ultima

Her gut was full of waves. That must’ve been why she came down to the ocean so early that morning, too early to call ‘day’, face bare, hair unmade, eyes still half-shut with sleep. No birds singing. Hardly any sound but sea-sound, the waves sweeping up and down the coast, tugging at her hocks. Stars, foreign and unintelligible overhead.

It was the jealous half-dark of summer, never comfortable for too long, poaching scraps of time from a generous sun. The sky ahead of her was inky and bruised, and behind her, shifting softly to rose. Rich with potential energy, that. Like waking up on the right side of the bed, in the quiet hour before the ladies woke; Minerva had been up for hours already, but she was savoring the silence, humming something lilting and off-key, expression soft, head tilted just so. Ultima used to lie in those dark blue moments and count them. One breath at a time. In. Out. In again. And on the hundredth exhale, maybe, sometimes the hundred-forty-first: blackbirds. Then the robins. Then wrens and the black caps, and the thrush, the distinct treet treet treet— Light just beginning to trickle through the heavy thatch of branches and boughs, speckling her windowsill, catching the dewdrops caught in the grooves of her windowsill, the smell of petrichor wafting faintly over the rise of her windowsill— And the birds would swing by on their colorful wings, and their beaks would open wide with cheer, jaws unhinging, raw breath, gullets like tunnels to—

She shrank all of a sudden, wings pinned hard to her back, head tucked to her chest as if the mild breeze troubled her. Alien, she thought to herself, the feathers on her neck tall, ruffled. Stranger in a strange, strange land, with strange problems and strange ways. 

Lucid was the word for it. Evening and afternoon never phased her, but morning revealed the truth like a spyglass, or cold water; one found her secrets out, and the other sent them shivering, wildly, into wakefulness. What was she doing here? How long was she staying, and why? Cowardly thing, vapid thing, lurking here, dancing through the woods, trilling about—

PRIMROSE WON'T BRING YOU BACK, GIRL.

Feel of teeth on her neck. Her heart floundered, eyes wide and unseeing. She struggled for a long moment and then shut them, tightly, the long doll’s lashes trembling.

One. Two. Three. Four—

dear god, make me a bird so i can fly far away from here