Snake-Eater

by T. Kingfisher

Outside, in the dark, the scorpion sat in the dust. Its mind was not, in fact, large enough to feel gratitude, but it understood death / not-death. It was not-dead. There had been large dark blurs and movement and at the end it was still not-dead. Insomuch as a scorpion could find anything interesting, that would have been it. Eventually, one leg at a time, it picked its way into the dark.

She studied the saguaro again, wondering how you learned a cactus’s name. Did it tell you? Was it written along the length, in a braille made of spines?

“When I was in seminary,” Father Aguirre said, after a moment, “I would beat myself up constantly. If anything bad happened to anyone I knew, I would ask why I hadn’t been there to stop it. If I’d paid attention, or been present, or even just prayed harder, surely I could have done something. Finally one of my teachers took me aside and said, ‘Manuel, you are not God. You aren’t omnipotent. Wanting to help is good, but this belief that you, personally, have so much power to affect the universe is starting to border on personal idolatry.’” He snorted. “He wasn’t wrong.”

Selena thought about explaining that apologies were the best tool she’d ever found for making something be over.

Selena thought glumly that life had been instilling a flinch in her since birth and it was gonna take a lot more than an afternoon with a rifle to get it back out again, but tried again.

Her neck cracked like a gunshot.