"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
No one chose to Flee to the Cave (a pity—you would have liked the results!)
No one chose to Join the Cult (such a shame—you missed out!)
No one chose to Stand and Fight, which would have resulted in elimination.
No one chose to Turn Back, which would have resulted in elimination.
A Trail of Feathers
Night creeps in.
As the light fades, the trees begin to change into something grotesque; no longer luscious and green, they’re now bald and pulsing; slabs of red meat hang from them in place of leaves. They rain blood relentlessly. Small, horned creatures—as black as sin—crawl out of the trees' crevices, cackling mad; they try to pelt you with chunks of the trees’ flesh as you pass. The whine of the maggots fills the air, but instead of swarming you, this time they slither out of your way; there’s so many of them it looks like the ground itself is squirming under the starlight.
Other creatures, each more sinister than the last, try to catch you but you are determined to find your savior.
The feathers, scattered everywhere, glow a pale gold in the dark and offer something to focus on besides the horrors all around; you hurry forwards, eager to leave this nightmare behind while a battle for the sky wages on without you. You only arrive at the center of the island in time to see the war end. Screeching, the macaw dips into a spiraling nosedive—a trail of glowing feathers and smoke following it all the way down. The ground shudders beneath its massive weight, giving way to a crater that cradles the poor thing unwillingly.
“Please…” comes a voice, though rather than being frightened, this one is soothing to you and a feeling of sudden (forced) calm settles over you. “Come closer, please. I won’t hurt you.”
Somehow, you know the voice is coming from the great bird.
You amble closer to the lip of the crater and peer inside.
The bird is broken—bleeding and burnt, it thrashes around wildly and tries to get back up to no avail. Once you lay eyes on it, it settles down. Breathing hard, it turns one gold eye towards you and seems to smile. It’s almost… terrifying. “Child, It will be here very soon—“
“As if I am not everywhere already…” comes another voice.
It is your friend, your very best friend that steps forth from the darkness. The red glow that emanates from their very being makes them easily discernible. The rest of the group—all alive, all of them—step up as well, but they’re missing a few things: Some have no eyes, some have stalactites sticking out in place of ears, some are missing the lower half of their jaws and are no longer able to speak.
A certain headless, burnt body stands defiantly among them.
“Come, come down here with me,” the bird urges, offering you a wing to hide beneath. “I will save you from this peril, I will give you the power to go home.”
“No,” your friend sneers at the bird, though their face softens significantly when they look at you. “He lies; he will only lead you to ruin—come with me, I will give you the power to return home. This I promise you. I will deal with him later.”
You now have three choices: Crawl down into the crater with the bird, stand by your friend, or challenge your friend on the macaw's behalf.
Describe following the trail of feathers and the forest of horrors.
Create monsters that your character has to escape from en route to the macaw; include the horned creatures. The monsters you create must be grotesque versions of actual jungle animals.
Describe the battle between the dragon and macaw going on overhead (what glimpses you catch of it, anyway) and the subsequent crash.
Include seeing the whole gang back together in your post.
There is a minimum word limit of 500.
You have 48 hours. Choose wisely.
Facing Your Demons
You are unable to move.
The entire group converges on you, do terrible things to you—your friend does nothing to stop them.
If anything, your friend seems… amused.
The body up above sways like a pendulum, back and forth, back and forth; the torture carries on long into the night and at some point, they drag you beneath the corpse and ‘baptize’ you in the poor soul’s blood. Cackling mad, a mass of writhing bodies, you’re no longer sure if it’s their blood or yours that you’re covered in—a shadow passes over the roof of the cave, blacking out the moon. It happens quickly, the moment is fleeting, but your friend notices and sneers up at the hole.
Then comes a snarl.
Through the hole drops a massive tiger.
It dives down into the middle of them all, ripping, slicing, and tearing them away from you with its claws—it takes off the lower jaw of one of your assailants in one fell swing.
Your friend does nothing but watch until the carnage is over.
Shifting, moaning, they rise from where they fell and shuffle over to their leader as best they can; from the darkness comes another body, burnt and headless, it joins the others. The corpse dangling from the ceiling begins screaming and writhing around until the vine snaps and it hits the cave floor with a crunch. Groaning, stalactites still sticking out of its head, the corpse crawls over to your friend and stands with the rest just like the others before it.
