High Plains Drifter

[Badb†]

[Zoe Leverett, continued from I Forgot to Remember to Forget.]

G029: Zoe Leverett - DECEASED

That is her story; the rest is detail.

Any story seems simple and insignificant when stripped to its most basic elements. Without individuals, there are only numbers and statistics. Nameless, faceless, and innumerable numbers and statistics. Forty-nine dead, a thousand dead, a million dead. There were a large number of human beings who, in some shape or form, were born, lived, and died. But Zoe was determined to make her story mean something, if only to her, so she thought that it was only appropriate that her story ended where it began. Days earlier she had sat on this coastline with Oscar Trig and they had tried not to remark on the aesthetic splendour of the sea. Now, Zoe stood, battered and broken, and she stared at those same waves and she called her past self a liar. There was nothing remarkable under the sun.

Zoe dumped her machete where no one else could use it and knelt down on the shoreline, filling her bags with as many rocks as it would hold. Stumbling over to a patch of dark water with her pack weighing her slim frame down, Zoe began to shake, and wondered if Virginia Woolf felt the same unease, the same uncertainty. Zoe tried to conjure up a reason for her to stay in this unrelenting decay. There had to be something left, some reason for her to continue perpetuating this cycle of violence and death.

Zoe swallowed uneasily. There was no deus ex machina coming to stop her. A lifetime believing in myths had instilled upon her a belief that any moment of overwhelming despair would be met by divine intervention. Zoe could not accept that, when she asked for it most, nothing was coming to save her. So she pretended something was. The imaginary voice sounded faintly like Danny Trejo, and told her not to do it.

"Why not?" Zoe asked. "Everything dies."

Zoe could not think of a rebuttal. As she turned those words over in her head, she began to realize that she had gotten it all wrong. The painfully obvious truth dawned on her and she felt so stupid and insignificant for never realizing it.

Everything lives.

Before it dies, it lives. It is an endless cycle of millions of millions of unique and individual stories illuminating the universe like a brilliant star, chasing away the shadows. Life is unrelenting creation, and the celebration of that creation. It cannot be contained and it never will be.

It never ends, and Zoe Leverett finally accepted that.

Which is why she accepted that it was time- why she believed it was necessary- for her to take herself out of this cycle. Zoe stood shaking on the edge of the water, ready to make one final mantra.

"This island has enough cynicism and despair without me," Zoe began, tears welling in the corners of her eyes. "And I'm starting to think that maybe I'm one of the bad guys."

She swallowed hard, choking back sobs.

"And I think the only way I'm gonna solve that is by taking myself out of the game," She continued. "'Cause it's about time the good guys started winning for a change."

Zoe exhaled sharply and jumped into the water feet first. Zoe sank like a stone, her lungs emptying in columns of bubbles that rose to the surface. The salt-water stung her eyes and she squeezed them shut. It barely helped. As her lungs began to tighten, Zoe thrashed against the water. Trying to swim. Trying to pull herself up. Second thoughts.

The waters pulled her back under.

Zoe Leverett remained one story, so important and so insignificant, swept away in a torrent of water.

G029: Zoe Leverett - DECEASED