A Wind Age, A Wolf Age
Asmodeus's laughter, and mine, and the mirror girl's, and Her's, and Her children's, rising and twisting and hissing in the dank, humid air.
Inside the theater of the looking glass girl's chest, a velvet curtain twitched and parted, revealing serrate
(more)d cogs churning against groaning wheels. Steam billowed through the rusting gears as the machinery retreated toward her spine, and a shadowbox stage descended from her collarbone.
Moon and star cutouts rose clockwise against the backdrop. Twisted trees grew from trapdoors in the floor. A tiny marionette in a flaring red coat dropped on slender strings to the middle of the stage. For a moment, the tableau was still, and my eyes followed the strings to their origin - wrapped around my mirror image's teeth. I glanced behind me, at Asmodeus, and startled at the sight of Her and Her children, ranged in a half circle on the soft sand, eye sockets completely engaged by the sinister pantomime.
A mechanical growl from the miniature stage pulled my gaze back around. The scarlet-clad marionette spun on her wires, searching for the source of the sound. Two glass-jewel eyes appeared at one corner of the stage. The marionette didn't see them. Whirring cogs behind the backdrop grunted and puffed to sustain the deepening growl. Through the black, rippling trees, the jerky, jointed figure of a wolf stalked the dangling marionette.
The little red-coated figure appeared to move, though she was still as the clockwork theater rolled away beneath her on hinges and pulleys, and the wolf crept ever nearer.
When the wolf was a breath away from her string-straightened spine, I hid my eyes behind my dirty, blister-covered hands. As the wolf's teeth shattered the marionette's wooden face, her snapped strings ripped teeth from my mirrored face.
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