Cohost writing prompt: @Making-up-Magical-Girls — Magical Girl Who Has To Let Go
The wildly thrumming wreck of the suspension bridge has hesitated, for now, over crashing entirely down. The calm water below has fallen under the powers of the Mirror Witch, reflective surface turned into a portal to a bottomless, plummeting dusk.
Rayna's leg is hooked round a twisted metal strut, one scrabbling hand clutching at the edge of the bridge's tilted deck. The other arm is dragged over the edge, gripping as tight as she can, dead weight stressing her body so she feels herself as a physical object under tension, the drag on her joints, the burn in her muscles, a stretched tautness that compresses her ability to inhale. Her head swims.
"Rayna," Dragonfly Knight Zephyr says quietly.
I've got you, Rayna wants to say, but she can't spare the breath, can't unclench her teeth.
"Rayna," Zephyr says again, "you need to let go."
She can't say no, but she lets a grunt of furious refusal slide through her teeth.
"My wings are smashed and my clockworks have wound down and I can't help, Rayna," Zephyr says calmly. "I'm heavy. You're hurting yourself. You can't pull me up, and nobody's coming. You need to let me go and get off the bridge, while you can."
No, Rayna wants to say.
"I'm not even really real," Zephyr says. "Remember how the Sleep Demons are just dream-things that have got loose? Remember how the Witch was doing all that gloating about dream-things that don't even know it? She meant me. But she was wrong; I've always known."
The bridge shudders, and Rayna makes a strained, angry noise. She doesn't care.
"I can't even die, Rayna. I'm not real."
Real enough to love. Which Rayna, here at the end, still can't even say.
The bridge quakes again.
"Please," Zephyr says. "Rayna. For me."
Not fair—
"You can only hold me up until the bridge falls, Rayna," Zephyr says. "You'll die. I can stand to stop existing; I'm only a wayward dream. And I've been a good dream. Don't make me end knowing I'm taking you with me."
She couldn't tell, to begin with, amidst the pain everywhere; but the strut is inexorably cutting into her leg, blood trickling on skin. It feels ridiculous, it feels additionally unfair, that on top of all this she can feel the rivulets tickling as they meander.
"Rayna," Zephyr says, voice breaking. "If I could still move, if I had my sword, I'd cut off the hand you're holding, so you wouldn't have to let me go yourself. I know. I know, sweetheart; you shouldn't have to. But you need to. Please. Please, Rayna. Please."
A long sob ratchets involuntarily out of Rayna's chest, jaw finally opening for it. It feels like giving in. It feels like being stretched to the point of sudden weakness, ductility and fracture. It feels inevitable and inconceivable. Trembling.
Her fingers slip.