The battle of the beasts

The battle of the beasts

There once was a girl called Gillian and she had three things she treasured most: her home, her peace and her love. Her home stood on the wayside of town. It was small in a technical sense but enough room to fill three hearts to contentment. Her home held her mother who had a garden that bloomed in spring and her father who tended to a herd of friendly livestock sheep and Gillian's favourite goat she named bill. 

The quiet was what she liked best about that small loving farm but now that faded disappearing into scratching and distant human and animal cries of terror. Her mothers garden had been uprooted by the hoves and hives at war and now her fathers creatures lay crumbled with snapped bones and bleeding flesh. All seemingly pointlessly.

The second thing she treasured most, her peace seemed a memory. Lost to the noise of bloodshed of everything that could possibly commit violence doing just that. Her Love remained. For the world and for her family. Who had stuck together like the herd of sheep, hiding like the rabbits in their burrows in their strong and feeble home. Her love intact but fear nibbled at the edges and inners like maggots and transformed it into so much pain. The love for her dog snapped into fear as her paws got matted with blood. She worried about how when the sheep had finished ripping apart the goat to death that they had turned to rip apart one another. 

Listening to the cries of people running and creatures hunting. Until they heard the cries of a baby. Alive and screaming. Not yet bludgeoned but vulnerable waiting to die. Gillian wasn’t thinking when she ran outside. She hadn’t been thinking for the past hours. Or was it days? Her home outside was unrecognizable. Gillian breathed the hot silky air and ran down the lane and to the child. The mother’s broken screams echoed from the distance where she must have tried to lead away whatever was chasing them. Gillian hoisted up the child who was screaming in abandonment and began to turn back towards her home. When a giant fell dead on her house killing her family dead. 

Gillian froze, gripping the child tightly as her love slipped and crumbled under the gigantic weight of loss and pooled into this crushed human in her arms. She would have stayed frozen in shock except the giant’s skull was cracked flooding her farm in hot purple blood. That pooled around her ankles and burned. Breathing macicy and blinking back into reality. She ran, not towards anything just from this awful something. Stumbling and crying, her heart thumping and broken. Into the battle of the beasts.

Each and every creature turned on one another. Family’s against family’s beasts against hordes of birds. The sky rained blood and the ground littered bodies. They fought because otherwise something would come and fight them. You were a predator or prey. Claws tore through feathers and ants ate through eyes. Humans ran with guns and knives to the wolves and the nightingale. Bullets shredded the wings of giant butterflies. Dragons held bears by their throats until they were slain by men high with power. Hordes of ducks and swans suffocated the lungs of bears with feathers and humans shot and shredded the ducks with their teeth. No one knew why or how the battle began. It was attacks and counter attacks until the world went up in flames. 

The battle waged around her and a storm began to swell above her. The weather still apathetic to whatever was going on beneath it. It began to pour. The baby wined in her arms but she gripped it like hope and ran. The forest cried from every direction. Running she got covered in the mess of the bodies of dead creatures and the blood of herself and of the beasts. She hadn’t time to pause and check whether they were alive or dead or if they were human animals or something new. The plants and insects too wielded against each other with poison, gas and spikes. Gillian paused to tie a mask across her face from her skirt and squinted as she ran. Holding the child towards her chest. The exhaustion bit at her and the baby was quiet and asleep somehow in her arms. Maybe they were all dead. Oh god.

She ran and ran until finally she ran in silence. Until the world felt dead. She almost longed for a scream of pain to ease the nothing that filled the air. All she had left was her hope. Her hope was what led her on through the forest and what made her scoop that child up and hold it tightly in her arms. Hope led her to that lake. She watched it for a bit. It was so still it reflected the stars. Gillian found that the quiet wrapped around her like a blanket. She carefully dipped her foot in the water and found it was warm. She waded into the shallows carefully. Holding the child on her chest so it found air above the thick water. Both children curled up in the rough warm shallows. Gillian thought of her family, her farm. Maybe the rain could wash away the red. Maybe the beasts would fade as the night does into morning and she could return. To her crushed home. She could burry her parents in the soil and work on a new garden for her mother. Planting seeds in the blood fertilised ground. She could Care for more creatures like her father. Rebuild her home for her and this kid. In the morning they would wake to discover that they had been relaxing in the dying warmth of a giant golden fish destroyed. But for now they found peace and slept. In the comfort of the belly of the beast.

As the moon watched and sighed

The night seemed to cry 

Children resting amongst the blood 

The flesh The pain

Death sustaining life

Folding the world anew