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Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Mouth of the World  
by Donna J. W. Munro 

Mama says that there’s a beauty seeing in the dark.

She can’t see the light at all with her smooth pebble eyes. I got Daddy’s eyes.

Every day, after Mama goes to sleep, I sit in the half-shadow between our world and theirs.

At night, when Mama crawls out from her rock crevasse, I tell her about colors. Blue and green. How the valley spreads out in a shade so bright she doesn’t have a name for. She’d have to see it to remember it for me, but she gave up her day sight when I came. 

My favorite is the blue. She told me the words to describe the things I see, fluffy white clouds that roll as slow as the stone we sleep with. Hard silver clouds that flashlight so bright it burns me, shifts the circle of light back into the cave so I can see that I have color too.

Color like the sky in winter. Hair black as the sky when Mama puts me to bed for her hunt.

She says, before she turned, that she lived in the valley among the people.

They are too far for me to see, but I see their makings.

Why do they spend so much time building things to live in when there are perfectly good caves? Mama laughs when I ask that, pointy teeth glinting in the dark. She teaches me things before she goes each night, answers questions, and tells me about things past the valley and above the hills. Things I’ll never see but through the woven poetry of Mama’s words. Good thing she remembers everything, so she can teach me.

I’ll never leave this cave.

When Mama met Daddy, before he became one with her as men and women do, she’d just begun turning. Her skin still as pliable as the people in wooden houses, she’d loved him, brought him to the cave and lived with him side by side.

Mama says he taught her to hunt, only he hunted the night creatures—coyotes and deer. Taught her to creep and trap, what wood whipped and which grasses hid smells. They’d been happy.

Mama’s always sure to tell me that.

That they’d been in love.

They made me in the cave when the moon shone and Mama’s eyes still lit on the beauty of the world. Still had human in their colors. She’d only been half stone then. But once I was made and Mama understood the hunt, he’d become skittish. Maybe it was Mama’s hardening skin or her scrabbley clawed fingers. Or her pearl eyes washing out with each night hunt. Maybe the last straw was Mama’s first real hunt, a broken old drunk she’d found sleeping by the river. She served up the drunk to Daddy seared crispy over the last fire she ever made. The last she’d ever need.

Mama tells me he hit her for that. Screamed and ranted and swore.

That night she’d made him part of her, forever. Chewing and tearing. Piece by piece. I think he’s still with us, even if his meat is long gone. Maybe he’s in the pile of bones I sleep on.

I came soon after he’d gone, fed on his meat and memories.

She says I stepped out of her, talking and singing and made of stone but so like Daddy. Still human. Still able to live in the near light of the cave mouth. Able to see.

I am the guardian of her slumber.

I sit, staring out of the mouth of the world, watching for those who’d hurt Mama. Watching for those who wander away from safety. Watching for those who hunt the hunter.

Watching like a good girl.

Someday, like Mama, I’ll leave the cave, but then I won’t see the colors. I won’t know the breeze. Stone and blood, not flesh and breath. I can wait. I can wait because then it will be just me. Me and the mouth of the world ready to eat.

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Fiction © Copyright Donna J. W. Munro
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from author Donna J. W. Munro:

Revelation: Poppet Cycle Book One

In a dark future, people with money live in doomed cities and use the recently deceased as
repurposed servants and workers called poppets. Ellie DesLoge is the teen heiress of the
company that makes and distributes poppets–your basic reprogrammed flesh robot complete
with training chips and kill switches. If Ellie does everything her Aunt Cordelia says, she’ll have a
life of wealth and power. If she chooses to be what is planned for her, life will be perfect.
Everything she ever dreamed. But something about her sweet poppet Thom goes against what
Aunt Cordelia and tradition have taught her. Will she choose to believe what everyone knows is
true or will she follow what her heart tells her about Thom? Her choice will change the world.

Available on Amazon!