2.3 A Theatre of Snow

※　※　※　※　※　※　※　※　※　※　※ ※　※　※　※　※　※　※　※　※　

I never open the box. That felt like an invasion of privacy. I could feel those red eyes staring at me, judging all the shit I did.

So honestly, I never found out what that noise was. My nose didn't belong in any of that business. I continued my search around for only a few more minutes, and decided this sort of privacy invasion. . . it wasn't worth it. Androktasiai’s door, I made sure was fully shut. That was her space. I didn’t need to know about her life like that. It made no sense to me, why I decided to rush in and find the ending of something, without putting any effort into the journey of it. 

Now, I went up those awful stairs in the living room, shaking my damn head. 

Why had I gone and rushed into something like that? It wasn't for me to know. That's all there is to it. My life is my life- her life is hers. Ain't nothing more to it than that.

Plus, I know my Goddess is still judging me.

She's a curious gal but, she isn't like that. She wouldn't approve of my actions today, and neither did I.

So, I sat upstairs with nothing to do. I didn’t want to go back to the other downstairs. My nightmares had stopped any ideas of that. So, I sat sideways on the chair at the foot of the front room for a few hours. I brought a few books of course, but. . . yeah. I stayed, just waiting for Mom.

Finished skimming two books by the time the time got away from me.

Finished re-reading paragraphs over and over again, never really getting the information in my head, before I realized that the axe was still there.

Androktasiai never went outside without that thing. Never.

It had been a while now that I’ve stayed with her, and she’s gone out almost every day. That thing goes with her, everywhere.

Everywhere.

I felt my body recoil in fear.

And, I don't know. I felt, less me than before.

Jesse got real close to it. Traced his fingers along the handle. The leather grip was worn, smoothed by years of use, the grooves molded to fit her hands, not his. The blade was different than usual, though. It was pristine, as if it had never been swung. He leaned in closer, his breath fogging against the cold steel. 

Curling golden letters were etched into the side of the shaft.

‘Godking Alltitus.’

I don’t remember that. I feel like I’ve seen enough to know how it looks. This one, doesn’t look exactly the same as the other one. 

Androktasiai said she’d be back soon: just dropping off Nfierre, but that was hours ago. The sky outside had gone dark, swallowing the forest in an abyss of shifting shadows, the kind that slithered and stretched. Jesse was trying not to look. He swallowed down the unease and made his way downstairs, forcing himself to keep his breathing even. It didn’t help. The longer he waited, the worse it got, the gnawing pit in his stomach turning over itself, twisting him up inside.

She’s not back yet. She’s not back yet. She’s not back yet.

He tried to distract himself. Jesse picked up another book. Read a few pages. Something about the sin and virtue paradox, how the seven greatest sins all seemed to mirror the seven heavenly virtues. A contradiction, a balance, a cosmic joke. It made sense. Or well, it didn’t make sense. It felt like something important, but Jesse's mind wouldn’t sit still long enough to untangle it.

Because she’s not back yet.

He clenched his jaw and stood, shutting the book with more force than necessary. IHe moved on autopilot, cleaning, straightening, making sure everything was in its right place. 

I had to– because if I didn’t, my thoughts would start spiraling, and I couldn’t afford that. 

He brushed his teeth. Fixed his hair. 

I should look nice for her when she gets back, he thought.

If she gets back.

He shook his head.

Why is it that everytime life goes right, things will go wrong instantly? Why is it that no matter how hard I try, I will never be able to do the right thing?

Jesse moved without thinking.

Today was going to be the day, he thought to himself.

I would start my new routine.

I would wash my face and brush my teeth, once in the morning, once at night.

I'd work out every day.

I'd draw every day.

I'd cook. I'd eat three meals.

I'd make my bed. I'd cut my nails.

Today, I would get a hold of myself. Today, I would be a better person.

Today, I would make Androktasiai proud. I would make my mother proud of the man I was going to become.

