The hail kept falling as Hymn’s blood froze across the icy stoop. Carolynn saw her face, briefly, in the burgundy mirror as it seeped closer to her boots. She pulled her feet close to her chest, panting warm mist into the air. Hymn’s breathing was labored. He let himself spread across the small outcrop, his face burnished with a sheen of sweat.

Eventually the hail lightened into snow. Carolynn had the foresight to pull up the grapnel. It was a calming motion, winding the rope around her elbow, then the palm, then back again. Over and over. Around and around.

Once she had gathered herself, she stood. The abruptness of the motion caught Hymn’s attention. His red eyes watched her as she knelt over him and untied the satchel from around his waist, pulled it off his shoulder. Then she removed his jacket, its front slick with stain.

With an unusual calmness, Carolynn signed an approximation of the words. “You. Animal. Now.”

He stared at her hands, uncomprehendingly. She shook his shoulder and demanded his attention as his eyes slid into the distance. “No. You are not dying.” She pointed at him. “YOU.” The four-fingered gesture that evoked a standing animal. “ANIMAL.” She smacked her finger against the ‘time’ wrist gesture. “NOW.”

He must have read the words on her lips because his eyes stayed trained on her face, the pupils jittering in their sockets for a moment before he heaved himself into motion. Slowly, painfully, he transformed into his wolf from a kneeling position. The way his body stretched made the wound in his abdomen spit more blood. He grimaced.

Carolynn took Hymn’s jacket and tied the sleeves around his waist so the bulk of the fabric would cover the wound. Then she harnessed the satchel around the fabric to keep it in place. With a pocket knife she fished from the bag, she sliced around ten feet of rope from the end and slipped her foot into her second crampon as she tied it. Hymn laid down and shut his eyes. She spent time fashioning a sling with some straps for her arms.

As Carolynn approached Hymn’s wolf once more with her hastily-fashioned contraption, Hymn growled. Some clarity had come to him; he finally understood her intent.

“I am not leaving you,” she said.

He tottered to his feet and backed away. His hackles rose with his snarl.

“Stop this! Let me help you!”

The great black wolf took another step back, closing the distance with the abyss beyond.

“No!”

Hymn’s foot slipped at the edge but he kept balance.

“You will not die here!” Carolynn shouted. The wind took her words but not her determination. She wrestled him away from the edge by the satchel wrapped around his belly. She used her remaining energy to jolt them both backward toward the cliff face.

Hymn was larger than her. She knew the risks and the rewards. She knew he could bite her and jump off the edge in a stupid attempt to sacrifice himself for her. She knew Hymn would do it if she didn’t keep her arms wrapped around his squirming neck.

“Listen to me, Hymn! Listen to me!” She pressed her forehead to the top of his wide skull. She cupped her mouth to his ear, the only way to make him hear her above the wind’s yowling.

“You will live,” she said, her breath fogging the air between them. He stopped wriggling. “If I let you die here, do you think I could rightly forgive myself?”

She could almost hear his breathing as his lungs expanded against her arm. She had never been this close to him, her face pressed into the thick pelt. He smelled like cinnamon and clay and mineral water.

After that, he was still. He let her strap the rope to him and the satchel. She harnessed him to one end of the grapnel and then to her back. She had to use her legs to lift him off the ground. He was lighter in his wolf form. Less mass, more fur.

She took the grapnel in her hand, secured it, and began her tedious descent.

Each day of travel was longer than the last. Each night was colder. The storm was a ceaseless thing. No food. The only fire was the one burning in her shoulders, her back, her legs, her neck. Maybe everything was burning.

Hymn was dead weight, but he was alive dead weight. She checked on him when she could. Forced him to drink melted snow. Sometimes, she climbed through the night when the weather would dampen. The moon and the stars lit her way. She had her jackal’s night vision to amplify that light, but it was still a dangerous pursuit. As the days passed, she became increasingly wreckless, increasingly tired. Yet another night of travel.

When the sun rose at her back, she blinked in its yellow light. She thought of the spirit at her Foreordination. Follow the setting sun, he had told her.

More and more, she pondered the reasons for it all. Why had they gone this route? It was pointless. Why do all this for the gods, just to suffer through their wrath by day and night?

Pointlessness was a form of hopelessness. Hopelessness was a noun, a modification of the verb hopeless, which had the root word hope. Synonyms for hope in Beverly’s Thesaurus included wish, purpose, and dream.

How she wished to dream of something nice. Not drowning. She could not remember the last time she had dreamed of something sweet and meaningless. That Night character…Where was he?

‘Delirious’ was a funny word. Did it describe her? Maybe. But it definitely reminded her of the word ‘delicious.’ Not that many letters off. Caribou would be delicious right now. Or maybe a haunch of goat with some honey or garlic or some ginger. She should have learned how to cook before…everything.

One of the days, (Carolynn had lost count), she was unstrapping the ropes on a flat surface to relieve herself. She left Hymn in the snow to get some privacy. She wandered away. This is a large stoop, she thought. Her eyes were scrunched in the morning light. For a moment, she stared at the sun, shining like a copper coin on the horizon.

The horizon.

No clouds here; maybe the weather was clearing.

She was in the middle of untying the laces of her trousers when the thought occurred to her: My feet are very flat on the ground right now.

She looked up again—Horizon, flat, no clouds, ground.

What the fuck… She thought, her mouth hanging open. I made it? Hm.

She did her business, kicked some snow over it, and walked back to Hymn.

“Are we done?” Carolynn asked. Her voice was hoarse, and she had smelly, dry-mouth breath from the disuse. But she could hear it.

Hymn looked up at her from his resting position. He snorted, as if in good humor.

She did not feel joy. She knew what that ought to feel like. Carolynn laid down and slept for twenty one hours.

“It won’t stop until we leave this place,” Hymn said.

“If the gods want us to make it to Saga, why do they not simply stop this weather?”

“They’re angry.”

“Because of our detour?”

Hymn scowled at the tunnel entrance, where flakes of snow were blowing in. “Likely.”

“Why—?” Carolynn started, just as Hymn stood up and stomped on the fire, the clang of his boot against the half-formed metal ringing throughout the enclosure. Their light source faded.