“I gave you a choice,” says your friend, still eerily monotone. “You betrayed us—now suffer the consequences.”
A bright, red light fills the space where your friend once stood. It stays there, growing in intensity, and then all at once turns to lightning and shoots towards you—
“NO!” The tiger roars. “This soul is mine!”
Without warning, the tiger dissolves and shoots towards you in the form of pale gold lightning.
You now have three choices: Get struck by the red lightning, get struck by the gold lightning, or step out of the way and allow them to strike one another.
Your character is tortured by the group; you do not have to describe in great detail what is being done, that’s entirely up to you. Let muse decide. Whatever wounds your character acquires during the torture session will become scars upon their return to Beqanna.
Include being dragged beneath the body and being ‘baptized’ by its blood.
Describe the battle between the massive tiger and the members of your group.
Include the group’s reanimation; mangled, zombie-like, they return to their leader.
Their shrieks and moans deafen him; they spit and slice into him with their blunt hooves and flashing teeth, laughter rising up from their throats as his blood and clumps of hair is tasted on their devilish tongues. At one point their bodies seem to intertwine like they had before, as if they were not each separate beings but one entity - slithering together in ecstasy whenever he screams in pain, releasing him from their grasp for a moment, and then hurling forward together once more in a wave, only to elicit more brutal beatings. He cannot even see their faces anymore - they are only blurs of gnashing teeth stained with blood, sweat, and darkness.
Balto is not sure the exact moment he fell to his knees, but suddenly they are above him and he is looking up at their grim expressions, their cackling and open mouths pulling at his skin and muscle, slicing into the thickness of his shoulders and haunches easily with him beneath them. Blood is warm and metallic in his mouth as his ribs crack beneath their weight, crunching sickeningly as they snap. The mob is no longer interested in watching him scream - they want to watch him die.
How he has not already passed out, the blue roan stallion is unsure. With weary eyes he watches them yip giddily as he falls to his side with defeat, Aravis’ grandeur smile staring down at him. ‘Pity,’ she hisses at him and he is certain his soul shatters, but the pain he feels is one of his family digging into the side of his barrel, just beneath where his shoulder meets his leg, almost as if searching for his heart that lays encased beneath the muscle and bone of his chest. Balto groans, eyes rolling upwards as the loss of blood begins to wane on him, but their cheers bring him out of delirium for just a moment as Corin’s bloated and dead body somewhat bursts - fresh, red blood spills on the crowd and onto Balto, seeping into his eyes and nose and wounds, filling up the large cavity in his chest. He gasps and sputters, blinded by the sticky liquid and choking on the thick, metallic blood of the deceased.
Darkness comes. Finally, I’m dead.
From the darkness, however, comes a guttural snarl.
Balto does not move, for he can’t. Through slow blinking eyes he catches the scene that unfolds above him - a massive beast, with dripping white fangs and paws as big as a horse’s face, rips the horde of equines from his body, slamming them with ease against the stone walls that surround him. Balto wheezes as he attempts to breathe and tries to stand the second their bodies weren’t on him, stained red with Corin’s drying blood. Some attempt to crawl back and finish the job, adding swift kicks and bites to Balto’s battered body when the tiger was turned. This only angered the giant feline more and with one quick and terrifying crunch, the jaw of Rilian flies away from the rest of his face, clattering to the floor and falling still before Balto’s eyes. The stallion scrambles upwards, standing feebly as blood pours from the wound in his side, both a mixture of his own and Corin’s.
His breath comes in quick spurts, as if his lungs were ready to give up and collapse.
Aravis stands unharmed, and though Balto thought she would be staring down the beast that has just annihilated her family, her venomous eyes are poised on him instead. His blood (how very little was left) runs cold beneath her ominous, ravenous stare. He has forgotten all about the ferocious behemoth of a tiger that stands to the back of him now, stained with the fresh blood of the corpses that lay haphazardly across the cave’s floor, growling incessantly.
Silence engulfs the cave, and for a while the only sound is the tiger’s threatening rumble and Balto’s terrible wheezing breath, eyes wide and rolling white.
