The child is dying.

  Woman now. Woman once.

  She's breathing through her neck, skin fanning with every sputter, every wretched gasp to live. She holds her head up to the light, and it lovingly splays across the gore, across all that's left of the fire in her eyes.

  It's when her legs buckle that I grow curious, when she still doesn't fall to the dirt. She's bathing. Bathing in the sun while she dies. Drinking in the rays before they bring the flies. The blood, the blood is thick. I remember that smell. We remember—

  She is not the first to stir my curiosity. My fondness for creatures such as you, but I am hesitant.

  We have done this all before.

  Before—agony still soaks where love once swelled. I have cherished the creation that comes from creation and have mourned its squalid decline. My arms, his arms, still feel the ache — our body, our body is no more, and yet I feel it. Feel it all come crumbling down.

  But the trees are growing again — this clearing is thick with them, however burned they may be. The ground, whilst turned up, reeks of life. There are crickets resuming their song now that the danger has passed.

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  How long has it been?

  Curiosity.

  I've always enjoyed cats. Perhaps that's why they favour me? Perhaps they personify me greater than humanity ever could, and thus we are both weak to it. To girls like her, who hold their heads to the sun. I wish to bask there as well, in the flickering and dying light of her life.

  She falls. Heavy. Simple. Chokes on a gasp that sputters red from her neck. Her fingers fist the ground — claw at it. Defiant even while her body shuts down.

  I've never seen one of you die so slowly before. Not like this. She punches her fist against her chest. One. Two. Three times, and then again and again. The pulse of her failing heart can neither echo nor copy.

  Thumpthump. Thumpthump. Thump-thump.

  Her hand falls still. I smell her tears before I see them. Saline and sweet. Tears shed in love always are. I shouldn't. I know how this ends for you. You're kind. Your heroes.

  I know what he’ll do.

  But I creep closer. This is a soul that seeks to share, and this field is empty of meaningful life, bar mine. The creatures have all fled. I know how you like to be kept company while you die. I've held your hands one thousand times. I won't make the same mistake. This is kindness. A kindness.

  I will not let curiosity take me — not again. That's how I lost you all before. Each time. Over and over.

  But her eyes are gleaming in the light, golden rivers welling and overfilling. She has not seen the world yet; she has not seen all that I have laid down for you. She has not seen it, and she mourns it. I can feel that most of all.

  Perhaps this time… things will change.

  Perhaps this time. It won't all collapse again.