Paper Thin

Title: World falls down
’Verse/characters: Court of Birds, Fionnuala
Prompt: 96/Writer’s Choice: Loss
Word Count: 190
Rating: G
Notes: That was supposed to be Wren, dammit. Also, I hate titling things.

The cave was empty and the baby’s clothes were thrown carelessly on the floor near the entrance, and the blood on her mouth smeared across the back of her hand.

Fionnuala threw everything aside in her searching, scorching herself on the embers of the fire, tumbling nettle-cloth into the dirt and tangling thread, and the baby was nowhere to be found. Outside were only bird-prints and the tracks of her brothers running down to the lake before the dawn came, and at the forest verge deer-tracks. No sign of a baby not quite old enough to crawl, and there was still blood on her mouth.

She washed her face and poured fresh water until the tainted water no longer taunted her, and stumbled back to the cave. A year and more’s worth of silence kept her tears quiet as she shook out the baby’s clothes, rags cut from the remnants of her brothers’ shirts.

Feathers, too small for her brothers’ great wings and mixed with grey and brown besides, fell and drifted in the restless air. Fionnuala dropped the clothes and clutched at them, soft and fringed, broken-patterned.

Owl feathers.

Harvest
Title: Harvest
’Verse/characters: Court of Birds/Fionnuala
Prompt: #64, Fall
Word Count: 574
Rating: R
Notes: human sacrifice, ritual cannibalism

The Wheat Goddess laughed. With the red blood on her white skin and dark hair, she laughed, leaping like a deer from their sharp bronze knives. It was not last year’s crazed fearful laughter, and there would be no shit-stained goddess cringing beneath the oak this year, to be dragged out and slaughtered like a rabbit.

Blood spattered the oak in the south as they chased her from inner fields to outer, and still she laughed. The sharp-toothed holly in the north took its own price in blood and skin, from Goddess and hunter alike, as bitter and sullen as it had always been. The ash in the east was smeared with blood as they hunted her back in, and the rowan in the west, and there was no more laughter, only the harsh panting of a weary body.

The Wheat Goddess fell, for nothing her pursuers could see, and lay sprawled in blood-spattered earth, without moving. The silence was hushed and terrible for fear she was dead out of sequence, too early, and harsh relieved sighs when her chest heaved with breath. Fionnuala raised the goddess’ head by the bloody tangled hair, looking into blank, unfocused eyes, and raised up her bronze knife.

The knife glinted in the sun, and the goddess’ eyes focused on the brightness. And then she closed her eyes and bared her throat to Fionnuala’s knife. The red blood spurted as the goddess’ life sank into the earth in an instant, corpse limp and heavy in Fionnuala’s arms as she laid it out.

The oldest mother began the the keen first, the others joining her one by one. Fionnuala knelt by the dead goddess’ chest, carved it open as the women wailed out the mourning, shuffling around them in a slow, tight spiral. It was a good, strong heart, warm and heavy in her gory hands, and the sun shone down brightly on it. The women raised the dead goddess to their shoulders and she began to keen with them, bearing the goddess’ heart to the fire as they bore her body to the pyre.
The youngest mothers lit the torches, and the oldest washed her body, and Fionnuala prepared the goddess’ heart, cleaning it and slicing it thinly. She heaved the goddess’ corpse onto the pyre herself, and covered it with branches, and the youngest mother shoved in the first torch. Fionnuala, herself childless for youth, stood aside as the pyre was lit, and when the smoke rose thickly, turned to the smaller fire.

The goddess’ heart, sliced so thin, cooked swiftly, and she passed it from oldest to youngest mother, and the last piece for herself. They ate in slow, reverential silence, that the goddess’ heart would remain, and not go to that land of eternal summer to forget them. The wind rose, whipping the pyre into strong flames to char the goddess’ flesh and bone.

They washed the goddess’ blood from skin and hair, and when the pyre had burnt to sullen smoldering embers, soaked it thoroughly with the bloody water. The sun had set, the golden moon just risen over the horizon, and the sky was full of stars, thin streaks of clouds hiding and revealing. Fionnuala braided up her still-damp hair, and led them in silent procession to the village, where the old men watched the gate for their coming.