She has seen such strange things.
Crawled through the underworld on her belly and back out again.
(And she thought herself indestructible, here, now.)
She had mistaken him for a boy, just a boy.
But this is not a boy, this thing that had addressed her by name.
(There is nothing left for her to fear.
She has died so many times before.
She does not fear the pain or the darkness.
She understands the message.
She knows that here, now, a thanks is not a thanks.
It is something else altogether.)
A shame, she thinks, that she tried to be a good mother only once.
And she will not get to say goodbye.
But then, a voice from behind her.
She had looked for him and here he is.
(Is she relieved? She doesn’t think so, not really.
And yet, there is some strange satisfaction in it.)
The boy who is not a boy at all but must be something left over.
Left over from all the things that had leached out from the underworld.
It snaps its jaw shut and she watches, head tilted.
(Unaware that the son had almost killed her a second time.)
The golden eyes flit between Chemdog and this strange thing.
Perhaps this is just a dream.
She has never seen fire like this.
And the thing circles them and she thinks she should be afraid.
(Shouldn’t she be afraid? But she has died so many times before.)
When the thing addresses her, she looks steadily back at it.
“I won’t be going anywhere,” she tells it.
She had thought it just a boy, but it is not just a boy.
i didn't need to go where a bible went
@[crowns] @[Chemdog]