From the darkness, Hymn’s voice resonated like the copper bell in the watchman’s chamber.

“The black dove rides the evening down

Eyes watch it fly

Behind the roll’d hills the thing drowns

Tears now they dry

Night ousts Day in the scholar’s mind

No heart outlasts

The grass silvers ‘neath waxing tine

The final toll cast.”

“Er—Is that…a prayer?” Carolynn said into the quiet.

“We should leave now, before the storm gets worse.” Hymn shuffled through the darkness, presumably packing the satchel and strapping it to his torso.

“But—”

“There used to be a door here,” he muttered to himself as his silhouette covered the dimness coming from the tunnel entrance. He ducked low and left Carolynn in the dark.

Crouching in the blackness, alone with her own mind for company, Carolynn shuddered. The emptiness around her was stark and strange. She followed Hymn outside.

It was well past midnight and the only light within the cave beneath Annie’s secret clearing was the acidic-green luminescent moss and its reflection on the stagnant pool beneath it.

“Changed your mind about joining me, Doctor?” Annie said. The words echoed strangely around the corrugated oblong expanse and the lake’s surface.

“It wasn’t a change of mind so much as a change of insurance. Sandy knows I’m down here.” I left my shoes, a hand towel, and a change of clothes near the hole in the roof I had descended from. I padded over to the poolside.

“How wise,” Annie said. I could hear his mocking smile disappear beneath the water’s surface as the green reflection on his hair dropped lower.

“Hey,” I said, smacking the crest of his head with my foot. I waited for his ungraceful reentry from below the depths and for him to snort water out his nose. “You were the one who invited me. Don’t wisecrack or I’ll put my sweatpants back on.” I didn’t like wearing shorts. My knees were already knobby-looking with jeans on, and the damp cave air just made them quiver.

Water lapped at the sides of the pool as Annie swam back from the edge to allow me some room.

“I still don’t understand why you’re so obsessed with this place,” I muttered, dabbing a toe into the frigid blackness.

“That is the point of this exercise,” he replied. I smiled at the choked quality of his speech, knowing my kick had sent at least a bit of water down his throat.

I sat on the edge of the pool, cringing as the water washed over my hands and thighs. “It’s cold as shit! How do you do this?”

“Get in all at once, and the movement will warm you up.”

“I guess I meant ‘why do you do this?’”

“I already said, ‘you’ll see.’”

In the past, Annie had gone out of his way to climb back into the pool regardless of his health and wellbeing. His skin had been so fractured and waterlogged, his body so comatose, that mushrooms had actually managed to grow on his skin and moss in his hair.

Since I’d healed his decaying body, he could no longer support his corpse agriculture project. Now he was forced to grow a garden of mushrooms deeper within the solace of the cave, where a tiny fracture within the earth allowed indirect light to hit the caps.

Despite taking up a less destructive hobby, he still occasionally ventured into the pool to fall unconscious in the sweep of its magic. He told me he could talk to his ancestors through it. I would believe it when I saw it.

I pushed off the stone and slipped within the depths like a knife into its sheath. When I resurfaced the air froze my cheeks and I was panting for breath, shaking in the tiny divot I had made for myself within the water.

“Move around more,” Annie said. His slickened hair reflected luminescence as he drew a tight lap through the lake. It was very deep, but at a guess, only ten feet across.

My teeth chattered. “Cold—So cold!” I managed. It felt like I needed to keep my limbs pulled tight to keep the warmth preserved at my center. My feet moved in tight circles to keep me afloat.

It took a while for my body to adjust before I could say anything beyond a couple words at a time. “When are we going to see the spirits?” I asked.

“When you stop complaining.”

Annoyance rivaled the chill rising up my body, making me shudder.

“Good.” He rested against the far side of the pool. “Now, get out of the water.”
“What? Why did you make me get in?” I spat.

“Because I thought it would wash away your sarcasm.”

“Wonderful,” I said, shaking my head as I climbed out.

“Clearly, I was mistaken.”

“Mhm.” I was barely listening, overtaken by a seething irritation.

“No, it was necessary for the ritual,” he said. “Whereas I am taking a voyage, you,”—He raised his leg out of the water and pointed his toe at me—“are taking a vacation.”

“Put your dirty foot away,” I grumbled. My teeth were chattering.

The foot sunk below the surface. “You can start a fire now, if you need it.”

“Of course I need it,” I spat.

As I got to work attempting to light the damp sticks in the pyre, he told me how things would go. I would fall asleep, still soaked in the magical water and that would be enough to allow me a short trip into the spirit realm. Once my clothes dried, I should wake up from the coma like normal, but just in case, Sandy was instructed to check on me tomorrow morning.

“Shit!” I said as the soaked hem of my shirt wept onto the embers that had started to smoke. They went out.

“What do you plan to do when you are there?” Annie asked.

I paused the wringing out of my shirt. “I want to ask the recently deceased kin if they know anything about a face-changer or if anyone from the Tribe of the Calling Owls can give me more background information on Vermillionsky.”

“And what will you do with this background information?”

I rearranged the tinder and picked up the flintstone. “I will either learn enough about them to read their minds, which would make it impossible for them to hide whether or not they are the killer...”

“Or…?”

“Or, at the very least I will know why they left in the first place. If one of them was banished, say, for killing someone, then that narrows down our search drastically.”

“Very clever.” There was no sarcasm in his voice.

“And what will you do when you’re on your ‘voyage’? I imagine you want me to wake you up?”

“Give me at least a week to do what I need to.”

“Which is…?” The fire lit and I threw my flint aside.

He didn’t immediately respond, so I waited, crouched by the tiny orange warmth.

“I am going to the Nightlands to talk to Asphyxia.”

“Pfft…” I said. “You’re going to talk to a god?”

The Nightlands was the name for the territory where Asphyxia’s garden and castle lay. It was supposed to be deep within the center of the spirit realm, where the Black Forest and the White Prairie collided. It was aptly named, for it was a shadowy place where the souls who did not deserve a peaceful death were tortured under a sky of forever-night.

“I’ve talked to gods before,” he reminded me.

