MABEL
Mabel walked, and walked, and walked. Like a ghost, like a specter, like a wraith, all willowy limbs and unearthly conjectures. Maybe she was a phantom, resurrected and brought back to life for a second time by their brightened Goddess, by sparks and electricity, by pieces and pockets of hard-driven flesh and ambitions.
But she remembered so very little, and it was like running on a tightrope; falling off the side at any given moment. Maybe that was why she only had eyes for the void, for the world didn’t matter to her now, not really, not in these seconds, slipping from portals, into known ramparts, into fortifications and ruins she’d known since her birth. Born and born again; to dust, to ash, to ruin, to seabeds, to nothingness, and then snow laden across her feet.
She didn’t feel. She didn’t care.
She only looked for her sister – a call across sibling, twin bonds, a sharpening knife wrapped around her cold, dead, sinister heart. She only glanced for Evelyn, into the skies, into the air, where she might’ve been coaxing, enticing, laughing.
Like they’d played in Temples, like they’d marred in places of worship.
But when she asked, when she hissed, no one had an answer.
And so she kept going, going, going, until the familiar gave way to strangeness again, fertile fields buried beneath snippets of snow, mounds buried beneath more hills and outcrops, and she stared into the expanse – wide-eyed, and suddenly, painstakingly alone. “Evelyn?” She called along the shadowed dusk, the unwinding world – as if her second half could call back in return, as if there’d be an answer.
But she remembered so very little, and it was like running on a tightrope; falling off the side at any given moment. Maybe that was why she only had eyes for the void, for the world didn’t matter to her now, not really, not in these seconds, slipping from portals, into known ramparts, into fortifications and ruins she’d known since her birth. Born and born again; to dust, to ash, to ruin, to seabeds, to nothingness, and then snow laden across her feet.
She didn’t feel. She didn’t care.
She only looked for her sister – a call across sibling, twin bonds, a sharpening knife wrapped around her cold, dead, sinister heart. She only glanced for Evelyn, into the skies, into the air, where she might’ve been coaxing, enticing, laughing.
Like they’d played in Temples, like they’d marred in places of worship.
But when she asked, when she hissed, no one had an answer.
And so she kept going, going, going, until the familiar gave way to strangeness again, fertile fields buried beneath snippets of snow, mounds buried beneath more hills and outcrops, and she stared into the expanse – wide-eyed, and suddenly, painstakingly alone. “Evelyn?” She called along the shadowed dusk, the unwinding world – as if her second half could call back in return, as if there’d be an answer.
I bare my teeth
and stretch my claws out
and stretch my claws out
