At last she is alone, proud and fierce as ever but a lake basin gone terminal, all the old grandeur poured in with no way out except by sublimation. At last she knows all the songs, all the stories, for any she doesn’t know no longer exist.
They catch glimpses of her now and then, though it might be twenty or thirty years at a stretch between takes, just a tail flip or a low rumbling shadow at the edge of the frame but enough for a headline or six. Not Extinct Yet.
Sometimes she takes to the city, one more wracked coracle adrift under a bridge or huddled by the side of a shopping cart, buried in glorious technicolor beneath a sleeping bag reeking of obscurity. They have forgotten what she should look like, so, invisible, so, obscure, a hole in the world they rush to fill with memories of memories.
Heavy her chops now and then with blood of their children, rough tongue of fire laving them clean. She is alone, watching the sea, the altar and the candle both, the bitter herbs and the scroll tacked to the door.