An ear-splitting scream breaks the silence from above as Corin’s once dead body now writhes within the vines that hold him - and then, they all begin to move. Aravis is unphased by their moans and attempts to climb to her, her red stare looking at Balto expectantly. Finally, Corin’s body breaks free from the vines and clatters to the ground, snapping sickeningly against the stone. Head sprouting stalactites and completely bent in an unnatural way, Corin positions himself beside Aravis.
Balto watches in pure fear as some of them rise (the ones who still had legs) - Rilian (jawless), Caspian (throat sliced open and still profusely spilling), Ambrose (shattered skull, with bulging eyes) - to join Aravis. Some of them still attempt to get to her - Jadis (separated spine, dragging herself with her two front legs), Shasta (right foreleg completely missing from the shoulder, torn from its socket), Bree (the spirited yearling with all four legs snapped, hobbling on sickening crunches as she still attempts to use them), and then lastly his sweet Eridi (opened up from the belly, innards tangled within her mangled legs). Even the body of Hwin finds its way into the horde, the smell of burnt and decaying flesh filling the cave as the headless chestnut arrives.
The stallion lets out a cry of despair, which is met with blank stares of the undead and Aravis’ deadly splintering voice.
‘I gave you a choice,’ says Aravis, her voice acidic and eerily monotone. ‘You betrayed us—now suffer the consequences.’
She is no longer Aravis (was she ever?) but instead becomes the intense red glow that he had seen earlier. It vibrates with power and sends a chill throughout the cave.
But then -
“NO!” The tiger roars. “This soul is mine!”
The light from the tiger is golden in color, brilliant and bold within the darkness and the bright red of Aravis. Without much thought (or much choice), Balto had begun to try to move away from the group of undead and from Aravis’ bold red light, stumbling upon the cave floor in attempts to flee into the darkness - but the tiger’s light is in the way, blinding and white-hot, and strikes the stallion right in the gaping hole in his chest.
-- once the king of beasts but now they feast on thoughts beneath his vacant crown.
When she puts on a quick burst of speed and darts sideways to escape Black and Green, and outpaces them to the edge of the trees, where they fall back while Sloene pushes forward to seek the trail of glowing feathers. For one belaboured instant, she wonders why they don’t continue to follow her into the trees.
After a couple of breaths, a few strides, she doesn’t wonder anymore.
The trees themselves seem to be rotting away, the sickly-sweet smell of rotting plant matter filling her nostrils and making her stomach turn. The maggots are still underfoot and she is terrified of them, the bites they have already inflicted burning with every stride she takes, but they do not pursue her.
There is relief in that, but it is short-lived.
The first monsters are like little monkeys, crawling out of the flesh-like trees, but they are horned in a way no real monkeys are. They tear bits of fleshy, pulpy tree-flesh from the forest and throw it at her – often they miss, but occasionally she spooks sideways at the liquid-y splat of flesh against her body.
They do not pursue her when she keeps running, but Sloene is so tired, and once she has left them behind, the girl slows to a long-legged trot, trying to catch her breath. She is thankful that the feathers are glowing in the dark, inspiring her, because she isn’t sure she could follow a dimmer trail. A growl to her left puts her once more on high alert and she looks over, heart suddenly racing again as she snorts her fury and leaps up and forward. In her world, it might have been a jungle-cat; but here, it has six legs and three tails and it’s glowing too, or at least the spots are. It crouches, prepared to leap, but she has fled already.
Above her, Sloene can barely recognize a battle still raging somewhere ahead. The dragon roars, the macaw shrieks, there is sizzling air and fire and a light show.
She almost trips over the next monster, but lifts her knees at the last moment in a neat little jump, mistaking it for a log – until it moves beneath her, hissing wildly. Her forelimbs have just touched down when the serpent’s head swings around, innumerable eyes a sickly yellow focused on her and a full mouth full of crocodile-esque teeth. Those teeth are moving towards her faster and faster even as her back legs touch down and she leaps up again, angling herself towards the snake so that its head slides under her arc and its body is already following as she continues to race away, shivering when she realizes the serpent has spines all along the length of its tail that she’d mistaken for nubbly branches.
Crash and Burn
The shrieks are becoming less insistent, the roaring taking on a sound reminding Sloene of satisfaction. She’s quite convinced that the bird is losing the sky battle.
