herdsheep.
In this world of Khthonios a cat is no longer a cat. It is Khthonios, maybe. Or it is not. But the knowledge that it could be them is enough. Pluto’s legs stiffen when the cat rubs against them. Their jaw clenches. As though it is burs scraping along their heels and not a cat. It feels that violent. If Khthonios could become the sky like they can become priests and sheep and mothers, Pluto wonders, would wind still come to carry a child’s kite, still spread pollen and fruit seeds across fields? They won’t ask. They’ve already decided what the answer would be.
Khthonios‘s voice warms Pluto, fills them like a church bell. Pluto can feel how easily Khthonios is something you could slip into. Open to. Die to.
So, Pluto stays stiff, like frosted blades of grass. Purposefully. Their fists are squeezed so tight that they quiver with each heartbeat. They keep their body uncomfortable to keep their body their own. And find the comfort in this.
Slowly, calmly, like dragging glaciers:
“Death is natural. I accept it. You are not natural.”
Earnestly, genuinely:
“Why must you be the world? It is enough. It is enough to be in the world. You do not have to become it.”
‘ I do. ’
Without purpose, what is it, other than several thousand hollow corpses walking single file over the edge of a great chasm? Is it not enough, it wonders, to do something because it makes you happy? Because it makes you feel whole?
‘ Perhaps I gave you too much credit. ’
The guilt Pluto tries to conjure is like thick, black smoke that crawls down its one throat, but there are worse things stirring in Khthonios’s gut. Stronger, stranger things. Things that can swallow smoke, things that can expand and wrap around it, smothering it from all sides. Feeling such a thing and letting it rot you from the inside-out is such single-minded nonsense, it crushes the seeds of such negativity before it gets the chance to sprout. Before it can think about sprouting.
Still, it doesn’t enjoy such talk. It does not like to be talked down to.
‘ Do you ever worry about what it will be like when all your sheep die and you are alone without them? Do you worry about long winter nights when you are so cold and so hungry and so alone and they are all almost dead and so are you, and you think, oh, there is no use letting us all die.
Do you ever worry that I am the sheep you herd? That I was the ewe that bore them and the farmer that delivered them. Do you worry that if you eat a creature I have taken, then I will be inside you, too?
Do you worry about being the only one left? The only one allowed to speak from your own mouth?
You would never know the difference. Maybe I am already inside of you. Maybe I am looking through your eyes right now, looking at me, wondering if it could be true, wondering if it has always been true.
It is hypothetical nonsense, and we both know it. My point is that there is no point overthinking it. You will be dead and in the ground with before I am done. ’
