Remnant

Hey, guys! I'm officially on Christmas break! *insert explosions of joy* Currently, I am at a friend's house in Memphis; Josh and Butch are driving down to meet me and we're gonna do fun things around town.

I wanted to share a short story I wrote with you all. (Notice the distinction, here. You. All). I wrote it three nights ago and I really liked the way it turned out. I would love your comments after you read it, or your own interpretations.

I'm excited about this one. It was so easy to write and very fun. I've been having some trouble writing lately, so this story was a blessing.

Remnant

The demon Stvia floated lazily through the trees, a truly disinterested expression on his wolfish face. As he twisted and wove through the canopy of the forest, leaving his thick, yellow remnant in his wake, he couldn’t help but sigh aloud, quite exasperatedly.

Stvia, the Destroyer of Worlds, was bored.

Just as he was contemplating this fact, quite bitterly, Stvia heard a small, hushed intake of breath from somewhere beneath him. Twisting his head down toward the earth, Stvia beheld what appeared to be a girl. Truly, he had never seen one with his own four eyes, but he had heard many stories about them during his own travels; but, then again, his travels were quite exhausting and never allowed much time for socialization.

After all, destroying a whole world was incredibly taxing on oneself.

Now, upon seeing what he was almost positive was a girl, he could see what all his kinsmen had been going on about. The thing was relatively remarkable, really, with its small, pale body and movement limited to touching the ground. Stvia regarded this body quite interestedly; what a strange idea to have a solid form all the time. It must be so very constricting.

His black eyes regarded the girl as he floated above, considering. “May I help you?” he asked the creature, almost positive that humans had the ability to speak. At least, he hoped so; that would provide some sort of distraction until the world was completely covered by his yellow, ribbon-like remnant.

The girl stared at him, with strange eyes that were not one solid color like Stvia’s, but seemed to be split by three colors. It seemed excessive to the demon, but he wasn’t one to pry. The girl opened her small, ruby colored lips, the furry lines above her eyes crinkling together. “What are you doing?”

Stvia sighed sordidly at the reminder of his current activity. “Obliterating.”

The girl frowned slightly, considering the unbroken strand stemming behind him that grew with every turn and motion the demon made. “Are you a snake?”

“No,” Stvia answered, “but that sounds delightful. What is it?”

Before his entertainment could provide an answer to his inquiry, there was a rustle from the foliage behind the girl and, as both turned to look, another girl slid out of the greenery. This one was not nearly as miniscule as the other, almost triple in height to his current companion and had a much longer brown mane. Stvia managed to hide his surprise quite well. What were the chances that there would be another girl on the same world? He wondered what the reaction of the first one would be, but was quite interested to see it almost light up upon seeing another of its kind.

His interest was officially piqued.

The taller girl froze upon seeing him coiling through the early afternoon air, shock and horror appearing on her delicate features. “I found a flying snake, Kita, and it knows how to talk!” the little girl crowed, quite proudly.

“Kita,” Stvia repeated, almost tasting the girl’s name with his forked tongue, “how curious. Do all girls have names?” he wondered to his smaller companion, whose lips parted to reveal white stones in her mouth of all similar size and shape. Curiosity continued!

“I’m Aa,” she told the demon, oblivious to her sister’s fear.

“That’s nice,” Stvia said offhandedly.

Kita suddenly regained her ability to use words. “No,” she murmured, staring up at the Destroyer of Worlds in sheer disbelief, “you can’t do this.”

Stvia looked perplexed. “Why not?”

The girl blinked, slightly baffled by his question. The little human, Aa, her sister, Stvia would learn later, was pleasantly immune to the fear and terror her older sister was currently experiencing, and was being quite entertained by watching Stvia’s remnant wrap around and over and under itself as he drifted along. It was almost like he was weaving a blanket with his tail!

“You’re going to destroy our world,” Kita said softly to him, in a voice that reminded him of a sunrise, which was one of his favorite moments of destroying. “You’re going to kill us all,” the girl’s pink lips parted, her forehead crinkling.

Stvia considered this for a moment, almost surprised at her statement. “Why, yes,” he said thoughtfully, “I am.”