She dodges a few more monsters, too tired to catalogue their particulars, and she slides to a stop as the trees start to crash overhead and she looks up, only to scramble back as the macaw comes thundering down before her, glowing feathers and smoke all Sloene can see for several heartbeats. The bird is masked by the stench of burning feathers and the smoke she can’t even begin to see through. She tries to approach but then backs up again, coughing on the air she can’t breathe.
The voice changes everything, forcing her to calmness. Her heartrate starts to slow, breathing becomes easier, and she walks right up to the edge, the smoke seeming to cause her no issues now. The macaw’s voice should be soothing, and indeed it has caused the forced calm, but still it makes her skin crawl. It’s thrashing until Sloene whimpers just a little, and then it stills and turns to stare at her instead. The almost-smile and the big gold eye make her even more uneasy and she tries to back away but she can’t. What will be here soon? she has formed the words in her mind, but hasn’t had a chance to speak them when there is another voice.
But Who Did the Finding?
It’s a familiar voice, despite having a different edge that it usually does. Sloene spins around, relief a sweet taste on her tongue and tears in her eyes. “Thomas!” Her eyes are all for him for many long, long seconds and she catalogues every change. He’s glowing, for one, but he’s her Thomas. “Thomas I’ve been so worried…we’ve been looking…” A pause, as she realizes the rest of the group is arrayed behind him, but they are monsters like the jungle animals now. Not as bad, really, but pieces of each of them have changed. But they are no longer chasing her, no longer look crazy and blood-lusty. The headless body of Scarlet in particular gives her the shivers. She has so many questions, and she tries to sort them in her head while she frowns.
Her savior the macaw speaks again, urging her to come down where supposedly it will send Sloene home. But…she does not feel safe next to the bird anymore. Not since the forced calm.
And she doesn’t want to go home without Thomas. She had imagined going home, but always with Thomas by her side. She hasn’t had such a friend, not since Aranea.
It is her Thomas’ face that softens when he looks to her after snapping at the Macaw, telling her to trust him and not the bird. The bird’s face seems to beg her to intervene, to save her from the fate her best friend clearly has in mind, but she remembers that sense of fear, uncertainty she had gotten from interacting with the bird just a few minutes ago. And the dragon – where does the dragon fit in?
The bird wants her to come down, to ‘go home’. The bird wants her to save it from Thomas.
She doesn’t know the bird. Maybe it was carrying her off earlier to eat her or something. Maybe it’s not a savior.
She loves him.
Sloene walks away from the pit, straight into embracing her friend, wrapping her body around his. “Please let’s just go. You can explain later. We can talk about going home. Please let’s just get out of here.”
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts
he thrusts his fists against the posts
and still insists he sees the ghosts
Jack, oh Jack!
His name is moaned inside her head as the group convergences on her. Nikoline feels so powerless against the group and their savagely grotesque ways. They fall upon her in vicious ways. They taunt her, riddle her with silly rhetorical questions and taste her with their teeth and their violating lips. Niko, the pretty painted creature, is saturated red in her blood. She had been strong...so very, very strong for so long till she broke and wept openly as they tasted the saltiness of her wounds with sharp, darting tongues. They giggle and jest about how easily her hide splits upon her legs, the white all but gone with the stain of blood, as scars zig zag down the length of her legs, the length of her neck marked in a necklace of slits, her brow bearing a crown of jagged thorns.
A zebra of a different color? Hah!
But then they performed the "baptism". "One of us...one of us..." They chant as her terribly tired body lay beaten and broken beneath the empty rolling eyes of familiar faces and strange voices. Nikoline can feel her soul bending beneath the red glow of Jack's mocking body. She is losing the hope she had held onto for so long. The blood falls in thick, wet droplets and splashes against her hide like a decorated solider blessed by God. Niko only curls into a ball as they others laugh and laugh and laugh at her shame until there is a voice...no a roar!
A tiger, of all things, has appeared but Niko only weeps softly amidst the pain of her skin and they emotional rape of her soul. She can hear the others laughing after first before their screams rapidly begin to fill the cavern and echo inside her skull. She quietly prays it with eat her body and soul so she may not have to live through the torture any longer...but hen the sounds of their screams wake her from the nightmare.
