⧽ "𝕳𝖔𝖑𝖑𝖔𝖜." | folk horror, original story.
Some myths are born of mist. Some just reside beneath the packed earth. A language that only your bones can understand — not always articulable. At least, not in ways one could train their tongue to do.
It is not a language meant for mouths.
There are other ways: ink, incantations, parchment to soil and floors to bleed upon. Poisoned altars cracked and grown over with moss, statues with eyes that once moved.
Some were never meant to be found; some are still warm.
The languages in which one could describe it are dead, buried under tendrils of roots and soil interspersed with ash. Only those brave enough to unearth such monstrosities might dare to hope. And hope? A fatal aspiration.
For it is an archaic evil.
Older than names.
Older than warnings.
Older than prayer.
A noose that slips around young soft necks made of flesh, fastened with not-quite-hands.
It does not rush. It has never needed to.
It seeks the innocent. The curious. Preys upon it. Catches the scent of openness like a starving beast to a blood trail—hell, it doesn’t even have to be hungry right then and there. There was hardly ever a time where it denied what it craves most. It is teeming and it is a burden ravenously carried. Cradled in its bottomless core–if there even is one. It is an unbleedable that forever feeds. Rips bones from flesh, claws through muscle with tendon, extorts soul and spirit.
Nevertheless, it will take. Undyingly, eternally greedy, it will hunt. It will wait. It has always waited.
For a nameless entity is never truly satiated.
The cycle? The cycle persists.
Because people still love, live, and raise children anyway.
MENA wakes to her soft even breaths cradled against his ribs and his hand stroking along his knuckles.
He doesn’t open his eyes. Not immediately. He never does – not unless Zenni’s absence is apparent or Carmelo's making too much noise when preparing to go out to tend the woodwork. Mena will toss a glare his way then, wordlessly berating his husband on him and his trying big feet, and every time he will receive an apologetic giggle–hushed, of course–and an apology kiss to his hairline. He knows Carmelo is in no way apologetic every time.
But what steals his heart and settles it in tandem is the tiny being curled against his side.
He’s used to waking before her. She’s a heavy sleeper most of the time, but every now and again, his little girl is up with the dawn. Sometimes even before Carmelo, who wakes before dawn. On those days, she rolls around between them and hums until she either gets too hungry or frankly bored and hums right up against Mena's ear until he stirs. If Carmelo is still in bed, Mena can count on that saving grace. For on those days, he’s roused to wake by the sound of playful shushes and toddler gurgles of delight, usually followed by obnoxious twin kisses against his face and ears and hair until his laughter is inevitable.
Today, it’s far past dawn.
The air is clear but the sky is not. The window is cracked just so, and Mena's sharp nose catches the storm approaching before he finally forces his eyes to open halfway.
Her tiny hands curled into the neckline of his sleep-rumpled shirt, her little feet tucked beneath his thigh, gazing up at the corner of the ceiling and whispering wordlessly.
At something he cannot see.
He has learned what sitting up costs.
The whispering does not scrape at him the way it once would have. It settles instead, heavy and familiar, like weather in old bones. Instead, he keeps his breathing even, keeps his hand where it is, keeps Zenni close enough to feel the rise and fall of her tiny chest.
What tightens his throat is not the thing he cannot see.
It is the way she listens.
There’s movement out of the corner of his sleep-clouded vision. Mena turns, just barely, and meets Carmelo's gaze over Zenni’s mop of ebony curls.
He looks as exhausted, as wary, as bone-tired as Mena feels.
They share a look.
A breath.
Then Zenni giggles. Untethered and sweet as a bell. She sits up, abrupt as children do, curls sleep-matted and bouncing, and flops on her belly across them both—her button nose against Mena's sternum, her legs splayed over Carmelo's midsection. Familiar. Warm. She chirps at the awareness both her worlds are awake now, honey-golden eyes flitting between them like they hung the stars she slept beneath.
It’s going to be one of those days.
Something in Mena's chest loosens. He doesn’t realize he was holding his breath until he releases it precisely when Carmelo does. A single organism, the both of them, forged from years of habit.
Carmelo sits up slowly and braces against the headboard, already cooing as he scoops Zenni up to cradle against his neck. Mena follows suit. The age-old animal in his chest settles into something warm, curls up around the core that bloomed the day he first held Zenni in his arms—impossibly tiny, pink, pure as a baby's breath bloom, too good to be born upon this wretched world.
She flops until her head thumps against Mena's thigh beneath the blanket, trying to escape Carmelo's smothered tickly kisses, and Mena's hand immediately finds her crown.
He pretends it isn’t trembling.
Instead, he mirrors her little hums as he gazes down at her.
She responds with a musical trill, strikingly similar to the lady hummingbird nested in their oak tree.
Yes.
It’s going to be one of those days.
