The Last of Us Does

Exterior, forest, brilliant spring. Verdant perfection of Dawn’s Beauty in high-sunned splendour, pulsing and alive. Bare feet in soft mulch, rich, earthy scented expression of all-as-it-should-Be. Tender bird song, edgèd wind and strident beast-voice.

No, wait. That was then, this is now.

The last of us slips, sometimes, closes his eyes a moment too long, and is Then, a sleep-walked mis-step on the scaly vertebra of a long-dead and broken bird. Then was well enough, was as-it-should-Be, and Now offers nothing, promises nothing. Is not rich in half-distinct sensory truths or, heaven forfend, sublime and disingenuous half-sos. Now is poor and forgettable, unlovely and Past. Dead and broken, cracked and wasted, Quite Alone. And yet in fine company. Foul company. Poor, enraging, filth-bodies fit only to languish in the shadows of periphery and yet lords of all the last of us might care to Survey. The bellicose shadow of the destroyer-that-was-and-wasn’t-and-wasonceagain. The blood-shot sleepless gaze of the corpse-rock that bore them. Bore those that left the last of us, the Last of Us Alone.

The last of meets, sometimes, with ghosts and not-quite-forgottens still extinct coherently. Sometimes they speak, mumbled never-there nonsense. They soeak through a veil, a stifling soaked rag that turns their dead faces deader blue and chokes off each memory of the not-quite-forgotten until the last of us is sure they will not meet again.

The last of us walks, sometimes – walks always – but walks sometimes to the dry, rotted death-wounds of his heart and looks down, stares her in the eye. Cold rust on bare feet, dead and cold, rough and still, unyielding and unwanting.

The last of us climbs, sometimes, to some shattered precipice or the shadow of a tree. Counts the steps up until they amount to High, or High-Plus-One, or High-Plus-Three, and looses an arrow, or reaches far with his spear. It is impossible to tell where the arrow lands, or if the spear meets anything but Now.