by T. Wyse
She freed the pouches, but anchored herself, digging her feet in tightly against the soil. The head of the great serpent reared up as if to strike, to cut her flying escape loose.
She simply let go, and fell into the sky. The head of the shape slammed against the earth, silvered blood gushing forth before it corrected its path.
She took the reins finally, clutching and playing the strings, urging them to take her higher, upwards, away. The shape blundered and folded upon itself with a temporary dissolution of the clarity of its form. She passed over the school, stealing a stalled glance through the skylights below before catching the air in full and tearing towards the east.
The school dissipated into a white speck, and shortly after only the coloured sparkling glass still chased her sight.
The black form followed ever still, the dissolution as temporary as a boxer’s punch landing. As the serpent flowed through the free air it thickened and slowed the currents it touched, and the slimy feeling reached out towards her, came faster than Crow could move.
The thing struck, a sudden bolt of speed driving its mawless head. She feinted, dropping towards the ground, then spiraled upwards, crossing over the body of the thing.
That vicinity, even so temporary gave her the briefest flash of something, a hint of something more in a tiny moment slowed by that aura. She dipped and rotated under the belly, following and accelerating up its progress, trying to catch that feeling once more.
“Can you scatter them?” She asked, her voice carrying to her passenger.
"Get me closer, above them."
She rose, her momentum carrying her contrary to the ribbon's train-like progression. Kokopelli erupted from the sheath, landing on the back of the multifaceted beast. He ran along their backs, his hunched shoulders gyrating like an overworked machine, his claws wounding and piercing with every flurried step. He fell slightly behind her, finally tearing through a group of them, and falling towards the earth.
She swooped down, riding drafts and headwinds to correct herself, thrusting upwards to catch the little creature, while avoiding another vipered strike from the head of the beast.
"Did you see it?" She shouted at her little guardian as he clung back to the harness.
"I didn't. But it’s not for me to see. We're going to have to push harder than that." His voice was almost lost onto the wind's howling
The snake’s path now swirled in an unsightly knot, its sides trembling and bleeding now and then as rogue pieces of it collided, but yet it could only move forward. She flew outwards and on, as fast and straight as she could, hoping to narrow its path and girth, and to allow a clearer runway for his jagged little feet.
The viper struck once again, she nimbly dodged to the side. Kokopelli erupted again from his padded refuge, and tore into the ribbon once more. The empty world below rained in quicksilver, his attacks became more vicious, more desperate. Some would separate from the form and he would meet them with his jaws open wide, chomping them neatly down. Yet this served to marinade him, and in the end he slipped and fumbled, falling down in a cloud of silver droplets.
Amelie caught him once again, narrowly avoiding the serpent's head. "How many of them are there?" She knew a tinge of doubt, seeing the ribbon extending into the horizon, its tail hadn't even arrived at the knot it had tied itself into earlier.
"Too many for me to kill myself." He laughed. "But continue child, continue!" He roared in joy.
She made another pass, and as he tore into them the silver flowed over him and into him. His shoulders lost their jagged looseness, his back became pointed and lean, his claws all the sharper. Not quite Qotsamosa, and yet far too noble to be Kokopelli he landed upon her again, this time of his own noble agility.
“I think I felt it that time.” She shouted. “Not at the front, but somewhere here.”
“Well then, let’s go again!” He roared with a deep rumbling joy.
She couldn't help but share in his elation. "You're enjoying this, old one." She laughed with him, falling beneath another vipered strike, feeling the second knot finally disperse. She flew east once more.
"This is as the old days, makes me feel young again!" He elated, his voice indeed seemed younger, more confident. He leapt out, onto the head of the flock once more moving even faster than he had. It was like a waterfall geyser pouring onto the earth below, and yet there was something wrong, something that worried her. The great snake had suddenly turned its attention to him, doubling upon itself, and submerging him in black.
"No!" She screamed, plunging herself through the line of black exploding upon itself. The slickened body slipped through her arms, he had not caught the padding. The little cat fell down, towards the earth, his body slack.
Amelie plunged after him, spiraling without control, her sailed dress closed to the wind. She caught him, but had no time to look him over, to see how badly he was hurt. She tossed him into the little quiver, and hoped it would keep.
The rescue’s cost manifested, the viper’s head struck without warning. She tore away with all sail, but the ribbon’s side grazed her, kissing her on the cheek.
In that moment she felt it again, a kind of pulsing surge, an excitement hidden within the cluster.
Her face burning, she feinted towards the ground, then rose high above, attempting to lose the pursuant head of the swarm. She rose high into the sky, high enough that the chill stung at her, but she forced them open to survey below. She needed shelter, at least for a moment, some way to look him over without being pestered.
A dash of black and grey somewhere below, a smattering of white a little ways from where she had come. She dove, focusing hard on the wind and felt the wind travelling through a tunnel underneath the blackened shape. The wind focused through this spot, an eye forging a piercing spear’s tip.
Good enough. If nothing else the tip would allow a quick escape, and it held a covered roof. She finished her descent, letting the sails gasp as she passed the upper level of the broken road. She skidded on borrowed shoes, silencing the pouches. She had arrived again at the sheltering underpass of the first day.
