The girl inhaled, sharply and suddenly. As if the tip of an icicle had been run up her bare spine. She turned to the spirit, dumbfounded.
“What did you just do?”
The spirit refused to acknowledge the girl’s question. She simply sat there, and continued to pick at the grass. The sun had slowed to a halt in the sky. Its stillness was too subtle for the girl to perceive, but the spirit knew.
“You’ve changed something. What’s going on?”
The spirit assured the girl that she had changed nothing. That she was being paranoid. The sun began to reverse direction. Again, too slowly for the girl to perceive.
The girl watched the spirit closely. She was up to something, and the girl was determined to find out what it was.
The grass began to retract. The girl could sense that something was off, but she struggled to pinpoint exactly what it was. The girl’s frustration grew, and she needled the spirit further.
“What are you playing at? Tell me. Now.”
The spirit snapped at her. She was up to nothing, and the girl should drop it, rabbit.
What seemed like hours passed, without a word spoken. In time, the girl’s suspicions became obvious. The grass was several inches shorter than it had been before. And not only that, it was speeding up.
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But the girl said nothing. She simply watched. She watched the spirit, sulking in her little divot in the grass. She watched the sun as it inched back toward the horizon. And she watched the grasses retreat back into their seeds, and ungerminate.
The bones around them began to darken.
“Tell me what’s happening. Please.”
The spirit averted her eyes.
“I deserve to know.”
The spirit asserted that it was rude to look a gift horse in the mouth, rabbit. The girl briefly pondered the spirit’s slight misunderstanding of this phrase, but it was clear the spirit was offering something she considered a gift.
The girl backed off.
The gentle blue sky above them was long gone now, having faded to a stark paper white. The spirit coughed an ectoplasmic mucus from her lungs, and swallowed it back down her translucent esophagus.
“Okay, no. That’s enough. Explain yourself.”
The spirit struggled to suppress her hacking and sputtering. The girl rose to her feet and approached the spirit. She knelt down and began tapping the spirit’s skull repeatedly, forcing her to pay attention.
The spirit screamed at the girl. She screamed that she was trying to undo her mistake, rabbit! That she should be left alone to concentrate!
A string of mucus was hanging from her mouth. She wiped it from her chin and rose into the air, embarrassed. But it wasn’t long before she fell back to the ground with a bony clatter.
She coughed up a thick wad of mucus onto the ground. The girl approached her from behind, and placed a warm palm on the spirit’s shoulder, gently brushing her hair aside.
“How can you possibly undo your mistake? You told me that if you tried to unrot my brain, you would die...”
The spirit looked the girl in the eye, her jaw quivering. She looked as if she were about to cry.