Saturn sat down behind me, back to back, still holding her book. We talked. We talked of endings and beginnings. We talked of things dying and seeds scattered in the killing fields. We talked of pen colors, ink colors, how they really didn’t matter, and how they were quite important. We talked of timing, time, and the futility of it all. We talked of fratricide, of the Furies, of propriety, how cultures have changed over the millennia, and how thousands of years of history and precedent means jacque shitte if you are not safe where you are.
“When a man is threatening to hold a gun to your head, that is not the time to pontificate on the history of gunpowder.”
Jupiter zoomed about. Sitting in Saturn’s orbit, I suppose the old man would look pretty damn spry. I saw his harlequin masked face briefly. He had a smirk that would put Hermes to shame.
“Jupiter is up to some shit.”
“Jupiter is always up to some shit.”
“Should I be concerned? I ran as his messenger a couple times, and I think I still have a connected aspect.”
“Do you want to be concerned? Do you want to be distracted with a hundred little things that turn out to be just what they need to be? Or do you want to bring things to an end before things are brought to an end?”
I remained sitting with Saturn. I fell asleep and woke up with my head in her lap. I apologized for the impropriety of a grown adult lying in the lap of a fourteen-year old girl. Then I remembered who I was talking to, and the real difference in ages involved. She only chuckled and used my face to rest her book on. She told me to go back to sleep, that I was where I needed to be at that moment. She did not tell me what was in the book.
In the distance, I heard Jupiter zooming by. He was carrying something, and the something rattled. It sounded like pottery shards and hollow bones.
I fell into deeper sleep. Raven returned to [Cracks The Bones To Make Rattles]. Raven’s feathers were marked with dust, ashes, and blood. Some of the blood was hers. Some of it, wasn’t.
“You’ll never be the same, Raven.”
“Isn’t that what I asked for? Isn’t this what I’m getting? Let me be true to myself, and let the falsehoods fall away. I have been caged because I make others afraid. Let me then lose the civility that chained me. Let me be Fear.”
A rattle was shaken. The sound chased away all the little lies I held to keep me proper and genteel. They manifested as vermin, scattering away from the hungry fire in the midst. Scattering away into the darkness that some call civilization.