A Lonely View

Rushing, running, she doesn’t know if she’s fast enough to make it to the ridge.

It takes a lot of strength, and she doesn’t have much left.
But nobody will know. They can’t.

Her rage burns brighter than her soul.
Maybe she won’t be alive when this is all over, but she’ll be standing.
Scratching, clawing, kicking, fighting.

Everything to get him back.
In the ground.
In a grave of his own making.
This fucking-

There he is, at the ridge.
A tall tired sentinel overlooking a land that could have been his.

“Why,” she screams with a fury full of an endlessly violent experience.

“Because… I can’t keep doing this,” he answers softly with the sound of a thunderclap.

When it’s far away, that sound is like an echo,
Barely beyond the edge of hearing.

“We TRUSTED YOU. BELIEVED IN YOU. WE-”
More furious cries.
Fists clenched, blood trailing from her hairline.

They just fought.
Her rage burns brighter than the body she’s in.
Mind over any matter. Any.

“You… you believed in your… Him,” he says.
His sounds are soft, but his words aren’t.
“… and I’m never going to… I just can’t be that.”

It’s only now she notices the sound of her own breathing. Heavy like his footfalls. Oh, how he is truly her son.

She was rebellious once-
No, she was never like this.
Not a “FUCKING TRAITOR. THAT’S WHAT YOU FUCKING ARE, OTOLIN!”

He just stares.
A wind whistles over the ridge.
She keeps screaming, and her words are unintelligible to her own ears.

They are full of threats and fury,
Sound and a sensation of killing that only overtakes,
And rolls through her soul, her mind, her body.
The buzz in the back of the head that comes from a kill, clean or not.

He just stares.
More wind over the ridge, kicking up rocks and dirt.
And then he goes with it, turning and shambling off.

No.
No, he won’t go.
Not without one more fight.

She springs into action right as the wind begins to pick up, whipping around her. Up goes a hand.

He’s learned to react to the feel of violence,
Not the feelings of one’s soul. Like her.
Because the tall traitor looks back, turning so his head cranes to stare.

She closes the gap. There is no distance between them.

Then…

“Don’t.”

She stops right as her hand delivers the strike, a last-second improvisation
Within murderous movements.

“… what.”

Her tone is short.
Again, she’s aware of her breathing.
A few seconds left, maybe.

“WHAT, OTOLIN?”

He just stares.
And when he lips open, and words spill over them?
She’s already tumbling down to the ground.
But she hears it.

“… aren’t you tired of this?”

… Maybe.
Just maybe.
She’s face-first in the dirt,
And oh, how so much of her hurts.

In an endless pursuit of a godhood that no person should ever pursue.

Later, she rises,
The sun crests over the ridge,
Her son is gone, and all Emelyn has left is a lonely view.