Thanks to AmandineVanRay for permission use her spectacular image, “Sweet bones her lovers”!
Kurmala rested on
the marble throne, carved by long-forgotten artisans and smoothed by
generations of her ancestors. She had grown up here in the City of the Dead,
and she had no fear of spirits or death itself. She accepted death with the
same ennui she embraced her lovers while they still lived. She caressed their
warm skin the same way she stroked their cold bones. It was all the same.
She shifted
restlessly over the transforming octopi that struggled weakly beneath her. Some
limbs had already completed their change from dying flesh to immortal silver,
wrapped around Kurmala’s ribs in an eternal embrace. Transformation took as
long as death, sometimes longer. It was all the same.
Leaning down, she
picked up a bone from her last lover and turned it over in her hands,
remembering his quick smile and slow hands. A triggerfish swam apart from his
school and came close to investigate. Curiosity was a kind of reckless abandon
here. Kurmala stretched her arm up, idly swinging the bone in slow arcs back
and forth, tempting the fish closer. Three of the still living octopi tentacles
whipped up and grabbed the triggerfish around its middle and tail. Kurmala
watched its death struggles as impassively as she had so many times in the
past. It was all the same.
The bone clattered
against the marble stones that radiated out from her throne. Kurmala wrapped
her delicate fingers around the still-warm fish and began to peel the flesh,
drawing the pieces across her lips to savor every bite. She eyed a large
jellyfish drifting by her side. She did enjoy the sting of their tentacles. She
considered the remains of the triggerfish in her hands. There was not much flesh
left on the needle-sharp bones. Enough to entice the jellyfish. She stretched
her arm up, idly swinging the fish in slow arcs back and forth. The jellyfish
drifted closer, reaching down its long, frilled tentacles. Kurmala smiled. It
was all the same.
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Dogs
in house
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Houdini, Maize
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Time
writing:
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~25 minutes
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October
word count:
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16,562
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ReplyDeletePrompt: Sweet bones, her lovers
She sat in a throne-like chair, octopi fused flat to its surface, tips of tentacles waving. They noticed me first, shifting colours from a grey camouflage to bright red, then vibrant blue rings, then white, then back to grey. She turned in slow motion. I expected her hair to wave in non-existent water, but apparently her magic did not extend the illusion so far that it might make her look less than perfect.
“Yes?” The androgynous voice came from a fish, lazily circling the throne.
I swallowed and placed my burden down. Kneeling, I realised the smooth lump at her feet was not an illusion of corral but instead a human skull. My knees barely held me to stand back up. They continued to shake beneath my skirt. “I come with a petition.” I left off any honorific; I could not remember which one she wanted anyway.
Three fish nuzzled my tightly wrapped bundle, but as illusions they could not open it. A jellyfish floated low enough that its tentacles touched the burlap cover. I wondered if her magic enabled her to taste what the images did. Good, she was curious.
Time writing: ~30 min