She sleeps.
Her body twists through consciousness, overlapping and underlapping with bliss, sublime happiness. She is alone in the depths of the cave — but still, she sleeps.
Eerie.
Perhaps it is eerie, the way she moves. Not at all, and then some. Something. A shift of a hair and a breath of the wild inside of her. Curvature of her bones. Elasticity of her skin, shifting forward and backward and in directions she isn't sure of. She isn’t sure of anything.
She feels nothing, breathes nothing. She does nothing but sleep.
In the hollow of her chest, something starts.
Not a beating. It’s a humming. Higher frequency. Pulses quicken to beat past a pulse, not a pulse. A pulsating. A drumming. A humming.
No one will ever see her.
You cannot see her.
But you can hear the humming.
Her back twists, bit of spine tumbling over bit of spine, section by section as it moves unwholly, unholy. A smile curves around her limp mouth, tongue caught in the cavity between jaw and jaw. The humming shakes those teeth, shakes every inch of bone she possesses, shakes her. Her skin quivers. Her body was cold, but this warms it. Probably. Maybe.
Hopefully?
The skin on her teeth shakes, and another something starts. A glow. In time with the humming, a massive, glowing compression wave begins. It beams out of her, of all of her, quiet in brightness, and then louder. When the sound increases it burns higher; when it ebbs, the wave gets dimmer, streaming out of her. Slowly, slowly, until it has hit all the walls of the cave. All but one.
The entrance is a mouth, held open as the rays of light flicker out. Not out, not out of light or energy but an increase in forward motion, streaming and dripping out of the mouth. It does not burn out. It will not burn out.
Now you can see her.
Lying on the ground, drenched in light. It makes her look like she is underwater, this light, a pearl in the deep, lodged inside some oyster, some beach of sand. She is unique, this pearl, enveloped and developed inside an ocean of her own making.
Even without its source, the light continues to stream. Up and up it goes. Maybe they are in an ocean — waves mixing with waves, waves carrying waves to shore and to the bodies on the beach, children in the sand, fishing boats bobbing. It is the ocean near a small town, which is fitting, because massive things always start small. This massive thing, massive wave she has created, will start small and end small, but the in-between will be the biggest thing to ever exist.
But, to begin, we start small. The wave approaches the bodies on the beach, which come in varying sizes, all relatively close together, all tucked inside this little cove. All live in this village together, always drawing closer and farther apart, and all here, now.
I’ll show you only one of them. You have to assume the rest. But I don’t want you to see the children fall.
There’s a man on a boat; he’s young, dark. Sunburn creates a peeling of skin on his neck. His hair curves around those raw bits, curls clinging tightly to the salt on his scalp. The boat is empty. The fish aren’t biting.
When her wave hits him he stops breathing. That isn’t the worst part. He only stops for a second; it’s the rush of breath coming back to him that hurts the most, and it just gets worse, just increases. The pain is mounting in his throat with each new rush of air, her light streaming up into his lungs. He doesn’t see it, just breathes it in until he can’t breathe anymore. That’s the worst part. What happens next. This decomposing, that skin. The mop of hair disintegrating.
The children are watching him.
Deep in the belly of that cave our pearl turns over. If she were alive she’d feel a tickling, maybe, a trickling of force out. Would it hurt her? Does it still?
If she knew?
Her skin is bare, wet, slick. The cave is dry. When the light mounts in its wavelength, amplitude pressing so high it draws breath from her, the walls quiver, shoulder this new weight, crumble. Crumple.
Around the world, around this ocean, thousands of hearts stop beating as one.
But she, buried beneath rubble rock and eerie streams, only sleeps.
Radiation.
Her body twists through consciousness, overlapping and underlapping with bliss, sublime happiness. She is alone in the depths of the cave — but still, she sleeps.
Eerie.
Perhaps it is eerie, the way she moves. Not at all, and then some. Something. A shift of a hair and a breath of the wild inside of her. Curvature of her bones. Elasticity of her skin, shifting forward and backward and in directions she isn't sure of. She isn’t sure of anything.
She feels nothing, breathes nothing. She does nothing but sleep.
In the hollow of her chest, something starts.
Not a beating. It’s a humming. Higher frequency. Pulses quicken to beat past a pulse, not a pulse. A pulsating. A drumming. A humming.
No one will ever see her.
You cannot see her.
But you can hear the humming.
Her back twists, bit of spine tumbling over bit of spine, section by section as it moves unwholly, unholy. A smile curves around her limp mouth, tongue caught in the cavity between jaw and jaw. The humming shakes those teeth, shakes every inch of bone she possesses, shakes her. Her skin quivers. Her body was cold, but this warms it. Probably. Maybe.
Hopefully?
The skin on her teeth shakes, and another something starts. A glow. In time with the humming, a massive, glowing compression wave begins. It beams out of her, of all of her, quiet in brightness, and then louder. When the sound increases it burns higher; when it ebbs, the wave gets dimmer, streaming out of her. Slowly, slowly, until it has hit all the walls of the cave. All but one.
The entrance is a mouth, held open as the rays of light flicker out. Not out, not out of light or energy but an increase in forward motion, streaming and dripping out of the mouth. It does not burn out. It will not burn out.
Now you can see her.
Lying on the ground, drenched in light. It makes her look like she is underwater, this light, a pearl in the deep, lodged inside some oyster, some beach of sand. She is unique, this pearl, enveloped and developed inside an ocean of her own making.
Even without its source, the light continues to stream. Up and up it goes. Maybe they are in an ocean — waves mixing with waves, waves carrying waves to shore and to the bodies on the beach, children in the sand, fishing boats bobbing. It is the ocean near a small town, which is fitting, because massive things always start small. This massive thing, massive wave she has created, will start small and end small, but the in-between will be the biggest thing to ever exist.
But, to begin, we start small. The wave approaches the bodies on the beach, which come in varying sizes, all relatively close together, all tucked inside this little cove. All live in this village together, always drawing closer and farther apart, and all here, now.
I’ll show you only one of them. You have to assume the rest. But I don’t want you to see the children fall.
There’s a man on a boat; he’s young, dark. Sunburn creates a peeling of skin on his neck. His hair curves around those raw bits, curls clinging tightly to the salt on his scalp. The boat is empty. The fish aren’t biting.
When her wave hits him he stops breathing. That isn’t the worst part. He only stops for a second; it’s the rush of breath coming back to him that hurts the most, and it just gets worse, just increases. The pain is mounting in his throat with each new rush of air, her light streaming up into his lungs. He doesn’t see it, just breathes it in until he can’t breathe anymore. That’s the worst part. What happens next. This decomposing, that skin. The mop of hair disintegrating.
The children are watching him.
Deep in the belly of that cave our pearl turns over. If she were alive she’d feel a tickling, maybe, a trickling of force out. Would it hurt her? Does it still?
If she knew?
Her skin is bare, wet, slick. The cave is dry. When the light mounts in its wavelength, amplitude pressing so high it draws breath from her, the walls quiver, shoulder this new weight, crumble. Crumple.
Around the world, around this ocean, thousands of hearts stop beating as one.
But she, buried beneath rubble rock and eerie streams, only sleeps.
Radiation.