MABEL
In too deep now, perhaps, the story had already begun, revolved, spun around and around for its second coming; no rapture, no reverence, no intertwining of something pleasant or fantastical. Maybe there were living legends wandering amongst them now, right under their noses, ready to carve them all apart. She regretted it somehow, someway, because they’d been thrown right back into a den of lions without much else; their own claws, their own menace, whatever they were worth.
Her hair had likely lost the semblances of the weeds, the reefs, the waves by now, but if it kept them from flickering and falling apart, then she maintained the same semblances. Whittling away, fingers splayed between tendrils, sniping and taking away the echoes of her demise. A little bit more of renewal, resurgence, in her lungs, even as she dragged portions of the past back into the folds of the future.
Then it seemed to die away, and she furrowed her brows, pushed her lips together, over fangs and vitriol, back into the unknown. Indistinct, indefinite, filmy, misty, hazy, blurring fragments that could’ve been stitched back together had either of them known or understood anymore. But these were warren hedges to climb back over, just as her restless fears, just as his enigmatic shrouds, just as the rest of the world kept beckoning, kept clawing. “You rose up? Who started it all?” When there were clashing storylines, where victors painted the tales, where the end results skewed in alternate, divisive directions, sometimes the whispers offered different, alternative views. Who laid the first blow? Who stretched across battlefields to enact, to engage, to begin the rush?
The concern was paramount, and Mabel thought she might understand, even if she lacked the experience. Her eyes fell to the wooden floor again, looking at the patterns of timber, where ancestors had laid down the groundwork, the foundations, only for it all to rot and wither out again. “Things were starting, before…” Before she’d met her first fate. Before she’d begun the second. “And they seem to be worse now.”
Her hair had likely lost the semblances of the weeds, the reefs, the waves by now, but if it kept them from flickering and falling apart, then she maintained the same semblances. Whittling away, fingers splayed between tendrils, sniping and taking away the echoes of her demise. A little bit more of renewal, resurgence, in her lungs, even as she dragged portions of the past back into the folds of the future.
Then it seemed to die away, and she furrowed her brows, pushed her lips together, over fangs and vitriol, back into the unknown. Indistinct, indefinite, filmy, misty, hazy, blurring fragments that could’ve been stitched back together had either of them known or understood anymore. But these were warren hedges to climb back over, just as her restless fears, just as his enigmatic shrouds, just as the rest of the world kept beckoning, kept clawing. “You rose up? Who started it all?” When there were clashing storylines, where victors painted the tales, where the end results skewed in alternate, divisive directions, sometimes the whispers offered different, alternative views. Who laid the first blow? Who stretched across battlefields to enact, to engage, to begin the rush?
The concern was paramount, and Mabel thought she might understand, even if she lacked the experience. Her eyes fell to the wooden floor again, looking at the patterns of timber, where ancestors had laid down the groundwork, the foundations, only for it all to rot and wither out again. “Things were starting, before…” Before she’d met her first fate. Before she’d begun the second. “And they seem to be worse now.”
I bare my teeth
and stretch my claws out
and stretch my claws out
