She does not land.
She only awakens.
Opens her eyes to crushing darkness.
A black so deep that not even the sun that orbits her golden head throws any light.
She can feel it like a physical thing.
It presses in from all sides, hungry.
(It reminds her of the Eclipse.
The whole world plunged into shadow.
But there is no sun here.
No light that struggles against the darkness.
Only the small sun that belongs to her.
And it makes no effort to illuminate the darkness.)
There are things that lurk, she can sense them.
Things that watch.
Things that are adept to the total blackness here.
Hungry things.
Savage things.
(Is it fear that twitches in her gut?
No.
No, it cannot be.
She does not fear Death.
Has she already died?
She does not recognize this as the Afterlife.
But so many things have changed and she with them.)
“Mother.”
The voice slithers up out of the darkness.
It is not one she recognizes, but then how could she?
She did not stay long enough to hear him speak.
She had looked at him and called him Larva.
And then she had gone.
(Had she thought about him?
The child she had abandoned?
The thing she had set loose upon the world?
It is hard to tell now.
These memories no longer belong to her.)
She hears him still but cannot see him.
Even when he presses close.
(Is it dark or is she blind?)
“Child,” she says.
And he touches her and she knows.
She is blind.
This is what the falling cost her.
(Perhaps it is a blessing.
For she cannot see the way their faces are distorted.
She cannot see the sick disfigurement.)
“Mother.”
A second voice.
And she does not recognize this one any better than the first.
Because she did not live long enough to ever hear him speak.
He is another thing she set loose upon the world.
This is not the Afterlife, she realizes.
This is a reckoning.
She exhales.
(Breathing still, she thinks.
She must not be dead, not yet.
But she can feel the promise of it squirming in the darkness.)
“Boy,” she says.
And she waits then.
Waits for this child to touch her, too.
But he does not come close enough.
She has already given her life for him once.
The girls do not come.
Only the boys.
(Had she loved the girls better?
Had she taken greater care of them?)
She does not smell the fire.
She cannot see it.
And it is no ordinary fire.
It burns hotter, brighter.
It is vicious as it scorches the earth.
It leaves nothing but a path of devastation in its wake.
“Why?”
A third son asks.
“Mother, why?”
There is a desperation in his voice.
She turns her face in his direction.
A better mother might have apologized.
Might have said, ‘please forgive me, I didn’t know any better.’
But Bible did know better, she always has.
She made the decision to leave them.
(Save for the one who had eaten his way from her womb.
Although, if he had let her live, she’d certainly have left him, too.)
This is hell: having to answer for her sins.
She sucks in a sharp breath and the crush of darkness tightens around her ribs.
Surely she will suffocate.
“Stop this,” she says.
But she has never been their mother.
She has no authority over them.
“Mother, please.”
She cannot distinguish between the voices now.
And the fire draws ever nearer.
And she is oblivious, blind.
The fire burns so hot that it leaves no smell.
As if even the atoms have been obliterated.
“Mother.”
“Mother.”
“Mother!”
The fire takes the first son.
And then the second.
The anguished screams sink their teeth into her psyche.
The agony. The total, bone-deep terror.
And the fear, finally, seeps into her chest.
Because she cannot see what it is that takes them.
Her nostrils flare as the fire takes the third son.
“Mother!”
But she was never equipped to save them.
She was not even equipped to love them.
The fire takes the fourth son and then.
And then it takes her, too.
A fire so fierce, so deadly hot, that it melts her from the bottom up.
The gold gives way.
She had thought herself indestructible.
But she has been wrong so many times before.
She opens her mouth to cry out.
But the heat melts her cheeks, her lips.
Her eyes.
It is worse than any death that ever came before it.
The pain is incredible.
Inescapable.
She tries to run but the legs are already gone, reduced to a molten puddle.
The chest collapses and her heart seizes, shuddering once and then going still.
And then she is gone.
Here rests Bible.
She who could not make right all of her wrongs.
Until.
Until the body returns.
Until she sucks in a sharp, world-swallowing gasp of air and scrambles to her feet.
But the world is still dark.
Dark, dark, dark.
She has returned to the Mountain but she has no way of knowing this.
Her heart slams out a frantic pulse and she turns her head this way and that.
No one calls out for her.
So she calls out instead, “child?”
i didn't need to go where a bible went
traits to scramble!
horn, wings, immortality—all carried
the pit also took her sight oop
claiming the 0-space jewel touched!