Today would be the first step towards being the human being I wanted to be.

Jesse shrugged on a jacket, patting the pocket where he'd tucked away one of her cigarettes from the counter. His feet carried him back up the stairs, back to the axe. It was heavier than he expected, a lot heavier, and it took both hands to pry it off the wall. His arms shook as he adjusted his grip, fingers slipping along the too-big handle, breath coming out fast. This was a bad idea. But not as bad as sitting here doing nothing.

Jesse staggered toward the door, axe in hand, stomach twisting. He knew the rules. Don’t leave the cabin without her. But, she wasn’t back. And that wasn’t normal. Not for this long.

Jesse stood at the door, hand hovering over the handle, heart hammering in his chest. His breath fogged against the wood, his fingers flexing, itching to turn the knob.

Breaking a rule this important should’ve felt worse.

Instead, Jesse just felt like he didn’t have a choice.

I closed my eyes, took a breath, and stepped outside.

. . . 

Outside, was bright. The sun was shining against the snow like gently dusted snow on dove feathers. There was a beautiful shimmer to it and. . . day? It shouldn’t be day.

It should be dark out.

Almost as if compelled by my own thoughts, the sky instantly darkened, a blizzard of snow overwhelming the air. The sky became this grey and white battle of whittling birch, and anything more than twenty feet in front of me might as well have been invisible.

The world around me was a mess of dust and snow. The greedy wind howled for more, ripping through the trees with a force that felt personal, the world itself trying to keep me from moving forward. The powder was drowning, an unrelenting force. I couldn’t even open my mouth for a larger breath without fear of suffocating.

Still, I trudged forward, boots sinking too deep into the drifts, each step that much heavier than the last. My breath came out in thick clouds, immediately swallowed by the storm, and my mouth would fill with powdered snow, ice eating away at my saliva without so much as a second to breathe. The axe in my grip dragged along the ground beside me, carving a shallow trench in the ice-packed earth, a weight I wasn’t strong enough to carry but couldn’t bring myself to abandon.

It was too late to turn back. And, even if I did, there was no way I’d find my way back. If I found Androktasiai, we could worry about that. That was my only warm solace. Finding her would fix all my problems. Finding her would snowball into the days where I better myself.

The cold was heating up. A warm, incessant push against my body. It pressed against my skin, worming its way beneath my clothes in white spirals, biting deep into my ribs where it wanted to settle inside me, to make a home in my gut. What little I could still smell was all sterile, frozen, and untouched.

I reached into my pocket, my fingers stiff, becoming almost fully unresponsive. The cigarette was still there, crumpled slightly from how many times I’d rolled it between my fingers. I turned it over, feeling the paper, the delicate imperfections in its shape.

I’d brought it for Androktasiai.

She wasn’t out here. Even if she was, I doubt I could find her.

The thought hit me harder than anything the wind threw at me. I closed my fingers around the cigarette, gripping it as tight as I could, as if that little motion would make it warmer, as if that sentiment would make any of this work out. But, the snow kept thickening, the blizzard wrapping around me where the sky itself was closing my eyes. I hadn't even brought a lighter to burn up this last cigarete.

Somewhere ahead, there was a distant sound. I had dulled to the sounds of whipping winds, and my ears, almost frozen shut to the rest of my head, had just remembered their job. My nose was shaking in that onslaught.

I swallowed the freeze, crystallized hands shifting my grip on the axe, my endless heartbeat banging down every door in my chest. I couldn't see anything ahead of me anymore. All of it was just. . . white. No longer an inch of gray. No depth to it. Not even a painting to be made here.

The wind kept coming, and the snow only got worse. It was in my mouth, my nose, my eyelashes. My jacket was thick, but the cold had long since found its way beneath it, needling against my skin. I was freezing to death.

I didn’t know how long I’d been walking. A minute. An hour.

