it's the parasite eve
got a feeling in your stomach
cause you know that it's coming for ya
Is this what death feels like?
At least, it's what death looks like. Everything here either looks or smells dead and it's really creeping me out. I've never been so terrified before- maybe when I first saw Momma get angry and her fire flared up all around us. Honestly, I would much prefer to be around fire right now and not all this.
I've been lost for what feels like forever. Momma and I were separated and I haven't been able to find her since. I've tried asking some people walking around this weird marketplace if they've seen Momma, but they either haven't or ignore me.
I feel like an ant and this place is the big hoof that's going to come by and squash me. My chest gets tighter and tighter and it's been getting hard to breathe. When I do manage to breathe, it's between sobs and my eyes hurt from crying so much. I want to be strong like Momma is, but this place is making it so hard. It was supposed to be this cool jungle with grass as tall as trees, but there's nothing green here, only darkness and decay.
I've tried retracing my steps and I keep coming back to the cave we came in from, but Momma and Bram aren't here. When I call out for them, there is only an echo of my own voice. When I wander to the marketplace, I'm reminded of home. I miss the way my hooves sound on the cobblestone roads and my favorite bakery. There are no sweet smells or apple cider here. It's a ghost town with all merchant goods laid out for the taking. Maybe someone would want to take all of this stuff, but I don't care about it. I just want Momma.
I let my tired legs give out and sink into the ground with dirt that smells like ash. "Someone help me…" I mumble to anyone who might be listening. Momma's told me a lot about Caligo, but I'm not sure even she can help me here.
The island feels as much like home now as it did when it was a maze of star-skeletons leading me deeper and deeper into its embrace.
I do not stop and wonder what the ribcage-bridge belonged to, or whether or not it wants its bones back. I do not stop to ask the castle if it is living or dead.
I know, I know, I already know, and I am home.
A
ll the bone walkways and ribcage arches, all the hollow rooms and bright-white statues — all of it is filling a part of her that has only ever been empty and wanting.
Each room is filled with new wonders (that others might call horrors, but Isolt knows better), and each walkway that weeps silver star-blood at her feet is like a fountain for her to play in. Isolt is laughing as she races through the island, as she climbs higher and higher into its chest cavity. Her laughter echoes in all the hollow spaces of it like breathing, like she is the only thing alive and moving in all that stagnant air.
She does not stop to listen to the crying walls, or the screaming ones, or the ones that scrawl words with arcane meanings across themselves as she passes.
Isolt does not hear anything above the thump, thump, thumping of her own heart, and the song her tail blade sings every time it taps its own melody against the bone-white floors. And that is what drives her on, the sound of her heart calling out to the bones of the castle, and knowing the bones of the castle were welcoming her home. And her smile grows fat and wide upon her bloody lips.
She does not knowing how long she is dancing before she hears a cry that is not coming from the walls. But she follows the sound of it, the sound of something — someone — other who does not belong in her castle of death.
And when she comes upon the girl lying crumpled in the ashes, she only tilts her head and taps out a greeting to her with her horn against an empty merchant stall.
“Why are you crying?” she asks her in her paper-thin voice. But in her bloody gaze there is a promise — the promise that there is only one reason to cry, and it has only just arrived.
it's the parasite eve
got a feeling in your stomach
cause you know that it's coming for ya
I can hear tapping.
I thought I heard it farther away, but it's closer now. At first I don't look up because I'm not sure if I can handle what sort of demons have found me here. I've already jumped at nearly every shadow (even my own). I don't trust this place and I don't think it likes me very much. It's nothing like the sea whose tides welcome me at the shores of Denocte or the flowers of Delumine that seem to smile when I go over to say hi to them.
No, this place is much, much worse. It's an undead being that's swallowed me and everything whole. I just want to get out.
Then I hear her voice and that's what makes me finally look up. My cheeks are wet from tears and there are a few drops that have fallen down to the ashes. I do not know who this is and, at first, I wonder if she's a ghost (or worse, a demon) that lives here. From the way she taps her horn, she must be real, right?
"I'm lost," I say, my voice nothing but a whisper. My throat is too sore and I have barely any energy left. "My mom and I were separated." All I can think about is how nice it would be to curl up - just me, Momma and Bram, by the fireplace in the castle and just drift off to sleep. My everything is so, so tired. I just want to sleep and lose myself to sweeter dreams instead of living nightmares.
"H-have you seen someone that looks like me at all? Older? With fire, maybe? Or a black wolf?" I ask, speaking a little louder this time as I start to hope. I hope there's a chance that someone has seen Momma or Bram so that maybe there's a chance I can find them again.
