03-27-2017, 09:18 PM
(‘She isn’t right.’ He wrings his air-clear hands; he is always worrying.
—everyone is always incessantly fucking worrying around here.)
“Right?”
(‘Right. I mean ‘Okay’. She isn’t that.’ Wind hangs onto her tail, woooshing bonelessly behind, much like a flag in the way his legs flap and flick. But unlike a flag, he never hangs still and solemn, for he lives carried by a perpetual phantom breeze.)
“Okay?”
(‘That is to say… well, what I mean by–’ his voice is gusty, like the sound of air rushing through tight slits of rock or over a vast, open tundra; it contains a multitude. Voices, made small and insignificant, that he has caught and bottled, like fireflies in a mason jar, on his journeys. ‘She isn’t normal. I can tell.’)
“Normal.”
(He is gone, with a high, agonizing wail, whipping through the trees.
Wind is a fickle friend, always at the mercy of the changing westerlies and easterlies and so on. But friend he is. The only one she has ever had, plopped down by her side when Crone – that horrible, beastly, surprisingly durable nag – had pushed Aurane from her beautiful, idyllic womb.)
She smiles – toothy and deeply, deeply unpleasant.
“Silly old thing. She looks normal to me.”
She is not cold. She is like an errant ember coughed up from literal Hades – just, not as mighty as the ones that might consume whole worlds in wildfire with one bite;
—she is dying and glowing. Too hot to hold in the palm but too tempered by her own mediocrity to sear to the bone.
She watches from the trees – those leafy, succulent bodies make castles and they make caves for her to move in; they bend and twist as she walks, for the red woman sees the world as her mind wishes her to. (Around the grey creature – the not normal, okay, or right one – the trees bend ever inwards, reaching for her with hands that are bark-for-flesh and blossom-for-nail, but five-fingered and wanting, all the same.
But when they touch her they still – their bellies stop heaving with laughter – and they begin to shudder.
Trees are great judges of character.)
The red woman isn’t. She lacks that thing that makes her viable, so it is by the grace of luck that she is not dead and rotting, thrice over, by now.
Her wires are crossed, one could say. The pulsing, lively red one that says flee lays in naked embrace with the flat black one that says fight. Their intersection is electric and sparking and it makes her dumb and senseless instead; makes her enticed by things that are not normal, okay or right.
“Hello.” Her voice is just a voice, bright and fleshy, but her eyes are lewd and leering.
She is always so hungry – she has been fasting.
This woman is not the most interesting things she has ever seen – she is not like Firegod, with his steamy, smoking fissures; or like Michaelis with his shadow pets – but she is as tempting as and honey left out bare. Aurane gets but the slightest whiff of that cold and slow body as she stops, stricken still and staring.
A ghost precedes us. A shadow follows us
And each time we stop, we fall.
—everyone is always incessantly fucking worrying around here.)
“Right?”
(‘Right. I mean ‘Okay’. She isn’t that.’ Wind hangs onto her tail, woooshing bonelessly behind, much like a flag in the way his legs flap and flick. But unlike a flag, he never hangs still and solemn, for he lives carried by a perpetual phantom breeze.)
“Okay?”
(‘That is to say… well, what I mean by–’ his voice is gusty, like the sound of air rushing through tight slits of rock or over a vast, open tundra; it contains a multitude. Voices, made small and insignificant, that he has caught and bottled, like fireflies in a mason jar, on his journeys. ‘She isn’t normal. I can tell.’)
“Normal.”
(He is gone, with a high, agonizing wail, whipping through the trees.
Wind is a fickle friend, always at the mercy of the changing westerlies and easterlies and so on. But friend he is. The only one she has ever had, plopped down by her side when Crone – that horrible, beastly, surprisingly durable nag – had pushed Aurane from her beautiful, idyllic womb.)
She smiles – toothy and deeply, deeply unpleasant.
“Silly old thing. She looks normal to me.”
She is not cold. She is like an errant ember coughed up from literal Hades – just, not as mighty as the ones that might consume whole worlds in wildfire with one bite;
—she is dying and glowing. Too hot to hold in the palm but too tempered by her own mediocrity to sear to the bone.
She watches from the trees – those leafy, succulent bodies make castles and they make caves for her to move in; they bend and twist as she walks, for the red woman sees the world as her mind wishes her to. (Around the grey creature – the not normal, okay, or right one – the trees bend ever inwards, reaching for her with hands that are bark-for-flesh and blossom-for-nail, but five-fingered and wanting, all the same.
But when they touch her they still – their bellies stop heaving with laughter – and they begin to shudder.
Trees are great judges of character.)
The red woman isn’t. She lacks that thing that makes her viable, so it is by the grace of luck that she is not dead and rotting, thrice over, by now.
Her wires are crossed, one could say. The pulsing, lively red one that says flee lays in naked embrace with the flat black one that says fight. Their intersection is electric and sparking and it makes her dumb and senseless instead; makes her enticed by things that are not normal, okay or right.
“Hello.” Her voice is just a voice, bright and fleshy, but her eyes are lewd and leering.
She is always so hungry – she has been fasting.
This woman is not the most interesting things she has ever seen – she is not like Firegod, with his steamy, smoking fissures; or like Michaelis with his shadow pets – but she is as tempting as and honey left out bare. Aurane gets but the slightest whiff of that cold and slow body as she stops, stricken still and staring.
And each time we stop, we fall.