I adjusted my grip on the axe again. It was heavy, awkward, dragging more than I was carrying it. Each step carved another line into the frozen ground, the blade scraping against ice and buried stone. Androktasiai carries this thing like it weighs nothing. I could barely keep my arms from shaking when I dragged it behind me. I exhaled through my nose, breath vanishing instantly into the storm. What little strength I had left was fading, all too quickly. My heart howled for more.

Why was I even doing this?

She told me to stay put. She told me to wait. But, waiting was what you did when you were powerless. I didn’t have to be powerless anymore. Androktasiai needed me. 

And I, couldn’t help her.

I hated that thought infinitely more than the cold.

The canvas kept thickening, the world getting smaller and smaller, swallowed by the white storm. I kept walking, and somewhere ahead of me, in the valley of white, that sound arose again.

Something was definitely moving in the storm.

Could be Androktasiai. Could also be a bear.

The wind tore at me, a constant, gnawing force that bit through my jacket and settled beneath my skin. My hands had long since gone numb, but I still gripped the axe, dragging it through the snow, feeling every ounce of its impossible weight in my bones.

I kept walking.

The storm wasn’t letting up. It swallowed everything. Trees, sky, footprints, composure and breath. I wasn’t sure if I was leaving a trail anymore or if the wind erased each step the moment I took it.

But then, through the wall of white, a path of shapes shifted.

The ground sloped ahead, an uneven stretch of land and non-land. I knew this place. My stomach twisted before my mind could fully recognize why and what the hell I was lookin' at.

The cliff stretched out before me. That same one.

The place where I had stood, where I had looked down at the endless drop below and wondered if it would hurt. If my crater would be quick.

I stopped at the edge.

The bridge is only a few hundred feet down.

That beautiful bridge.

And there- right there, in the snow at my feet- was blood.

Not a lot. A few drops, a gentle pool, dark against the white. Already sinking into the ice. I let go of the axe, and it dropped into the snow with a dull thud. With it, my gloves slipped, and some of the skin on my palms. I heard a scream come out of me, but I had no recollection of screaming.

I took another step forward, the wind cutting into my face, my breath shaking in my chest.

My knife.

The same one I had brought here before. The one I had carried with me that night, clutched so tightly in my fingers that it had left an imprint in my palm.

It lay dead in the snow. Waiting for my skinless palms to touch it again.

I crouched down slowly, my fingers brushing against the handle. Cold. Of course it was cold. It was agonizing. I swallowed, staring at it, my heart thudding against my ribs. I thought it fell all the way to the bottom of the valley. 

Underneath the howling, beneath the roar of the storm, somewhere layered beside the crunch of my own breath– I heard that creature.

A low, grinding sound, something slow and deliberate. Teeth, gnashing together, the wet snap of something sharp against something softer. The scent of metal drifting in with the fresh snow. Not the clean, cold tang of iron, but thicker, warmer, clumped together. A bloody stench and rancid steel.

I didn’t turn around. I didn’t move at all.

The knife was still in my hand, the handle solid against my palm. My fingers curled around it, slow, tight, but my body refused to rise, my legs locked beneath me.

The sound came again. A shift of weight. A low, heaving breath. It was behind me, prey before a predator that knew it had already won.

The wind carried another scent, something harsh and something familiar, something I did not yet have the stomach to name.

I exhaled slowly, forcing my voice into something steadier than I felt.

Abetta: “. . . I know you’re there.”

The gnashing stopped. A beat of silence. Then, a dragging footstep in the snow. Closer. I shouldn’t have come out here.

Androktasiai told me to stay. She told me.

But I left anyway. Because I thought I could find her. Because I thought, maybe, for once, I could be useful. Instead, I found myself in the same fate that she bled out in, was gobbled up in.

The endless snow and the calm pool of blood. The knife I carried on the night I was supposed to disappear. . . but nothing else. 

I never found her. She was gone. Probably dead, probably frozen somewhere in the trees, ripped apart, or swallowed whole by this thing behind me.

