et in arcadia ego [ reverse cowboys - day two ]
Jul 4, 2022 13:13:27 GMT -5
Post by heather - d2 [mylee] on Jul 4, 2022 13:13:27 GMT -5
K I P T Y N
Nothing about it feels natural, but my blade arcs neat through the air and slices clean through the leg of one of the creatures. I stagger back, surprised, not at the sight of the thin limb limp on the ground in front of me, but from the ache that immediately shoots through each muscle of my left arm. I grimace, tense and release and twist the shoulder around, but fear lodges in my throat. If the effort from one swing sapped everything out of me, what point was there in hoping to survive past nightfall?
When Tex pulled me out of the river the evening before, I remember the feeling of my bare feet against the rocks that lined the streambed, how I kicked and fought to avoid being dead weight in his arms, still I felt his strain in hauling me onto the bank, on fighting not only my body and the current but the motion I set us into, the bottom of my feet rolling along the rocks and coming up scratched and bloody.
I’d laid there panting on top of him, eventually finding the strength to roll off flat onto my back beside him. Thanks, man, I’d said then, thought it came out labored and insincere.
Now I feel the same tightness in my chest, panic causing each breath to come out shallow and short. The glaive quivers, and the animal tissue still attached shakes loosely in response like streamers, droplets of blood splattering to the ground.
I can sense Tex shuffling behind me, the smalls of our backs pressed against each other, even more so when I force myself upright. We never are, he says, and I wonder for a brief moment if he’s been able to spot and identify the creatures that are swarming us, their flashes of orange rhythmic, nearly hallucinogenic. The glaive falls to my side as I watch them dance around us, and I imagine the creatures that could have visited us in the night, could have turned the lull of deep sleep into music we’d never live to hear.
But Tex interrupts the thought with the question I’ve not yet gotten close to, asks, Think this is the thing that killed Cain? And he doesn’t give me time to respond before thrusting out his spear, the tip of the blade grazing a leg of one of the creatures closest to him.
I watch their movement, the speed with which their small bodies wrap around the trees towering above us, and I spot the leg that I severed in the mouth of one of them. It struggles under the weight, its jaw stretched clean around the bone, which is visible through the torn, patchwork flesh, and each breath seems a labored exhale through its snout. There’s something in me that wants to believe this is the end that Cain met, but I can’t bring myself to believe it. It seems too neat--this all does somehow.
No, I say, shaking my head as I strain to flex the muscles of my upper arm. I can feel momentum building underneath, the gentle and heavy movement of the blade lurching into motion. I think we would have found some of Cain this morning if that was the case.
When one lunges, all I see is a tiny flash of teeth and a cracked, pink tongue that lolls beyond its lower jaw, frothy and bloodied. That doesn’t mean they won’t make quick work of us.
[ table: pogue ]
[ kip attacks sheepish; glaive ]
Wp_|0DvuaOglaive
[ shallow cut on left shoulder -- 3.5 ]
Wp_|0DvuaOglaive
[ shallow cut on left shoulder -- 3.5 ]
glaive