Later I will tell myself I was about to leave, to find my sister, or my mother, or my own weeping wall to carve my sorrows from. Later I will tell myself it was only the roar of the river-veins beneath our hooves that I could hear, or the empty waiting of the market square that made my heart begin to snarl instead of beat.
Later, later, later —
I will know it was a lie.
I
n the silence of the empty market, Isolt can hear the lifeblood of the city humming beneath her hooves. In the layers and layers of cold laid against her spine there is the song of it, of those silver-blood rivers her sister had been following. Even the air tastes like it, like dead-stars and broken-promises and dreams that never learned how to fly high enough to come true.
And she is there in the wild of it, the new-god of this castle of death pressing onward to the girl crumpled against the ground like she is the offering for death to consume.
Here, on this island of magic and hunger and things-that-should-not-make-sense, it is easy to be the wolf. It is easy to be the dragon, and the shadow, and all the other demons of the stories.
The inhale of her breath has nothing to do with pity, only hunger, only wanting, only the ease of coming across a prey that is already too weak to run away from its own death. Somewhere a pack is beginning to howl, and her sister’s heart is stumbling, and her mother is tapping out warnings against her hips. But Isolt hears only the whisper of the girl’s breath, and the rage of the rivers that cross together beneath the bones of the market.
She had heard a story once about two rivers that formed a cross underground. How the water turned to poison where the two currents overlapped, and everything that fed on their waters died. How the animals grew thin and hungry, and their minds were formed twisted, and how nothing in the world could sate their hunger, and each night the horses had laid out an offering to keep the monsters at bay —
she had been looking for those two rivers. And now a smile is curving sharp as a scythe upon her lips.
“No.” Her tail blade screeches as she walks forward, dragging the tip of it against the silver-bright ground. Ashes coat the edge of it in black dust that shines like a rotten smile.
“The rest of the castle is empty. It is only you and I here.”
No one here to know to look for her if she went missing. No one to stop the hunger gnawing along Isolt's ribs.
it's the parasite eve
got a feeling in your stomach
cause you know that it's coming for ya
I find myself wishing I was alone again. Somehow it felt easier to be alone in this place than how I feel right now. I am broken and sad and now more scared than before.
There is something about this woman that sets me on edge. I'm not sure if it's the way her tail blade screeches as she walks or the way her eyes are looking at me when I dare to look up. I think I'm too weak to stand or maybe just too frozen from the fear creeping in. I don't move.
A pit forms in my stomach when she says that it's just us. There's no one left, how could that be? I had just seen someone walk by, although they didn't bother to answer my questions. I think back to how Maret and I were tricked by the spirits and almost became a ghost permanently. I wonder if this is something similar and I've been tricked into being trapped here. I try to swallow, but my throat feels like it's closing in and I can't breathe right.
"W-who are you?" I manage to ask, although maybe I'll regret it. I'm not sure if I truly want to know who she is (or what she is). She doesn't seem like a normal horse. There is something more wild about her like a predator who's found its prey. I don't want to be made into lunch.
I stay put, but I start to feel something in me shake. Like it's begging to be let out, but I don't know what it is.
The bones of this city are whispering to me. They tell me of violence, of metamorphosis, of becoming. In them I can hear the pain of being turned inside out and growing up, and up, and up.
I can feel their rage at being reduced to a thing for the mortals of this world to marvel at.
T
here is a rage on this island that Isolt knows. It is the rage of things-that-have-been-made, of monsters with a hunger too great to be satisfied by the world. It is the rage of growing too fast, of feeling her bones split and her muscles tear, of spitting out a mouthful of teeth when she smiles at her sister with her bleeding gums.
It is the rage of life chasing after death chasing after life.
And in it all Isolt is the wolf waiting outside the door, ready to consume everything in her path. And she prowls closer,
and closer,
and closer to the girl who looks so very small, lying there on the bones of this city.
Isolt wonders if she can feel them whispering. She wonders if she would understand the stories they have to tell, if she would feel their aches echoing between her lungs like breath. She wants to recite them to her, all of them — she wants to show her that soft things never last long between the jaws of beasts (and this world is a beast, if she does not know it yet — soon she will.)
There is a part of her which knows she should not be giving in to the violence of it, but oh! it is so much easier to slip beneath the wave of it than to try to keep her head above it. So she goes under the violence, under the hunger, under the rage of this island, and she becomes it.
“Who.” The word feels like a foreign thing hanging from her teeth, another thing waiting to be consumed by her. She has become a monster wearing the skin of a unicorn. “Who do I look like?”