Aa looked between Kita and the demon, a confused look on her small face. “Why?” Kita joined her sister in waiting for the demon’s response, looking quite paler than her natural hue, he noticed. It almost caused a glare from the suns’ light.

The demon looked down at the human girls, realizing this was the first time in his existence that anyone had asked that question. Slowly he twirled downward from the high canopy of trees, leaving the gentle waves of yellow up above. Kita’s blue eyes followed the demon’s movements carefully.

Stvia finally reached roughly eye-level with the tall, thin girl, and, for the first time in an eon, stopped moving. He merely levitated beside the human girl, black eyes unblinking. Up close, Kita observed, he looked less like a wolf but more like a fox with narrow, clever features, graceful yet fierce, with a sharp intelligence in his iris-less eyes.

Stvia spoke suddenly, making the girl jump slightly. “Do you know why I do what I do?”

Kita paused for a long moment, regarding her reflection in the bottomless black eyes. “I suppose it’s because you are told to,” she surmised, brows knitting together thoughtfully. She knew from stories that demons did not work on their own accord. She wasn’t quite sure to whom they answered, but she did know that each one had a clear purpose.

“I am, but why am I told to?”

Kita opened her pink mouth only to close it and frown. What reason would there be to destroy a world? Stvia seemed to hear her thoughts, because he continued deliberately, “I don’t know why either, girl. No one tells me anything. I only appear,” he twirled once, smoothly, as if gesturing to the world around him, “and cover it until I consume it. I move, always, leaving my remnant in my wake, because I do as I am told. I don’t always know why; I never do, but I do it.”

“But how can you justify it?” Kita whispered, looking at her world, which mostly consisted of a small human girl currently inspecting a clump of bright green grass for insects or flowers, perhaps. “How can you live with yourself?”

Stvia’s nose twitched. “I cannot die,” he admitted, something he had never said aloud, and something he would never say again.

Kita straightened suddenly, sharpness in her eyes. “But we can. Aa and I will die. There are thousands of humans on this world, and you will kill them,” she spoke fiercely, passionate for such a small creature.

“You would die without me, eventually,” the demon stated.

“Not the whole word, not all at once,” Kita argued.

“No, probably not,” Stvia mused, straight-faced. He thought of the countless worlds he had destroyed throughout time. There was not a number for them all; it was pointless to keep track. It had never mattered before, and it wouldn’t matter. Stvia would destroy many worlds in the future, but this one, right here, was the first where he had found something worth saving.

Kita’s fingers trailed over a thin, quivering tree trunk, her voice soft, “But you do it anyway.”

The demon was seized with an urge to explain himself. “Kita, do you believe that there is a Plan?” he asked her intently, staring into her eyes.

He could practically see her mind working. Her shoulders came together and she nodded, once. “Yes,” she said, “I do.”

“Then how can you question it?” he countered. “How can you know better?”

“I don’t know better,” the girl admitted, biting her lip, staring past Stvia at her sister, whose small, sweet voice was singing a lullaby for no one’s sake but her own. “I do believe everything happens for a reason. But the Plan does not always end in death. I have a place in it. I am here for a reason.” Kita looked the demon squarely in the eye, “And maybe this is it.”

“And maybe you will just die like all the others,” Stvia said quietly, tongue tasting the air. It was cool and lovely, and he almost wished he hadn’t done it.

“Maybe,” Kita shrugged, “but that doesn’t mean I didn’t matter.”

“But all you did was exist,” Stvia stated, frowning at the girl’s logic, “you will cease. All will. You will be forgotten; you were nothing great.”

Kita smiled suddenly, a beautiful, simple thing. “For a moment I was. For a moment, I was alive. I breathed and I loved. For even one moment, I had a beating heart that existed. I was a part of the universe. In a small way, yes,” she acknowledged, eyes traveling to Aa, but shining with pride, “but small doesn’t mean it wasn’t there; it just wasn’t big.”

“What’s one beating heart among a sea of stars?”

Kita spread her palm against the trunk of the tree, thinking. “I didn’t make the Plan; I was just in it. But I was put in it, so it’s my duty to try to live it.” She looked at Stvia, leveling him with those blue and white and black eyes. “And maybe, together, we can save it.”

