From a distance… it is harder to focus. The peripheral opens up. Bodies are scattered here. Fire snaps. And when Redana raises her head, she sees it all.

Her strength is gone. Her strength is [i]dead,[/i] tossed aside by a hateful god. Her sword is broken, and her secret sword has shattered. And no. No no no. It should have been her. She’s already done it. Not Bella. Not Bella. Not Bella.

The gods are absent. Dionysus does not ride her like a horse. Her sight refuses to leave her.

The scream is all she is. Eyes to see and a throat which reflects the scene. And the Shepherdess does not come. And her father does not cradle her mother’s bloody head. And Bella does not get back up and spit blood and tell her that she’s [i]insulted[/i] that her Dany thinks she’d give up like that. And madness does not take her away from herself.

She howls and tears at herself with her fingers until she bleeds and her face twists in anguish at being the last one, the last alive, the last to see the failure of hopes and dreams.

But she does not run. And when she is coughing blood, unable to keep screaming, there is nothing more but the caress of Aphrodite’s bloody talons and the tinkling of a memory.

“I’m sorry,” she rasps, and her eyes will not allow her to look away from what is now inevitable.