u/UglarinnsWife

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Context: I've been feeling a little emotional and needed to write it down to get it off my chest. It's the first draft, written very quickly, so please don't expect too much quality. I just want to know if it's any good at all, and if so, how it could possible be improved. It's sort of halfway between a fiction story and a poem, but since it's more prose than plot, I'm using the poetry flair.

Content Warning: Implication of suicidal ideation.

Untitled Poem

Three miles home, so close that driving seemed pointless. Walking home in the dark seems scary to some, but there’s nothing I fear at my age. A stroll through the streets, bustling with the cleaning and closure of businesses, before the buildings give way to towering pines and dirt roads, gravel crunching underfoot and the smell of earthen water. Then this gives way again to the bridge, where the night sky and its spread of diamond stars glitter, winking at me, before that in turn gives way to the final path to my front door.

That night, as I approached the bridge, ready to greet my gemstone sky, I saw a shadow, standing at the exact halfway point. I paused, staring at it, before I realized her silhouette was that of a woman: Young, but not childish, hair loosely blowing in the soft breeze of autumn. Her hands, under the half cover of her sweater sleeves, clung to the railing, tight enough to make the metal whine and turn her knuckles white. Back bent, knees buckling, body shivering. Her tears glistened in the light of the full moon that night, as they fell from her stained cheeks into the waters below, ripping outward to malform the reflection of the night sky.

I remained hidden among the pine, wishing not to startle her when she was already in pain. I doubted there was much for me to say to comfort her.

Her gaze, turned towards the sky, was transfixed on the moon, the glowing orb replacing the color of her eyes with pure white. Tears continued to well and fall without blinking. In the silence, I noticed a cacophony of noise. Crickets, leaves rustling, the sound of her tears dripping into the water, like a ticking clock.

At long last, she released her grip on the rail, her finger prints etched into the metal. “Thank you, sister,” she said, before she turned and came in my direction. I kept in the shadows, and she went along her less-than-merry way, arms wrapped around herself.

I walked the bridge myself, and returned to my home.

The following night, expecting to never see the sight of her again, I was again stopped by her shadow. She stood straight, hands clasped at her chest, head bowed in stoic worship as she basked in the moonlight, like a spotlight in a church. Standing under her own strength, I could tell she had little of it. Her sweater hung from her frame like drapes in an old mansion, swooping down and swallowing her up. Her feet stood in her boots like posts in a newly dug hole.

Again, I stood in the shadows, not wanting to break her sacred moment.

“Thank you, sister,” she said, and once again she came in my direction, passed me, and vanished into the shadows of the pine. I, once again, carried on home.

The following night, expecting to see her once again, I had found that such a pattern would emerge. She stood, leaning forward on the railing, a smile spread from ear to ear, easily seen due to the fact that her hair was pulled up and back to show her face. She chirped, as though she were a bird in the morning sun, about tips and checks, customers and managers, coffee creamer and silverware, and on and on and on.

Finally, she took a breath, bowing to the moon with a cheerful, “Thank you, sister.” Then just like that, she scurried off.

And on and on the days went. I soon came to wish I had cherished her cheerful night a little more than I had, as they were few and far between. Most days, she was stoic, so quiet that even the crickets and the leaves dared not to serenade her scared prayers. The nights that were loud, she was bent over, barely able to stand through the weight of her sorrow, desperately tossing tears over the side of her eyelids to lighten the load.

It was in these nights of utter despair that I came to see she was the most beautiful. The light of the moon and stars turned her tears into companion gemstones, and they would sparkle together. The trails of moisture would make her skin shine, turning her whole face into a polished river rock, to the point I expected her to jump up and over into the water, skipping along the surface as she tried to jump into the arms of the moon.

I never saw her do it.

Instead she would choke back one last sob, and through unsteady breath say, “Thank you, sister.” Then towards me she would come, and away from me she would go. And onward to my home I would continue.

The moon waned, bit by bit as the days gathered into weeks. The night before the new moon, I could barely see her in the dark. At once, I wondered if this was truly her, or not an actual shadow. At once, I wondered if it was a shadow all along.

In the last silver sliver of moonlight, I could make out her form, on her knees, her hands above her as her fingers hung listlessly on the rail. She sobbed, then wailed, then howled bitterly as the lost wolves do, her desperately calling for her sister moon to come back and find her.

I hid in the pine, knowing I had nothing to say. Nothing at all, perhaps except to say that I knew such pain. I’d felt it before. I wouldn’t hope to find anyone who hadn’t.

Then, she spoke. “I am sorry, sister.” Slowly, she pulled herself to her feet, dragging them along as the weight of gravity sunk her boots into the floor of the bridge. She trudged into the dark and vanished.

Five miles home. I walk through town a little farther, taking the neighboring bridge. Walking home in the dark seems scary to some, but there’s only one thing I fear at my age: I will come back to that bridge, when the moon is full, and see in the light that there is no one there.

Context: Three main characters are running away from a bunch of Strix birds (the same birds that Apollo, Meg, and Grover had to escape in the beginning of Trials of Apollo: The Burning Maze). According to the book reference and the wiki page, when you kill one, two things happen. One is that more strixes appear in it's place, and the other is that whoever killed the strix will be cursed.

In the scene I'm writing, one character has directly killed a strix by casting a magic spell (being a child of Hecate, that's a apart of their power set), and another has indirectly killed a few of them (they're all fleeing in a car they're driving, and the strixes are throwing themselves under the car to make more of them appear. I took some creative liberties in saying that the dead strixes literally split and come back to life as two).

I don't remember much detail about what a strix curse would entail (I think it was mentioned as a motivation to not kill them in the book, more than anything). What are some good, clever curses that killing a strix would bestow?

Keep in mind that the driver of the getaway car is a child of Hermes, and according to the origin of strixes, Hermes was the one who turned Polyphonte into the first strix, so there's possibly some personal revenge happening right now.