The Only Choice

Your name is Meri Clef, and you cannot die.

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AstersQuill and Queerious

⚠️ Content warning: Mentions of Suicide

If this topic is upsetting to you, please refrain from reading this tale.

Thank you.

⚠️ content warning

The Only Choice

Your name is Meri Clef, and you cannot die.

You've come close many times, but the world always seems to have other plans for you, whisking you away from death's grip at the last possible moment. You cling to the few fragments of life left, desperately hoping for salvation, and each time, right before you lose hope, something refuses your death.

You are dragged back, whether you want it or not.

A cell in the body protects the contents from the world — a prison cell is meant to protect the world from whatever is inside. A biological cell is necessary for life; your prison cell was constructed to protect you from yourself. Growing up, this cell was your world, your bird cage, your gilded chains cast upon you by unknown adjudicators — you knew very little else, outside of pain and monotony.

Yet, you felt the feeling of safety within its walls. How naïve.

Thankfully for your uninformed self, while your spirit may have desired release; your animal brain only yearned for survival. Something deep within the primal aspect of you knew that the blades of green grass before you were for grazing, much like your animal brain had told you to crumple to the floor at the sudden drop of the lights or sirens blaring. You trusted your instincts to protect you from the darkness, so you trusted that they would find a way to ease your hunger, long after you had been weened off milk and instead fed with gross tasting and smelling kibble.

Do you remember? You were so so hungry. You were starving, and the powers that may be did nothing.

As you ate, desperately, ravenously — as you dug your tiny fists into the "grass" and "soil" beneath you, shoveling what you thought to be nature in your mouth, you quickly found that this was not the environment you were made for, and your animal brain was no longer led by hunger, but fear.

I almost had you.

You tried desperately, straining your feeble body to remove the pellets from your system, filling your mouth with metallic tasting water, crying out for someone to help. I was there, and you refused my salvation. Nobody else noticed. Your throat became scratchy and slowly closed. Can you remember, laying there, vision fading to black; choking, sobbing, suffering in vain? After a while, you found yourself simply unable to fight back at all.

This was your first death, but it would certainly not be your last.

You grew, and with growing came the shadow of erasure, looming over your shoulder, a pale crimson imitation of death. You no longer inhabited the cell, the walls that once were your comforting constraints; instead, you found new hoofing on a forested island in the middle of the lake. It was perfect for the half of you that sought to spend its days in the sun, frolicking, imbibing and engorging yourself on the lake water and the bounties of the earth. The other half of you, however, the much gentler side of you, fragile as an egg, learned just what it meant to live in nature.

To think, you used to dream of it.

Your 'caretakers' — in as much as one can describe any care being taken, let alone given to you — believed that a being of nature, like yourself, would be able to protect yourself from the elements. Surely, a beast of the earth would know how to withstand the elements, wouldn't you?

And yet, you know just how many times we nearly met.

Rain storms would wash away the jumbled branches and leaves of what you could call a shelter, leaving you to kneel in the mud, soaked by both rain and tears, to try to repair it before nightfall. You were convinced, that if you could just get underneath a few branches, you would survive — how pointless your struggle was.

Out of desperation, foolishness, the folly of youth, you thought you could control the elements around you; the rains did not listen, and had no hesitation before washing you away. Carried, down the side of a hill, caught in a current that would not listen to your cries; you felt both the shattering of your bones as you crashed into the rough ground you called 'bed', and the burning of your lungs as the uncaring deluge overwhelmed your last gasps of air.

You were coughing up blood and water for nearly a month, but still you rejected my aide. Maybe, you knew I would return, your sole constant companion. You, for once in your pitiful life, were right.

Each and every season brought its own touch of death upon you.

Summers were for dehydration, the bugs, seeking so desperately for solace under a tree or outcropping of rocks. But there was no escape from the heat, no escape from the itching bites where you scraped and scraped and scraped at your skin until you bled, lapping up the ambrosial drops of your own life, a self-defeating cycle of thirst. Even then, you were a hollow corpse, an empty sack of skin and fur.

And you were resurrected nonetheless, because your existence was as sure as the sun’s rising.

Fall was for starvation. Different years brought different patterns, meaning you could never really know when exactly you would be running out of food; but you always did. You tried eating dead leaves for a time, but their brittle crunch did little to ease your hunger, no matter how amusing it was to see you grind the fallen foliage into flavorless paste. You tried fattening yourself up like your animal kin, but you found that no amount of food afforded to you would last you through the winter. You didn't even last until winter, not once. Always, you died hungry and tired, numb to the world around you.

