The Children of November

[icarusburns]

Creeping quietly to peer around the corner of the stairs they come, the children of November. Silently stepping around the spilled blood and spatter stains of pain, they edge closer to the girl. Tiny feet and tiny hands scrabble and skitter on the packed dirt floor, collecting more grime to cling to the already filthy skin, more dirt to fill the delicate ridges of precious finger prints, unrecorded gritty innocents. The light around the girl is pooled like blood, and her plain white dress has been contaminated with a red so dark it's almost black. She doesn't see the children, she doesn't see the light, she doesn't in fact see much of anything. She is dying, and doesn't have the time to see. Her wide blue eyes are clear and wet, with pinprick pupils focused on her pain. Her open lips are pursed in a whispery scream, too weak to be heard by anyone. Anyone, except that is, the children of November. Closer still, they've come, close enough for the spreading stain to touch their little dirty toes, close enough to smell the copper of a dying human. They lean over her, their shadows not showing in the shining light, for they've not shadows enough to show for their tiny forms. They look deep into the ugly wound that separates healthy pink flesh from hell, and see that the gap is closing, the girl is practically already gone. The children of November whisper and weep, both sounds too quiet, too soft, to sweet to be human or whole. The girl closes her huge, sweet blue eyes, and waits for it to be over, but of course it isn't. Two clear tears course down her cheeks, dampen the corners of her mouth, and fall to the black blood on the packed dirt floor. The dark that surrounds her is too deep, the well to dark, and she, too strong for the children to save her. They crouch close by, taking off some of her pain, and moaning as one with her, easing her exit. At the very last second, she sees them, quietly by her side, crying with her, crying for her, and helping her on her way. She smiles to herself, tears still streaming down her white white cheeks, and whispers so only they could ever hear. "I'm sorry you couldn't save me." As she dies, and her soul leaves her prone form, they see it ascend, a misty wisp of fog, and they see its ascention halt, and reverse, sink back into the body, and through it into hell. The children stand, wiping at their tears with bloody fingertips, and look into the wound, looking around the long long sword, and the girl's hands, which held it firmly where they had placed it. Like a soft soft mother's kiss, an echo of her whispered apology floats through their minds as one mind. "I'm sorry you couldn't save me." They creep back, now, along the stair and past the bodies which pepper the inner hall. They pad softly down to the dark of a cellar, and open a door in the floor, sliding single file through the pit, to disappear into the bowels of the world. The last one stops, and looks back at the pretty body, drenched in light and self-let blood, and sighs, waiting. As he waits, the misty form of the girl reappears, as a child, alone, poorly clothed, and sooty from the fires of beyond. He looks to her and says "I wish there were never any more of us."
She nods her little head, and two new tears clear a path down sooty cheeks. As they close the door to the light world, wishing they didn't have to, they hear a dark dark voice smile as it croons "Welcome to November."