THE OMEN GIRL | Wattys 2020 Winner

𝟏𝟗

I don't have much time, so I don't waste any.

I carve over the city of Tall Titan, a falling star against the night sky, a comet that hurtles toward our hole in the wall. I expand Gaia's power so that I blow through the gap like a bullet, so that I am not slowed by stone and bark and memories.

I'm a gust through the gardens, all light and wind. I sweep past the training pit and the work tents and flurry toward the main chancel of the temple, the temple bordered in by monsters.

Though the doorway is the size of an aircraft tunnel, the three monsters there nearly plug its entirety, and they see me coming – me a roar of flame, an arrow of light. I do not slow. I do not stop. I'm aiming for that singular gap above their heads.

When the monsters raise their claws for me, I corkscrew a hole through their claws. I come out on the other side, shaking off oil and blood, and take in the scene inside the chancel.

The acolytes are all knelt on the floor, hands bound behind their backs. The whistlers are bound in another group, facing the acolytes.

Esp strides between them, tall, dark. Her hair is sleek and long and like starlight, and her lips have been painted indigo. She's wearing no mask, because she no longer needs to. She is done with hiding.

Stationed all around the chancel are men and women – Omens who have not yet turned – with guns in their hands.

Roaz is on his anchor, and he is about to leap into the titan's eye.

I was right.

Esp is going to use the racers – someone she can coerce, threaten, someone that could survive the portal regardless if they won the previous stages or not – and then take the wish they capture, take it for herself, for her own gain.

Roaz sees me. They all do.

I see Rama, and Sister Ena. I do not see Yashi or Frea. Esp turns to me and watches me, and I see for the first time in a long time, the shape of her scar.

Like someone's taken a hook and sunk it into the corner of her lips and tugged, her omen is a lumpy path of congested flesh. It's got the red rawness of a burn-scar that worms over her cheek and up into her hair, and for the first time in all my life, I realize—

Esp has never been beautiful.

Not because of her scar. Not because of her omen.

Because of her eyes.

She takes out a gun, cocks it, and she's aiming it toward an acolyte knelt by her feet – Rama, blotchy skinned and smeared in tears – because she is telling me that she will shoot if I come any closer, and I do what Gaia did at the end of the first race.

Lights warp and bend around me.

I blink.

I reappear.

I've charged through and snapped past Esp, knocking her gun aside, but I do not stop. I do not go for the others, not the acolytes or the whistlers, or the men and women that are now raising their guns at me, or the monsters that are now screeching and rumbling and crowding close.

I blink again, toward the wishing well.

Roaz, eyes wide and wild, jerks out of the way and, with a snarl, dives into the portal.

I do not close my eyes.

I want to see everything, the sands, the dark, the storm that follows.

I let Gaia sing through my bones and my veins. I dive into the eye.