the oxygen in the air that you breathe is eating you alive but you’re still here so breathe a bit more of it and exhale and go conquer the world or something just as terribly wonderful that a species dying from its own metabolism can achieve.
Tag: prose
and let me tell you a secret, love: if you were really as cruel and terrible and loveless as you think you are, you wouldn’t try and work so hard and do everything to be as kind as you just proved yourself to truly be.
cruelty never doubts itself.
so don’t allow your kindness to do so.
Nobody knows when it began.
Some say it was a Monday morning, but it could have been a Tuesday, a Sunday or anything in between. It’s hard to even remember the season – was there snow? Had the trees lost their leaves yet? Were other cats squeaking when their paws touched the concrete because the sun was burning down with too many degrees and no mercy?
It could have been years ago, or centuries.
All the people of the small town know is this:
The cat doesn’t move.
And it doesn’t seem to eat, either. They’re not even sure if it’s a she or a he. (Some whisper it’s neither. A kid told his friend in school, during break. His friend said that’s stupid, but her eyes were a little watery and very wide.)
When it rains, the cat nuzzles flat into the ground.
When the sun shines, its nose lifts into the air, eyes blinking, fur uncoiling in little happy motions.
When the heavy blizzards come, nobody can see it. Every year, they think: This is it. There’s no way this tiny thing survived. Children don’t go to school, adults don’t even need to call into work because snow rules the world and the sky spits ice into the streets and lakes.
As soon as winter leaves, the people go out looking.
The cat is still there. Its eyes are soft half-moon smiles. Someone always leaves food. It goes untouched, and somehow, not even the crows or seagulls dare come close to pick it up.
Everyone hears when it begins.
From one second to another, the sky is gone. There is no light. The universe yawns in horrible silence above their heads. Impossible, the people whisper as they stare where the stars should be and only infinite darkness grins back.
The earth cracks. A sound emerges from it, loud and distorted and a million noises screeching at once. The people of the little town are running.
The cat sits next to the hole in the ground. Something is next to it, a terrible shadow, eyes coal-glowing-red, a claw around the cat’s neck. It looks at the people, half-moon happiness now despair, as if to say: I did all I could.
And the people realize (too late), and they beg (too little), and they shiver when the shadow moves toward them.
The cat doesn’t cry. It can’t. But it sits and looks at them with sad full-moon pupils, as if to say: I’m sorry for not being stronger.
maybe the darkest parts of the universe, the most unimaginable of creatures, unspeakable in any other planet’s thousands of tongues, stay away from earth because they’ve seen what we’re capable of when we fight each other, and they don’t want to find out what we would do to something that threatens all of us.
Primero, fueron los grandes guerreros.
Disparamos balas en sus pieles y lucimos sus dientes como trofeos. Los desnudamos de sus pelajes, de sus vidas, de su dignidad, perdida mucho antes de que la sangre dejara de correr por sus venas. Los tachamos de monstruos, y aquellos pocos que los llamaban grandiosos, el culmen, una hermosa y necesaria parte de nuestro mundo se vieron obligados a acallar su voz. Olvidamos sus nombres, olvidamos qué eran los tigres, los osos, los zorros, los leones, los lobos o los gatos.
Así que primero, los guerreros fueron asesinados y no sentimos el viento cuando empezó a soplar más fuerte.
Segundo, fueron los poderosos vigilantes.
Nos abrimos paso entre sus escamas con arpones y consumimos sus aletas. Los atrapamos en redes y arrastramos a su asfixia, sus ojos desvaneciéndose luego de que nuestros cuchillos los alcanzaran. Fuimos a su mundo, tomamos los colores de sus hogares de coral y clamamos que era su culpa cuando intentaron dar pelea, desesperados a causa del dolor. No nos acordamos de sus nombres, no nos acordamos del tiburón, de la ballena, de la foca, de la manta raya, del pulpo o del arrecife.
Así que segundo, los vigilantes fueron asesinados y no sentimos el suelo del océano cuando se partió en dos.
Y luego, fueron los pequeños errantes.
A esos no les dimos caza. Eran pequeños, casi invisibles para nosotros, y éramos demasiado grandes y magníficos para preocuparnos. Arrebatamos sus flores, sus estanques, les quitamos sus amados bosques y consumimos y destrozamos y aniquilamos. Nos emocionaba someter a los guerreros y a los vigilantes, pero los errantes no eran muy importantes, demasiados feos para siquiera echarles una mirada. Y ni siquiera nos dimos cuenta, no fuimos tras el sapo, la araña, el pez, el ratón, el pájaro o el insecto.
Entonces, los errante murieron y ahora sentimos el suelo rugir debajo de nuestro pies.
Intentamos.
Te lo aseguro, intentamos. Sacrificamos y lloramos y nos unimos para arreglarlo, para enmendarlo, para hacer algo. Cualquier cosa.
El viento gritó nuestros nombres. El océano y la tierra susurraron sedientos por nuestra sangre.
Si hubiésemos conservado a los errantes, últimos, definitivos, esenciales, con vida, entonces quizá las barreras se hubieran mantenido en pie. Quizá, si el último enjambre no hubiese muerto junto con su reina en un laboratorio caro, entonces podríamos haber vivido.
Deberíamos haber sabido que los guerreros no eran nuestras presas, sino el ataque de nuestro planeta contra lo antiguo. Deberíamos haber sabido que los vigilantes no eran una carga, sino la defensa de nuestro planeta.