The tiger, massive and unnatural, starts with Peter, tearing his flesh and severing his throat easily. Niko manages to find her feet to try and stand, soon after Veruca's body is tossed away in a simple slice of her stupid skull...Abigail's stalactite riddled head and body is nearly missed as Niko slips in and out of consciousness, fighting. The tiger is through their skin and bones easily with tooth and nail.
Their carcasses, despite the sluggish smile upon her lips, begin to move on their own accord. Severed limbs begin to twitch as the body from the ceiling suddenly thumps to the ground with an empty, wet grin as it crawls blindly to Jack's feet. The others, diced and sliced, do the same without heads...legs...bellies. Niko wants to vomit but she can't. The woman stands with blood oozing from the 'striping' of her legs that the others had carved so eagerly into her limbs. A jaw-less Penny (fuck that bitch!) returns to Jack's feet with large, adoring eyes and a slithering, wagging tongue. (Niko can barely register the fight for her soul) And so she can only collapse onto her knees as the gold lighting ignites her body and fills the hazel of her eyes with something so strong that she nearly collapses before it's strength fills her
What the hell just happened?! Something or someone has restored her! The dark eyed mare finds her strength to stand, her eyes focused and burning as she turns to the group with a twisted sneer...her mind slipping but welcomed in this moment of sheer desperate madness.
The last trace of soft sand becomes firmer dirt under her feet as she leaves the beach behind for the second time. She doesn’t think of that first time (tries not to, but the thoughts slither into her mind anyway like venomous snakes). How worry and determination and hope had filled her, filled all of them, as they set off to find Kangaroo. How she had propped up Koala’s chin with her own muzzle before they left, looked into his chocolate eyes with her cornflower-blue ones, and told him they would find his mother. How she had trusted the lot of them, as well as you can trust the strangers you will be spending the rest of your life with after being storm-wrecked on unknown shores. What choice did she have but to trust them? She tries not to think of how it felt to fail in both losing her friend and not finding her again most of all. Because she’d been in this same position before, and it all felt too familiar.
The jungle swallows her like a ravenous beast, body and mind.
Now, Zosma has distractions aplenty. It is quiet behind her (for now) as the crashing ocean fades. She doubts it will stay that way, and trains one ear on the path behind her in case the islanders intend to follow her escape route. A small part of her hopes they do. Let her make her final stand, end this madness once and for all – win or lose. But the bigger part of herself wants to live, to survive. And she still believes there is a way to save them all. There has to be. So she moves onward and deeper towards the heart of the forest.
Golden feathers litter the ground for her to follow. She sees them fall like stars from above the canopy ahead of her. They seem to dance as they spiral down and down, glinting even in the weak light that filters through. Occasionally, she sees the moment they are plucked or torn from their source. The dragon and macaw’s deadly dance in the sky above is both terrible and great. Harsh squawks and rumbles of pain seem to shake the forest as they exchange airborne blows. She wonders what advantages the poor macaw has against the lithe dragon. How can the behemoth bird survive such a fearsome predator? Then she remembers the parrots in the citrus grove. They’d had curving, sharp beaks that tore into even the most tough-skinned fruits with ease. She remembers, too, the claws that had plucked her from the ground with such gentle precision. Surely, they weren’t as careful with their aim or grip now. A war of titans, Z thinks, glad she is on firm soil instead of wrapped snugly between the macaw’s toes.
The only thing that chases her now is dusk.
It comes on like a wave, fast and strong. The darkness gathers behind her like a looming storm cloud as she heads east. The pale mare never looks back. It is only when night begins to catch up to her that she notices the changes overtaking the jungle. The horrible, incongruous curse that seems to befall the flora quite suddenly around her. Zosma sniffs as the ripe smell of death fills her nostrils. She stops and looks around, immediately keen to the feeling that she is no longer alone. She is sure her former friends will be glaring at her from between the trees. But instead, she sees that it is the trees themselves that she should worry about.
