Page 11 of Of Sockets Of Stitches
I focused on the thin crevice in the haze. A path?
The creature loomed over me.Herfur was a rich copper hue. Her fangs were white and terrible and they dripped with saliva and threat.Powerful.Capable of ripping a queen in two. Yet now more than ever, I got the sense she might be me.
Sanity? Guardian? Self? Body?
Some connections were bigger than a queen. This was one of them. I contented myself with the idea that I may never know. But I could still feel grateful to a creature who had snapped and snarled and growled until I looked inward.
“Thank you,” I said, and I heard my voice.
My voice! Husky, raw, and unused.
The creature turned and padded to the thin path, and I staggered upright, able to feel my body but very faintly. In fact, thefurther the creature moved from me, the weaker all of my senses became.
I could run to the creature to regain the bodily sensations of me, but I had found my inner peace and healed my forever pains. There was a reluctance to disturb the new calm of my minds with the distractions of body.
The creature turned to watch me, and when I did not run to touch its soft fur, she swung her head to the tiny path.
The path widened.
The creature walked ahead.
I followed.
This is how we return. They celebrated with me, the woman swinging the child around in circles, the orb cushioned between their chests.Safe.
I walked after the creature and did not quicken my footsteps when she disappeared ahead. The path grew wider and more defined by the passing of time and the healing of me.
The tiny crevice had become a walkway between two seas of fog.
This path leads to our monsters.
Yet I should not feel so sure of ancient design. Ahead, the fog was not as thick. More of a mist that swirled and allowed tiny glimpses of what lay ahead.
Ah.
But of course. I had forgotten my small problem.
He lay on the cracked, hard dirt ground—a king whose circumstances had vastlychanged.
My lips curved at the small amusement.
King Change.
I must have spoken, for how he leaped. From despairing and unmoving to sitting and scowling.
I walked to sit beside him, and the creature appeared through the fog to curl at my feet.
Change’s scarred and pitted lips had been moving, and when the creature touched my skin, I was able to hear.
“—did you find me?” he demanded. “What is that beast?”
I stared into the fog. I was unused to hearing much of anything, and unused to answering even myself, let alone another monster.
I stared into the fog and considered King Change. He, who had shoved a vial with the last drops of a deadly curse into my back to weaken or kill me. He, who had never believed in the beauty of my monsters, but only in the evil of them. This king had rushed to my mother’s grave in a desperate attempt to ensure lasting ruin on the world.
Perhaps he had found his own...
I considered the king, who continued to demand any number of answers. I switched off my hearing. Change had wandered through the haze. He had stopped wandering. He clearly had not been deprived of his bodily senses if he could hear and see me and the creature.
