31 Days
nothing ended, nothing begun, nothing resolved
Grey World
emclar
Her entire world is grey – everywhere she looks, she sees puppets dancing amongst the remains of the living, having torn others apart in their desire, their wish, their want, their need for new human flesh, pink human flesh. They smell her whenever she is in her human form, so she has no choice but to take the shapes of the People. Her scent changes as an animal; she takes on the pine, beech, evergreen scents of the forest, the clean-air smell of the skies, cool and fresh, and when she is of the water, she smells of nothing.
And right now, as she watches these people inhabiting the bodies of her friends, she feels nothing. Nothing but remorse, sadness, loneliness, regret that it is them in there and not her.
And she wants to help them, but she feels like she can do nothing, like she is helpless. And she is. Short of transferring her wild magic to every person – puppet – she comes across, there is nothing else to be done. She is doomed to wander the world, always searching for new people, for life yet untainted by death.
And when she comes across them, she feels her heart leap to the sky and play amongst the clouds along with her other wishes and prayers. The brightest star in the night sky feels to her like the pinnacle of her hope; where the gods are watching through a spyglass, distancing themselves from what has happened in her world. They have left their worshippers, chosen not to work through a human vessel as they often do in dire situations. She often weeps for them, for the people who have been erased from existence by those who have already passed, feels her tears hit the ground and land on one of the people, who sit by her trying to ease her sorrow. They know she is mourning and they know that the humans, their humans, are not who they once were... and as they try to figure out what to do, she realises something.
There is something she can do.
She can be the one who doesn't give up hope when everyone else has. She can be the one who actively works towards a resolution; something that will send these dead back to the Peaceful Realms where they belong so the living can keep on living and the death can sleep, slumber through the long, long days and dream of the long, long days they had when they, too, once danced under the sun and, in the night time, gazed up at the stars and dreamed.
