TW: SUICIDAL IDEATION, RELIGIOUS TRAUMA, BLOOD, DEATH, GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF TRAUMATIZING SITUATIONS
I have seen the Day of Death with my own eyes. I saw the twisting coils of the universe, contained in the body of that creature, and the hubris of the ones who created us. I am the bastard child of the minds of many, and the world I have been forcefully brought into has cursed me.
I once thought, in my young, foolish, pup-hood, that the moon we lived under at night was beautiful. I was blind to the death Orpheus brought when his hunger grew - I am no longer. The moon is nothing but the home of the creature who wishes to use us as livestock.
I creep from the house of my owner with trepidation filling my paws - my small tail shakes slightly as I follow the same hallways I have been in all of my life. Past the food preparation room, through the sitting room, into the doorway. The door, something I have known all of my life, seems unfamiliar - it unnerves me. I bite the handle, a hot, metallic taste fills my mouth, and I grimace. Blood, but I pull down the handle anyway - I need to go outside.
It has only been a few moments since the sounds outside stopped, and I close my eyes once the door swings open. The world outside smells like ash, dirt, death. The earth is barren, scorched, when I finally allow my eyes to open. The cropland to the left of my home is grey and dusty, the small sprouts I had seen just yesterday obliterated. My home is torn to shreds at the top level.
The building looks like it has been torn open from the top, like a soft baked pastry, or a pie crust. I shudder - that must've been where some of the sounds had come from. I swallow a choked whimper in my throat. My owner had told me to go into her room, to lay in my bed like I always did - a position I had learned in my pup-hood, to be by her side, to protect her. Then the sounds started. There were screams, first. Loud, throat-ripping, with jagged edges like their vocal cords were snapping.
Huge cracks like a bull-whip echoed through my ears, and punched through our walls. Dust shook down from the ceiling, and I had buried my face into my bed - to no avail. Then everything stopped. There was a loud screech, metallic sounding, like steel rending from itself.
Now I am here, and everyone else is gone. I walk back inside, for one final time. I return to my owner's room, and look around. I wasn't like some of the other vexxils, I know that. I wasn't a luxury item, I wasn't a guard. I was a 'pet'. I loved them; and they loved me. I nuzzled my favorite toys - pressed my nose to the sheep one, as it let out a mournful "baaaa," - and then left.
There was nothing left for me here anymore.
Food has been surprisingly plentiful, along with water. Yesterday destroyed the livestock pens, and now they run wild. I was taught never to eat something I was not given, but this...this is not the world in which I was born into. I wander, and I am alone with my thoughts, forced to relive the final moments of my comfortable life. I think about the last look my owner gave me, her eyes sad, and I have to stop walking and sit down.
My paws lay heavy on the grass below me, singed, but still a yellow-green. Towering bodies of mahogany trees fall into the sky above me, and large mushrooms sprout between them, spongy caps and lined gills glistening with cold morning dew. I curl below one, for the shade, and the smell of damp earth comforts me - it reminds me of the first day I came home. It was raining, that day, and I had gotten muddy, slick with earth up to my ears. My owner laughed when she saw me, mottled with brown.
I bury my face in my paws, inhale the loam again. My body shudders with sobs that I want to let myself feel - I am hopeless, in the dark of this new world. What am I expected to do? Why should I go on without those I care for and love? Why did they leave me behind, and why have I found no one else?
I have never cried before in my life, and I would later learn the word for it - at the time, all I knew is that the overwhelming desperation of my sadness echoed into this empty forest, as I sat beneath the shade of a mushroom and let silvery droplets fall from my eyes.
They matted my fur and turned my stomach with the force of my tears - it took much longer than I would've liked for them to stop. I sniffled, rolled over, and fell asleep.
-- Two weeks after the Day of Death --
I am not the vexxil I once was. I have been broken and have been forced to rebuild myself, or die otherwise. Dying was an option I wanted to give into for too long - I considered too many times what it would be like to let myself lay down, and dream of what I had in the past. But I have never given up easily. I had continued to wander after the forest, and seen life for the first time since the destruction. I had seen death, as well. A fellow vexxil, caught under rubble. I had shuddered and turned my eyes away.
Now, the blue grasses of an ephemeral field glow under my paws, lit my eyes from below. I was a haunting, in this dead world, and I walked, like a ghost without a purpose. I am searching for others, for more vexxils. There is so little left of me; and it will disappear completely if I cannot find anyone else. I've heard the calls of others, from the ruins of the city. I went there, once, and never again. I do not know the way - so I follow the remnants of their trails.
Scraps of food, pieces of cloth, a few small stuffed toys from pets like myself. The ground has begun to turn hard under my pawpads, and I wince - I am not used to this. I am used to the plush comforts of grassland and soft cloth and carpet, of moss and blankets. The earth here has blackened and died, covered with long streaks of soot. A smell rises up from the soil - decay.
I pass a bone, yellowed-white branch sticking from the earth. A rib, a remnant of the center of a vexxil - where the heart lies. I give it a glance, and nothing more. Grief is not an ability I have the strength for anymore - and I keep walking. Night has fallen by the time my paws are too weary to keep going, and I stare up at the accursed moon.
She looks down at me; a saint with the sign of holiness surrounding her in the halo around her - a halo made of the serpentine, muscular form of Orpheus. He twirls, seemingly slow, like sand slipping through an hourglass.
I wish I could watch him with the beauty I used to think he had. He used to be a creature of beauty to me; a wide open ocean to explore with a smoky, starry body. The light of the destroyed city glows ahead of me, and I sleep with it in my vision.
In the morning, I continue. My head low to the ground, I plod along. My body hurts, my heart hurts. I could be so close to losing myself, if the light of the city was not growing closer by every footstep.
Before I knew it, I had stepped inside the city itself; light still flickered in some areas, but the buildings here were still tall, reaching. Debris crumbled into the streets, but the city had fared far better than the farmlands.
I closed my eyes, breathed in deep. The smell of others. Fresh, warm, alive. I followed the streets, wound around corners and wove through doorways and alleys. It went cold for a few moments, I couldn't find it. I moved into a building where I had found it again, and sniffed around.
I flared my nostrils, shoved them into a corner, and drew in a deep breath. Following the scent…I found a stairwell, leading downwards. I followed it, nails clicking on concrete and metal, and stepped into a foyer, with a closed iron door at its end. I carefully bit the handle - hoping the metallic taste of blood would not fill my mouth again - and turned it.
In the room behind the door, it was warm and full of life. Vexxils chattered, ate, and took naps. I stared at them, owlishly. I had finally found others. I was finally with my own kind again.
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