The cars were still there, pieces of them at least. Not quite bones but certainly carcasses now, having been scavenged for parts, both cloth and metal. Bits and pieces lay scattered about the site now, longer pieces propped up against the cars like some kind of market.
She opened M’grevor’s door, and slipped Kokopelli’s slick body into the seat. His own lava ichor mingled with the silver rivers, and he was once more the old little sad cat she had come to know, looking all the more wretched wet. His eyes were cut and bleeding, his lop ears shredded to near ribbons, and his form lay limp in her arms. Yet there still lingered some glow in his lungs.
“Please, I don’t have time. Just wake up. I can’t do this alone.” Her own breath trembled, and to her relief his lungs glowed and gasped, but only half filled. Darkness was overtaking them, filling with liquid.
“No. You can only do this alone,” he sputtered, and cracked.
“I’ve never been-”
But then his form sputtered and gasped, his lungs found no further purchase, and they darkened entirely.
She stroked his shagged cheek softly, though his body trembled with limp disinterest, his eyes closed.
“May we meet again tomorrow then.” She turned to face them all, hearing the chorus rising up.
She strode towards the edge of the darkened asphalt, but movement caught her eye. Two tiny figures stood to her right and left, both wearing her dress, both strangers and yet herself.
The two pieces of the shimmering bumper that had cut through the darkness now sat propped up against the truck.
It was her turn to stand between him and the world.
She looked at the grounds, and felt the daggered wind, tearing through what was once an artery of civilization, and knew what she could do.
She snagged a rod from the laid out market, and tore into the earth, stirring it with wild and crazed circles. This aw
akened the silt, breathing out a great cloud of dust into the piercing wind, her own little snake which engulfed the oncoming beast. She stirred it more, wildly, her eyes choked with dust, burning with the invasion. She coughed, sputtering as the cloud overtook the entire area.
Her eyes useless, she let her wind sense open wide, the world a blizzard of clear snow tracing glowing contours around her. Close now, and unimpeded by her little play. Allowing the primers loose, and ensuring she could still move her hands, she braced the pieces of bumpers across her arms.
Alone, at once and finally, she let her sails fully free, and braced the shining shield around her head. She was thrown into the air with enough force that the strings nibbled at her arms. They met there, between the shadow and the sun, where silt met road, and her shield tore into them. Wet thumping drummed against the metal like sloshing hail, their soft bodies pouring silver in a gushing burst around the dam. The wind still carried her, pushing hard into and against them, ripping and parting the body of the great monster.
She cut with enough ease that the overpass’ shape shrunk quickly behind her. Their blood soaked her hair, dripping into her nose and mouth, it stung at her clenched eyes but still she held tight. The ribbon split into four pieces, reforming upon itself as it peeled away, pouring its life onto the earth below.
She felt it there, only a little further. She felt it pulsing, its excited breath. Suddenly her progress was stopped, that slugged feeling of time standing still permeating the air, the wind only serving to help her hover there. This was a place of tranquility within chaos.
She floated there, the flock still passing around her, and she felt as if she stood on
the edge of the world, the wind fighting against this perversion of reality.
It approached as the bodies around her grew thinner, the feeling of something beyond the flock, a familiar piece greater than the whole. The shape struck at her before she could confirm it, stunning her. The thing knew the metal barrier, and cared nothing for it, and for its reward its twisted beak sunk between her shoulder blades. Both brackets fell, one from surprise, the other from being released by ripping agony.
Not a hoarse whisper now, but a feeling projected directly into hers. “Victory.” Crow moved her jagged beak up and down, sinking it further into her flesh. Amelie smiled, even through the intrusion, even through the pain, even through one of her lungs now going dark. She grasped it in the hug of a lioness.
The falling metal pierced through the heart’s moment, and the breath flushed them down into the live air of the world below. Locked in their embrace they fell uncontrolled towards the ground.
"I see you." She sneered at it. She opened her eyes, even through the stinging blood, and she saw it, and knew. It had eyes like a fly, thousands upon thousands of them covered its oblong, asymmetrical face. Its beaks forked off in useless directions, yet were deadly sharp. The thing had two jagged claws, one shrunken, useless, the other ripped at her stomach. It had many wings, countless wings, all useless to it now.
"I see you." She repeated as they fell towards the earth. It was a crow, at least superficially. What it truly was, however, was herself. It was monstrous, twisted beyond imagination, and yet she understood it, understood the nature of the Aspect. It had gnawed on her flesh, taken her forced sacrifice, so that it could know itself, so that it could be born into the world, with stolen power, with stolen flesh.
She abandoned the comfort of the wind entirely, allowing them to fall freely. She grasped it closer, pushing its knifed beak through her shoulder even further, lodging them together.
It flapped its wings, furiously trying to squirm free. She tore the wings with her teeth, rending them out of their sockets. The thing screamed, it was her own voice, twisted, mocked. The legion behind, its body echoed the scream, desperately trying to catch up to the falling duo.
