Calling the light…(WoD)

"God help you if you are a Phoenix and you dare to rise up from the ash. A thousand eyes will smolder with jealousy while you are just flying past….." -Ani DiFranco, "32 Flavors"

She waits.

The sky above the shattered ruins of Milwaukee is lit with a golden fire, the sun sending its feeble rays through clouds of nuclear ash and debris. She waits, a tiny puff of white against the dusty grey of her surroundings, her dark eyes unfathomable and her hands clasping themselves gently, almost as if in prayer. At her heels stands a sight nearly invisible in its improbability, its vast form almost hidden by the viewer’s inability to reconcile their eyes with their logic: a Siberian tiger, male and massive, its stripes strangely dulled by its surroundings, vibrancy muted by the ash covering the city’s streets and buildings. It growls deep in its chest, butts its heavy head against the girl standing silent beside it as if in question. She smiles down at it and rests one pale hand on its thick fur. There is no time for talk. To speak now is to break the spell, break the frail hold she has on the reality of this world. And her ability to control reality is all that stands between her cause and certain destruction.

There needed to be light within the darkness of this world and she would hold the candle as long as she could, or until one came to take her burden from her. One whom she waited patiently for, the same time every day standing here in the wreckage of a dying city, sending her message across the miles, over land, sea, through the air like a bird on the wing, flying with the swiftness of an arrow and the relentlessness of an avalanche.

She has yet to receive an answer to her unspoken plea, but she is unshakable. He will come. She has seen it. He will come, and the light will burn for always.

Unknown even to her fearsome guardian, eyes move in the shadows of the broken walls and rubble. Hate and madness bubble in those eyes like malignant growths, fed on fear. They fear the light, their desire to smother it driving them to this place every day, at the same time, to watch her, whining and cringing on their bellies as she sends her summons over the earth like the wings of a dream.

She waits.