Animals We Made [RETURNS June 7, 2024]

Consider Lily | Part 1

She watched the flames eat her garden.

They burned in a dazzling mass, the color of roses, and she was just Lily. Her name, though, permitted her to identify with flowers. A vine unraveled in the heat as she crouched, observing. Plants she'd watered and tended now dissolved like old manuscripts. She noticed horses gallop across the inferno. Their riders, large men, wore helmets and plates that shimmered and jingled. Abba in his foresight might've guessed that evil thrived here, but where had he vanished to?

Despair overtook her and she tried to run but stumbled, hypnotized by her ignited tulips and jasmines, pinks and violets, all of which she thought of as her friends. The garden had once been so lush. It currently shrank under the flames. Red, orange, and yellow dominated her vision before long. White surfaced but it was only ash. She felt the ends of her hair curl. Her tears sizzled dry as they leaked out of her when she blinked.

Clopping filled her ears.

The horses approached in a whirlwind of thuds and neighs.

Lily gawked up at the riders, who clattered in their armor while the fire silhouetted them.

Hesitation and uncertainty plagued her mind.

Did Abba leave me today? she wondered.

Goats shrieked as their herders drove them off.

Lily was fourteen, young enough, she hoped, to be unappealing to the armored men. They might've kidnapped her. Chained her up. Sold her to work in a field. Yet they wouldn't injure her in unspeakable ways.

Right?

"Don't let them," she muttered and knelt, hands folded in her lap.

"Why are you on the ground?" One of the riders, who had thorns lodged in his cape, dismounted his beast. "Now, don't let us what?"

So he and his men were Romans.

Their fire clouds veiled the sun.

"My prayers are not for you to know." She flinched as his boots hit the earth, and then she continued: "Will you answer some of my questions instead?"

He nodded, helmet flashing.

Lily stood and gulped. "Are you . . . uh . . . ?" Despite the fire, her teeth chattered. "Well, you and . . . and your . . . uh . . . um . . . your—"

The Roman whistled, and his horse galloped to him, its mane swaying.

"Questions." He patted the animal's thick neck. "Speak up. Out with it."

Lily braced, expecting to be kicked. "Are you and your horses ghosts?"

The Roman furrowed his brows. "Not unless we've lost a war I'm unaware of."

Behind him, the men on their own horses snickered.

Lily kept her eyes down. "I only ask because you were riding through the fire without seeming afraid of—"