The Fall
PART ONE
Chapter 1: The Birds
She thought she was alone.
Then a twig snapped. Then the air changed; it was colder now. A creeping warmth washed it away as it slithered up her spine and across her shoulders, settling deep into her skin.
No, she was most definitely not alone.
She kept her small hand resting on the bony protrusions in the rock before her and turned her head. Watched some kind of silhouette approach, outlined in starlight and filled with a blackness that rivaled night itself. "Who," she rasped, meaning to add are you to the end, but her voice was only so strong.
The shape strode closer, and there was no urgency to its motions, like it had all the time in the world and more. In her skyrocketing fear, every moment stretched, each longer than the last. Eternities were passing. Empires would rise and fall, suns would collapse, the universe would draw to its end before the shadow reached her.
And when it spoke, reality's glassy surface would shatter. "Moth."
Moth is her name. Moth has always been her name.
Her nails dug into the rock, finding the cracks and dips in the rock-hard stone that had once been the bone of some creature, long dead. She couldn't bring it back, she knew she couldn't, but she also knew that if she could, it would protect her from the shadow that knew her name.
"Do you know what hides in those depths, child?"
It was a harsh voice acting mellifluous. Moth's eyes drew wider at every word. Every word so human. So familiar.
"What? W-who…" Again—the sentence hung, unfinished. Perhaps it was a question she shouldn't ask. Perhaps she knew the answer.
The shadow came closer. The stars above brightened, reflected so lucidly on the wide expanse of the lake that stretched beyond them both.
The shadow had a face, Moth realized. She made out eyes that were too wide. A mouth, an oddly shaped nose. A face she knew. A face of someone long dead, as her mother told her, a face that was very much alive in the universe of what Moth now knew was a dream.
"Perhaps you don't," he rasped. "Perhaps you want me to show you."
She scrambled back on her hands, gripping at tree roots and weeds to pull herself away as the man knelt before her rock. A protective rage bubbled in her throat when he raised an arm, a protrusion from his dark bulk that reached for the giant bones embedded in the stone. It was her rock, and she was the only one who knew about it, lying there where a mountain, a forest and a lake collided.
The shadow was a man, and the man was supposed to be dead. Why wasn't he dead? It'd been years since she'd last seen him...
"Grandfather," she whispered, shuddering in the dark, "get away." The man froze. He made a strange sound in his throat; a growl.
"'Grandfather?' Disappointing."
"I-I'm sorry," she murmured. "I'll come back home. I won't sneak out again. Please just leave my rock alone."
No response. Time was frozen. Nothing moved.
Her vision dimmed, then it was gone, and a prickling sensation trailed through her body as her senses dissolved. She didn't feel her head hit the earth, didn't see the trails of light and shadow erupt from the man's heart, coil down his arm, and sink into the stone. Wreath the giant bones in a cloak of something between light and dark.
The moon would dim and the sun would rise before she would know again.
Two days. Two days. Two days.
Moth grit her teeth, tensed every part of her body. Her footsteps through the forest's undergrowth were heavier because of it, slamming down on dead leaves, making as much noise as possible to drown out the low drone in her mind. Two days, two days, two days—SHUT UP!
Yawning yellow light seeped through the canopy of trees above her, pooling on the earth. Little glowing islands among the dark of the forest, places where the lizards would dart to as soon as the sun was high and bright enough to break through the leaves above. It would never get brighter than it was then, though it was hardly past dawn.
Dawn was when her brothers woke. Dawn was when they'd realize she wasn't home.
She knew what they'd think—Moth ran away. Moth ran because she didn't want to die. Moth ran because she was scared.
What's wrong with those reasons? she asked herself over two days two days two days two days. Indignant anger and guilt clashed in her head. She would be a coward to run. She would be a fool to run.
She would be alive if she ran. There was that, too.
Breathing out heavily through her nose, she broke into a sprint, forcing her legs to move and not stop till they took her home, before she could be a coward and a fool. She didn't trust herself.
Something loud and faraway let out a shriek, and she fell. The ground came up fast, so fast she couldn't even yell. She careened onto her side, sprawling onto the hard-packed earth, arms flailing for something to grab onto. Nothing but trunks and roots.
Her heart had jump-started, pounding not only in her chest but in her ears. It was like it was throwing itself at her ribs, trying to beat its way through her. Fear slipped into her veins, much more potent than the anxiety from earlier, from watching a dead man speak to her—but that had been a dream. She knew it had been a dream. She'd simply fallen asleep by her rock, woke up to its shattered remnants beside her, and listened without question to the deep-seated instinct that told her to run.
Home was where she would have no choice but to fight off the creeping grief, the confusion, even the fear.
Shaking, she scrambled against the wide trunk of the nearest tree, pressing her back against it and brushing the dirt off her arms. In the poorly-woven pockets of her deerskin vest, she fumbled for something long and sharp; a dinosaur tooth.
Protect me, please, she thought as she stared at it, gripping it from its wide, rounded base. From whatever that thing was.
Birds were shrieking in the high canopies, flying away in great dark clouds. Their wings flitted across the sun, and the light islands flickered out, again and again.
She'd often thought, looking at birds, that they existed purely to add colors to the world, the ones that lived in their feathers and didn't exist anywhere else. From where she sat, their shapes were dark, no light from beneath to see them by. They were dark as night, the daylight dissolving in the spaces between their wings.
Two days. A certain foolish animosity for the birds sprung up then. Don't end today, you stupid fowls. I've only got so much time.
They were gone fast. Their wingbeats faded as they left, and the sunlight grew stronger in their absence.
Her grip around the tooth tightened, the serrated edges sending small pricks of pain through her hand. All was silent. No birds, no wind, no rustling of leaves. No otherworldly shriek of a creature foreign to her.
She dug her nails into the old bark of the tree behind her, using it to pull herself up into a standing position, or rather a slumped-upright stance against the trunk. Moth drew in a long, deep breath, pushing off the tree and stepping tentatively away, out into the thin forest trail she had been following. The trail that, somewhere down its length, touched her home village.
A heavy weight slammed into the earth, and it trembled. Her knees wobbled in horror, and letting out a sigh of fear, she turned and ran again.
Her head felt funny. It was being enveloped in a cloud of cold air; chills ran down her spine as she fought it off, but it kept coming back with a relentless insistency. Like it was meant to be there, like she had no right to fight it, like any attempt would be in vain anyways.
It's him, screamed the irrational part of her brain. It's him with the undead dinosaurs, they're chasing you, they're going to kill you, all because you ran. They're going to kill you.
Your two days are up.
Moth ran and forgot how to slow. The cold came back, settling deep into her thoughts in a way her fear would not let her admit was almost comforting. She stumbled on roots but didn't know how to fall, didn't remember which turns to take on the forest trail, only knew that the constant thudding behind her was footsteps, was death.
All the way, that same part of her mind—the irrational part—cursed the birds.
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-Angel