07-16-2021, 11:04 PM
She is dead-weight on Castor’s crushed body, though the magic of her flesh makes her seem light. The mangled shapes of his shattered limbs where they lie disorganized beneath her are visible between her ribs, and between the blades of her shoulders whose bright glow slowly fades with each minute that ticks by, the edges of the spearhead that killed them both glint like cruel mockery in the harsh, flickering, light of bodies burning on pyres.
Sintra does not hear Pollux’s bargaining, no longer hidden within the bounds of her skin. The growl of thunder reverberates in stilled muscles and the taste of lightning that flavors the air sets flyaway strands of her mane and tail to dancing in the air like living things, but there’s no consciousness left to notice, only bright blood seeping slow as molasses from her nostrils and the hole in her chest. Sintra does not notice the bridle pulled roughly from her head, nor the way Pollux and Castor dissolve away to stardust like smoke, mortal and immortal set against the darkening arc of the sky. She does not feel the way the spear in her breast dissolves, leaving a golden scar.
For Sintra, there is only nothingness. Until there isn’t. Until, from that golden scar, a bolt shatters the nothingness to pieces and Life floods in, washing the peace away. The smell of burning bodies floods in, of dried blood and fear, the sobbing moans of men who lay dying, praying to gods that don’t answer them. The burning shock of Life stabbing through her chest sends her reeling back to wayward, coltish, legs that buckle and twist and stumble over rock and bone and lost bits of armor. Her gasping adds to the cacophony of this spent battlefield, draws attention from the victors as they pick and stab their way through the dead, as they add more bodies to the wicked flames and the greasy black smoke churning up into the sky blots out the bright gleam of a new constellation. The men gesture with their hands when, on still-shaky legs, she passes by. Cursed, they call her, and the little ghost-mare can only agree, though when they see her seem to understand them, they only fear her more. Demon, they cry, and throw stones to chase her away.
Rainbow light pours form her shimmering skin and the rocks skim across it in a shower of colorful sparks, but she feels each blow in her pierced heart just as if they bruised her flesh instead. There are no kind words, no gentle touches to be found here (and Sintra is not sure why she would expect them, except that her heart is a broken thing full of longing,) and she pulls back, out of range from their simple projectiles.
Dejection makes her hooves feel heavy, even as she shakes off the last shadowy remnants of death. Sintra pauses at the water’s edge with her head slung low. The salt on her lips could be water, or sweat, or tears. The battle had given her purpose, but it’s gone again, like a dream that she can’t quite hold on waking, and there’s nothing now but homesickness for a land that was never a home and the loneliness that is her constant companion. Even the water seems to draw back, away from her, evading her touch. The sea recedes, revealing the horrors of its shallows where tiny crabs devour the men and horses and the occasional hound, and Sintra, raised well away from the seas and knowing nothing of the water’s moods, only lifts her head curiously and takes a forward step like a question.
The water recedes and the horizon becomes a mountain, a massive mound of salmon-red, of horned shell gleaming in the final burning light of day, and she, foolish girl, is too dumbfounded to move. A sound like scratching and bubbles accompanies the disappearance of the scavenging crabs, beneath the sand as the king of them all rushes headlong to land. He feeds on the bodies left in the shallows, devouring them (and any of the small crabs too slow or stupid to hide,) plucking them apart with huge, tearing, pincers as if they were not whole men, as if horseflesh were frail as autumn leaves, and Sintra, also too stupid, too slow, watches with fresh horror as his attention land on her.
He might be forgiven for not realizing she is alive, with her glassy flesh and her bones, and that heart that clenches harder and faster than the stillness of her body suggests.
He’s coming for her, each leg a piercing dagger in the sodden sand. Sintra shudders in response to the chittering, to the ecstatic bubbles bursting ardently from his mouth, and she, as repulsed and beguiled as the frothing sea that swirls around him, does not wait for him to reach her. All the adrenaline and the fight that burned in her heart during the battle is gone, she is tired and she is alone, and if this is death, Sintra will not fight it, now, not even as the larger of his two claws closes over her and he lifts her to a dizzying height. The smaller, thinner claw, the poking, prodding, cutting claw, is a dagger through the flesh of her shoulder. Someone is screaming, but she isn’t sure who. That rainbow light curls out of her skin again, but instead of protecting, it bubbles and foams and falls and the lucky dead watch with gaping mouths as he plucks her to pieces, the scent of her living flesh driving him mad.
It’s okay, she thinks, a final thought in a foggy brain, full of death’s reeling shadows again, and she tries to smile at her murderer, as if to say she knows; they are all the toys of the gods.
This death takes an eternity, but she marvels distantly at the way she feels no concern, no pain, when he tears away some tender piece of her, and she does not bother to watch it disappear into the narrow chasm of his mouth.
I forgive you.
She does not see how the water boils where her blood joins it, where it mixes with the iridescent foam that remains of her rainbows. She does not see when the ocean revolts against him, how the half-eaten Dead rise up, each wearing a thin film of seawater and rainbows and blood. They run and limp and crawl towards their devourer at an impossible pace, climbing and scrabbling, biting and tearing, until he is so coated with relentless attackers that he drops her in a rage and tries to flee, but they rip him to pieces with all the inexorable tenacity of Death.
Finally, from her bed in the shallows, she sees, and she would frown if shecould, but there’s no feeling in her lips, anymore, there are only the screams and the terror from the Men behind her. Poseidon! they shout and their voices are tinged with fear. Carcinus is Hera’s, not his, and the Sea God will always favor horses.
I’m sorry, she thinks, and she is, for a moment, but then there’s nothing, again.
1200 words