Title: The Monster's Alphabet
Author: alliterator
Summary: A series of vignettes, from Adam to Zookeeper. Spoilers for all seven seasons.
Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything belongs to the great and power Whedon.
The Incan Princess
Takes place in 1478
"You are the Chosen One. You must die. You have no choice."
- The Bodyguard in Inca Mummy Girl
They brought her high atop the mountain, Sabancaya. They had wrapped cloth around her eyes so she wouldn't see, but it was not needed; her eyes were tightly closed out of fear.
Hitting her foot on a rock, she stumbled and fell upon the ground. Men – from her village, those whom she had talked to not a week before – grabbed her arm and pulled her up and dragged her along.
High overhead Condors flew – she knew the sound of the Thunderbirds' wings flapping. She wished that she could fly with them, that she could escape her fate. But her wishes were ignored and the men kept on dragging her up, up the Tongue of Fire[1].
When they finally reached its edge, she could smell the sulfur. "Please!" she cried out, "I beg of you, don't do this."
"You are the only one," one of the men said. "You are the only one that can defend our people from the nether world."
"I do not want to die!" she said.
"You must," an older man said. She recognized his voice; he was the one who condemned her to death. "You are the aclla[2]. It is your destiny to die." Just then, she felt the hands holding onto her shoulders, a knife pressed against her breast.
"Please!" she pleaded again.
"Death is your gift," the older man said as he plunged the knife into her.
[1] Sabancaya, a volcano in Peru, means 'Tongue of Fire' in Quencha, the Incan language.
[2] An 'aclla' is a chosen woman in Incan society – a princess.
Thanks to the Annotated Buffy (www.justinleader.com/annotatedbuffy/) for those and other facts!