L I L L Y
The pain built inside her and she needed to scream. But she held it in—she wouldn’t reward herself with the relief of her voice until she was there. A step. Another step. It was tempting to succumb to the agony and crawl on her hands and knees, but a greater desire kept her upright, and not simply the dignity of it. She wanted to admire her domain from her full vantage point.
She reached the apex of the hill and stood tall, though it hurt every part of her to do so. Something cracked: her spine, breaking. But she didn’t need bones anymore. From here she could see all the mountains to the east, and the indigo blur of an ocean on the horizon. Turning westward, there was the valley—and there, in miniature, the church. Beyond Town Town lay the Forest of All, with its necropolis of eternal trees.
Southward she saw a tangle of distant roads, gray yarn looping around itself in wayward chaos. It took the people there so long to get anywhere, trapped in their circuitous travels. Such thoughts made Lilly feel sorry for them, and glad she was home. Turning northward she saw the solar system, the great road of the Milky Way, the planets hovering like moons.
Down on the path from which she’d ascended she spotted the seven priestesses, little bigger than insects, watching her. Waiting.
She blew them a kiss; they would feel her in the air.
A great ache howled its impatience and Lilly could contain it no longer. It came from all directions, as if she’d swallowed a thunderstorm; the bolts of lightning threatened to cleave her. Lilly took in a great breath, a breath like the winds of a hurricane, a breath that emptied the stratosphere. She screamed the tornado of everything she’d ever felt—the pain, the joy, the confusion, the dreams.
She screamed for her father, and for the mother she never knew.
She screamed for the brute who’d taken something that wasn’t his.
She screamed for the friend who was like a sister, the guardian of her spirit.
She screamed for her childhood. For the trajectory of her incredible life. For the triumph of who she was.
She screamed for the miracle of her journey. She screamed for the first man who fully saw her. She screamed for the ladies—all twenty-one. All one trillion. All infinity.
She screamed for the forest, and the sky, and the animals. She screamed a home for them on the vastness of herself.
She screamed for the baby that wriggled out from between her legs.
She screamed her daughter’s name in the language only the two of them spoke.
She screamed until she was finished, until nothing was everything, until empty was full.
Lilly took the bundle in her arms and her daughter’s cries blended into the cacophony of her own tremendous noise. She held the baby against her heart and uttered one final bellow….
The impossible sound of the largest mountain.
Long after she fell silent, Lilly’s transcendent cry reverberated against the stone bodies of the surrounding peaks. In this way she introduced herself and her daughter, and the neighboring mountains rumbled a greeting in reply.
She rested then, the baby in her arms.