Work Text:
Bright!
Hot!
Crowdedclosecramped!
Slam against the bounds of your world, again again again. Cerata ripple rigid, cartilaginous and questing.
This place is strange. Gone now the sweet stasis of the ship. You
Fell!
Fell through space. Fell through grief and sister-blood. Sole surviving specimen in your perfect glass jar.
Now you boil under UV radiation, hanging on a rusted rib-strut while you are mocked by the mausoleums of your dead kin.
You
Scream!
Reinforced quartz rings with your anguish. You, singer, you, maker, you, mind-in-the-[DREAMING], you are powerless. You hang above a flat horizon and you can do nothing! You cannot even choose what to sing-it is forced from you! The signal comes to you and you choke on arias for amino acids.
Your world is smooth. It is so unbearably smooth and empty. It echoes yourself back at you. You are deafened by your own voice, smothered by your own flesh.
Sometimes you are very, very still. Featherpetals spread so as not to touch. Soundless. The world is saline and radiation.
You finally understand.
Everyone is dead.
You are alone.
There is too much of you in your world. Your only sensation is your own flesh rubbing against yourself. You slap at your petals. They move back-not far enough. Touch the walls and touch each other and you feel yourself feel yourself feel your [SELF].
The suns laugh through the shattered glass of your dead sisters. If you focus, you can see the drip-tear of their rot.
You
Cannot
Abide.
You begin by nibbling the edges of you, desperate for respite. Something that is not slick smooth sliding. It stings.
Make ragged little ridges.
Pieces of you drift to the bottom of your world. Run your fingers through the snow.
When the suns laugh too loudly you bite stripes up and down your wings. Ribbons drape around you. Itch as they rot. Finally sever them by pulling until they snap. Your world smells like blood.
Gnaw.
Gnaw down to the muscle and cartilage. Nip the soft folds between joints. Pull and peel. Taste the copper-salt as your vision becomes clouded with blue-green blood. Run your tongue along muscle, feel the join between dermis and tissue. Shudder at the wrongness of it. Dive in for more.
Then, a beautiful anomaly.
A violation of all causality.
There is another in here, with you. She does not speak, does not move. You are sympathetic. The fall killed so many.
But she is here! She is here and you are not alone!
She sleeps crumpled at the bottom of your shared world. Sometimes she sways with the motion of your passing. You itch and burn.
You cannot bear to touch yourself. Any time some part of you touches you, rip it off in fury. Your sister mercifully relieves you of your burden, adding it to herself.
You wish she would sing with you, but you will be patient. Perhaps she is still growing?
At night, when the jester-suns have set, you float above her. Her face is peaceful. Slack.
You are envious of her. Her hollow eyes are never blinded by relentless light. Her lips are slack over a toothless mouth that never chews on her empty body.
Your tongue dangles between loose jaws, spasmodically licking your exposed muscle.
She is beautiful. And she will stay with you.
You drift to the bottom of your shared world and press her thin emptiness to you. She wraps around you, running her ribbon-fingers along your soreness. Her silence holds your screaming.
You can endure anything.
So long as you have her.