Deberíamos haber sabido que los insectos ignorados, los molestos grillos, y los últimos errantes que una vez simplemente llamamos abejas de la miel, no eran nuestros servidores, sino nuestra única forma de supervivencia.
Así que fallamos. Y cuando el viento con su calor, el mar con sus olas, y la tierra con su hambre vinieron a engullirnos, cerramos los ojos y sentimos.
Escrito por @moami
Traducido por @kaleyus
Me encantó tanto esta pequeña historia que no pude evitar traducirla. Es la primera traducción que publico así que espero hacerle al menos un poco de justicia. ¡Espero que les guste!
Thank you very much for allowing me to translate and post this beautiful piece, Moami!
First, it was the great warriors.
We shot bullets into their fur and wore their teeth as trophies. We stripped them off their pelts, lives, their dignity lost long before the blood stilled in their veins. We painted them as monsters, and the few that called them great, apex, a necessary and beautiful part of our world, had their voices silenced. We forgot their names, forgot what tigers, bears, foxes, lions, wolves or cats were.
So first, the warriors were killed, and we didn’t hear how the wind got louder.
Second, it was the mighty watchers.
We pushed harpoons into their scales and ate their fins. We caught them in nets and dragged them into their suffocation, their eyes fading after our knives got them. We went into their world, took the colour of their coral homes and roared them blame on them when they lashed out, desperate from the pain. We don’t remember their names, don’t remember shark, whale, seal, ray, octopus or reef.
So second, the watchers were killed, and we didn’t hear how the ocean floor cracked open.
And then, it was the tiniest wanderers.
Those we did not hunt. They were small, almost invisible to us, and we were too grand and magnificent to care. We took their flowers, their ponds, ripped out their beloved forests and ate and shattered and wiped out. We found thrill in submitting warriors and watchers to us, but wanderers were too unimportant, too ugly to even look at. And we did not even notice, did not look for frog, spider, fish, mouse, bird or insect.
So then, the wanderers died, and now we heard how the ground howled beneath our feet.
We tried.
I promise you, we tried. We sacrificed and cried and brought everyone together to fix it, mend it, do something. Do anything.
The wind screamed our names. Ocean and earth whispered for our blood.
If we’d been able to keep the final, the last, the crucial wanderers alive, then maybe the barriers would have held up. Maybe, if their last swarm had not died along with its queen in an expensive lab, then we would have lived.
We should have known that the warriors weren’t our prey, but our world’s attack against the ancient. Should have known that watchers weren’t a burden but our planet’s defense.
Should have known that the ignored insects, the annoying critters, and the last wanderers that we once simply called honey bees, weren’t our servants but our only survival.
So, we failed. And when the wind and its heat, the sea and its waves, and the earth and its hunger came to swallow us, we closed our eyes and heard.
“I’ve caught one,” the fisherman screams, grinning at his hook stuck in the girl’s cheek. “I caught myself a mermaid!”
Her hair is green, algae curled around it. The fisherman’s grip is greed, is lust, when he rips at it to get her closer. Her mouth glints like a pearl and oh, he could sell her after he’s – well, once he’s done with that beauty of hers. “Aren’t you a pretty one,” he licks his lips, “and all mine. I caught you, so you’re mine.”
All at once, her song ends. No sound comes out of her mouth that stays open, teeth tiny and many, sharp in the slick night. She tugs the hook out of her cheek. The fisherman watches, his heart burning from how fast it runs against his flesh, as her wound closes up and a bit of blood drips from her little mouth.
“Yours,” the mermaid says. The sea echoes her voice, an accent he can’t define, oh who cares, she’s just – just prey – and her pupils snap into slits. “Yours?”
The ocean ripples.
The waves tremble.
The wind whispers, smiles, then stills to not disturb the song that rises once more.
“No,” whisper a thousand voices, whisper a million teeth, whispers ten thousands of stares in the water. “We caught you. You are ours.”
Of course I love writing. Every writer loves writing. It’s just that sometimes my writing isn’t lovable enough to me.
Humanity’s stupidity may be infinite but here is a little list of traits we have that are also infinite: curiosity, stubbornness (beyond infinite), the potential of kindness as well as cruelty, the ability to learn where we didn’t know or were wrong, and most definitely the ability to achieve something simply because we were told that we couldn’t, so get out of the way, the universe’s most mind-boggling creature is coming to prove you wrong.
“Well, your qualifications look adequate,” the man says slowly. He’s middle-aged, his hair is as grey as his suit, and his mouth sits in an unimpressed line that hasn’t twitched once. The woman with dark eyes next to him hasn’t smiled once, either, and the younger man by his other side hasn’t even looked up at her. He just lazily drags his pencil over his paper.
“But,” the man goes on, dragging the words as if he’s reading them from an instruction manual that constantly deals with defective products, “we’re looking for someone with a unique character. I’m talking inner strength. Would you say that you possess that quality? Would you say that you’ve got enough bite for us?”
She takes a moment to let them wait. Makes sure that her grin appears in a motion of careful, practiced confidence.
She reaches into her bag.
“I think I do.”
She opens her fingers for them.
She shows them the small, fuzzy, brown kiwi.
She listens gleefully when the middle-aged man chokes on nothing during her first bite.
The woman holds up longer, but even her nails are clawing at the table when a the fruit shrinks with every bite, and fuzzy skin disappears together with green fruit right into her mouth.
“What the hell,” says the young man once she’s finished her kiwi, and when she pulls out another one, he gets up to grab her hand. “You’re hired.”
Moami 