for makai

[Cy]

Time had been unkind, life even less kind still. There may have been a point in her life, a time before the piece of metal wedged in her forehead, before the magic that had driven her to madness, that Cy had been average. Usual. But that was a self long lost, long forgotten, a memory that had died decades past. There was only the madness now, only the old mare with the piece of copper protruding from the burrs and tangles of a pale, dirty forelock. A hunched creature with cloudy eyes and spittle dried on her sun-calloused mouth. “The boy, the boy. He had no hair. Too close to the sun, it burned away.” The old mare muttered as she hobbled amongst the sand and bleached bones. “The girl was worse. Worse, worse. Dead by her heart.” Her thick, arthritic joints creaked and groaned and clicked as she continued pacing through the stony, bony beach. “Others. Too many, too many. No better than stones.” She paused for a moment, crooking her head awkwardly to the side as she peered into a shadow created by a cluster of rocks. Magic crackled like static in the air around her, impatient, hungry, but she made no effort to use it. Instead she turned back to the stretch of unwelcoming beach and stumbled forward into that same uneven rocking motion. “The wings, the wings. Alive as me.” She cackled and spittle flung from her leathery lips. “Love is ruin. She is ruin. Tear out the wings. Bright like fire.” She stopped again, pausing, turning to look at a different shadow buried between bodies. Her head tilted one way and then the other, those cloudy eyes narrowing as she leaned in. And then abruptly she turned away again, hobbling away at a crumbling walk. “New flesh. New bones. Gold, gold. Better this time.” Her head swung left then right, sweeping back and forth, and then she stopped again. Without grace and without speed she turned around. Her cloudy eyes squinted at every shadow, faintly curious and impatient, but there was no room left for unease at being followed by ghosts in the land of the dead. “Time, time, it’s all run out.” This time she didn’t turn back to her path, walking among the bleached white bones and tufts of leathery flesh. She waited. The magic crackled and poured into her ears. She ignored it still. “Dead, dead. Just like you. Love is ruin. Just a fool.” CY