard enough to be disappointed if she does not find him.

The sand feels strange beneath her golden feet.
She thinks of her daughter, wonders where she’s gone now the sun’s returned.
Wonders if, for once, she was a good mother.

Turns her gaze to the sky.
Thinks this will do.
Doesn’t remember the last time she had a home.

She is alone again.
And she finds that it does not matter.
It does not matter that she is made of gold.
Or that she has her own private sun. 

It does not matter because she is a creature who was made to be alone.
There is a heart that rattles in its gilded cage.
Sometimes she thinks it must have teeth.
How fiercely it begs to be let out.

And then, quite simply, she is not alone.
And she drags her gaze down out of the sky.
She turns to look at him, surprised that it is not Chemdog.
Not Chemdog at all, this stranger who addresses her by name.

He looks at her steady with eyes that glow.
She has never seen anything like him.
She thinks something abstract about the things in the dark.
How they had come for her.
(Oddly she does not think about the child that had clawed its way out.
She does not think about the child she left.)

There are so many things she does not remember.
But he is too young to be one of them.
She blinks her gilded lashes at him.
She tilts her fine golden head and the sun tilts with it.

She does not know what he has done.
(What would she do if she did?
Would she flee? Would she cry out?
Would she mourn those children?
Most of all, would she fear him?)

“Yes?” she asks, already trapped between his teeth. 

She has seen such strange things.
Crawled through the underworld on her belly and back out again.
(And she thought herself indestructible, here, now.)
She had mistaken him for a boy, just a boy.
But this is not a boy, this thing that had addressed her by name.

(There is nothing left for her to fear.
She has died so many times before.
She does not fear the pain or the darkness.
She understands the message.
She knows that here, now, a thanks is not a thanks.
It is something else altogether.)

A shame, she thinks, that she tried to be a good mother only once.
And she will not get to say goodbye. 

But then, a voice from behind her.
She had looked for him and here he is.
(Is she relieved? She doesn’t think so, not really.
And yet, there is some strange satisfaction in it.)

The boy who is not a boy at all but must be something left over.
Left over from all the things that had leached out from the underworld.
It snaps its jaw shut and she watches, head tilted.
(Unaware that the son had almost killed her a second time.)

The golden eyes flit between Chemdog and this strange thing.
Perhaps this is just a dream.
She has never seen fire like this.
And the thing circles them and she thinks she should be afraid.
(Shouldn’t she be afraid? But she has died so many times before.)

When the thing addresses her, she looks steadily back at it.
“I won’t be going anywhere,” she tells it.
She had thought it just a boy, but it is not just a boy.