MABEL
Her hand retreated when the magic and mystery seemed gone. “Why is it here? What is it for?” She asked no one in particular; the figure before her likely wouldn’t know either, and the strangers mulling around them have once again dispersed further back. Maybe they saw her as a ghost and treated her as such, with disdain, with fear; she preferred either now, wanting some portion of the world to shudder at the sight of her. Drowned girl, but no lost lamb. She’d barely begun to know her fangs and daggers at all, when the tide swept her out.
Yes, he answered, and she wondered if he was some sort of savior. Like the Voice had been for the twins, their parents and siblings and everything else fallen apart, torn, dead. Her eyes studied, scrutinized, the pondering beginning to form behind them all over again, instead of the empty, unhinged, unbalanced look, starting to conform back into reality. Into life. Or whatever this was now. “How? Why?” The first two inquiries to pop into her brain, to sizzle against her teeth and tongue.
And then she was being studied, and instead of curling back into herself, away from the scrutiny, she allowed him. What else was there to see? To know? Or perhaps it was just her complexion, her disastrous wake, her disheveled presence, an entity of bracken fathoms, where it’d just been dark, dark, dark. But his question wasn’t what she expected (if she did any of that now; predictions and perplexities had been with the old Mabel, worried about war coming to the forefront, asking the Wraith what was to become of them). “I do,” she insisted with a nod; the motion was slow, as if she’d forgotten how to move some of her limbs. “I was born here.”
Yes, he answered, and she wondered if he was some sort of savior. Like the Voice had been for the twins, their parents and siblings and everything else fallen apart, torn, dead. Her eyes studied, scrutinized, the pondering beginning to form behind them all over again, instead of the empty, unhinged, unbalanced look, starting to conform back into reality. Into life. Or whatever this was now. “How? Why?” The first two inquiries to pop into her brain, to sizzle against her teeth and tongue.
And then she was being studied, and instead of curling back into herself, away from the scrutiny, she allowed him. What else was there to see? To know? Or perhaps it was just her complexion, her disastrous wake, her disheveled presence, an entity of bracken fathoms, where it’d just been dark, dark, dark. But his question wasn’t what she expected (if she did any of that now; predictions and perplexities had been with the old Mabel, worried about war coming to the forefront, asking the Wraith what was to become of them). “I do,” she insisted with a nod; the motion was slow, as if she’d forgotten how to move some of her limbs. “I was born here.”
I bare my teeth
and stretch my claws out
and stretch my claws out
