Z is for Zenith

Zenith: a highest point or state; culmination.

River knows how it all ends.

Images squeeze through closed lids and dance on a backdrop of black shot with red. (Close your eyes and press your hands against your ears, but still they get in).

Whisper whisper whisper. They talk to her, at her. Hands grasping and pulling, fingers tugging at clothes and hair, scratching skin till she bleeds.

XXXXXXXXX

The Fate's loom spins, crimson and gold and indigo twining together until she can't tell where one color begins and another ends. She watches, blood dripping down her wrist to splatter the cloth, and the world burns below her.

The fire reaches higher and higher, fingers of flame licking the sky until it crumbles to ash and tumbles down down down, scorching earth and burning grass.

XXXXXXXXX

She spins her way through a city, the buildings disintergrating as she dances until they wash away with the tide. She bends, fingers digging into soil. Opens her hands and ash tumbles away, spiraling through the breeze.

Once, this was a garden. Now the roses drip crimson blood and the weeds have sprouted thorns. Dancing, always dancing; they tangle around her feet and trip her, biting and scratching and hurting.

XXXXXXXXX

Bleached bones and harsh winds that carry the smell of smoke wherever she goes. She can run, so run she will. Her feet grow wings, but they will not carry her away.

She will not escape, bars grow out of stone arches and lock her in, stuck with the wind and the ash and the promise of rain that never comes.

XXXXXXXXX

The swing burns before her, ropes snapping and unweaving. Once, a child played here. Now he is gone, white on white on black. No one will play here again, swinging to try and touch the sky.

She touched the sky once, but a star burned her and she fell back into this place of brimstone and smoke.

XXXXXXXXX

She wonders if this is hell. It's not. At least in hell there would be someone else to wander this desert with.

XXXXXXX

"River, what are you doing?"

"Listening to the screaming."

"There's no screaming River."

….

"There will be."