Sometimes I forgot that most of the moonkin of the six tribes had the privilege to meet some of the gods on their fourteenth birthday. Annie was only here because he wanted to protect Jacky on her journey to the Beyond, not because he had been fated to live here.

The way Annie’s arms were relaxed along the poolside behind him, I could see the sharp shape of the gemstone mark embedded in his upper arm. The lost mark was usually hidden by the sleeve of his shirt.

He shouldn’t even have one of those. He chose to come here with Jacky, he chose to never go back.

“It’s not as great as you’d expect,” he continued. “Talking to the gods, I mean.”

I crawled over to the wall and leaned against its cold surface, stretching my legs near the fire. “Yeah, well, it’s better than being banished,” I muttered.

“Not necessarily. It depends on who you’re banished with.”

I sighed and shook my head. “You’re not talking about me, are you?”

He shrugged. “I’m not entirely not talking about you.”

“Keep saying stuff like that and I’ll start to think you love me or something.”

He chuckled. Then quietly, “Good night, Chrissa.”

“Good night.”

It took a while for me to fall asleep. The fire finally warmed me up enough to stop me from shivering, but my clothes were still uncomfortable and damp when I finally drifted off.

The first thing I saw was a dark blue jelly-like substance surrounding me. I was standing. When did I stand up? And I wasn’t in the cave anymore. I wasn’t really anywhere. Everything around me was a grey blur.

The floating blue substance congealed into a human-like shape. My shape. As I found myself able to move my limbs, they were a cobalt blue in tint and waded through the air like astronauts in zero gravity.

Where am I?, I thought.

I tried to get my eyes to focus on my surroundings but I felt like I was nearsighted and everything was too far away to make out. I was the only color in the world.

After a moment, a coral-orange point of light appeared in the space in front of me. It expanded until it was as large as I was and twice the width. One by one, colors faded into existence within the shape of light. White fleece. A green poncho. A brown nose. Yellow eyes with pink lids. Bronze bells dangling around the figure’s wide waist.

My mouth fell open. Was this a god?

It was a humanoid figure with the legs, horns, and facial features of a ram. Their hands were clasped together in front of them, their rectangular pupils swimming in a golden serenity.

“Chrissa,” the figure said with a meditative voice.

“Y—yes?”

“It is not your time. You have work to do, I am sure.”

“What do you mean?”

“You are a caterpillar yet to molt, Chrissa,” said the god. “Your time will come, but it has not yet arrived. May your time arise for conciliation, regardless of your faith.”

“Can’t you be more blunt?” I complained. “Conciliation of what?”

But it was too late. I woke up to Sandy’s gentle cooing as she shook my shoulder. “It’s mid-afternoon, Chrissa. You need to wake up.

”

Colors danced on the dark sidewalk from the lights inside the bar. From across the street, Ricky Cegar-Pollock gazed through the coppery glass, a hand still resting on the car he was hesitant to leave. He took a slow inhale of the crisp night air then closed the car door and crossed the street alone.

The insistent bass radiated through the walls of the club and seemed to make the glass of the front door throb like a heartbeat as he touched it. Or...maybe that was Ricky’s pulse gradually picking up pace.

He opened the door and stepped inside.

The bar loomed like a boulder in a field of rye. Friday night bodies swayed and stomped and shouted. A rainbow flag hung from the ceiling, dripping with what looked like beer.

What am I doing here?

Ricky started weaving through them, toward the bar. It was a vantage point to see the people, to see himself clearly. Not a single memory graced his mind of coming here alone. He’d come with friends in college, and later he’d come with his then-boyfriend, Reed.

Reed.

The name left a lump in Ricky’s throat the size of a golf ball. He tugged at his collar when he attempted to swallow it. The T-shirt was a bit snug for his taste but he still hadn’t done the laundry. Reed usually did the laundry.

But no, he wouldn’t think of Reed tonight. That was why he was here.

Briefly, his eyes coasted around as he sat down and fished his wallet out of his pocket. A man in a jean jacket smiled at him from a few seats away.

Before Ricky could return the gesture, his wallet slipped out of his hand and fell open on the ground. Stooping down to retrieve it, he paused. A picture of his daughter had slipped from its pocket.

The picture had been taken around five-and-a-half years ago, Bailey’s first Easter. A tuft of umber fleece was all that marked the thick brown curls she would grow in later years, reminiscent of his own. She was giggling, flinging her little fleshy fists in the air. Her yellow dress was crinkled by the two pairs of hands holding her up, belonging to men Ricky had folded out.

He stood up and sat back in his seat. He had originally folded himself out so it would fit in his wallet but now that Reed had been folded out too, the picture jostled around in the loose pocket.

The man in the jean jacket stood up. Colin was tall, pale and had dark bouncy hair that parted down the middle. This stranger whom Colin had watched enter was a new and welcomed face. He was immediately intrigued, interested, attracted.

He admired the man’s well-defined musculature tugging at the confines of the perfectly-sized shirt. Colin walked over and took the adjacent seat as the man passed an I.D. to the bartender and ordered a drink. He introduced himself and got Ricky’s name in return.

“Nice decorations, huh?” Colin said, gesturing to the tired flag.

Ricky nodded, watching another chain of droplets fall onto the floor beneath it.

“Makes you want to drink,” he said. “I recommend the Tom Collins. Lemony, a bit of sugar—I imagine you're a citrus guy?”

“I don’t really drink that much but I guess I could be a citrus guy.”

Colin laughed. “I promise it’s good. If you don’t like it, I’ll buy you something else.”

“I think I’ll take you up on that,” said Ricky, waving down the bartender.

“You won’t regret it,” chimed Colin. He waited until his acquaintance had tasted the drink before saying “I imagine you don’t come here often?” He traced the rim of his glass.

“You’re right, I don’t.”

“Yes, I would’ve recognized a face like yours. You stand out in a crowd, you know. Your...look.”

“Heh, yeah I haven’t noticed a lot of tee shirts in here.” Ricky plucked at the tight shirt collar then ran a hand down the taut breast.

“It’s not mesh,” Colin admitted, “But that’s not what I meant. You draw a person’s eye.” He drank in Ricky’s appearance.

