myth for mata verde

Sweetie’s grandmother seemed to barely be able to stand but she held that strange weapon still. The two grass men at the door chuckled.

Yet the old woman swung, summoning the last strength and aided by a fortunate gust of wind. She found an old form she once had known as she thrust at the man on the right with her long leafy sword. The tall man fell, holding his stomach that seemed to be opening out like fraying fibers. After all this time, was he plant or human? The second man grabbed his companion. No one would have recognized him, but he was once the shadow man.

Of course the shadow man had fooled everyone. He has charmed them all, mirroring their bluff like shadows do. Swaying like grass when they swayed. Honoring the sun.

“This is Sweetie’s house.”

“Not anymore, it belongs to the grass army.” The other man said. His companion appeared to be stitching his stomach together.

Pearl would stand on the balcony, with the leader of the grass men, and the grass official. She took many husbands. She took the whole town. They all were hers, every one of the grass people. She was the sun, the grass people understood. She had brilliant yellow gourdes all around her - even in the middle of summer. She forgot everything she had been before. She stepped into this identity like it had been standing there all along waiting for her. Every bit of her old self was shed. No one doubted her, no one questioned her. Her smile was enough to make flowers bloom and wind to blow. No one knew that her name was once Pearl, except for Rebecca who she paid into silence, and the old woman who she believed to be dead. She put on a great ceremony in the winter fields and named herself Sola. As ritual, she killed a crow, releasing it’s blood, body, and everything she used to be into the soil.

It was that very day, when she was washing the blood off of her hands when she heard of the last person who had her name on their lips. The old woman from the passionfruit place.

The woman looked small between the men, so tall they hunched like the grass itself. She was fuzzy, soft over her bones, her hair fuzzed and white. The grass men were lined from her sword, but they had taken her anyway. Partly because of a man who had a yellow flower peaking from under his hat. The queen hid her shock when she saw the old woman, but her brilliance always hid her emotions so no one saw the terror - as if she had seen a ghost ‘Lucinda.’ she breathed.

The grandmother recognized her. Of course she did. But did not speak to her, but to the crowd with a voice like glaciers calving. “Heed me - a see a truth burning in this man’s eyes!There is a serpent at the end of the world who belched out this man. Everywhere she goes nothing but grass grows up in her wake. Have you all forgotten how all of this started? We lost our companions. We could not have fought the grass men back. We were weak from the beginning, and now our songs and stories feel as fleeting as heat lightning. This man holds the secret of how it all began. I can see the snake writhing in his eyes. Ask her, for she knows this man and, I don’t know how, but she is connected to the man. And the two of them, they are connected to the serpent.” Lucinda’s fingers were jagged with age as she pointed to the queen of the sun herself. So beautiful and brilliant.

A tremor went through the crowd, and a shadow passed over the brow of the new queen.

“And who would you believe, a crone at the threshold of death who has gone nearly mad. I pity the hag.” Before she could summon her fate

The birds came down and sat on Lucinda’s head. She, with the sword for a cane. It was that moment that birds began to fly around her. They swooped down from all directions, and when they lifted off again, all that was left was a large shrub and Lucinda could be found nowhere. No one saw the shadow man cough up a cricket as he rushed to be swallowed by the departing crowd.