#dwylla

On the first day that dwylla woke free, it was to warm sunlight across cold skin. Dense muscle laden body embedded in the grass, tossed when finally she collapsed. Dwylla walked until her legs could carry her no further, because no one commanded her to stop. But now on the eve of the day when the sun in bursting from the horizon and bathing her in in its warmth, she rolled and pushed herself up t o sit on her knees. For the first time in any life she could remember she watched it happen. The sun gliding upward breaking through clouds and the visage left her eyes fluttering and stinging. Heavy wet droplets collecting in wiry thick black lashes as she realized this was every day.

The sky just burst into this medley of colors every goddamn day and she’d missed it. She’d missed out on all of it a thousand lifetimes locked away bad clawing for her freedom while such beauty existed. It wasn’t fair. Dwyllas wide miscolored eyes stung as tears spilled down her face, mourning the life she would never know, the her she could have been. Everything came out in a screaming guttural wail, long clawed nails dug to her scalp as she gripped her hair around long damaged horns. Misery and loss wracked her, all alone in a open field of tall grass, just the way life it seemed started. A terrified woman called mother had handed a happy child away in exchange for something sparkly, a sale. Her mother sold her and only now did dwylla have time to think enough to feel and process, to feel that loss. And anguish. She should get up and simply move on But she didn’t have to. No one could make her. So for a time she simply lay there expelling every drop of anguish she could muster until all the was left was an urge.

The sun now hung high in the sky, half the day gone but the day was hers to do with as she pleased. She grinned at the empty sky from her place in muddled grass and when she stood up she turned and stared at the pl;ace shed laid. Dead grass pressed form to the soil and browning. Dead.

The smalled mark of her misery. A hundred helpless dead things and her heart panged at the image.

But it was done and she didn’t know of anyone else who died and just woke up. A loud rumble announced her stomachs complaint of emptiness.

One day passed of her chasing her stomachs requests, two and three. One week, two and without warning months had just tumbled by. She lay comfortably settled in a hammock strung up between two high trees sleeping peacefully, her long sharp pointed tail hanging lazily over its edge.

A loud crash of booming thunder called her attention, jolting her up. Dwylla jerked out from her place of comfort and leapt out to perch on a nearby branch. She looked out with wide mismatched eyes as a massive ship crackled into being into splitting sky overhead. The massive shrieking hunk of metal collided into the ground, the echo of its impact throwing her off the ground.

Everything had been so calm for so long, it was so wonderful. And suddenly she was flung violently backward, lungs empty, mind racing. None of it mattered as she tilted her head, spine twisting to follow suit. Body contorting in the air to land in a rolling rumble and stand on two feet.

“W-what is?”

She heard her own voice as she watched the fire burst and blaze, erupting through her peaceful forest. Her breathe hitched at the image of her free home ablaze when suddenly another sound caught her attention.