[ The pain of Alecto's nails is not a good thing, because she is right, and there are none of them left. It pins Mercymorn to her, to the staggering words that Alecto pries out like teeth to spit gleaming and bloody on the floor.
There was a world, once. It was the First. It was the world where John was born, and first knew them all, and the world he sifted their ashes from to make them anew in his mercy and his love. All else is sacred, and sacred is the word for the things that Mercy hated for any of them to ask of God, for how the asking hurt him so, and hated more for any of them to ask of Alecto, for how her answering hurt him worse.
She had been so young when she decided the past did not matter. She had no past of her own. By the time she began to wonder, centuries had accrued to the questions, calcified them beyond utterance.
Mercy has already hurt John as terribly as she could hurt him. The sacred swallows her like a great throat. The acid of mystery etches her own voice, turns it slurred and tender. ]
You never did know anything about how to stop.
[ She wonders if Alecto can feel it yet, the strands unfolding. The kindled fellow-feeling, at last, between them. I still love him. It hurts. The last prayer of broken faith that does not die, but only goes on and on. ]
The First. [ Her hand grips back as tightly as Alecto's grips hers, clasped at the precipice edge. ] That was the world. The oceans rose and the sky burned.
[ She makes a noise. It's a terrible, staved in noise, wet and retching, worse than the awful sounds she made with Alecto's hand plunged into her chest. She can barely see the face before her for the welter of her tears, except for yellow, yellow bright as dandelions and the sun. ]
Did she know you? [ It's there - it's there - the shape of it, right in front of her - ] The person who came before me?
cw: blood, dysfunctional relationships, discussion of major violation of bodily autonomy
There was a world, once. It was the First. It was the world where John was born, and first knew them all, and the world he sifted their ashes from to make them anew in his mercy and his love. All else is sacred, and sacred is the word for the things that Mercy hated for any of them to ask of God, for how the asking hurt him so, and hated more for any of them to ask of Alecto, for how her answering hurt him worse.
She had been so young when she decided the past did not matter. She had no past of her own. By the time she began to wonder, centuries had accrued to the questions, calcified them beyond utterance.
Mercy has already hurt John as terribly as she could hurt him. The sacred swallows her like a great throat. The acid of mystery etches her own voice, turns it slurred and tender. ]
You never did know anything about how to stop.
[ She wonders if Alecto can feel it yet, the strands unfolding. The kindled fellow-feeling, at last, between them. I still love him. It hurts. The last prayer of broken faith that does not die, but only goes on and on. ]
The First. [ Her hand grips back as tightly as Alecto's grips hers, clasped at the precipice edge. ] That was the world. The oceans rose and the sky burned.
[ She makes a noise. It's a terrible, staved in noise, wet and retching, worse than the awful sounds she made with Alecto's hand plunged into her chest. She can barely see the face before her for the welter of her tears, except for yellow, yellow bright as dandelions and the sun. ]
Did she know you? [ It's there - it's there - the shape of it, right in front of her - ] The person who came before me?