[open] send me back to where i roam, any

[spectra]

all i want is beaches full of dead birds. a flood of limbs
washed up onshore. seascapes sparkling bright with bone

We aren’t dead.
The viper’s heart spasms with disappointment, though she had suspected as much.
Certainly, if she were dead, the hunger would not be so painful. There would not be such a dreadful ache in her ribs.

Her frown mirrors the girl’s, though she has no way of knowing this. She cannot see the expression her mouth makes because she can see no mouth at all.

There had been a time quite early in her life, the first day or so, when she could see them as they truly were. She saw her mother with skin and muscle and sinew. She saw other residents of the Cove looking just as fully alive. And then she had woke the next morning to find that they were all bone. Just bone.

But the girl’s mention of her death piques her interest just enough to have her linger there. She tilts her head and searches the girl’s bones for any clue as to how she might have died or how she might have come to be alive again. She sinks closer by fractions, her nostrils flaring.

“How did you die?” she asks, unaware of any social contract that might deem such a question inappropriate. She has no manners to speak of, the viper, abandoned by her mother rather promptly after birth. There has been no one to teach her nor any desire to learn. So she asks and she stares at the girl, unblinking.

S P E C T R A

@[Sintra]