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Epilogue

Posted by on Sep 13, 2017 in Vidar's Boot: Chapter 99 (Epilogue) | 0 comments

– 1 –

Posted by on Sep 13, 2017 in Vidar's Boot: Chapter 99 (Epilogue) | 0 comments

Emily walks past a cow. It’s got a crown. She nods. It moos.

Emily speaks with a snake for a little while.

At the edge of the chaos she kills a fine feathered coat-beast and she puts on a fine feathered coat.

She walks to the waste, with its great sticky trees, and she scuffs the dirt with her toes: here a down arrow. Here a left arrow. Here an up arrow, and here a right.

She sets up a stone, that’s all you need, you don’t need a PlayStation if you’ve learned the dance.

She turns the staring skull to face away.

And this is how the world begins: when the last bit of fear in Emily settles, and the feathers of her coat; and she closes her eyes, and opens them, pure and clean; and she grinds a power button into the dirt, and she presses it, with the horny calloused tip of her right big toe.

Lightning flashes. Thunder rumbles. The world powers on like a PlayStation fan.

“You could die here,” whispers a silver snake. “They could fall on you. The world could bury you alive.”

There’s no turning back now, warns a passing crow.

And the jaguars go around and around the Earth, in the cold and the airless awfulness of space; and even in this last moment of that pain they do not know that an Emily has come.

– 2 –

Posted by on Sep 13, 2017 in Vidar's Boot: Chapter 99 (Epilogue) | 0 comments

I think if the wolf had lived —

The bigger wolf, I mean. The one that wasn’t Skoll, or me —

That maybe it would have been bad, I mean, really bad, but not world-ending bad. That maybe there’s something else that you can do with wolves that isn’t just killing them or letting them eat everything. That maybe sometimes things can happen, and they suck, and they’re awful, but then afterwards, somehow, things go on.

Or maybe they don’t. I don’t know. How could I? There’s not been time.

The world has only just begun.

– fin –

Posted by on Sep 13, 2017 in Vidar's Boot: Chapter 99 (Epilogue) | 1 comment

This is the beginning of the world:

When her feathers, when Emily’s feathers, settle, and her fears fall away; when she closes her eyes and when she opens them; when she boots up the Thunder Dance on that little rock and dances then to touch the sky, and to bring it all tumbling down;

To work a brand new miracle

And to set a hurt thing free.