They have become big, ugly things from hell reaching for the heavens above. Like masts hoisting grim flags, the fleshy trunks support limbs of meat. The meat dangles unappetizingly around her, swaying in the air, dripping blood in a red rain that hits and splatters the ground below. The sound of it – like falling rain – is almost peaceful as it drowns out the rest of the jungle noise. From her stationary position still staring into the gloom past the morphed trees, Zosma can no longer hear the battle raging above her. Only the red rain falling and the erratic sound of her own fast heartbeat echoes in her ears. She waits long enough until it is solely the drip-drop of blood on the detritus below before picking one foot up to start moving again –
and then a million more noises start at once.
Animals appear everywhere: in the trees, between the trees, on the path behind and in front of her. Their feet crunch on the leaf litter. Their grunts and growls penetrate the unearthly peace. Dark, horned monsters swarm over the trees like monkeys. Her eyes track their frantic movements across the trunks. They tear into the once-trees with their nimble fingers and pull away sticky chunks that drip and coat their hands like gloves. They raise the chunks of meat above their heads like trophies. She is horrified when they bring their hands back and launch them at her. Many of the chunks hit her before she moves forward and she shudders each time they connect. The fleshy pieces hit her neck, her back, her hindquarters, before sliding off and leaving a crimson trail in their wake.
The white woman splashed red flees the tree-bound demons. All around her, though, are more hellish creatures to contend with. Maggots carpet the ground. Somehow, they are less ugly in the dark of night. They almost seem to glow with borrowed light from the moon as they move away from her. But the pulsating motion of so many bodies and the squelching, sliding sound of them will haunt her nightmares forever. Still nasty, Z thinks, seeing the telltale golden glow of a dropped feather in the near distance. She heads for it and her heroic bird, but is tripped and falls hard. Something sickly green has wrapped around her ankles. Zosma’s neck bends around to get a better look at what she thinks is a harmless vine, but then it squeezes her legs.
The horned face of a python lurches at her, and she barely avoids its flying teeth aimed at her throat. Its’ eyes are too large, abnormally so, hideously so. They burn red like embers even as it misses its target. The snake releases her a little in its surprise at not latching onto her. While she is still struggling to free herself, a tapir comes crashing through the forest, charging her on its three wobbly legs. Twin horns gleam on its dark head. Just like her once friend, this tapir is painted black and white. At the moment, this one too, seems to want to kill her. Up close, she sees the dagger-like feet and whip-like tail it swings around. The creature lowers its head and crookedly plows into the downed mare. One horn connects with her already wounded shoulder, gouging the skin open even further. Zosma cries out at the stab of pain. The tapir scuttles back and prepares to launch itself again, but the horse kicks away the last loop of python and rights herself. She stomps at the loamy earth, hopefully landing a fatal blow to the snake, before running towards the feather.
She is passing the glowing beacon when the jungle is suddenly illuminated. The dragon releases a jet of fire overhead, so hot that she can feel its after-warmth down below. The brightness only lasts a few seconds, but it is enough to reveal the creature that has been waiting for her ahead. Its striped coat shines in alternating orange and black stretched thin over a gaunt frame. Bones poke out of its sides and hips. It looks hungry, ravenous. In a heartbeat, she realizes she will be sustenance against starvation. It pounces at her with its razor sharp claws outstretched.
“Tiger,” she says like he is here before her. Because of course it would be him, the last hurdle to a clear path ahead. All the animals with the names of her friends working against her, just as her friends are. She ducks to the side desperately. The tiger with two horns twisting on his head like the others rakes her as he jumps by. His giant paw leaves red claw marks over her right ribs. Heaving, Zosma runs on. She hears his angry yowls behind her, but he doesn’t seem to have the strength to follow her for another attack.
With the macaw’s fallen feathers as her guide, the mare moves deeper into the jungle than she’s ever been.
It is as dark as death. But between the feathers and the occasional firelight overhead, she finds her way through. At some point, the battle reaches a crescendo in the sky. The woman pauses, because the noise is so great, she thinks her hero has surely perished. But with her gaze trained through the horrific canopy of dripping meat, Z sees the massive bird. Still flying, but on fire. It shrieks and the dragon closes in for the kill. Zosma edges forward with her eyes still to the heavens above. If the bird is to die, it won’t be alone. It had saved her when she was most vulnerable (she can still feel the maggots now, worming and drilling her body) and she will be there for it.
She trips over something on the ground. Looking down to make sure it isn’t another monstrous beast and finding only a vine, the cremello mare misses the exact moment when it happens. When she looks back up, the macaw is alone. And it is falling. Fast. BOOM!
