Unlikely Bond

[WP] "So you summoned me... to fight?" the demon said. "I wield a scythe and my title is the Reaping Demon, how could it possibly be more clear I help with farming?

*****

The demon had been with the girl for three months. In that time, little had changed: the sky still billowed its nuclear clouds, never-ending, the color of an ancient anchor pulled up from the depths. The farmhouse still strained under its aging weight, still bent in on itself, its wooden beams warped like bowed legs. And the girl — she was still the last human on the planet.

“I’m not here to fight your wars,” the demon had said upon its summoning. Despised being called upon like some loyal pet. It was all humans ever did because it was all they conceived in their minds; taking, using, and wasting.

That was why their world was as it was.

The barefoot girl, maybe twelve, torn dress, hem heavy with dried mud, stared at the creature. She held a black book in her hand. Candle flames licked the air in a circle around the demon.

“There is no war,” she said in answer. “Not anymore.”

The demon saw her green eyes smudged with tears. Saw the poisoned sky. Saw the fields that lay dead, crops blackened, curled up like cattails.

He inhaled. Sniffed the air. Smelt the rot that infested the wind, the constant and relentless stink of burned bodies, of decomposition.

”They’re… all dead?” he said.

The girl nodded.

The demon did not care for humans, had existed long before them, and had known they’d pass like a season’s harvest. And yet, seeing the girl alone, dressed breezing in this exhale of death, he felt a pang of sadness. A feeling he’d not suffered in eons. Like cold fingers clenching each of his hearts.

”Help my farm,” she said. “Please.”

”There must be silos filled with corn,” he said. “Shops filled with tins. You do not need to farm. And besides, when I leave you, the farm would only die again.”

”I’m not after food,” she said. She pointed at a field to his left. He saw the mounds of the earth like molehills, recognized the signs of planting.

“What have you done?” he asked.

”Please.”

How many bodies had she buried in the field? How many bones lay like driftwood beneath the surface?

Humanity was gone, except for this single, lonely girl.

He’d never thought he’d feel bad about humanity’s passing.

And yet now it had happened, it brought him no pleasure.

*****

For three months he helped the girl with her crops. His scythe nourishes them with golden light. His footsteps feeding them, his spit watering.

He lived with the girl inside the farm. Fixed taps, reinforced beams, kept away wolves and coyotes who howled for the girl as if she were the last scrap of food of the planet.

One night, he read her a story before she slept. It was a heartfelt action, one that he did not know he was capable of, but that was what he was now. Who he was now.

Of a girl taken to a world far away, who needed to find her way back home. Who found unlikely friends to help on her journey. One without a heart but who desperately wanted one. He wondered if she could tell then, or if she would ever be able to tell that he was telling his story. From his own point of view, one in which he was not an evil demon but a being that had become something of a friend to her.

In the fields outside hair spouted, like the tops of carrots, out of the earth. Brown and blonde and black and red.

And they wouldn’t be the same as her. He could only do so much. They would be shadows of what they had been. Placid and always tired, frame delicate, bones brittle. But they would grow and he would reap them and humanity would be reborn — in some fashion.

As they grew taller, heads erupting from the soil, mouths wide, teeth covered in saliva, the demon moved into the field. Kept birds and animals away from the slowly growing people.

Over the weeks, their naked bodies creeped out of the earth, arms like branches.

He would free them soon from their roots. Would help the girl readjust them. And then he would return to a place of many moons.

Some nights the girl lay in a sleeping bag next to him, between the growing bodies. Sometimes she smiled now. As they grew, her heart seemed to beat again.

He thought of his own hearts. Thought of the story he’d read to her.

The demon had been forged not born, never had a family, never felt protective of a person rather than a possession. But now he understood humanity, at least a little.

He wondered what it would have been like, sitting in a field such as this, with a girl like his for a daughter, with the sun beating a hazy wave on the year’s crops. A dog chasing crows. Animals bleating.

He wondered for a long time.

Perfect.

It would have been perfect, he thought.

The sweetness of fantasies that would never be was criminally enticing, yet painful. He turned and closed his eyes.

*****

THE END.

Photo by Samuele Giglio on Unsplash

Maybe it's because we're drawing closer to the end of the year, but my writing feels different. At least to me. Perhaps an unexpected change of perspective?