The shorter path is not easier

[Nyxia]

my friend makes rings, she swirls and sings
she’s a mystic in the sense that she’s still mystified by things

Time offers no way back.

Not this time, anyway,

She must trust, instead, that which drew her away from all that came before. The internal thing, orientated by stars she cannot see, that pulls her ever towards.

‘I can help you!’ 
She gasps, stumbling backwards, startled – and yet, she cannot deny how badly she needs it. Hungers for it, actually, as once she had hungered for acceptance in a strange world. Her father took great care of her. Loved her, once. (Even now, she thinks, because she does not know any better – does not know that an impassable amount of time now exists between them.)

But what he left behind is a weak thing. A trusting, scared, naive thing. 

She trembles. As they are wont to do, her eyes begin to well. “Hello?” though she is terrified, she follows the voice. Nyxia steps up, passing through the door,  her eyes take a moment to adjust to the dark therein. He is like nothing she has ever seen before – but that’s okay. She has seen many a-strange thing. When he offers her a drink, she cannot remember how long ago she last slaked her thirst. Such a long time! “Thank you,” she mutters, sucking it back into her dry, sandy throat.

She does not notice the walls solidify, but when they do, it is not so terribly strange, to her. 

Just another in-between.

When he speaks, she blinks up at him, suddenly aware of her confinement. But that is fine. There was no going back, anyway. Even as he suggests it, she shakes her head and turns to look at his doors. They glimmer like mirages. Behind her, she can hear the whistle of warm wind between the newly carved exit and the floorboards. That out-door, she believes, in all her naivety and unsureness, is the biggest illusion of them all. Tempting as it is. To easy.

“That way, I know,” she says softly, tears spill past her eyelids and down her face – beautiful and broken sides, both. “But I can’t go back…”
‘...you can go back if you choose…’
She moves to shake her head again, but the phantom monsters suddenly materialize. She is still.
‘...Manticore or Curupira…’
For a long time – a moment or an hour – she does not look at them. Decides, instead, to examine the four faces shifting it the water at their feet. “Home,” she repeats, as he finishes, falling silent. That cannot be. Too easy.

She follows the animal, like all those bejeweled creatures of her mother’s making; something like the friends she had made, such a long time ago, in the forests and deserts of home. Passing through the door and the illusion of the manticore, looking back only to wonder if this god is, perhaps, the thing that had navigated her into mother’s dream. 

And then the hole in the wall closes in on itself. She turns, sadly, to face yet another world (or, in-between… it can get so very hard to tell the difference). On either side of her are big, fat trees and large, flowering bushes. Their trunks are thick, their leaves broad and shaped like hearts, fans and stars. But their bark is strange, colorful and glittering, as if made of gemstones in wood’s stead. The leaves, she can see, high above, are many-colored, too.

In front of her is a single path, and all that lay behind the rows of flora that skirt it is darkness… so utter, it might as well be outer space. The sky  is impossibly high, and from her place far below, is equally as jet-black. Starless and unimaginative. Night, it seems to her, for her body wants so badly to gauge some passage of time; really, it could simply be that they are stuck beneath a crust of the earth that could never permit sun to enter.

Dark, in either case.

The path, however, is lit up well enough. She begins to move forward (the only way to go) and as she does, it occurs to her that everything that lives down here seems to emit a faint bioluminescence. She glances down at her own knees and believed even she is alight!

Everything beyond this strip, she supposes, must be dead. Must be death.

She moves slowly, her mind repeating the words like a mantra, ‘We cannot stop the creatures, we can only warn you.’ She can hear nothing, in this world-without-wind to tussle the leaves and grass, and for a long time she walks, keeping her eyes forwards, and she is lulled. Naive. Remembering, once, that her father had told her he was the most dangerous thing in all of Beqanna…

—but what about here?

Finally, after hours (this time, of that she is certain) she catches something in the corner or her eye. So strange after such unending sameness, that she cannot be sure it had been movement or light in her peripheral. “H-hell-lo?” She peers into the dark over her right shoulder, trying to see anything from the pitch black there.

Again! To the left this time, passing just outside her line of sight.

Movement and light. “H-h-hellllo?” she croaks, turning to look to her left. Her gaze, however, is stilled straight ahead. She sucks in a sob and steps back from him. He sits, just as tall as she at the shoulders, in the center of the path. He glows much brighter than anything else here. “Oh,” she whimpers, knowing there is no way back. “I-I-I…” 

His queer, un-animal like face stares at her, with small, close-together eyes that blink but seldomly. He parts his thin, pink lips, revealing sharp teeth. She winces, expecting something horrid, but what comes is a soft, beautiful music. His voice is like a million harps, flutes and violins. No words, at first, but somewhere in the melody, a meaning crowds her ears.“I cannot let you pass.” It is deep and melodic. Beautiful, really. Nyxia stifles and sob and shakes her head.
“B-but, why? I have nowhere else to go…”
He looks at her for a moment, considering, and then his lips parts again, “it has been such a long time, since last someone wandered into my woods.” He stands up, stretching out his front paws, and she can see the lean muscle that rolls under his sleek, red coat.
“C-can you tell me… w-why are you so bright?” she tests a step forwards, imagining herself bolting past him, navigated now by a powerful sense of self-preservation.
His strange mouth frowns, “it… has been such a long time… since… last someone… wandered into my woods… I have… consumed them all, I’m afraid. I take no pleasure.”

As his last verse dies in the air, there is a still, quiet moment.

Nyxia, small and weak, thrusts forwards, thinking only to pass him, for anything else surely means death!

The manticore leaps, just as nimbly, thinking only of catching her, for anything else surely means suffering! 

They catch somewhere in between, Nyxia manages, only just, to skid to the side and avoid him head-on. The manticore lets loose a scream, like a beautiful opera, trying to turn in mid air. His claws catch her right hip, digging deep and then slipping off, dragging in mean, red lines down her rear.

He screams again, a violent, booming refrain.

Nyxia keeps running. It is all she can do. In her peripheral is darkness, and only that, beyond the gemstone trees. In front of her, the path seems endless, hopeless. That nothing beyond becomes increasingly welcoming, it seems to her, but every nerve in her body pleads her to ignore it – death! they cry, and nothing good! 

Run!

Suddenly, light gathers to her right and she has no time to react. He catches her with his front paws, but their momentum and weight tumbles them both, sending them rattling down the path and crashing into those strange, hard trees. She sucks in breath, her lungs feeling hot and deflated. Somewhere just beyond her aching body, she can hear his raspy breath – like a soft, low dirge. “Enough,” he sings, and she lifts her head, tears dampening her cheeks, watching him struggle to his feet. 

Her body obeys like a newborn. She struggles up to.

“There is… nowhere to go…” he frowns and sings, limping towards her.

“No,” she replies, softly. He leaps  and she hurtles. They meet, in blood and anthem, tumbling and then… darkness. She falls from the path (or… so it feels like) and into that darkness. Death, she thinks. But when her eyes open again, she is in a white room, his misery remembered in the scatches and pools of blood on her body, like sheet music.

and I pray to blades of grass to find forgiveness in the weeds.