“Kita,” the demon began gravely, already starting to rise, to put distance between him and the girl. He could not do what she was asking. He had a job; there were rules.

“I’m going to fight. You cannot destroy life. It is valuable. No matter how small,” Kita spoke quickly, stepping closer to Stvia as he tried to rise. She was merely inches from the demon, but she was not afraid. She was not afraid. Something inside Stvia, in that moment, was moved.

“I have to take, Kita. I can’t just erase what I’ve done. I’ve already started to destroy this world. It needs an exchange or else it will break by itself if I try to move on,” Stvia explained carefully, black eyes intent on the girl.

“But you don’t have to take all of it. The whole world,” she clarified carefully.

“I was supposed to,” the demon said quietly, but he did not look away from the girl, “but something came up.”

Kita looked up at him through her eyelashes, chest rising and falling. “Maybe that was the Plan all along.”

“It’s impossible to know,” the demon murmured, slowly revolving in a circle. He felt his remnant behind him; he was conscious of its existence, of its sureness. He could only draw it along; he could not tuck it away. Stvia felt its sturdiness, it’s reality.  

Kita spoke again, a note of suppression in her melodious voice. “If I take this world’s place, could you go away?”

Normally, Stvia could only leave a world after he had encompassed every inch of its sky. Only when his body was a blanket drowning it, snuffing it out, could he move on. But, just as Kita said this, his remnant softened slightly. It wasn’t strong enough yet; he hadn’t even gone one full time around the world. It would break for something like this.

It would dissolve for a girl like Kita.

“Yes,” the demon answered honestly.

“Okay,” the girl nodded, as if that solved everything. She looked at him, determined, waiting. Stvia frowned to himself. How could she bravely accept her own demise?

“You’ll just do it?” he asked, mystified, slightly concerned with her sanity. “Say goodbye to life?”

“It’s not just doing, but it must be done,” she told him, shrugging her slim shoulders. “This life I have had, however short, was a beautiful thing.” Kita pursed her lips; looking around the world she had been a part of. “Even though, at times, it didn’t seem that way. At times, I wished I wasn’t a part of it anymore. But sometimes I just had to wait for the darkness to pass. And it did, when the time was right. I wasn’t always happy, or pure, or content, but I do know that it was all worth it for the light. Regardless,” Kita smiled at the Destroyer of Worlds, “life has always been beautiful. I’m only sorry sometimes I closed my eyes to it.”

Stvia nodded at Aa sitting out of earshot, whose eyes were the color of the sky above them. “It will destroy her world, you know,” he remarked wretchedly.

Kita looked at her little sister who was enjoying the lovely day and going to enjoy many more. “No,” Kita shook her head knowingly, “it will just affect it. Sometimes pain is worth it.”

“Worlds grow,” Stvia agreed, almost to himself. He sat for a minute in the air, observing the little glen below him. A soft, warm breeze slid across his remnant, unconcerned with its existence, ruffling the dark hair of Kita and Aa, the breath of the world. Sunshine from the duel suns in the sky shone golden through the trees. Far off, he heard something he had never wanted to listen to before, but had always been.

Out there, in this world, there were countless hearts beating. Some, yes, were breaking, but they still beat on, a cadence of life and living and hope.

This world would beat on, thanks to a girl who was brave enough to fight for it.

“Are you ready, my dear?” Stvia asked his human girl, wondering if this was what his entire existence so far had been for. To do more than destroy. To learn, to see what was worth fighting for. To see what his choices were and that they existed.

To choose to live; and to live truly.

To choose meaning, regardless of an eventual outcome.

Kita the Small Human Girl smiled softly, a lone tear sliding down her pale skin. “As I will ever be,” she whispered brokenly and with one careful hand reached out and offered it to Stvia the Destroyer of Worlds who took it the only way he could: in his mouth.

One moment later, Aa would look up, just as both disappeared into thin air. In that moment, she would feel a lot of things, especially for a child so young and fresh and lovely in the world.

Amongst all these things, she would later reflect, the biggest one she would feel was that of hope.