1.4: The Furl

I walked and I walked and I didn’t stop walking even though I wished each step forward was really a step back and I could just retreat out the doors and back down the hall and into the storm again where I could get soaked and battered by the rains again for all I cared because this was hard, this was so fucking hard, and she was looking right at me with eyes as dark blue as her banners and just as embroidered with blood even if it didn’t show up on her pupils and no deep breaths could have prepared me for this moment because it was as raw as I’d feared if ‘raw’ was even the right word for the flensing stare she was giving me out of a face that was both hers and not hers at the same time and I felt like a ghost if ghosts could be skinned alive and made out of all these memories that refused to curl up and die but rotted instead when unearthed and festered and her eyes, her eyes, bright in laughter, bright in murder, bright as the winter sky is bright but too bright too look at for long, fever sharp, fever dream, and her mouth on mine and my fingers in her hair and her body scarred like a doll that’s been ripped and stitched and patched back together again and

               “Hello Corvalis,” she said, all smoke and glass and I stopped before her dais and inclined my head and said,

               “Furl.”