Polly and Fenrir in the Dead World
There is a smell of scorched hair as the dog walks in. Matted and decaying, a fierce god killer is now bored, and rests without another prophecy to fail.
My flesh is bruised and gnawed raw, but I am his eternal prize, unable to feel the tender hand of death - lifeful. Even when life is absent.
I’ve lost almost all sense of time, the days are as dark as the nights, weeks bleed into months and all traditional measurements are off. My skin is more reliable than constellations, the slow healing of my scars and wounds provides the only estimates for me to memorise. Someone must record hell so that we can remember to not return to it.
As he lays down to slumber I take the opportunity to crawl away into a far corner of the cave. Long ago I discovered a hole, it is only just large enough for me to squeeze my body through to the other side, but with some caution I manage. The smudges that the ashen rocks leave on my skin are no sign of sneaking to the wolf’s worsening senses when my bed is a jagged, black slate floor. Through this gap in the wall lies my tiny garden of eden. It is perhaps the last living, natural green organism of its kind, at least from what I can know from within this cell. Our crack in the high mountain looks out over endless black dust fields and smouldering fires, it is all that seems to remain of this once fertile land. Here I am trapped in an eternal cycle of suffering and recovery. I gather whatever strength I have left, far above all of nothing, from the same stone tower that Fenrir leapt from to reach the burning sun that his sibling had spent so many years chasing.
World-eater.
Fire-spitter.
Lazy monster.
My garden is small, no bigger than the size of a modest wheelbarrow, and the only source of light in this world is the moon, dimly glowing through the clouds that blackout the stars, too far away to care. A little opening in the roof of my secret room provides a gimped skylight, it is just enough to make out the beauty of my gradually growing plants. I can see my wounds and bruises here, I tend to them while the wolf is unaware. I make use of the moisture from the walls, and I sparingly tear small leaves to rub on myself as a makeshift healing ointment. Sometimes I feel as if it is the garden that is keeping me alive, perhaps as long as there is pure life somewhere in the world then maybe my curse is that I must live and suffer it all. An undying martyr of a world forgotten.
I hear a low grumble, the kind of a waking god, not unlike that of a brewing storm or bonfire. I crawl back through the hole and into the open room before his eyes roll back into his giant skull.
This rotten, black, war-beast. The hand of hell itself, bringer of chaos. Always in my thoughts, a vicious haunting of my own, a shadow made of hate, unleashed upon the old world. Now without purpose, a dumb pup, done playing.
Fenrir was not meant to live this long, and his body knows it. He is so tired, his teeth chipping and his claws bloody, he is weaker than the creature that swallowed the sun of our world. Loki, his father, changed the fate of Ragnarok when he replaced the leather of Vidarr’s shoe with poisonous serpent skin. He took the leather for himself, and used it to fashion a cruel whip to slay Heimdallr. The trickster fooled the foreseer. As a consequence of this action Odin’s son was too weak to fulfil his destiny and avenge his fallen father. Fenrir swallowed them both and crushed Odin’s chosen warriors in a most terrible battle.
The wolf attacks me often, I am powerless in its jaw, with teeth the size of spades, pressing into my soft tissue, several piercing my skin. A king has no thought for his slave.
Fenrir fills my thoughts with the seed of the new world, my new world. Snarling, he whispers nightmarish prophecies of horrors. The heat of his breath brands my skin, it also happens to help with the healing of my open wounds. I think it may somehow be intentional of him. I once had hoped that it was an act of mercy or remorse, but I know better now. He is evil, born of sin, failing his destiny horrifically.
Standing over my aching torso.
I have no destiny, I know that now. I am immortal, a glitch in time itself.
Odin, the all father of the gods and his army of Earth’s greatest warriors throughout all of history were no match for the black wolf. But I must endure it all, and become numb to pain, or at least be strengthened by it, until Fenrir finally falls. I know that I will outlive that dog bastard.
In that thought, the dark of the cave is split open with white lightning, strange red and purple flashes. It appears as if the fabric of the cosmos has returned to this very room. Fenrir’s sharp hairs all rise up on end, I drag myself away backwards as he growls and leaps forward, and two dark figures emerge from another crashing of white light.
Loki.
Fenrir relaxes ever so subtly, and the other man points at Fenrir a steel object, the lightning cracks again, and the beast topples over lifelessly, blood spilling from its head.
‘I’m sorry my son, I never planned for any of this.’
The nonchalant look in Loki’s eyes frightens me, but the other, larger man takes my arm, and tells me that I am safe, he says to come with him as a galactic hole opens in front of us.