whispers to a deaf mind

When He first came to you you were cocky, and stupid, and untouchable in the way all young boys assume of themselves. You had me. What else did you need?

He saw us fooling about on that distant hillside. The one where the trees grew down and the leaves fell up. We were shifting, running, slipping from two to four step as easy as breathing. Do you remember that? How easily it once came to us? Maybe not. Maybe you don't remember it at all.

He watched us play and then suddenly His voice cut through our laughter.
That voice. Honey and milk. He smiled at us. Held out a hand for a shake all proper like. His hands were so soft. They were the softest touch you'd ever felt.

He said I was beautiful and a real fine animal and asked you if the horn on my head was real and you laughed and said of course it was. He said well blow me down and laughed too and you'd never heard a grown man laugh before. It was nice.

He asked you if you had a daddy and you said you did. He said what about a mamma and you said you had one of those too. He asked if either of them had an aspect and you told him nope, it was just you, and in fact out of your whole clan it was just you alone who had me.

"Sounds like you're a real special boy then," and He'd smiled again and you felt warm and fuzzy inside. Right there and then you decided you'd do anything to see Him smile at you again.

//

The smell of shit in the air. The raw stench of human desperation in your own house. Your daddy drunk on the table and your mamma on the couch with empty eyes. Trash on the floor. Smoke staining the walls. You sit there and think of the smell of Him, clean and crisp and cool like a fresh water delivery. You're brushing my tail but your thoughts are so occupied you've been doing the same segment for six minutes. I laugh at you and you swat me and it only makes me laugh harder and you join in and Daddy wakes up and there's no more laughing.

//

You adjusted your gun. It was too new, too clean. Still smelt like foundry and linseed. You'd only ever used your daddy's old rifle before this. But He'd got it for you special and you weren't gonna turn down such a beautiful gift. Especially one that could blow a hole through a monster's skull and still had enough power to put another through the wall behind it. The holster sat pretty on your hips, He'd said. You'd gone all warm inside at that.

He stood behind you, crouched to match your height, His body enveloping yours. His hands were on yours as you lifted the gun, His breath on your hair as he lined you up with the targets. The gun's so new you barely twitch your finger before the recoil is lashing through your bones and your wrist jerks hard. He catches you, straightens your posture. Murmurs real easy in your ear and adjusts your aim again. This time the bullet cuts clean through the bottle in an explosion of blue and green. The glass catches the light as it goes, a minature firework, and it matches the one in your chest when He leans in real close and whispers "Well done."

//

Your mamma does her best. She's making you a new pair of pants after you tore through the old ones scrapping on the hill with me. I'm sitting all contrite in the corner and you're on the stool by mamma's sewing machine watching her hands as she draws the fabric under the needle, turning the wheel all the while. We went with her to get that fabric, remember? From that town down near Wolfblood station. You used to get candy from the street vendor in the station's mouth. Do you even remember the taste of it anymore? I can't.

Your mamma looks up at you and promises to take you to town again soon. You grin and swing your legs on the stool, dreaming of your candy treat.


She never goes to town again.

//

The smell of gunpowder in the air lingers as you clean your gun. Shards of broken glass glitter around the tree stumps, green and blue shining in the light. You almost want to reach out and touch them, spinning softy in the shardlight, but you'll cut yourself on their beauty. Instead you scour soot from your gun's chamber while He paces, explaining how to correct your aim.

He's incredibly patient, always willing to sit and talk you through it, explain where you failed and how to fix it. He takes your hands in His and shows you how to hold the grip properly so the recoil won't throw your aim. He stands back and corrects your posture, puts a hand on your thigh to draw back your leg just a touch. You burn at the contact.

He's looking at you but every now and then His eyes flicker to me, a flash as quick and burning as the one that erupts from your gun when you raise it again for another round of shots. This time you only miss once. His smile's just as shiny as the broken glass.
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a rare treat. It's not boiled canesugar like the stuff you got from your mamma. This is fancy stuff, dyed blue and clear like glass. The candy is sweet on your tongue. It's almost sickening.

//

Your daddy tells you one day that it doesn't matter if you take a wife. He tells you that you're the endling, that the family's gone, that the blood doesn't matter anymore because there's no more of us. There's just you, and me. Daddy tells you that it doesn't matter who you marry, you'll all end up like him, like mamma, alone and walking in single step. He tells you that you're a fucking waste of time. He tells you that the hope is gone. He tells you all this with clear eyes and clean breath and steady hands.

"You're doomed to be alone, son. There's no one left like you."

//

He's brushing your hair while you bathe. He's got real soap, a thick white bar that smells like ice, and hot water that comes from a tap instead of a heavy bucket boiled on the range.
I'm lying beside you on my very own towel, real cotton, resting my head on the bathtub's rim and breathing in the steam. His hands are soft on your skull as He draws them through your dark strands. They fall limply against your back when He drops them and His fingers follow them, down the curve of your spine, dipping beneath the waterline. You freeze and He whispers to you all smooth like. You're so mature for your age, though, aren't you? You're a big boy. A grown young man. You've seen your daddy do things with with mamma and the man tells you it's just like that. But mamma always cries when daddy's done with her.

