MABEL
She could’ve traversed the trail in her sleep – even though she no longer did anymore. A commitment to its denizens and distinction, of days where her family had spent long hours toiling in soil, caring for their livestock, pressing and clawing their way through the dirt. She’d witnessed her parents pray to gods that never heard them, never cared about them. She’d watched as, no matter what she and Evelyn found on their wayward hunting and gathering, her siblings fell one by one to disease, to starvation, to the concaved ribs and the jutting out angles, to the burial mounds they’d dug through the ridiculous earth. She’d pleaded, and then listened, as no amount of conversation seemed to break it to her parents, and then witnessed them follow the same damned path.
But she and her twin had been better, smarter, far more cunning. They wouldn’t have fallen apart to illness, to a lack of food. Instead, it’d been hunger to survive.
Mabel was mostly silent as she led – a siren in the snow, a wraith in the embrace of darkness. “What’s your name?,” came from her mouth on a whisper, as if anything louder would betray, would disturb, the pieces and portions of this walk. And maybe it would; otherwise she became quiet and feral again, immersed in the sacred foundations of where she’d grown up and where everything else had faded, died.
And one would be able to tell, from the farmhouse’s debilitated state. It remained still and steady against the winter winds, but was obviously hollowed and empty, save for one or two inhabitants in the past year. Barebones of a structure, with its missing windows and its worn, chipped away edges, portions of the roof’s shingles gone, a significant lean in the corners. The barn nearby was in the same state, and she seemed to pay no heed to its weakening stature as she opened the front door, listening to the creak echo across the void. She didn’t care how he felt about its existence either – only shifting her feet to make room for him to follow.
But she and her twin had been better, smarter, far more cunning. They wouldn’t have fallen apart to illness, to a lack of food. Instead, it’d been hunger to survive.
Mabel was mostly silent as she led – a siren in the snow, a wraith in the embrace of darkness. “What’s your name?,” came from her mouth on a whisper, as if anything louder would betray, would disturb, the pieces and portions of this walk. And maybe it would; otherwise she became quiet and feral again, immersed in the sacred foundations of where she’d grown up and where everything else had faded, died.
And one would be able to tell, from the farmhouse’s debilitated state. It remained still and steady against the winter winds, but was obviously hollowed and empty, save for one or two inhabitants in the past year. Barebones of a structure, with its missing windows and its worn, chipped away edges, portions of the roof’s shingles gone, a significant lean in the corners. The barn nearby was in the same state, and she seemed to pay no heed to its weakening stature as she opened the front door, listening to the creak echo across the void. She didn’t care how he felt about its existence either – only shifting her feet to make room for him to follow.
I bare my teeth
and stretch my claws out
and stretch my claws out
