Photo by Samuel Zeller via Unsplash
Even when Barabagi the Mongoose killed Esnaraban, he couldn’t stop her: she continued writhing and wreathing and weaving, barely pausing.
She shed life like an old skin, splashing rotted flesh onto good and evil alike, until all that remained was a behemoth of bones.
Her bite is still poisonous, of course. The gods’ always are.
Written for this week’s Three Line Tales photo prompt challenge. Thanks to Sonya for hosting! Click on the link to find other stories written for this prompt.
Tales from Eneana 
That photo’s crazy. It reminds me of a whale carcass we saw on the beach last week, the insane symmetry and architecture of their bones. Nice piece. The gods’ always are 🙂
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Thanks Bill! The photo really drew me in, too. I told myself I didn’t have time for another flash fiction piece this week (and all the reading and commenting that goes with it) but I saw that photo and just couldn’t help myself. Time to discover a new legend for Eneana!
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Esnaraban was probably less scary with skin still attached. Good story!
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Oh, fate is terrifying with or without skin, I’d say . 😉 But I agree, she sure does look spooky as bones. Thanks for reading, Ali!
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Lovely take, Joy. Those gods will always get their own way! Love that idea of shaking her flesh onto good and bad alike.
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I thought you might like that part. 😉 I haven’t really decided if any of this is real, or purely a legend, but whatever it is, the idea that gods get their way remains true. Part of it is obviously false, since the gods can’t actually be killed in Eneana (well, not by.. okay, it’s complicated, let’s just leave it there). 😉
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Ha! You know me so well 🙂 I’m intrigued, Joy. When you write a post in reaction to a prompt and come up with a new thread of Eneana myth/character/magic spell etc, are these inventions discarded or do they become part of the richness of the world? I find I leave behind so many interesting ideas sparked by prompts (just through time contraints – as we’ve said before, not enough hours in the day!) I wondered as you write in the same world, do you keep your ideas, even if it’s just in the back of your mind to inform future Eneana plots?
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In theory, everything I write here becomes part of the world-building of Eneana, yes. There’s no sense keeping it in the back of my mind, though — it’s a terrible mess back there, I’d never find it again! But if the story introduces a new holiday or religious ritual or legendary hero or something like that, I make a note in one of my world files. The myth I made up for this story doesn’t directly link to any known group or religion, so it goes into my religion file under “other”. I don’t know if it will ever come up again, but it might. Probably not as the basis for telling the whole story about these two, but more likely a legend that is mentioned during a story that takes place among the people who believe in this goddess.
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Love that last line!
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Yes, “don’t mess with the gods” is a good rule of thumb in just about any world. 😉 Thanks for reading, Crispina!
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I really love this short piece, Joy. In three sentences, you’ve managed to say so much and in such a descriptive way. The second sentence is brilliant and I love the word behemoth. (If I were still doing my WOW posts I’d be doing that word this week.) And the ending is simple perfect.
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I love that word too — what a great excuse this was to sneak it in. Thanks so much for the great comment, Millie, I really appreciate it!
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The second line – “She shed life like an old skin, splashing rotted flesh onto good and evil alike, until all that remained was a behemoth of bones.” – is stunningly beautiful.
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Aw thanks, that’s so nice of you to say!
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