Ricky’s ears reddened, but it was impossible to tell in the dim light. “You’re not so bad yourself,” he murmured into his glass.

“So what brings you here?” asked Colin, touching Ricky’s forearm. In the lights of the bar, Colin’s hand was pale lavender against the petals of wild indigos.

Ricky glanced at the hand before responding. “My husband—ex-husband and I are going through a divorce. He has my daughter for the week. So I’m lonely.” Ricky immediately regretted mentioning the divorce but it had slipped to the end of his tongue and fallen out. Regardless, Colin’s hand traveled to his unconsciously-tense bicep.

“Maybe I can help you. You don’t have to be by yourself every night.”

Ricky’s chest and neck warmed up at the proposition. “Perhaps you’re right.” He took his drink and gulped down some confidence.

A smooth, knowing smile crept onto Colin’s lips. “Are you a catcher or a pitcher?” He slipped his hand into Ricky’s lap.

It took Ricky a second to respond, feeling a jolt of excitement at the touch. He liked the casual eroticism that Colin rolled across his knuckles. “I’m a catcher but I can play both positions,” Ricky murmured.

Colin blinked in surprise but slipped his sensual, silky mask back on. “So am I. I think we can make this work. Your place or mine?”

“Yours,” Ricky said quickly. He wasn’t sure he would have the nerve to do it in his marriage bed.

Colin smirked. “I’d like that.”

Ricky stared at the bottom of his glass.

This is stupid. So, so stupid.

The next morning, Ricky woke up in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar apartment. Blue light from outside misted into the grey room. He sat up on his elbows and glanced around. Colin was sleeping on the far side of the bed, arms out like a goose preparing for flight. The clothes Ricky had been wearing were in a messy pile near the end of the bed, but it wasn’t much messier than the rest of the room. It seemed like Colin lived entirely in his bedroom even though Ricky had seen a kitchen and a sofa when he had been led through the house last night. It smelled a bit dusty, like an attic, even with the cardboard boxes, piles of wrinkled clothes, hamper, and full trash can giving plenty of evidence to the room being well lived-in.

Ricky crashed back onto his pillow. What have I done? What am I doing?

He thought of his soon-to-be ex-husband—A painful strumming of his heartstrings, a violent slash across the face of a cardiovascular guitar.

He thought about getting up, sneaking out. But who would he go to, and where? What did he have that wasn’t lying in this bed?

Ricky closed his eyes, breathed slowly. Inhale through the nose, exhale through the mouth. Inhale through the nose, exhale through the mouth. His brow creased, his eyelids scrunched up. He focused on his breathing some more.

After a few minutes, he shimmied over to Colin and cuddled up under his arm. Absent-mindedly, Ricky’s hand glided over Colin’s smooth chest. He closed his eyes and breathed in his scent. It was a sexy smell: bourbon, with rustic and woodsy touches. But it wasn’t the same.

Colin woke up around fifteen minutes later and stretched the arm that wasn’t wrapped around Ricky. “Hey, sexy,” he said and squeezed Ricky against him.

“Can I talk to you again?” Ricky asked, shifting as Colin sat up.

Ricky had told Colin about the divorce, about his daughter being away from him every other week, about Reed between their “sessions.” It felt good to vent, it felt good to be listened to. “I know we’re getting a divorce and animosity seems to be a given but I don’t want it to be hard on Bailey,” said Ricky, “She’s going to have to switch houses every week, she’ll probably never feel like she has a permanent home...Do you think it’s possible Reed could still live with us? Or, no. I guess that won’t work. But maybe...maybe she could stay in the house twenty-four seven and he and I could switch houses each week…”

Colin watched Ricky’s face as he continued, “I was considering staying at my mom’s house when I was away, but I can’t do that anymore. My father’s living at home again so I can’t even visit. I’ve cut him out of my life, out of Bailey’s life. He didn’t approve of me and Reed, he wouldn’t approve of me and any guy.” Ricky glanced hesitantly at Colin.

“The only reason I would care at all is because now I can’t see my mother. She’s always home, always around him since he got out of prison.”

Colin’s eyes traveled down Ricky’s body.

“But, it’s fine. All it means is that I’ll need to find somewhere else to stay. Maybe I’ll rent somewhere.”

Colin pulled the blanket over his head.

“I don’t know if Reed would agree, though...to living in the house part time. I think he...I think he hates me now.”

Colin re-emerged between Ricky’s legs with a impish smile

“I want to...I thought...I was...going...I…” Ricky’s sentence disassembled as Colin placed a hand on either of his thighs and started...mmhmhmmm...

“Do you want to do something today?” Ricky asked tentatively, looking at Colin as he stared forward at the ceiling with his hands behind his head. “We could go to the park or a movie or something…”

Colin took a long while to respond. “Nah,” he said, “I’ve got stuff to do.”

“Or we could go to lunch—could we go to lunch?” Ricky twisted the sheet in his grip.

“Sorry, I’m busy.”

“Well can I at least see you tonight?” Ricky pleaded.

“Yeah, you could come back tonight.”

“Come to my house,” Ricky offered, “I can make dinner. I—We can…”

“Yeah, okay.”

Ricky’s muscles relaxed. “Okay, good. What do you want? I can make anything you want.”

The day crawled along like a snail across asphalt. Ricky couldn’t bear going home to an empty house. He wandered the streets for hours, ignoring the molestation of his now-pulsating feet and the raw blister that had formed from the incessant rubbing of his shoe against skin. His eyes stayed down as he passed the coffee shop where he and Reed had gone for their first few dates, he took a wide berth around the spot in the park where Reed proposed.

He muted the calls from his divorce attorney. I can’t listen to that right now.

Ricky kept walking until an absent-minded glance at his watch told him it was time to start preparing Colin’s steak. He rushed home.

It turned out, Ricky’s haste to get home was unnecessary. After a few forkfuls of medium rare, the urge to be closer caused the seats to drift together before a different kind of hunger crossed their minds and they left for the bedroom. The neglected steaks eventually grew cold.

Time had passed but it was unclear how much. The shutters were dark except for the flaxen tinge of a street lamp across the street and had been that way since before the dinner guest had rung the doorbell.

