She is alone again.
And she finds that it does not matter.
It does not matter that she is made of gold.
Or that she has her own private sun.
It does not matter because she is a creature who was made to be alone.
There is a heart that rattles in its gilded cage.
Sometimes she thinks it must have teeth.
How fiercely it begs to be let out.
And then, quite simply, she is not alone.
And she drags her gaze down out of the sky.
She turns to look at him, surprised that it is not Chemdog.
Not Chemdog at all, this stranger who addresses her by name.
He looks at her steady with eyes that glow.
She has never seen anything like him.
She thinks something abstract about the things in the dark.
How they had come for her.
(Oddly she does not think about the child that had clawed its way out.
She does not think about the child she left.)
There are so many things she does not remember.
But he is too young to be one of them.
She blinks her gilded lashes at him.
She tilts her fine golden head and the sun tilts with it.
She does not know what he has done.
(What would she do if she did?
Would she flee? Would she cry out?
Would she mourn those children?
Most of all, would she fear him?)
“Yes?” she asks, already trapped between his teeth.