Dominion

Chapter Twelve: A Worse Fate

Chapter Twelve: A Worse Fate

I could see my sister.

She was asleep, her thoughts lost in the world of dreams - a fate that failed to find me that night. But I was not alone in my sleeplessness.

Our grandmother sat in the rocker in between our beds, her eyes focused on the words in her hands, the diary she had kept for as long as she could remember. The secondary source of her stories, tales of how the world used to be.

"Grandma," My child-self muttered, in the voice of nearly asleep but not quite. A whisper, almost, but she still heard. Her eyes lifted from her diary to meet mine and she smiled.

"You should get some sleep." She said, and I sat up, rubbing my eyes.

"I can't." I replied.

"You can," She said, and continued to smile. "Your mind just doesn't want to. Too busy thinking about something else, I suspect." She said, and I looked to her diary.

"What are you reading?" I asked, and she passed the small book over to me. I could only make out some of the words - learning to read hadn't been the biggest priority growing up. But I didn't recognize the passage.

"Do you know what a dog is?" She asked, and I shook my head. She just smiled.

"Dogs were animals, Gregor. Four legs, fur, and pets more often than not." She explained, and I saw her eyes drift away to memories of her own as they often did. "Man's best friend, they were called. And they were!"

"Did you have one?" I asked, and she nodded.

"I did. You would've loved her." She replied.

"What happened to her?" I asked, and she sighed.

"She died not too long after your grandpa. Before The Dominion came," She explained, and paused, standing up and slowly walking over to my bed, taking the spot next to me. "I sometimes envy them both for that."

"Why?" I asked, and she looked down.

"There are worse fates than death, my boy." She replied, and her eyes found the window of the room, the darkness beyond it. "They never had to see the world like this..."

"You never said what did happen to all the animals when The Dominion came?" I asked, and she looked back to me.

"They...died." She replied, pausing again, and putting her hand atop mine. "But as I said, there are worse fates." She finished, and I didn't find words to say. So she just smiled and helped me lie back down on the bed. "Now sleep, child," She said, kissing my forehead and smiling. "There will always be time for stories tomorrow."

The eyes of my child-self closed, my mind slipping away from that moment and from my past, opening slowly to the world of the present. But only just. The poison's hold over me was getting stronger; I could feel it grasping my entire body, squeezing the life out of every part of me.

I didn't know how much longer I could hold it back from taking what was left. All I knew was I would keep doing just that until I couldn't.

But in my pain, I realized my mind had shown me that memory for a reason. The creatures that had attacked us...they were what my Grandma had described. They were dogs. They hadn't died like she had said, like we had all been led to believe.

They had suffered a worse fate after all.

"...Wa..." I started to mutter, catching Vera and Lizard's attention as they carried me along, my arms around their shoulders and theirs around my waist. I suddenly found myself incredibly thirsty. I wondered how long it had been since I'd had food and water. Since before we entered The Cloud, that much I knew. "Water." I managed to get out, and the two of them helped sit me down.