Rescue isn't coming. 

The sand hangs in the hourglass, perpetually on the precipice of dripping from present to past. Frozen, forever on the edge. The dribbled water out of the bucket slows to a crawl. The candle burns and burns and refuses to inch downward the hours.

Rescue's not coming, and it's [i]his fault.[/i]

Would she be one of the ones turned into a crab? Honestly, she wouldn't mind that. Strong preference for snake, right, but crab is up there. Nature's most perfect form.

Demeter won't halt this. The planet is gorging itself, verdant, green, full of life. A jewel, seeded by rich fertilizer. Demeter's flourishing.

It's the nitrogen and acidity, you know. Though technically that needs bacteria to break it down. Does Demeter do bacteria? It'd suck to die and have just, you know, a swarm of invisible lifelets come out. 

She stares at the watch as if it were a hypnotist's pendant.

The God of love. What a hateful thing.

God of love, with that clock tick-hating away in the background? God of love, resentful, all devouring? Watching, forever, the children that got away. God of estranged parents, convinced all along that really it's their children who are abusive, and always have been, and only exact obedience will prove their love.

Honestly, when you think about it, it's only natural that a severed penis would turn out to be such a massive dick.

Ah, anger. 

It's honestly refreshing, you know? She's been so full of everything else--hope, despair, desperation--that having that knotful churning at her center is… 

How dare he? How [i]dare[/i] he sit there, with his smug smile and his stinking cigars and act as if this is best?

There's a hammer in her hand. No, no, wait, she knows this. Something old and fancy sounding. Crow's beak? Long and vicious, with a slender hooked spike on one end and a four-pronged hammer on the other. 

She stares down the shaft, and up at the god handing it to her.

How dare he stand here, in Mars' battlefield?

A knot sits in her throat, and at the god's nod, she fires up the rail and soars over the field. She is not a master of hammer or rail, but she is buoyed up, borne in Mars's hand--a puppet on his strings, bouncing and breathless and bodyslamming to his tune. A toy soldier piloted by a toy soldier, a spinning rocket with a hammer at one end.

Rescue [i]is[/i] coming, dammit. Just as soon as you're gone, this can end. And if that means she needs to do this herself, then so be it.