Dante's Heart
Hazel Lee
Lycanthropa
A woman awakens teetering on the precipice of dawn with no memory of
her self. With no sight or sound. Her fingers reach to her ears and there
she finds silky lops that rise erect to tempt her for a moment with ethereal
howls she may once have recognized but can’t quite place. Searching for
her reflection in her mind’s empty cave, and for a clue to the enigma of her
being, she sinks into the bottomless pond of her life. Lobo and his children
drift around her, hackles up, lips drawn back, murmuring among themselves
in a coded tongue. Do they know things about her? They dissolve, and a
rancid stench of shame overcomes her. Nothing seems familiar here. Each
moment is pregnant with peril. From among the rhythmic sea grasses she
catches hold of the roots of a cloud of mysterious potential. She floats up
and up, drawn by the smells of the slimy colors of mercury. Far above her
pond, she plunges her leathery snout into a festering storm to test the
fuscia aroma of its winds for directions. A flash of terror, what has she
forgotten? Her fur bristles a warning, then nothing. Nothing familiar here.
Nothing with form. Suddenly flooded by the return of the blistering heat
of ancient love oaths whose words she cannot conjure, she regains her grip.
She inhales crackling electrons and harvests their energy into her leathery
nostrils. Her elegant furry tail wraps itself around her soul as a disguise as
she rises to the ceiling of the universe, preventing her return to earth forever.
Lycanthropa
A woman awakens teetering on the precipice of dawn with no memory of
her self. With no sight or sound. Her fingers reach to her ears and there
she finds silky lops that rise erect to tempt her for a moment with ethereal
howls she may once have recognized but can’t quite place. Searching for
her reflection in her mind’s empty cave, and for a clue to the enigma of her
being, she sinks into the bottomless pond of her life. Lobo and his children
drift around her, hackles up, lips drawn back, murmuring among themselves
in a coded tongue. Do they know things about her? They dissolve, and a
rancid stench of shame overcomes her. Nothing seems familiar here. Each
moment is pregnant with peril. From among the rhythmic sea grasses she
catches hold of the roots of a cloud of mysterious potential. She floats up
and up, drawn by the smells of the slimy colors of mercury. Far above her
pond, she plunges her leathery snout into a festering storm to test the
fuscia aroma of its winds for directions. A flash of terror, what has she
forgotten? Her fur bristles a warning, then nothing. Nothing familiar here.
Nothing with form. Suddenly flooded by the return of the blistering heat
of ancient love oaths whose words she cannot conjure, she regains her grip.
She inhales crackling electrons and harvests their energy into her leathery
nostrils. Her elegant furry tail wraps itself around her soul as a disguise as
she rises to the ceiling of the universe, preventing her return to earth forever.
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