You cry when He's done with you.

He kisses the tears from your face, murmurs in your ear, holds you close, and smiles.

I should've protected you. I'm so sorry.

//

"He'll come soon."

Your mamma's trying to be reassuring but neither of us believe her. You've got your hand in my mane and I can feel you pulling. Daddy said he'd come and daddy wasn't a liar. He'd always arrive exactly on time. Just not when you'd expect.

The air's too hot and the smog is thick. Your mask is fogging up with each breath but this is important to everyone. I'm breathing easy but the smell of the dead is overwhelming. Shardlight falls over us in heavy bands. The meagre trees the group's gathered under do nothing to dissaude the sky's rage.
A part of you, contemptuous, spits this is a bad omen. You crush it under prayer.

Sweat drips down your back in heavy itching rivulets. Your grip on my mane tightens. You can't fidget. It's not proper. The pulling on my hair hurts but I don't toss my head. I can't be uncomfortable.
It's not proper.
Shards inch across the clouds. It's 1300. He was supposed to be here at 11.

Your daddy shows up at 1530. The heat's grown oppressive at this point and you'd taken your mask off a while ago despite the danger of pollution. You feel the way the dust sticks to your throat as you swallow, the grit crunching against your teeth as you smile. He doesn't smile back.

During the ceremony you squint into the crowd. You see Him. Your chest buoys with a sudden lightness, your blood sparks with a warmth unrelated to the burning shardlight. You swallow a grin and try and catch His eye. He's smiling.

The giddiness envelops us both when we change. We're proud to show off for Him. Our mamma's in the crowd too but her smile is drowned out by His grin. He's so happy. You're so happy. Our fangs are sharp and our claws are sharper and our hooves are sure and mighty. We rear and roar and feel the might of our legacy in our very soul.

//

The smell of blood and tears. You're pressed against His sheets and He's muttering in your ear. You feel like liquid fire and gold. There's something burning in your chest and it hurts like magma. You feel horrifically sick. You think you're really in true love.

His eyes never come off me.

//

Your daddy's shouting at you again and your mamma's on the ground and there's so much blood and she's not moving and I'm there with you but it's not enough no we're not enough we need to change we have to change the gun glints in the cold light and we move as one and the taste of iron floods our mouth with heat.

He's there at once when you bang on the door. His arms embrace you as you fall forward, sobbing, your tears soaking his jacket.

"You did good," He tells you, "real good." And He explains how you'd taken the first step, how you'd started your purest and most holy path, the true path, the only one you were meant to walk. He tells you your blood has given you promise and now you've kept that promise, how now you've glimpsed the road to your destiny. He tells you that what you did was righteous and good and that you had been granted this gift to be the arbiter. He tells you that He's been sent to guide you, to walk you on the road to salvation, that His hand will show you where the sinners lie.

He tells you to do it again.

And we do.

//

Twenty years later and we walk a trail of blood. The sinners are being purged and the path of glory is long and righteous. We know what we must do and we do it with relish. The other clans scatter before us like prey. We are the lion amongst horses, the god amongst men. His words are our tenents. He is old now, and frail, and his touch isn't soft anymore. We stand before him and look down and he looks so small and shatterable. Like the glass bottles so many years ago. His smile is gone and his laughter rings empty. This is our prophet no longer. We are god. We need no such fetter.

//

Do you remember any of this, I wonder? I try to whisper the memories to you but you can't hear me anymore. Your head is a hole, a shattered glass, the pieces blown apart by a bullet nobody expected. Each shard too sharp, too bloody, too brittle to catch and study and understand. An explosion caught mid-break, frozen and broken. Impossible to fix. You stare at me and see nothing. Your eyes are empty just like your mother's. You don't even remember her, do you? You don't even remember him. You run your hand through my mane, but it's cut too short now to pull on. Your mane too is gone, shaved to the skull. Your once handsome face is now split by the crater carved in one side like the Divide in microcosm, a permanent reminder of that sin branded onto you. The same scarring reflected on my own head. A reminder that you have forgotten the meaning of. A scar that says nothing to you any longer.

There is an infinite chasm between us now. The physical gap is miniscule- you press yourself to my side as if you were a child again, scared and shaking from the monsters in the dark. But this time I cannot whisper words of reassurance, cannot brush up against your mind and calm your racing heart, cannot feel each heaving breath and stuttered thought. Where once an ocean of emotion bore itself to me there is nothing. When we died, only one of us came back whole.

But now I think we were never complete at all. The cracks were always there. It just took death to shatter us completely.

You are warm against my side now. I can feel you breathing. You're still and quiet when you sleep for the first time in many years. I am content.

It is enough to know you are alive.