12-05-2022, 08:18 PM
As if the sea had returned its treasure, she lay amongst the kelp and wet sands, her demure body salted and quivering with each zephyr combing through her inky black hair. Warmth would momentarily caress her ribs, pulling at her to return as the tides began to shift. The shallows beckoned her back, promising to cleanse her troubled heart, and she longed for the waves to sweep her away deep into the abyss. She knew how easy it would be to let herself slip away and yet she stirs, willing her long spindly legs deep into the sand, one after another until long at last she stands. Her delicately curved ears flatten against her tangled crown, defiant. Her dished face braces against the ocean horizon and she turns away to face the ruins.
Memories like flickering lights flood her thoughts and she thinks that somehow if only she could regain her footing and make a run for it, perhaps they’d grow stronger. She tries to focus on the brightest of them, using it as a guide to usher her through the strange landscape and she hopes one will materialize. Things would make sense then. But she is dizzy now, her breath sharp and there is a trickle of scarlet dripping that she hadn’t noticed before. Those firelight memories dance away, and she is alone.
“Hello?” she mummers, her sweet voice raspy, throat full of sand.
Fear grips her, spurring on the drumming of her heart so loudly that it’s all she can hear. Her legs buckle as she panics and the world spins around her. Nothing is familiar.
“Anyone!?” she shrieks, overcome with dread.
This wasn’t right. She shouldn’t be alone on some desolate – island? She wasn’t sure. But she needed help, to know the comfort of even a stranger, and then maybe the world would stop spinning and she could make sense of her condition. Desperately she stumbles forward, catching herself on jagged rocks, forcing herself forward until the sands solidify and she can catch another breath. How long had it been? She felt the dampness begin to evaporate from her velvety coat, sunlight sinking into her bones that stretched it so thin. Hunger answered that it had been too long, but she could not bring herself to lower her head to quell its demands. Safety came first and there was nothing about this place that gave her any sense of such.
SPYGLASS
I saw the world I had walked since my birth and I understood how fragile it was, that the reality I knew was a thin layer of icing on a great dark birthday cake writhing with grubs and nightmares and hunger.