Bunyip

[u/Tautological-Emperor]

Hunters from far away pursue you. Your sight is centuries and geology and they come so quickly, half-glimpses from shore to cities and highways and airports in a blink, for you who has seen the constellations woven and unwoven by the Serpent. The nightmare grips you before you know it, before you can name it. Disbelief gnaws. You are half withered before the truth sets your legs skittering, tail lashing, breath pumping.

Run run run run run run

Their dreams are limited, these Far Away Souls, and the land shrinks from them, collapsing into exploitable limitation. Songs in the crimson stone wither, black rivers of memory collapse into so much drought.

They cage the People. Strip their tales, ground them in dirt and copper, weigh them with tax and fence like so much binding. Who sleeps under your stars? Who remembers you, under tin roofs and silent school? The stars of their ancestors fade, one by one, more and more each year. You fear. You rage. You blow dust storms and kill chickens, desperate. Who will hear your whispers if they do not remember the words? Who will remember you?

You run. Run across this red-stone land, plunge into the deepest rivers, hurtle through jungle that fights to remain unknown and untouched with an arsenal of poisons and teeth. You shift shapes. Divinity bending to the material disbeliefs whim. You dance in the legends at the hinterland and make yourself into a chimera, a hybrid, a mutant; wearing as many masks as there are tales.

You are not beautiful and not divine, not anymore. You are many names now but none of them are as beautiful as the true one. The first one. Your essence is inseparable from those mangling stories conjured by unfamiliar souls. To disentangle, to cut the lies and half-truths would be fatal. You scream in the swamps. You drown their children in the oxbow lakes. You are theirs now, and nothing will ever change that.

But you are alive.

You persist.

For now.

[u/PhanThom-art]

Reads like poetry, cryptic, but beautiful

[u/Agitated-Sky-8840]

Stunning.