Subjunctive

by Integral Archer

Chapter XXXI: Absolute

The air reeked of humiliation.

After I had cocooned her, I realized that I still had some distance to cover, yet had no way of taking her with me. I tried rolling her, but she was too heavy, I too weak, and the ground too rough. Then I tried levitating her with my magic, but I was too exhausted from the fight, the spell I’d cast, and the journey, such that even when I tried to change forms, to change back to my old unicorn form in order to try to inspire within her that little amount of pity she had once shown to me, I found that I couldn’t. So, after hours of struggling, cursing, and crying, all on my part, I finally managed to fashion a sort of rope out of vines and tree bark and tie it around the chrysalis. Thus I pulled her, inches at time, toward the common square of what you’d call our village.

It was not from her the humiliation effused. Despite my trying, she never screamed, never struggled against the chrysalis trap, and not once complained; she kept her dignity throughout the entire struggle. It was I, the scrawny changeling, straining against a rope that would continually snap and have to be repaired, panting, dragging this creature who without any active struggling still managed to so effectively resist my efforts, whence came the humiliation. Deponent, I thought—active but passive. She didn’t move at all, yet still the tension in the string pulled back at me.

Night fell before we arrived, and I couldn’t pull through the dark. When it occurred to me that she might be hungry, I tried to make a pathetic repast out of twigs and leaves, straining my memory to recall something I’d seen her eat in the wilderness. I found some berries which I knew to be not poisonous, but she wouldn’t eat them. She was so still that once or twice I thought she had suffocated. But, no, on closer inspection, I could see her back lightly rising and falling with her steady breaths, betraying neither anxiety nor fear—just an eerie calm.

In the morning, we set off again. I tried talking to her, but I couldn’t stand the sound of my own voice. It was too high and shrill; my meter was awkward from my heavy, panting breaths, and my sibilants sounded protracted and strange.

When I thought I could go no farther and was about to cast down the rope and burst into tears, a tree caught my eye, then a large log, a ravine . . . yes, I was close! I was here! Not too much farther, and I would run into our first outpost where scouts would sit to warn the family of encroachers!

But something seemed not quite right. The atmosphere was wrong. The aura from the land in front of me was not a changeling one—I couldn’t feel any indication that I was being watched. And, on top of that, I could hear nothing, no voices calling out to me or to each other.

I spoke out once or twice, but I received no answer. An hour’s walk later, still there were no voices nor any tremors in the foliage that I could say belonged to my family. Once, I heard a tree branch snap and something heavy fall to the ground and scurry away; but there was neither curse nor shrill that followed, and I was too afraid, too anxious to call out after it.

And then there I saw it: in the distance, at the end of the glade, a tree that stretched past the height of all others, with branches that stuck out straight and clean, as though it were supporting the air—this was the scout’s post.

I fairly threw down the withered cord holding the pegasus, and I limped, shrilling a greeting, though not without a hint of unease in its tone, across the glade to the tree.

No response came.

“Stop with your pranks!” I jeered. “Alright, be it so; I suppose that you should not want the present I brought then!”

I closed my eyes; and the image occurred to me of their emerging from the bushes, insisting I tell them what I’ve brought, suddenly remorseful that they’ve hidden from me. It was just like them, I thought; and, with this in mind, it suddenly made sense, this silence, this secrecy—a hero’s welcome, a welcome for the savior I was!

But when I opened my eyes, what I saw made even less sense—there was nothing.

I reached the tree and looked up through its spiralling arms. A zephyr stirred the air, passed through the leaves; and though the breeze was gentle, though it could barely be felt, the branches quivered, as though the geriatric tree shuddered in the cold.

In a hole in the base of the tree, underneath a blanket of leaves, lay the scout. She was withered and emaciated, her canines dull, and her once black skin was now a dull gray.

*

In what was once the village, the only sound I could hear was the ringing drone of silence. To the eyes, there was only devastation.

Shelters were knocked over, their furnishings destroyed, ripped apart, as it appeared, with teeth. Armament stores had been ransacked; pieces of rusted metal strewed the ground. Here and there were small upturned mounds of land; I realized that these had once been squirrels’ acorn stores, now overturned and looted. And above it all, there was a smell, of rotting wood, of decay, of death. There was something in this malodor so strong, so repulsive, so terrible that it was almost like a voice screaming directly into my ears, telling me that the greatest imperative at that moment was not eating, nor drinking, nor sleeping, nor mating, but to get away from that smell as quickly as possible, to get off the island, the continent, the planet, the galaxy, the universe in which this smell was. It was death, all around, hiding in the bushes, the foliage. My family had donned their last facade after they had shown their true faces to each other—but now I couldn’t find them. On the contrary, I wanted to get away from them as soon as possible.

I went back to the tree and stared, for almost certainly hours, at the body of the scout. Here she had stayed, here she had died, even when she had known that the calamity was behind and not in front. When it had become dire, even as the situation became worse, still she remained at her post, having faith in her family, diligently upholding her duty even when she knew that she was dying. I knew what she looked like before: happy, handsome, healthy, and free, till they had put her on this tree, told her to remain regardless of all; and she, the trusting spirit she was, had stayed, had not looked back, had watched the ones who ordered her die themselves, would not move no matter the pressure of the elements. As the days got longer, more dire, she had wanted to flee, but she stayed, thinking that just a little longer she would have to endure, and that she would be rewarded for it. And what was that reward? Odor, rot, to be eaten by maggots, to be left only with the realization she could not admit to herself, that it had been in vain; and that confused, desperate expression would be forever marked in the features of her face, to be discovered in this way by a confused brother, who, in his ignorance, could not comprehend what had brought her to this state, and who would gaze upon her with the same expression.

I couldn’t even scream. I wanted to run, to leave everything, myself if possible. My understanding of it all, and its sudden, deep, strike of a fear that forbade flight . . . I wouldn’t subject another creature to that, even the one I hated the most . . .

And then I remembered. A new horror took me, one I’d never experienced before—the horror that incites a purposeful creature to action.

I flew as fast as I could in the direction where I’d left the pegasus. I didn’t slow down as I approached her, and I hurled myself headlong into the chrysalis. I crashed through it; the gel erupted and burst with a sickening gush.

We lay for a moment among the slime. She rose, shaking in confusion, but stronger and unharmed; while I lay there, shaking in pain, my head throbbing, feeling sicker by the moment. She stood up, gave me a look of disdainful pity, shook the gel off with a quick flick of her body, and took off into the woods. And that was the last I saw of her.

Comments

[Korroki-Aternak]

I'm starting to like this story, and I'm only a chapter in!

I feel I don't have the linguistic dexterity right now to accurately describe my feeling for this, especially Errenax, that nigga tight yo.

The advanced prose and vocabulary is giving my brain one helluva workout, and it's tingly as fuck.

In reference to the second statement, allow me to say as such:

I really fucking like this story.

[VNilla]

Here lies everything
The world I wanted at my feet
My victory's complete
So hail to the king

Do you feel like a hero yet, Errenax?
(this is all your fault)

[Xaerouzle]

dude seriously, add the sad tag. you have atleast 3 moments when the story becomes sorrowfull as hell, hence the tag should be added.