“You know,” said Colin, petting Ricky’s chest, “you would be so much hotter if you shaved this.” He plucked at a clump of pectoral fleece.

“Reed liked something to hold onto,” said Ricky quietly, eyes focusing on a distant speck on the wall.

Colin raised his eyebrows. “Am I Reed?”

“No…” Ricky sighed. “You’re right.” He revitalized and sat up. “I need to make some changes. I can shave—I’ll shave it.”

Colin smiled. “Good.”

“Do I have to…?” He touched his shortly-cropped beard.

“No, that can stay.”

Ricky’s shoulders slackened a bit and he grinned. “Okay, good.”

Colin kissed him with some tongue. “Come with me.” Colin led them into the adjoining bathroom, grabbing some shaving cream and a razor off the counter, and they did it in the shower.

After ten minutes, they turned the faucet off. Wet feet slapping on the sage ceramic tiles, Ricky reached for a towel. His skin was hot and satiny. Beads of water slipped off his caramel-colored curls as it would a duck’s covert. He was a little out of breath; in the mirror, his newly-smooth chest and his face and neck had adopted a reddish hue.

As Ricky finished drying himself off, Colin gave his ass a pat and took his towel.

“Are you staying the night?” asked Ricky, slipping on and knotting his green robe that was color coordinated with the floor, the countertop, the towels, and the bamboo leaves in the painting on the wall.

“Sure.”

A high-magnitude pulsing within Ricky’s body seemed to calm. “Good, good.” He massaged the tightness out of his neck, watching Colin dry off by sandpapering the towel over the saturated locks of dark, dark brown.

Colin brushed out his disarrayed hair with a comb he picked up off the counter.

As Ricky observed, he found his cheeks aching from a smile that just brushed the sides of his mouth. It felt good to smile, despite the slight discomfort.

Ricky padded over and touched Colin’s shoulder until he turned from the mirror. Colin looked down to see Ricky’s smile. He released an easy smile in return.

Despite Ricky’s issues, the man had a very attractive physiognomy when he was smiling, Colin observed. Ricky started adjusting the part in Colin’s hair with his fingers, smoothing it down in a way that felt a bit unnatural.

“You look so much cuter with your hair like this,” Ricky said.

Maybe this was a new step in their relationship; they could critique each other’s appearances. Ricky had shaved for him, after all. But perhaps not, because Colin pressed his lips together in a peeved sort of way. “Is this how Reed parts his hair?” he asked.

The smile fell off Ricky's face and splattered on the ground. “Oh god,” he said and fell into his hands.

That was confirmation to Colin. He slipped his hand into his hair to fix it as he left the bathroom with the towel around his waist.

“Wait!” Ricky ran after the departing back. The bathrobe slipped off his shoulder in his haste. “Colin, wait!” He slid into Colin’s path and put his palms against the proceeding chest. “This—this is why I need you. You have to help me move on. Please.”

Colin’s eyes traveled from Ricky’s crazy eyes, to the slice of exposed body the robe had cut, then back up to Ricky’s face. This man was a mess. A sexy, sexy mess.

Ricky shriveled into a small, sad, dying creature. “I can’t do it alone.”

Colin pursed his lips as he examined the forlorn puppy. Then he sighed and said, “Okay. I’ll help you.”

A sharp inhale from Ricky before he leaned his head on Colin’s chest. “Thank you.”

Colin felt dormant tears wetten his skin.

The next morning, Ricky woke up with the six o’clock birds in the position he had taken up last night, spooning Colin. Like sipping a topped-up glass of ice tea in the summer, Ricky was refreshed. A cup of coffee and a banana, then for the first time in several weeks, he went into their garage gym and did his morning routine. Between sets, he would slurp down his water and scratch at his chest. The shave irritated like a sunburn and left cerise crosshatching where his fingernails dug in.

After he finished his last set of curls, he glanced at his phone. 7:18 A.M.

Before he took a shower, he crept over to Colin to see if he was stirring. He wasn’t. But after the shower, Ricky crawled back into bed and laid beside him.

With his eyes closed, he wondered how many minutes had passed. When did Colin wake up yesterday? Nine, ten o’clock?

He checked his phone and got up to make himself a protein shake. 7:32 A.M.

Next, he started the laundry. Then the dishes. Then he cleaned the bathroom.

He checked on Colin. Still asleep.

Ricky found a book and slid back into bed. He checked the time. He cracked open the book and began reading a page, but couldn’t digest the words. Two more rereads of the first sentence before his eyes stopped moving on the page. He checked the time. 8:56 A.M.

I should give him more time. It was probably closer to ten when we woke up yesterday.

He opened the book again, then closed the book. Ricky made more coffee. 9:01 A.M.

He probably should give him until nine-thirty at least. 9:02 A.M., 9:03 A.M., 9:04 A.M., 9:05 A.M.—That’s enough.

“Good morning, babe,” Ricky whispered, touching his cheek. “I made coffee. I didn’t know how you liked it so I brought sugar and creamer too.” He set the mug on the bedside table and kissed Colin’s cheek as he mumbled.

“What do you want for breakfast? Do eggs and bacon sound good?”

“What time’s’it?”

“Around nine-fifteen.” Ricky kissed his cheek again and fluffed his hair. “Do you want to go to lunch today, babe?”

Colin pulled a pillow over his face. “Wake me up in a few hours…”

Ricky felt a ship hit the rocks and sink from his chest to his stomach. “Oh,” he said, his smile flickering, “You want me to wake you up at ten-thirty, eleven?”

“No...” he moaned from beneath the pillow, “Noon or one or something…” He splayed his arms out like a migratory bird and stopped moving.

Ricky knelt by the bed for a minute with his jaw shut tight. Then he stood up and left the room.

For what felt like years, he walked around the house looking for things to do. He adjusted some books on the shelf, took a book out, looked at it, put it back. For the first time, he noticed the barely-touched steaks on the kitchen table. He plucked a piece off Colin’s plate and chewed the cold meat as he wrapped some for leftovers and threw away the rest. After a while, the kitchen table and countertops were clean, the fridge was reorganized, the floor was sweeped, the carpet vacuumed.

