With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain, And eyes squeezed shut ‘neath rusty mane; Funny, that they should meet. Two strangers, both of whom lost their eyes in long-dead kingdoms (hers, to a dark and laughing god; his, to a misguided idea this would save him). (Though – his came back. A magician whispered them back, and for the longest time they were amber, like Craft’s, until they weren’t.) And then – they should both be dead. They both had been dead. And death had found them both lacking. He knows none of this, of course. He has only the vaguest memories of his own death, too many of his memories seem to be bleeding away, and this frightens him but also feels like something of a relief. He senses he does not want to relive many of his memories, that there are awful memories mixed in, that he has done any number of terrible things. He sees the mare, pale as a spirit with sunken places where her eyes had once been. He feels an immediate stab of pity, taking in the ravages of age across her body – but the basic architecture of her still holds something lovely, a ghost of the beautiful queen she’d once been. She smiles at him when she’s closer, and he can’t quite decide if that smile is lovely or ghastly or somehow both things at once. She asks where he is going. He almost laughs. “I don’t believe I know,” he says, “only that I think I used to live here, once.” He should let her continue on – but he finds himself wanting to stay. There is something about her that a deep and primal part of him recognizes – the undying dead, the remainders of a past while the world has moved on. Detritus. “My name is Garbage,” he says, “who are you?” Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe; I never saw a brute I hated so; He must be wicked to deserve such pain. |
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