Two Eyes Cenote hey, it’s time to hand it over

she wondered if they knew the significance of this place, when they set camp along the rim of the cenote. did they know they stood upon the sunken face of a felled god, that they worshipped and celebrated over the murky bank of a charnel-house? 

she eyed the late august sky. a pair of perseid stars flew across the navy ceiling of the world, diminishing into a purple fringed horizon. 

she mapped the progress of the moon. waning gibbous; silky pale whites interspersed with the mottled mosaic of the moon’s deepening shadows.

 it was not time — not yet. 

she turned back to the cenote, a bundle of sun-cured herbs in her jaws. nestled between these dried fingerlings was another effigy — an antler braided by ropes of bluestem and river-reed. three coppery berries were crushed to its pale stem, staining the antler the grim color of a bruise. 

she paused at the cenote’s rim, eyes closed. gibbering voices of the overworld rose over the ancient sound of trickling water. once before she’d visited this place and cast her haka in it - she could sense its lingering presence somewhere deep in that bottomless pit, lingering like the smear of a malcontent soul. 

she looked over the precipice, where the luminous eyes of another world glowered. waiting. hungry. 

qiao dropped the herbs and their effigy into the pit. the antler was the first to reunite with the water; it landed with a loud plunk that reverberated down the cenote’s hard walls. second came the plop of dried herbs.  the black-water hissed as it swallowed the priestess’ tribute, a gurgling sigh the only answer the first of many costs had been met. 

qiao’s voice murmured as it wove between the roar of the overworld. she stood up, gingerly pulling from the bank. 

the priestess made her way back to muat-riya’s hearth. over her thinning body the night sky hovered, a single red star pulsing in the endless black.