They broke the mold with her.
“Fraya, what’s up?”
They can’t make any more of her anymore.
Just like there was Fallen before there was Man, she was made from their smoke stuff. She was made of their last exhales, as God snuffed them out and pushed them deep into the earth like He was crushing candle flames out with His bare hand. They had reveled in the light of the throne, and then had rebelled against it. She was made in that crucible--just a ball of red clay made of their ash and their tears and their bloody screams of disenfranchisement.
Their souls were condemned, but their bodies remained.
She came out of the kiln and they shattered her prison and she took flight, furious and quaking.
She looked down from on high. She laughed.
You can’t destroy the idea of something. You can’t destroy its poison.
It gets in your head. It hides behind your eyes, thick with envy--and she shot up envy like it was the only drug that could get her higher than heaven’s angels.
I think that’s the thing. That’s the poison. The idea of someone gets under your skin.
One day, she’s the perfect girl. Tomorrow, she’s another person slowly killing you.
In the end, she’s just killing you.
And she’s laughing.
“Earth to Fra-ya!” She had a voice that could still rivers, sunder mountains, stop time, other poetic bullshit. She ripped me apart with each breath. I don’t tear easily. I’m a steady soul. My mother told me so. My mother is dead. Hers is the word of God. Might as well be written in her blood. My blood. My word is God’s.
Laura Lane didn’t need a fucking name.
They broke the mold. She’s unique. She doesn’t need a name. She is.
She is.
“Huh?”
“Fraya,” she said simply, all smiles. The way she said my name promised pain and pleasure. She knew her torture. Say a tiger’s name. Say my name again.
“Say my name again.” It was out there. I made her deal with it.
She looked startled, her eyes widening briefly before creasing with mirth. No. Take me seriously, damn it. I am not just another person in your shadow. I am your shadow. Please look me in the eye. Please look at me. See me. “Come on. We’re gonna be late,” she said.
She knew her torture. Don’t say a tiger’s name. Grab her by her tail and make her wail.
I trailed behind her like the sparks of ash and fire off her wingtips; those furious wings that surged downward and made the world quake. She laughed as I followed her. She was like a fey playing with fairy lights. She was like a spirit nodding the plasma off her coat tails.
I was always reaching after her, like I could pluck a feather from her wings and fly with it.
“Fraya? What’s with that look? Are you…? Hey, are you okay? ”
I should have known then. One feather gripped like death in one hand does not a flying machine make. It doesn’t even make a machine. It doesn’t even make a bird, or an angel, or a wing, or the whisper of a creature equal to the one before me. A feather is just a broken promise.
“Is that a knife?”
Like all things, in life and in death, her shadow was bound to overcome her and strike her down like all her broken promises. All she represented, shattered in the flicker of the reflection of an ember that could never gasp enough air to become more than an imagined flame.
“Fraya! Stop it!”
She said I was her best friend.
“You’re scaring me… YOU’RE SCARING ME!”
I told her I wanted to be more.
“WHAT’RE YOU--?!”
She said she would always be more to me and she was right. I am right. She would always be more to me than just Hell’s wrath incarnate. She said she knew what I was going through--that I just needed to give waiting a chance. Wait for her in the right places. Wait for her. Wait.
“It’s o-okay… Hey… Fraya…”
But I was done waiting.
She was living revenge. She’s an idea. She is.
“I forgive you…”
She is.
She is a thousand screaming souls.
“You didn’t… You didn’t mean to.”
She is furious.
She is quaking.
“Say it was an accident.”
Smoke and sighs and goodbyes that refuse to go unspoken.
“Fraya… Tell me you’ll…”
Those are ideas that kill you slowly.
“You’ll… be… okay, won--Won’t you?”
They broke the mold when they made her.
“F… F… Fucking… bitch.”
They can’t make any more of her anymore.
ns 15.158.61.21da2
