35. North
North
Ileave Paris.
I do not know where I am going. I do not know how many days it’s been.
I count the gems on my bracelet.
I walk through the city into the wilderness. Exhaustion tugs at me, but I have much farther to go. I must be free of Paris, away from the smell of the Seine or the sight of the crumbling buildings.
My emptiness unmoors me, letting me float as a ship without an anchor. I move through villages and I wonder if any of these were Zora’s village? No, she is from the east. I head north.
North to what?
I do not care.
I do not hunt, I simply eat. I grab a human and sink my teeth into their neck and drink until they stop breathing. I leave their corpses where they lie.
Maybe Zora’s family will find me.
How will they know she is dead?
Thinking of Zora makes the emptiness deeper. If I think of her or you, if I feel too much, I will collapse.
There is nothing holding me upright.
I took nothing with me. I still wear my bloodstained clothes. I consider changing them, but why? Into what? Something else to get bloodied and worn by the road?
My shoes wear thin and I abandon them.
I am given wide berth by the humans. I sneak into their homes at night and leave them dead in their beds for their relatives to find in the morning.
Then I decide I’ve had enough.
I’ve had enough being alive. I’ve watched empires rise and fall, I’ve seen the birth and death of religions. I’ve learned languages, walked the reaches of the known world. I’ve stepped onto floating ice and buried myself in the sands of a large desert.
All while looking as I did that day you found me in Delphi.
I had seen enough. I already knew the repetition of life. Paris would overthrow its monarchy, all while stepping on the poor. Perhaps it would reign, or someone bigger would push them aside.
On and on and on.
Humans made so little progress. I’ve been alive nearly two thousand years and they’ve done nothing but destroy.
I am done.
There is a small home on the edge of the field I stand on. A couple lives there. I compel the man to dig a hole deeper than he’s ever dug before. He does, not stopping for three days, until I am staring down at my death pit.
This is where I will rest at last. This is where I will die. I will starve and sleep and never wake. No one will find my ashes. I will be like Zora, interred eternally.
Untouched.
I drop my sachet of grave dirt from my homeland on the ground.
I make the man bury me.
Each shovel full of dirt hides me from the world and all its horrors at last. Here there is no you, there is no Zora, there are no hunters or cults or religions or man or empires.
It is just me, and the silence of my grave.
I place a coin in my mouth and close my eyes.
At last, I will die.