Fable for the End of the World

by Ava Reid

To the young queer girls—your love is going to save the world.

There’s a lover in the story, but the story’s still the same. —“YOU WANT IT DARKER,” LEONARD COHEN

Because no assistance comes without gratitude, and no gratitude comes without debt.

I think the moral is that there’s always one memory that will ruin you, no matter how perfect your record, no matter how many times you’ve killed and felt nothing at all.

Being struck down by an Angel is meant to be a beautiful thing: riveting, theatrical, perfectly paced, like your favorite TV show.

Survival is the most natural thing in the world, as natural as breathing. Stripped down to its essence, any creature will choose to save itself. Even if it means stealing the breath from another.

They always talk about some mythical “before” time, when seasons were drier and milder, when white-tailed deer were abundant, when the trees were filled with birdsong. It bothers me to hear them talk about it, not because I’m envious, but because this is the only world I’ve ever known. They treat it like the dismal end of some story, but for me, it’s the beginning, whether I like it or not. I’m seventeen, and I’ll never see a dull sunrise.

I wish I had paid more attention to the things he told us, but that’s the way it always is: You never really understand what’s important until you lose it.

The new replaces the old. The powerful replace the powerless.

I can’t stop myself from crying over something I should’ve seen coming. Because I’m mourning a corpse that’s long dead. It feels like all I’ve ever done is cared for things that everyone else has left to rot.

Sometimes I think that’s what love is, really—giving each other matching scars.

“We’re exactly like everyone else—that’s the problem. Land animals in a drowning world, like Dad said.”

help never comes without strings attached. And we all know the danger of being in debt.

Standing there in the muggy aftermath of the storm, the air both cold and dense at once, and so familiar, because we’ve lived in this drowning world all our lives, I realize that we have to make our own hope. And I think maybe we can.

Silence is the most terrifying sound. The utter absence of life.

But strange metamorphoses are happening all the time. Who says prey can’t become predator?

“We all do what we have to do in order to survive.”

Debt. Every Outlier knows how dangerous it is. But in Esopus Creek, it’s also our only hope. The thing that’s keeping us alive but also killing us slowly.

“They would have killed us both, otherwise.” “Yeah.” She unfolds her hands, straining to see the bandages in the dark. “But that’s the same reason pretty much anyone kills anything. So they can survive. If it’s all survival, who am I to judge what someone does? We’re all the same, deep down.”

She just nods. Still not much for words, my Angel. I wonder when I started thinking of her as mine.

I’m being sentimental, reckless. Because even a wolf can be gentle if it wants, but you should never forget its teeth.

“Sometimes love isn’t enough.” “I think it is. I think it has to be. Otherwise, it’s not really love. If the world can break it . . .”

People just get stuck. Sometimes you don’t even realize that you’re drowning until the water closes over your head.”

I’ll always be able to find my way back to her.

All I see is Inesa. She grows like ivy on the insides of my eyelids. The roots of her are in my rib cage, winding up around my heart. I can’t help imagining what her bare skin would feel like under my hands.

She’s definitely blushing—that odd violet color, which I’m starting to think is sort of beautiful. Like the underside of a lilac petal when it’s shot through with sunlight.

“If humans were collectively capable of compassion, we never would have gotten here in the first place.”

And maybe that’s all it takes—at least at the beginning. Just a few people who care. And that caring matters, even if it can’t cool the earth or lower sea levels or turn back time to before a nuclear blast.”

“They’re not hideous.” Inesa’s thumb touches the scar on my wrist. “They’re just . . . adaptations. It means you’ve survived.”

Nothing dooms you quicker than desire.

Maybe I’ve survived this long so I could know how it feels to hold her. Maybe all my life has been one long gauntlet, running, fighting, searching for her.

You can hate the person who imprisons you, but you can’t hate the person who sets you free. So what do you do when they’re one and the same?

I hate him for leaving me. I love him for saving me. All living creatures have a place they call home. And the instinct to return home is as essential as the drawing of breath.

I know that flowers grow most brilliantly from ashes.

When we see flowers blooming or hear birds singing, we think it’s beautiful. But when people need each other, it seems so ugly.” “Caerus has poisoned everything.”

How do people love, I wonder, knowing that every moment is so precarious, that at any second, it could all melt like snow, or turn to ash?

It was Inesa. I flowered up like ivy beneath her touch. And now, as we set off into the purple dusk, I can feel myself still growing, budding, blooming.

You’re not an Angel anymore. Well—at least not a Caerus one. You still feel like some kind of angel to me.”

Feeling nothing is true cowardice.

“I love you,” I say. Inesa gives one short, stuttering sob. And then she leans forward, pressing her forehead to mine. “I love you,” she whispers.

Everyone needs something, because most of the time, reality is too much to bear.

I once told her it took strength to hurt, to grieve, that it was braver than feeling nothing at all.

I know that when our eyes meet, through the glass, over the heads of strangers, in the bright, shining dawn or the soft, fading twilight, she’ll remember.