And you were resurrected nonetheless, because your existence was as sure as the trees shedding their leaves.

Winter was for freezing. You learned there was little you could do to keep yourself warm enough to matter. Eventually, you gave up trying all together, waiting for your inevitable end, and end which would not begin. Year after year, you watched as your fingers, ears, and nose grew black and brittle from the cold, before they were hardly part of your body at all. You watched as frost matted your fur and crept up your arms and legs, before it clawed at your heart. It too hardened, slowed, your blood become viscous, before it finally stopped beating at all.

And you were resurrected nonetheless, because your existence was as sure as one year flowing to the next.

In spring, you finally found yourself growing tired of it all. You yearned to come into my cold embrace, You thought, just maybe, that your own hands could bring your death — if nature alone could not deliver the killing blow, perhaps your own ingenuity would lead to salvation. One day, you filled your pockets with rocks, and walked yourself out into the lake. You didn't flail, or hesitate, letting the water slowly drag you into the aquatic abyss.

And you were resurrected nonetheless, because your existence was as sure as the eternal nature of rebirth that followed the spring.

You so desperately wished you could die. Do you realize how sad that is? You longed for what others feared, a fate denied to you, and ending to a story that would never come. You wished for me. You so desperately wished that someone, somewhere would save you from this hell, take you from the island or put you out of your misery.

Some days you prayed to whomever would answer, prayed for a some sort of hero. I was the only one who heard your prayers; heroes are, after all, just a fairy tale. Meanwhile, you continued to die.

You grew more radical in your methods, sacrificing what little you had in terms of food, companionship — you bled yourself out on the altar, hoping that enough of you would be able to pay back the karmic debt of the sin you never knew you committed. You were born into debt, refused the chance to redeem yourself by the very hands that called you 'daughter'.

Still, you continued to die.

And then your voice grew hoarse, weary, before finally going silent. You had run out of words to say, run out of sacrifices — there simply was nothing to gain from a pound of your flesh. No one was there to save you, not the divine nor infernal, not the shadow lurking just out of view. Not some missing savior. Not even I would come to you, no matter how constantly you begged; it was never your choice. Your fate was in the hands of others, and they would never let you go.

You begged for a release. You pleaded for salvation, and were denied. You exhorted to all who might listen for freedom from your cycle of suffering.

You were looking for an excuse, and one day, it came to you in pressed uniform and stomping boots. Her eyes burned with Death, and within them, you saw your liberation.

You met the servant of Death in a simple, canvas tent.

Her blazing hair, sharp sleeves, shiny medals granted for the many, many souls she had ferried, clanging melodiously against her chest. She was loud in her appearance, but, it was the softness of her voice that rose above it all. She explained your situation methodically, as if it were already understood.

"You were always destined to remain here, did you know that?" she said, a cold satisfaction in her voice. "You are fated to eternal exile, wasting away, knowing nothing of life, let alone freedom. They have no use for you, child, nor the crimson blood you shed. This will always be your immortal hell."

She spoke of freedom, described things you could never see. She spoke of your father, whose age and body were failing him, much as he failed you. She spoke of Light, who abandoned you long ago, leaving you to the dark. She spoke of your dear, sweet uncle; a useless, blithering idiot, eternally plagued with inaction.

And then she spoke of herself.

"I am change," she said, sneering. "Do you really wish to remain?"

I was there, watching, lurking — she spoke the words that would shatter your chains, but it was I who waited for you.

And that, sweet child, is when you made a deal with Death.

She laid it out plainly: the only way to die was to be unmade, completely and utterly returned to the earth, as if you never existed at all. Your affliction, your ability to control reality would be the very tool you used to remove yourself. From nature, to nature, a cycle interrupted — without another word, she removed a knife from her boot, and turned without regarding your choice, so that she might leave the structure. She didn’t need to see what happened next.

We already knew your choice, as did It.

You never had any choices in your life, had you? But this time, this choice, one you had made years ago; it was finally yours alone.

I came to see you. She will return, when you are gone, and there won't even be a body to remember you by. She will simply retrieve her knife from the floor, brush the dirt off of her pants, and carry the sleeping infant, the next cycle far, far away from this place. No matter where its life may end, it wears your old chains, and will certain share your fate. She will smile, as you each share in a twisted victory. You will be dirt, as when you were born, as when you died, and there will be no one left to remember you. At your end, you will finally know rest.

We will meet, and you will embrace me with open arms.

Another choice, perhaps?

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