tuckova

It is lodged in her back somewhere between one vertebra and another, a small thing, sharp. It doesn't hurt at all unless it does, a slight movement forward and she feels it. The reaction is, as most are, involuntary: a gasp, wetness in the eyes; the need to do anything at all to not feel it again. She drinks to quench the fire it burns through her, the flames that lick at her heart, she drinks a river and there is nothing more to drink and still it hurts. This sharp… who put this in her? Why is it here? She cranes her neck around but it is just out of her sight, it is just beyond where her fingers can reach, that one spot, like kissing your elbow, unreachable. A man comes to tell her to stop screaming and she eats him whole and still it hurts, it is an endless pain except when she doesn't feel it at all. Days go by and she can forget it entirely, it's nothing, it never was. She even imagines that she was just feeling someone else's pain, which is a logical risk of being a sorceress, except then she reaches out in a particular way to take a specific thing that belongs to her and there it is again, the knife in her spine that twists with grief, and she is crying again until the whole village shakes with her sobs. Another man comes to tell her to try to hold it together and she swallows him before he can finish his sentence. Men. Meanwhile she is trying to do her job though it's clear that her pain has driven the less devoted customers away. This one needs a love potion; this one wants to stay up all night talking without saying a word about the actual problem. This one wants nothing except to be wanted, a mobius band of longing that she treats with alcohol and a song about shoes that can leave and don't. And still her back is sharp with anguish, the mirror won't show her what it is, and now when her fingers come close the pain is such that she can't even describe it without weeping. This is getting ridiculous. Another man comes, another, they are asking questions but it is only for themselves, what they want, she is interesting to them only in terms of what she can give them and she eats them, a pile of bones she spits at her feet the only remains. One day some day someone will come and ask her the right question, one day some day someone. Put arms around her, hold her gently, brush the tears from her cheeks, pull the thorn from her back. A thorn! Yes, that is all it is, like all horrible things it only feels big, but it is smaller than a splinter. They will pull the thorn out, lick the blood from the tip, put it in a jar with other things that used to scare her. They will laugh together. That will come later, and she will be so grateful she will give back the river. She will give back the men and call them warriors rather than bores. It's in the story, it's bound to happen. But not yet; today she mutters spells and wails, wraps her arms around herself and tries to keep her hands on grace, hopes.