With the vacuum in tow, he opened the door to his daughter’s room, marked by hundreds of dinosaur stickers and a hand-painted sign that sang, “Bailey’s Room.”

Once he was done vacuuming, he took a rag from his back pocket and started wiping the shelves his six-year-old couldn’t reach. Intent on his work, he pulled away a framed photo to dust underneath it. When he was done, he wiped off the glass then hesitated as he saw the people in the photo. It was from Bailey’s fourth birthday, her face lit up as bright as the candles on the giraffe cake in front of her. Reed was there next to her, handsome as always...so, so handsome…

Ricky sat back on her bed, clutching the photograph. He wanted his daughter back. He wanted his husband back. Reclining onto the quilted comforter of Bailey’s bed, he pulled one of his daughter’s stuffed animals near him and sobbed into it with the cold picture frame pressed into his itchy chest.

Earth.

The god was turning to earth.

In an alcove within the shell of a cramped, old coal mine, white marble columns crested to an artificial ceiling. The floor was made of cracked ceramic tile smudged with clay and cross-hatched with roots as thick as forearms.

At one end of the Temple of Anamnesis was a tall man with long black hair. The rest of the small space and mineshaft beyond was teeming with charred flesh and bone that coagulated into a single mass.

The god of memory, of rosemary in funerary pyres, of songs and hymns sang toward the sky, was made of the faceless, formless flesh of the deceased. Its bodies decomposed into the earth that poked through the chipped marble. A crisp and sulfuric stench filled the room, more poignant than the very air the man breathed.

Forced to squint from the odor and tears that rheumed, the man looked around for any eyes in the mass, some indication that the god knew he was here.

“Burned in the fire,” came a gravelly voice that echoed from the dozen mouths scattered throughout.

The man winced at the sound.

“Eyes do not survive the swelter, Anastasius. We do not need them to remember.”

The man shuttered again at the quarry of refracting voices. “You—” his voice cracked. He tried again, “You suffered to get where you are. What’s the point of—”

“Anastasius.” The voice commanded silence. The man’s mouth shut with a snap.

From within the scattered piles of flesh, a single skeletal figure rose like a puppet on strings. Its flesh was loose on its body and darkened by a thick layer of soot. Its neck was bisected with stitches and a pair of mammalian ears sprouted from its eye sockets. The face was too distorted to identify any other features. “We hear you. Now come here.”

Anastasius took a slow step toward the central figure as it beckoned with a singed finger. He rekindled his dying anger. “You listen, you hear,” he said, tilting his head in distaste. “So you must have an idea of why I’m here. The past is shit! Yours, mine—Why remember?”

“Anastasius, every one of us has a start.” The voice slithered from mouth to mouth, forcing Anastasius to turn in tight circles to follow the sound. “To remember it is an honor, not a curse.”

“Seems like a curse,” Anastasius muttered, eyeing a dying nerve that was still wriggling.

“It is not,” said the god, succinctly. When Anastasius grimaced like he had a ready retort, they continued, “You’re not wrong, child. To recall can be overwhelming, but it is a worthy burden to carry.”

Anastasius turned back to the central figure. “I don’t care about being worthy! I care about—Well—I don’t want to care about anything! If you know why I’m here, why hesitate? Erase Nisha from my memory— Erase her from the tribe’s memory!” He threw a fist in front of his face to physically prevent a sob from breaching his lips.

“Everything reminds me of her. Everyone reminds me of her, constantly. I am tired of mourning. She's gone. There's nothing left of her to mourn but her memory. With that gone, I can continue going.”

There was a long pause, punctuated by Anastasius’ heavy breathing. He realized then that he had not told anyone of his request, never vocalizing it, so Anamnesis might not have known this was his goal.

The god drew closer to the boy, the slacken muscles of the body's face contorted to first pity, then concern. "Oh child. That... is not remembrance. You are the one torturing such memories into that malice you hate so much." The bodies surrounding Anastasius tilted away, the rotting and burning smell was replaced with funeral scents; calming, serene, flowery.
"That malice could overtake me. Again,” Anastasius said. “We wouldn't want a repeat of what happened last time."

The ears twitched irritably. "Nisha’s memory is important to you. Part of your being. And you want it gone? Are you doing this for the sake of us, or the sake of your own delusions?" The voice, while whisper-soft, still filled the questions with a venom of importance.
"A very smart little girl once said that delusion implies playful deception of the self. Am I deceiving myself, here and now, when I tell you I want to die?"

The body tilted its head. "Deceiving? Deceit implies intent.” The figure, too, deflated into the central mass and Anastasius felt the presence of the room dim a bit.

“Hey!” Anastasius grabbed at an exposed arm but the thing turned to rubble in his hand. "What’s the point of remembering if you won’t make a change?” he shouted.

From the flesh, the skeletal vessel arose once more, this time holding a large tome. They sighed. "You poor boy. Tarnishing your memories as such. Have you ever asked why we kept these bodies? Sulfuric mounds of rotten flesh? It’s because we always respected their place. Their beings."

The vessel rose into the air, hoisted by living roots speckled with fungi. The body’s blackened robes billowed away from a pair of decomposing legs. "We will give you what you want. To respect your wishes to disrespect your remembrance. But first, remember Her for me, won’t you?”

“Her?”

At once, he was back behind the itchy fabric blindfold that plagued him at night. He was back in the past.

He reached up with soft hands that were not his own to feel for the knot that kept the blindfold in place. It occurred to Anastasius, now transported into the body of his past life, that it had never been Asphyxia plaguing his dreams with these memories. It had always been Anamnesis.

Bastard.

The thought was a small thing, burrowed deep within the recesses of a brain that was no longer his. Anastasius was not himself anymore. This was just a memory.

It was then that he realized his feet were moving in fast, light steps. He felt like he was flying over the ground, though he knew this form was still human. Despite the rotundness of the body he possessed, he always felt like he was defying gravity, perhaps even floating above the ground.

He pranced up a set of uneven stone stairs this body knew by heart and his hands shoved open the double doors. The temperature grew colder as he lurched into a drafty throne room he recognized by scent. Like sweet, poisonous fungi. Like Asphyxia, goddess of death.

