Survival Of The Fittest

She took her, new first step forward.

No hand rose to meet hers, intertwining their fingers in a final waltz to the looming entanglement of their sovereignty. All that met the girl's grip, touched her soft skin and sunken sinew, was the silent embrace of the eternity, its frigid touch gracing her with a sinister chill—gnawing through their bones like an infestation of termites through rotten wood, a ghost arising from the seams like smoke slipping through cracks in their skin.

The scent of brimstone and gunpowder hung in the air still, flowing forward into their sinuses; the severance of silence sliced the distance between them, erecting walls and ravines to keep them apart. Quiet finality came in the whistles of the wind and the quiet tufts of freezing air that leaked from Claire's open mouth like a dragon's fire, mouthing silent words as her abdomen heaved up and down with each breath.

Claire stared blankly, her irises like frosted spheres of painted blue glass, ice cubes dancing in the cup of her eyes. Then, she came to again after a juncture, eyes fluttering closed and open again as if awakening from an ill-conceived dream. Her face twitched, the cracks showing in her still lips, and then she deigned to say a word. Her mutters were broken and mislaid, as if lost in a deep trance, trapped in a portal to another world.

"I don't think I'm ready yet," she murmured, dream-like, head tilting as if to express confusion at the idea of somehow leaving this place. "There's something left to do. I've got to resolve everything. It can't end like this," she chimed, something vibrant and chant-like catching on her words, ritualistic in the intonation, like the words to a magic spell. It was an act against sanity. Freedom lay before her! And yet she declined it now.

But there was a method in her madness. Nobody on this island, or maybe even outside of it, would ever understand it but her, that magnetic feeling drawing her back, leading her by the hand to the conclusion of her last story, adventures in a waking nightmare. But she knew her purpose well. And, undeterred, she advanced upon it, turning on her heels to move towards the future that only she could foresee, a prophecy still to come.

So, with a wave of her hand, as if to dismiss her better judgment, she took one step, then another, listlessness transforming to the dying echoes of determination like the amber embers of a decaying inferno that once raged. Another gale of whistling wind sent a terpsichorean surge of powder snow in her wake, tracing her figure like a cloak, hiding her exit from sight like the closing of the curtains onto the stage of a play.

It was as if she had never been there at all. Even her footprints were gone.

S091: CLAIRE HAIG — CONTINUED IN "Danse Macabre"

"Alright," Amy said. "But be quick. And don't forget to come back. Or to where the rescue people are. Erm."

She suddenly didn't want the other girl to leave. Please. Stay with her. Bask in each other's warmth. Don't leave me all alone now. Please. I'm tired of people leaving me. It's so hard managing it all. Don't go without me. Let me follow you.

But Claire waved her hand, and she knew better than to press on.

"See you," she said, more like a promise than anything. "On the ship. At home. I'll see you again."

One pair of footsteps traced its way to the shore.