Now, it was my turn.

This was it. This was how my miserable life would end.

And the thought of it should have been comforting.

But instead of acceptance, something else twisted deep in my chest. I clenched my jaw, my breath uneven, numb and unresponsive fingers tightening around the knife. My body listened to one last desperate plea. With impulse, my shoulders shook, my lungs pulling in a final burning inhale of frozen air, and I felt it. Disgustingly, I felt it.

A single tear. Hot against my cheek, cutting through the cold, slipping into the corner of my mouth. Dribbling with salt and desperation. Something bitterly real. I didn’t want to die.

Not like this.

Not anymore. Because I had something now.

A home. A place. A purpose, even if I hadn’t figured it out yet.

People. Human people. A person who might actually care. And for the first time in a long, long time, I didn’t want to let go of that, that dead mother.

I had failed again.

I wiped the tear away with the back of my hand, the motion small, but final.

I had failed my mother again.

Then, slowly, carefully, I stood. I turned cautiously, gripping the knife so tightly that my knuckles ached. The snow whipped against my face, but I barely felt it anymore. The only sensation I could recall or name was the presence of that silhouette in the blizzard.

A gaunt, hunched thing, all jagged limbs and stretched proportions. It stood at the forefront of my vision, shifting with the storm.

Two pinpricks of deep, blood-drenched red, burning through the whiteout, unblinking, unwavering. Somewhere in the wavering snow, a shape of the rest of it. The gross, blotted out metal etchings of a humanoid, but only in the way a scarecrow mocks the shape of a great monstrous beauty. Its arms hung low, these sickle-like claws dragging against the snow, bony things, its gnarled phalanges curling inward crescents. Its legs, if you could call them that, were bent, moving at this savoring, slobbering pace.

Its head was draped in the hood of darkness, but I could see no face besides those glimmering eyes. Only a void, blacker than the space between the stars.

Something moved in that endless black.

A whistle of teeth. A gleam of something sharp.

The scent of rot and metal drifts toward me, a thick coating of rust clinging to the inside of my throat. With gluttony, it takes a step forward.

The snow doesn’t crunch beneath it.

It no longer makes a sound at all.

My breath lodges itself in my throat.

But I don’t run. Androktasiai's gone.

Goodbye, mother. Goodbye, mother again.

The world felt too still. Even with the storm raging around me, even with the snow tearing through the air in wild, frenzied gusts, something about this moment felt permanent, fixed, held in place. We were both hesitating in that pause.

A flicker at the edge of my vision. I didn’t turn to face her. I didn’t need to. White hair, cascading like silk. Red eyes, gleaming with that sharp unreadability. Around her, the snow seemed to die down in intensity, that little clear patch.

She stood just to the side, watching. 

She did nothing but watch. This was not for her to intervene.

The axe was equidistant from me and the creature. Now, it was buried up to the head in snow, but still. . . I could grab it.

The weight I had dragged through the storm. The thing I had clung to, carried, hauled across frozen ground, despite knowing it wasn’t mine. I could avenge my mother, here and now.

The Goddess smiled at me.

I swallowed, gripping the knife tighter.

I felt like a child standing in wreckage.

That thing shifted forward. The unnatural, mechanical twist of its silent limbs, the slow, shuddering pull of something man-made.

And with plenty of warning, the creature rushed at me, barreling at full speed. I took a cautious step back, and the ground gave out beneath me.

A sharp, brutal slip.

For a split second, I was weightless. It was the greatest feeling in the world, and should I taste it again, I would quickly grow addicted to this sensation.

The sky reeling, the blizzard spinning, the wind ripping through my clothes like claws. And in that brief moment, before I was sent tumbling down the cliff, I swore I saw my God still standing there.

Still smiling.

Applauding in the theatre of snow.

※　※　※　※　※　※　※　※　※　※　※ ※　※　※　※　※　※　※　※　※