The Last Prayer
She kneels... at the only warmth that left in a darkness... ancient.... Before language... Before light... Before anything that required a name to be real....
It does not have a name... Nothing that encountered it... directly... survived the introduction...
She doesn't know this...
The light at her crown feels like arrival... like something descending toward her, drawn by the sincerity... the warmth of the hand pressed against her own chest... She mistakes the pressure for hope.... For confirmation.... For the particular grace that finds only the truly faithful...
The darkness watches this with something that, in a creature capable of emotion, might be called tenderness...
It has been here since before here was a place... It has watched ten thousand faces tilt upward exactly as hers tilts now... eyes closed, throat exposed, that expression of total surrender that the devoted ones wear like a second skin... It has learned to appreciate the beauty of that moment... The absolute trust... The terrible, elegant vulnerability... of a creature that has made itself completely open to whatever comes....
Whatever comes....
She presses her hand harder against her chest.... Feeling.... Still beating....
The darkness moves closer....
The light holds....
She smiles... and... somewhere in the geometry scratched into the void behind her... Cold calculations that have been measuring the precise angle... for longer than she has existed...
something smiles back...
