Requiem

[ksirafai.livejournal.com]

Summerwolf whimpered, tugging at my sleeve. If I don't follow her, I won't see what she's showing me.

Patchesfeather, Alpha, boy-child, friend, has human arms around me and gives me strength.



***

My mother is safe. She was at Shpresa. My aunt is safe. She was at home, preparing Sunday dinner.

I brought her to Shpresa. To Hope. (To my grandam's namesake, my grandam whose body I brought back)

Orphan's Song is singing in my mind, and if I'm not orphaned, there are many here who are. I've been digging through rubble and chasing off mobs, gangs and looters for hours now, and the Rage hasn't dimmed.

(It's because I'm using it as little as possible. I need to be angry. Need to burn, because if I don't, I'll stop.)

I've brought supplies and the helpless to Shpresa, and the women there are making soup and bandages; the nurses have been patching up anyone who needs it, male or female - gender doesn't matter when the Scar is ripped open and bleeding.

Anyone who threatens this place, though...

I don't think I've killed anyone yet tonight - my bow's away, and I'm back in the Baltics, working through the ruins and picking off enemy soldiers. Turns out that I can't fight a Ratkin down (one nearly tore my leg apart; its friends burnt most of my hair away with a makeshift grenade) but I can make them move on to easier pickings. They laughed as they walked away, and I almost lost out to Rage.

I'm burning up as the snow comes down.

I don't know what they'll say about me tonight, but I know that the Veil's ripped far worse than one psycho in a battered suit can make it, so I bring them back; more and more and once again more. Wise Woman lets me find them, freezing and dying in the streets. Merciful Mother blessed my hands as I kept them from bleeding out. Maiden Huntress lets me carry them when they can't walk, lets me keep going on through the night.

Yet the threefold Lady and her Pegasus have not kept my sisters safe.

Let the world burn. Let the cities fall. Let the snow come down. My sisters are dead. My little blue baby niece is dead. My future is dead.

What can the Apocalypse bring to make me fear now?