The ground shakes and she is thrown back on her heels. When the initial smoke and dust clears, Zosma hurries closer towards the hole scooped out of the earth by the bird’s fall. She doesn’t go all the way, sure her savior is dead. Instead, as the feathers drift down around her (a golden rain rather than the blood-red rain before) she looks up at the stars. They have always been her hope and light in the dark. Before, they had given her a name when her own had been too soiled to wear anymore (remember, Cecilia, how I made you a woman?). They had spun in the eyes of her lovers at night on the prairie, brightened their, at first, shy and innocent (and then not so shy or innocent) explorations of each other. They had guided her to Beqanna and then to the sea. They rose again in a new world – the island – and she found them shining in Kangaroo’s soft gaze. They are with her now, as she mourns the bird who helped her.
Until a voice startles her from her reverie.
“Please. Come closer, please. I won’t hurt you.” And oh, how she’s heard that before! But she finds she isn’t scared, is quite willing, in fact, to walk forward as the voice asks. She looks into the still-smoking crater and isn’t surprised to see the source of the voice is the macaw. She is surprised to see it is alive, though it appears to be a precarious description. Its’ wings are tattered and scorched, shadows of their former beauty and grace. Puffs of smoke trail upwards from various parts of the bird. It looks pitiful and whips about its earthy tomb. It only quiets when it sees her. “Shhhh,” she starts anyway, wanting to be a comfort however she can. One eye peers upwards at her and the macaw smiles at her (or at least seems to); the smile twists her guts instead of soothes them. “It will be here very soon.”
And then it is.
She is.
Kangaroo. The chestnut mare steps forward out of the gloom. She’s glowing, a fiery red that betrays all of her soft features. This version of her friend looks fierce, unyielding – but still so beautiful. Zosma takes a step towards her but stops when she sees the others piling in behind. Sloth joins her, but he appears to have left his eyes behind somewhere in the jungle. Caiman flanks Kangaroo, and Z is glad to see she’s missing the vast majority of her bottom jaw. See how far she can fling spit now? The others are there, too, missing various parts of themselves. Some even sport extras; hard rock-like structures Zosma has no name for poke and prod ears and heads alike. Hellish unicorns. A headless horse walks easily beside them, stops when they do. Worst of all is Koala. The colt has deep, gaping holes across his entire little body. She sees a slice of stark white rib bone and can’t look at him anymore.
The bird urges her to shelter with him as Kangaroo and the others come along. She looks at the tattered wings that had once been glorious and full. Wings that had carried her away from certain doom only to be met with more war, more bloodshed (she can still feel the bloody flesh sliding off her sides, can smell the pungent earth she’d hit when the python ensnared her). Had it been benevolent? Kangaroo’s rebuttal is strong and wholly unlike the mare she’d come to care for so deeply. The red-glowing woman promises that she will take her home, but Zosma shakes her head, unsure.
Where is home? There have been so many: Espana, the wild prairies, Beqanna, the island beach. This last, she’d settled into, believing there was no way she could go back, believing the family they had made would be her forever. She and Kangaroo and little Koala would make their own unit within the larger picture. They would build their love and be happy, not because they had no other choice, but because it is what they wanted.
What she still wants, more than anything.
The woman she sees now is almost a stranger, though. She sneers at the suffering bird, calling him a liar. Her face gentles when she turns back to Zosma, and the pale mare’s heart catches in her throat at the familiarity of the look. The words don’t seem to matter as much after that. They way Kangaroo says she will deal with the macaw later doesn’t strike as hard a chord with her best friend as perhaps it should. Her loyalty wavers between her savior and the glowing woman. Because helplessness has always called to her very soul, and the felled bird touches something deep within her. But she has known the chestnut horse far longer. She has spilled her secrets, shared her desires and fears equally. If she goes with her, she can tell her how the bird helped her, how he saved her life. Surely, whatever transgressions he’s committed will be forgiven. They can restore their family, save Koala, and be together.
Zosma turns away from the crater with a sad smile and walks, exhausted, to face Kangaroo. Her red glow bathes her in its light, and she thinks only of redemption. “I’m yours.” And she is. Gods help her.
