‘George–’
‘And I wish you well–’
‘George–’
‘But I have to go now–’
‘I’m pregnant.’
‘. . .’
‘. . .’
‘. . .’
‘. . .’
‘Except, of course, you’re not.’
‘George–’
‘Goodbye, Rachel, and I’m sorry.’
‘George, I just–’
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The lady flies for a lifetime and more, landing when the growing earth calls to her, flying when it does not. Both are enjoyable, and enjoyment is, despite her tears, something she seems to have an aptitude for. She grants absolution wherever she lands, piercing hearts with her forgiveness, for of what do we ever ask forgiveness if not our offences against joy?
The world enters its adolescence, the land stitching itself together into a recognisable whole, though not without its pains and eruptions. She does not avoid the volcanoes when they spew, recognising in them the same anger as the water, of effort directed outward, into nothing.
‘Not long,’ she tells the volcanoes. ‘Not long before your reach will dig its long muscles into the earth, binding it tightly as a world. One arm clasping another clasping another, holding the burden of life on your collective shoulders. Not long.’
And the volcanoes believe her, calming their angry flows, directing them more usefully, dragging the world together.
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All volcanoes, save one.
‘I do not believe you, my lady,’ says the volcano, his green eyes flashing in a malevolent merriment she finds puzzling. ‘The point of a volcano is anger,’ he says. ‘A calm volcano is merely a mountain, is it not? To calm a volcano is to kill it.’
Lava and heat and destruction flow from him in waves, the denizens of this young earth fleeing before his burning laughter. She flies away in distaste, before circling around again to confirm her distaste. Then circling round again.
‘The purpose of a volcano is to die,’ she says. ‘Is this not what you strive for?’
‘The purpose of a volcano is to die, my lady,’ says the volcano, ‘but as angrily as possible.’
‘You do not seem angry,’ she says. ‘You smile. You jest. You speak from desire, from flirtation. I have seen it the world over.’
‘I speak from joy, my lady. Angry joy.’
‘Is such a thing possible?’
‘It is that which creates us all. It is that which fires the magma of the world. It is that which drives the volcano to sing.’
‘Is this what you call your destruction? A song?’
‘I do, my lady. And a song can never lie.’
‘Unlike you,’ she says and flies away.
The volcano casts a sail of lava after her retreating form. It does not reach her. It is not meant to. ‘You will return, my lady,’ he says. ‘You will return.’
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She returns. She is older, wiser. The world is older, too, though surprisingly not that much wiser.
‘You still erupt,’ she says, flying a wide circle around the volcano.
‘And you still forgive,’ says the volcano, atop his chariot of horses, ‘where forgiveness is not warranted.’
‘You have become an agent of war,’ she says, keeping beyond his reach, for she has learned more about volcanoes in the passing time, learned as we all must to stay out of range of their exertions.
‘I am a general now,’ says the volcano. An army spreads out before him, swarming over the world, consuming forests and cities and deserts and plains.
‘You have not died like all the others and become a mountain.’
‘I have not, my lady. There was no future in it.’
He raises his whip, a long chain of glowing white heat, and lashes his great and terrible horses. They whinny in agony and trample farms and bridges and civilisations under their hooves, his innumerable, ravenous armies flowing like burning rivers in their wake.
She flies with him for a time, watching in silence as he grinds this corner of the world to ruin. She says nothing to him. He says nothing in return, save for the occasional glance in her direction. Those green eyes, tracing her path.
‘I will forgive you,’ she says, ‘should you ask.’
‘I will not ask, my lady,’ says the volcano.
‘And why not?’
‘I do not require anyone’s forgiveness, and neither do I recognise your authority to offer it.’
‘The authority to offer it is given by he who asks.’
He smiles at her, his eyes bright. ‘This does not contradict me, my lady.’
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Guided by a feeling she declines to recognise, she swoops down low over the volcano’s advancing army. It has encountered another and, up close, it is impossible to tell which side is which. The battle is nothing more than a twisting, spattering pan of butchery, turned in on itself to boil and burn.
She sweeps back up and around, circling the volcano for a last time.
‘Before you leave, my lady,’ says the volcano. ‘I wonder if you will tell me your name.’ He smiles again, and reflected in his eyes the world is dying in fire and terror. ‘So that I may call it to you when you next see me.’
‘I will not see you again.’
‘As you wish, my lady,’ the volcano says, bowing his head at her. ‘Yet I will tell you mine.’ He opens his mouth and a roar of pain and mischief is hurled from it. The leaves on nearby trees curl up just to hear it, birds fall from the skies, black locusts spiral from cracks in the ground.
‘But you, my lady,’ says the volcano, ‘may call me–’
‘I shall not call you anything,’ she says, ready to fly away, but not leaving, not just yet. She says, for the second time, ‘I will not see you again.’
The volcano says, also for a second time, ‘As you wish, my lady.’
He raises his whip, but she is gone before it lands.
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‘Father?’ she says, flying through the clouds. She knows he will not answer. He never has, not at any point as the world has grown older. She neither knows nor in fact believes that he might be out there listening to her, for a cloud shifts and gathers and rains itself out many times over the course of a single day let alone a world’s lifetimes, and even the daughter of a cloud cannot tell one from another.