“Hello, my Reprieve,” called a familiarly deep and sultry voice from across the room. Anastasius pictured the goddess of death lounging across her pillowed throne with her white curls spread like an untidy halo around her sharp cheekbones.

“Good evening, Wife,” Anastasius’ lips said without his permission.

“Come here, my sweet Reprieve,” Asphyxia coaxed.

Anastasius did not want to go, but he wasn’t himself anymore, he was Reprieve.

Despite the blindfold, Reprieve grasped handfuls of a ground-length robe and ran across the uneven castle floor with ease. “My Lovely! My Wife!” Reprieve shouted, bouncing into Asphyxia’s waiting arms.

Reprieve was far smaller than the nine-foot goddess of death, so Asphyxia scooped Reprieve onto her lap.

Asphyxia crooned and pet the closely-shaved, silver head of hair like Reprieve—like Anastasius—was a mere toddler. “Reprieve, my love?” Asphyxia murmured.

“Yes?”

“I know you don’t like it here.” Asphyxia paused and lifted Reprieve’s chin with a taloned finger. “But you are my wife, and I don’t know what I would do without you.”

Reprieve’s eyes, like huge black rhinoceros beetles from her childhood on the Earth, did not need to see to feel Asphyxia’s gaze on her face. She could smell the salt of drying tears on her wife’s cheeks, and reached to wipe them away.

“Death is lonely,” Asphyxia continued. “I left my sanity with my mortal body, and the years I’ve spent here before you were like an eternity-long sentence. I feared it would never end.”

Reprieve nodded slowly. She was absorbing her wife’s words, but her mind was occupied by things she, herself, wanted to say.

“And the end is nice when it is with you.”

Reprieve chewed on her thoughts for a moment. She was not used to this sentimentality from the same woman who disposed of all Reprieve’s pleas to let her charges return to the Earth.

“I think…” Asphyxia continued after a pause. “That as long as you cling to the mortal plane like you do, you will never find solace in your duties.”

She’s telling me to let go of Earth.

Anastasius was thrust from the trance. He recalled the elixir that gave immortality to the gods. How easy it had been to stop drinking it. Weeks and weeks letting their body grow weaker. Until finally blood drained around the hilt of their own dagger. The glowing starlight turned redder and redder until it blotted her vision.

Asphyxia’s hand found the small of Reprieve’s back. “You value life to an extent that I do not.”

“I think—!” Reprieve began.

But before she could decide what she thought, Asphyxia continued, “And I admire you for that. I do. But you have to move on. Death means change. And reviving and reincarnating your charges does not give the Earth the chance to learn from that change. Revivification ensures the same mistakes are allowed to continue. Consequences become null.”

“You’re telling me to be more selective with my justice,” Reprieve murmured.

“I’m telling you that I love you. And without love there is no loss, without loss there is no strive for change, and without change there is no progression and no growth.”

Reprieve’s brow furrowed as she ruminated on this. “You’re ordering me to stop asking you to let my charges go back.”

Asphyxia laughed at that. “I’m requesting that you consider my words.”

“I will consider them, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy them.” Reprieve furrowed her brow.

“Of course, my Reprieve.”

When Anastasius returned to himself, he was still standing in front of the gargantuan form of the god of memory. Their vessel’s nose was tilted between the dusty pages of a thick tome. Their hands were crossed behind their back, but a quill pen scratched words into the leathery pages of its own accord.

The quill continued to scribble as the vessel’s head tilted up toward Anastasius and its ears swiveled. “You have made your decision,” they said.

“Yes,” Anastasius said, stiffly. Then, choosing his words slowly, he added, “I think I want to keep Nisha alive. In my memory. But I’m tired of the well-wishes and sympathies. I don’t want that. If I’m to remember her, I want to celebrate her life, not mourn her death.

I still want you to erase her from the minds of everyone in the tribe. Except me. Everyone except me.”

The stitches bisecting the vessel’s neck curled into a greasy, snaggle-toothed smile. “That, we can do.”

Anastasius returned to his tribe with a new sense of vigor. No more mourning, no more sympathies. He was pacified at the thought that he could keep Nisha, his night, alive through memory alone. This was a burden he was emphatic to share alone, by himself.

Anastasius’ pace quickened as he reached the edge of the main clearing. He trotted over to his own den that he shared with his sister, Jacalynn. He turned back into human form and pulled at the thread-bare curtain that blocked out most of the sun.

“Jacalynn?”

His sister was sitting cross-legged in human form facing the wall.

“I am back, Jacalynn,” he said, approaching cautiously. “Are you alright, Sunshine?”

He waved a hand between her eyes and the wall. Only then did life return to her blank face. “Hm?” She looked up with a curious tilt of her head. “Were you talking? I was thinking.”

“I just asked if you were okay. What did you do when I was gone?”

“You were gone?” She tilted her head the other way.

“Uh, Sunshine…” Anastasius knelt down in front of her and tucked a lock of brown to red hair behind her ear. “I was gone for three days.”

“How many days?”

“Three,” he said, anxiety growing like a weed within his stomach.

“Are you sure? I think I would remember something like that!”

Anastasius simply nodded, a frown etching canyons into his face.

The Serpent of Water and the Dragon of Fire had a contentious and brutal relationship. Between them they invented the concept of Strife, of War. But, between their brawls, they had passion. Together they birthed a new element, an element called koioka. (In English, this translates to “the space between Water and Fire.”)

Koioka is what we often call “the body;” it is the flesh that we wear and the substance that makes us move and function. This was the fifth element of the world.

The Wyrm of Earth and Amphiptere of Air had a close kinship. They were fond of each other and their expected child. Together they invented the concept of Virtue, of Love. They built the realms in preparation of their babe, an element called akoki. (“the space between Earth and Air”).

Akoki is the spirit; it is the memory, the thoughts, and the emotions. This was the sixth element of the world.

Koioka and Akoki were inspired by their forefathers. Together they birthed Moonkin and Humans. They gave their children the Strife of Koioka’s making and Virtue of Akoki’s. It was important for the children to have both.

As Night took a breath of air, I asked, “Why did they give us strife? What benefit could there be to that?”

Night leaned forward a bit. “Because lineage is important.”

