Coiled

When I woke up I was alone. I was less surprised by this fact than by the fact that I'd woken at all- when she hit me that last time, and I felt the bones in my skull crush before the darkness crashed over me, I had just enough time to think...

Goodbye.

Perhaps I'd spoken (thought?) too soon. I sat up, bracing myself for the shattering pain I was sure would follow- but it didn't. I touched my fingers to the side of my head- nothing. No pain, no blood- my skin was smooth and unbroken.

Odd.

A warm breeze stirred the hair laying against my jaw, then ruffled the hair on my chest- and it struck me that I shouldn't have been able to feel it. Not because of the whole, "I should be dead," thing, but because the last time I had had consciousness, I had also had clothes.

Not any more, apparently.

I looked around the room, growing more and more confused. It looked like the same room, but... different, somehow. But maybe it's just because it was so dark. I stood up and groped for a wall.

"Hello?"

No answer, not even my own echo. I tried again, louder.

"Hello!"

Still nothing. Fingers following the wall, I moved toward where the door should be. The wall had a thick layer of grit on it, and I couldn't help but imagine the strange trail I must be leaving. A trail that would show anyone who might come looking for me exactly where I'd gone.

I let my hand drop back to my side.

Still, this didn't feel like a place where people were. It felt... abandoned. Although I couldn't fathom that my enemy had left me without making absolutely certain I was dead, it appeared as though she had. Who knew how long I'd lain there unconscious.

Long enough to completely heal without starving to death? Or soiling myself? While my clothing rotted away into nothing? Long enough that the dried blood that should have been there disappeared?

I shook my head to clear it. None of it made sense. Maybe something had happened to me earlier, and I'd just imagined her bashing my head in. Maybe I'd been drugged. Still...

The door did not move easily, which it should have. I remember barely having to touch it, when I first entered.

If you entered.

Shut up.

That was easy enough to do, once I saw what was in the next room, because that's when I realized things had gone far more wrong than I could have imagined.

The room was absolutely enormous, as I'd known it would be. It had to be, to house what sat at the far end- the pinnacle of generations of engineering; a symphony of gears and cables; a being who held coiled in her mechanized heart the potential to recreate our world:

My beautiful She'enna.

But she was old. And that was impossible.

The metals we crafted her from- they don't degrade! They're incapable of oxidizing. She is immune to entropy- this cannot be her!

But it was her. I would know her form in my dreams- perhaps even in my death. I choked on a sob and ran towards my decrepit love.



(Coiled)