She grabbed at its eyes, tearing into the orbs, blinding it. It screamed with even more desperate primality, its grip loosened on her shoulder, and she tore it away from herself, holding it out in front of her, gripping its talons.
The ground approached, so fast. It was going to hurt, but it needed to be done.
"You are nothing creature. Twisted stillbirth, craving my pain to give you pleasure. Return to the world, return to the earth, and cease your torment." She snarled, somehow less than human in emotion.
Its body surrendered, going limp. “So much untasted, so much unknown.” It sighed with her voice.
The world erupted at them, the limp body of Crow fell into the earth, her own arms following it. Her hands shattered, and her forearms followed, yet something happened, something unexpected.
The ground took its offering eagerly, and there was a moment where it all stood still. The legion snake which had pursued her even to this final moment erupted into a quicksilver rain leaving not a single black form remaining.
A great gust of wind tore upwards from where Crow had been swallowed into the earth, pushing against her. It was the force of the wind unbridled, utterly unchained, and it flung her helplessly away.
Unable to control her crushed arms she fell to the earth, onto her back. Her dying mind saw a pillar of ash and dust rising upwards into infinity, piercing the roof of the sky itself.
21
Wind of Remembrance
She found her hands in front of her once more in the darkness, yet they were not poised beside the carved white wall. Her hands froze in place, as if strangling something, someone, but without the victim between them. In place of the pen’s wall, a blinding light in some inexplicable shape cut against the blackness, grinding against her bones and eyes even when she had no sense of them.
Yet beyond that searing fog, she could somehow feel the presence of Crow, not with sight or even wind, but something deeper.
“So it goes.” Crow’s voice no longer whispered. Now it rang with a music as resonant as Collette’s. The feeling began to fade away, and Amelie reached out, dipping her fingers into the light. It seared her fingers, and yet this gave the figure pause. “I can hear you now, or rather understand you.”
"
"I wasn't born with that thing, that concept that I see in your mind." It paused, rifling through the recesses of the knowledge of the dream. "Empathy," It decided softly.
"I knew only hunger, born only with desperation." Its voice was the voice of a thousand different sources, each one a different level of Amelie's own. "I was born, from eating, from plenty and yet starvation. I knew hunger, I knew onlyhunger."
"I knew you, I knew to seek you out, and to satiate my hunger there." The voices paused. "When I tasted you the first time, I knew centre, I knew form. I left you there, not knowing what I had done."
"
"The hunger returned, and with the knowledge of your flesh came the formation of my heart. It was imperfect, lacking. I only took sacrifice from those who stood fast against me, I could only take sacrifice from such people."
There was a strange tugging at her arm, a nipping gnaw. It pulled her backwards and away from the wall.
"
“That was no lie, I truly did not. I have only set out for you, others are of no consequence to me as long as they understand the need to allow flow around them." The voices echoed upon one another. "We tasted you again, and knew your empathy once more, we knew of the world, tasted the world. We wanted to be born, to be real, to be free and embodied."
That tugging pulled her back, she dug in her feet in the nothing ground below.
"I can wait." The chorus sounded. "It would seem you have urgency in the hurting world."
"Wake up! Wake up!"
A crackling purr, somehow frantic pierced her ears. Her shoulder spat and bled still, torn muscle muted into an ache from screaming cramping pain.
Everything hurt, her legs, her arms, her skin made up for giving up its itch by feeling like it had been burned off. "How long has it been?" Her lungs choked, almost three quarters dark.
"You have to get up! You have to run, take to the skies, anything!" He screamed, now frantically managing to drag her away. She heard the lapping of water, the ground seemed different, even more unsure.
"Wh..." her lungs seized again, painfully. "I don't think..." She forced a breath. "...I'm ready." She tried to sit up, managing to do so. Sputtering red vomit came forth with a volley of violent coughs, and yet her lungs lay coated inside, still choking, just slower. She raised her arm up, it lazily responded. It was broken, shattered, hanging limp, reminding her of Eilis' wounded arm.
She gasped for breath, struggling stay conscious, her legs were twisted like a doll's.
She sensed a living thing’s breath approaching, panting with hot wind somewhere nearby, her mind unable to source it only to know its presence. Padded feet drummed a muted beat against the earth. She attempted to move her head, and instead it flopped lazily, unbalancing her and toppling her onto her arm.
Her lungs closed again, dismissing a scream, her delirious state denied any fear.
A great grey wolf, its form nearing her at an impossible clip, closed the distance, bounding at her with fangs bared, its slobbered tongue hanging out the side of its maw.
There was a second figure, blurred by the distance, made unsure by the screaming agony inside her head. It was them, the boy and the wolf, coming to finish her. Kokopelli had been right.
The figure leapt finally, and she closed her eyes. "I'm sorry Kokopelli. I can't run, I can't fly." She lay there in the dirt, waiting for the impending jaws upon her.
There was a great crunch, she felt the vibrations in her body, yet there was no pain. A great thud resounded in the firm earth, a large body skidded behind her, sliding through the loose dirt. She opened her eyes again, her mouth opening and closing desperate for breath.
