The last, the last.
Last of her kind, of her unique breed – that breed of misery and star-crossed despair, the bloodlines like delicate veins, all leading to her. She is their crescendo, the moment they led up to. She, the plain bay mare, no prettier than the hundreds of other bay mares, she is the last.
She is the last, and she is failing them.
She was supposed to die young – most of them did – but she did not. She doesn’t look old – she had aged until she didn’t, and then she had stayed the same. There had been no fanfare, and she hadn’t noticed the stagnation for years, when it suddenly occurred to her there should be gray hairs amidst her mane.
She was supposed to find someone, but she did not. For all her blood’s history, she has not known love. Her father and mother had not been lovers, but they were the exceptions to the rule, the rest of her is perpetrated with lovesick tragedies, girls with tattered wings loving scarred boys, a devotee loving a goddess with a terrible blue eye.
It’s been long and so much has changed, but she comes back. The land has hollered her home, though she never loved or even liked it here. She’s never loved anything; really, she is anhedonic in the way she goes through life. She skims, a waterbug on the surface of a river, but she knows nothing of its depths.
She is last of a line that means nothing to them. She is a bay mare who smells like earth and hasn’t changed in years.
The bells toll.
At first, she thinks she imagines it. That somewhere her thoughts have turned from logic to peals of noise, chimes ringing in the summer air.
Then she blinks, and the sound is louder. The world shimmers like a heat-mirage on a dry road.
(come)
She blinks again and the bells are in her bones now, the noise in her marrow. The world has changed, subtly, and she cannot quite put her finger on it until she realizes what. There are no birds. No animals scurrying in the grass. Only a few horses, ones she doesn’t know and who do not know her.
(you must come now)
The bells are speaking. Someone – something - is speaking. She walks. They all walk.
The bells toll.
Something moves. Something that is not like the horses.
A lamb, small, delicate – until she looks deeper, until she sees there are seven eyes, seven horns, and her skin crawls. She looks back, but there is nothing. The world closes in around her.
Blink, and it’s gone, and with it, the tolling of the bells.
Silence is strange, almost suffocating. She wants the bells back. Even wants the lamb back, in a strange way.
Behold, cries a voice, and she wonders if it’s a god, the end of the world is nigh.
She laughs. She can’t help herself. She is the culmination of their bloodline, a woman with destiny heavy as steel in her bones, and she is the one at the end of the world.
She wonders if this would count as a success or a failure.
You are the chosen ones.
Hand-picked on what grounds? She is a plain bay mare. An old one, too, even if she doesn’t look it, body frozen young why whatever queer magic weaves its way through their line.
She is an anhedonnic woman, living a life like a water-bug, skimming across the surface. She’s never known love, or hatred, or any overwhelming passion, only the niggling itch left in her bones by her blood.
But she feels something, now. A swell of excitement, of fear.
Will you accept your fate?
She thought she had. She thought her fate was to propagate the bloodline. Not this, standing in a strange world with the memory of a seven-eyed lamb and a voice booming from nowhere.
She finds she quite likes the idea.
“I do,” she says, as if the voice had proposed marriage, “I do.”
She weds herself to this, to the new fate, to the bells that once tolled.
Last of her kind, of her unique breed – that breed of misery and star-crossed despair, the bloodlines like delicate veins, all leading to her. She is their crescendo, the moment they led up to. She, the plain bay mare, no prettier than the hundreds of other bay mares, she is the last.
She is the last, and she is failing them.
She was supposed to die young – most of them did – but she did not. She doesn’t look old – she had aged until she didn’t, and then she had stayed the same. There had been no fanfare, and she hadn’t noticed the stagnation for years, when it suddenly occurred to her there should be gray hairs amidst her mane.
She was supposed to find someone, but she did not. For all her blood’s history, she has not known love. Her father and mother had not been lovers, but they were the exceptions to the rule, the rest of her is perpetrated with lovesick tragedies, girls with tattered wings loving scarred boys, a devotee loving a goddess with a terrible blue eye.
It’s been long and so much has changed, but she comes back. The land has hollered her home, though she never loved or even liked it here. She’s never loved anything; really, she is anhedonic in the way she goes through life. She skims, a waterbug on the surface of a river, but she knows nothing of its depths.
She is last of a line that means nothing to them. She is a bay mare who smells like earth and hasn’t changed in years.
The bells toll.
At first, she thinks she imagines it. That somewhere her thoughts have turned from logic to peals of noise, chimes ringing in the summer air.
Then she blinks, and the sound is louder. The world shimmers like a heat-mirage on a dry road.
(come)
She blinks again and the bells are in her bones now, the noise in her marrow. The world has changed, subtly, and she cannot quite put her finger on it until she realizes what. There are no birds. No animals scurrying in the grass. Only a few horses, ones she doesn’t know and who do not know her.
(you must come now)
The bells are speaking. Someone – something - is speaking. She walks. They all walk.
The bells toll.
Something moves. Something that is not like the horses.
A lamb, small, delicate – until she looks deeper, until she sees there are seven eyes, seven horns, and her skin crawls. She looks back, but there is nothing. The world closes in around her.
Blink, and it’s gone, and with it, the tolling of the bells.
Silence is strange, almost suffocating. She wants the bells back. Even wants the lamb back, in a strange way.
Behold, cries a voice, and she wonders if it’s a god, the end of the world is nigh.
She laughs. She can’t help herself. She is the culmination of their bloodline, a woman with destiny heavy as steel in her bones, and she is the one at the end of the world.
She wonders if this would count as a success or a failure.
You are the chosen ones.
Hand-picked on what grounds? She is a plain bay mare. An old one, too, even if she doesn’t look it, body frozen young why whatever queer magic weaves its way through their line.
She is an anhedonnic woman, living a life like a water-bug, skimming across the surface. She’s never known love, or hatred, or any overwhelming passion, only the niggling itch left in her bones by her blood.
But she feels something, now. A swell of excitement, of fear.
Will you accept your fate?
She thought she had. She thought her fate was to propagate the bloodline. Not this, standing in a strange world with the memory of a seven-eyed lamb and a voice booming from nowhere.
She finds she quite likes the idea.
“I do,” she says, as if the voice had proposed marriage, “I do.”
She weds herself to this, to the new fate, to the bells that once tolled.