We're coming through the rye

[atrarosa.livejournal.com]

The time we have been waiting for. After sunset.

I put on a purple dress, to help me be brave. I grew out of my favourite one - I grow out of everything so fast - but Mama got me a new one. It's meant to be for going to parties, but I won't be going to any more of them. But I don't want to think about that right now. It makes my stomach hurt.

Mama made me go to bed not too long ago. She says that even though I'm a big girl now, I still need lots of sleep. I always argue with Mama about bed time, so I made sure to argue this time too, so she wouldn't think anything was strange. And I made my mind quieten down when I was lying in bed, so she'd think I was falling asleep. Mama's clever. But I know lots of tricks now. I can hide my thoughts, if I want. So I got up, and I got dressed, and I snuck out. Father told me I would know how to, when I needed to, and he was right.

So I go out of the house, and I go towards the tower. I have to walk through the field to get there, and the grass is so high. It looks creepy in the dark. But I know nothing will happen to me, because Father is watching. He wouldn't let anything happen, not before I do what he wants me to do. But I'm still scared, all the same.

[Open to Iblis]
[closed]

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[al-shairan.livejournal.com]

It is time. I have been waiting for this moment since my Fall. The breath in this body shudders, its heart fluttering. I hear her footfall on the stairs.

"Hello, daughter."

She looks up at me, and her bottom lip trembles. Then her eyes narrow.

"Don't wear that body."

"I thought you might find it comforting," I say, and she shakes her head firmly once. And so I put aside the Kent shape and wear Tanwen instead, who is not so very much taller than Rose is now.

"You've grown again," I say sweetly, and smile at her, pinch her cheek gently. "And you came. You are a good girl, Rose."

"I'm not. But I'm Mama's girl, and so I'm going to save her." She looks at me very seriously. "You have to promise you won't hurt her after, not ever."

"Cross my heart," I say, and she shakes her head.

"A real promise." She holds out her hand, palm up, and I nod, surprised but pleased. She is my daughter, truly, for all her human weakness. I scratch my nail along her palm and blood springs up. She does not cry out, and I nod, approving, then cut my own palm. I press them hand-to-hand.

"I swear," I say, "I will not harm your mother." I feel the flicker of blood between us like flame.

[al-shairan.livejournal.com]

I feel it when she cuts, even before I smell her blood. It is like a long sharp pain through me like a sliver of glass pressed into skin.

There is a silence after her body crumples, and the night is darker than it has ever been, all the lights in town and across the carnival briefly extinguished. I walk across the bridge, keeping my steps quiet to match the silence of the night. Rose is Snow White, crimson staining her white dress and her black her fanned behind her. I take the knife from her hand and fold her hands across her chest, shut her eyes.

Out of that heavy silence a great peal of thunder rolls, and then the ground beneath me shakes, and shakes, and the bridge rattles and collapses into the river. Excolo's first earthquake; but perhaps not its last.

Across the meadow, a single light goes on in what I know is Management's wagon.

"Come, reap," I say, and walk away.