Her tail keeps tapping out a heartbeat on the ground behind her, ever speeding up. The light of the island drips from the hollows of her horn like blood. Soon the distance between them is smaller and her eyes are bright enough to be rubies embedded in her skull as she looks down at the girl.
“Who are you?” Who am I? Who are we?
Who, who, who —
the word repeats itself over and over in her mind. She almost tells him that she is Isolt, that she is the daughter of Death (and soon, soon she will be Death). But with all those words that echo back to her in the bones each time her tail taps against them, she is not sure who she is anymore. All she is sure of is that she is hungry, and she is searching.
The thing inside the girl’s chest is begging to be let out. And like any good unicorn, she will carve it from her ribcage. And so she lays the flat of her blade against the skin of her chest as gently as a kiss. And she smiles that terrible monster smile when she begins to press.
it's the parasite eve
got a feeling in your stomach
cause you know that it's coming for ya
My legs start to tremble under me as she gets closer and closer to me. I want to cry, but I have no tears left. If we really are alone, then there isn't even anyone I can cry out to. I feel more lost than I ever did before and I don't know what to do.
I just want to see Momma, or Bram, or Uncle Tenny, or Aspara- someone, anyone that I know and could get me out of this place. Or even someone who could just get me away from this monster.
That's what she looks like, but I don't tell her that. I am too frozen for words and her eyes on me are too crazed to likely take just any answer lightly. The way her tail blade taps on the ground reminds me of a clock ticking. It makes me feel like time is running out.
She doesn't tell me who she is, instead she asks who I am. There is no space left between us now as she looks down on me. I have never felt so afraid and alone before. This might be more of my nightmare than just simply fire.
Then she brings the blade to my chest.
At first, it feels cold against my skin and I think she's just being threatening. Maybe this is her home and we trespassed so now she needs to make sure we're not here to destroy it. But then she presses the point into my chest and I have more tears after all. I cry, I scream, but for some reason, I still can't move.
Who am I?
Am I just a girl who has nothing left? Am I just a girl who is going to die here in this place that pretends to be an island?
Who am I?
In the blink of an eye, embers spark at my feet and a flame emerges. It's nothing large, but enough to get me on my feet again. It separates me from her and the heat of it makes me forget the stinging in my chest. For a moment, I'm standing there staring at it but then I realize- I did that. I made the fire appear out of nothing.
My worst nightmare had never been fire itself and it isn't even this place with the monster. My worst nightmare has just come true and it's getting fire magic. The same magic Momma has and can do whatever she wants with. The same magic that can easily get out of control and destroy all in its path.
So I run. I run from the monster and the truth that's revealed itself. I run as fast as I can, to where I don't know, but I see a path to the castle. It's the only thing here that reminds me of home, so I run there. I'll run until my lungs and legs give out and tuck myself into the tightest corner. I'll close my eyes and beg to wake up.
I don't want any of this to be real.
I leave the monster and the fire I conjured behind. Hopefully forever.
Closer, closer, closer — with every step I feel more like a monster. With every step I slip deeper into a thing I have always known to be lying coiled in the pit of my belly. With every tap of the blade of my tail it is another note to the song I cannot take back, to the spiral I cannot pull myself out of.
So I do not try to resist. I do not try to take it back, or to be anything but that which I was made to be:
A
monster.
Isolt is becoming a monster, and she does not have the remorse to pull herself back from it.
If her sister were here, she might; if she felt anything but the endless pit of sorrow and rage and the confusion of too many things, too much magic knitted into a too young body — if she was born instead of half-made, she might have pulled herself back. She might have thought to become anything but the beast that smiles down at a frightened girl and promises to consume her.
But she does not. She only relishes in the feel of the girl’s pulse against the blade of her tail, and marks with her eyes the spot where the artery of her throat lies. There, she whispers to her magic turning feral in her veins, there is where I will unmake her.
There are no vines here to pull through her body when she is dead, no seeds to root in her eyes and grow daisies of them. Isolt is not her sister.
And without her, this girl will not become a risen thing. She will stay here in the belly of an island like a sacrifice from one god to another.
A sacrifice she will never get the chance to make.
The fire bites into her flesh, her eyes with a pain she has not known before. A snarl rushes to her teeth when she leaps back, her blade slashing blindly through the air before her. Her voice becomes the roar of a monster howling out its fury to the world as the embers sting her eyes.
With tears streaming down her face from her burning eyes, she swings her head from side to side looking for the girl. And through her blurred and doubled vision, on legs that ache, she begins to stalk through the markets looking for her.
And the blade of her tail brings every stall crashing down before her as she hunts, and hunts, and hunts in the only way monsters know how: unrelentingly.