I frowned. “Why?”

Night shrugged. “Lineage is just memory. It’s important to remember the past. The good and the bad.”

Pariah the Unperson did not identify as a person, because she specifically was not one. She was not human, so when her victims pleaded with her, asking where her humanity was, she would laugh and put in her earbuds.

Despite inventing the word ‘humanity’ and a cultural definition that implied compassion and kindness, humans did not necessarily possess this skill. Not all humans had humanity (despite the etymological implications of the word), so why should she? She wasn’t human.

Pariah had encountered human murderers and backstabbers, who she had murdered and backstabbed. They had not had compassion; they had not had “humanity.”

What made someone a human? What gave humans humanity? What made someone a murder or a backstabber?

If it wasn’t a self-identified title, (which it often wasn’t), then it was earned by their actions. Only negative actions though. She did not hear people called “rescuer of children” or “filer of on-time taxes” nearly as often as “killer” or “pickpocket.”

Maybe humans just liked negativity?

Regardless, tonight she had named herself Pariah the Unperson, a Moonkin that was so utterly un-person-like that she might as well have been the first “aperson” to ever exist.

She did not have an ounce of human, a molecule of person within her. Nor did she like to think she had humanity. And like a murderer, she had earned this title.

As Pariah sat on the couch, she scratched her chin.

Maybe she could be a “disperson.” Or maybe “antiperson” would be a better fit. But George Orwell’s word choice was almost a perfect descriptor of what she was—wiped from the records. Unpersonified by both the Moonkin and human society. Why change something so perfect as the unperson?

She might as well be nothing at all. But until they invented a title that represented the anti-matter of space she took up, she would be Pariah the Unperson, an unsympathetic, unloved blip in the record who, really, needed no title. She had earned her place here, in the lack of space she took up, by destroying every instance of herself from the collective’s memory.

Water.

The spiraling chain of spiced liquid fell onto the blue flame. Tipping the jug over the fire was a broad figure that, himself, resembled a shadow like the ones cast against the crude stone walls. He was a dark shape with waist-length black hair and eyes that glowed red.

Why was he here?

Forced to hunch under the low ceiling, the man watched the magic bloom in front of him. The blue flames coughed up a cloud of smoke that filled the small cave and made the darkness even more potent. The smoke made the man’s eyes water and stung his nostrils.

He knew why he was here and yet the question still remained. Why was he doing this?

There was no hope left and yet he grasped for it.

The ritual was almost complete. All he needed was the signifying ingredient—a sweet-smelling, poisonous fungus that he crumbled in his hand and cast onto the fire.

The color changed from cobalt to carmine. A red that scorched the cave ceiling and made the air taste like blood.

Anastasius crouched there for a moment, letting the warmth overcome him. It made his skin feel raw, but he lingered.

Anastasius sighed, removed his clothes, and stepped into the fire. The red flames lapped at his feet and charred his legs but it didn’t hurt. His body dissolved and reformed in the other realm.

The firepit he reconstituted in was surrounded by walls made of thick stone slabs. He was in a small circular chamber off to one side of the Nightlands castle. He stepped out of the flames only to shiver at the chill of the stone against his bare feet. In front of him was a box with a folded letter perched on top. He read the ornate script: I took the liberty of choosing your outfit for tonight.

Anastasius tossed the letter aside, grumblingly, and opened the box. Once more he sighed.

In the outfit his goddess had chosen for him, Anastasius walked down the halls. The snail shell adornments clacked against his thighs as he moved, the echoes of his impractical leather sandals beating every grey surface of the castle.

He made it to the drafty, stone throne room and took a luxurious, if slightly mocking, bow.

A clap minced the air. “Anastasius, you came.” The goddess of death lounged across her pillowed throne. Inscrutable light emanating from the stained glass windows, perhaps from the very heroes and villains depicted there, cast the room in a violet glow.

“I didn’t think I had a choice in the matter,” Anastaisus said coldly.

“Mmm, yes…” she said, examining her manicured talons. Anastasius expected her to say more, but she didn’t.

“I’m here about my sibling.”

“Mmhm,” she purred, giving a long appraising glance down his figure. “I like your outfit.”

His face didn’t change. “You picked it.” He plucked at the black and silver chiton that wrapped his legs and half his chest. “I am not a fan of open-concept wardrobes, my goddess.”

She laughed and let her skink-blue tongue draw over her teeth and tusks. Despite the grin, her eyes pinched at the sides. Anastasius knew that look, that barely-disguised loathing. He wore it often himself.

“What do you expect me to do about your sibling?” Asphyxia said, curling a white tendril of her ruby-decorated hair around her finger.

Anastasius’s mouth opened, then closed. He had expected a lot more avoidance on her part. “I—I need you to stop it. They can’t be lost. They can’t be separated from their family like that. They’ll die on her own. They can’t or I’ll…” His fists trembled as they clenched.

He didn’t know what he’d do.

Asphyxia threw her legs over the side of the throne and let her head dangle off the arm rest. “Fate’s a funny little thing,” she mused. “I’ve met him. He’s bad at cards.”

Anastasius shook his head. “Fate is whatever you make it. You can change fate, you’re a goddess!”

“I’m the goddess of death, my love. I have my domain and I am not one to step outside my confines.” She smirked. “I would need something…shall we say, lucrative, to get me to step even a toe out of line.”

Anastasius tried to retain the growl deep in his throat. He rarely lost control, but Asphyxia was toying with him. Chiding him.

He tried to think of his sibling. He needed to stay calm. For them.

They were like a poppy springing from the barren, icy ground. The only color in his life, the only sign that thaw was soon to come. Thaw was coming.

He released a slow breath and tried to force the strain from his hitched shoulders. “I have other people I can go to, if you insist on being stubborn.”

“I am a boar,” she said, smiling with a molding sweetness.

And I am a foolish child. He had gotten his hopes up, thinking this spineless sow would help him in any way. Thinking he mattered enough to get her to listen.

He turned away and started toward the main entrance.

“Going so soon?” Asphyxia asked.

“I didn’t think I had a choice in the matter.”

“You always have a choice here.”

He stopped walking. “If I had a choice, I would never come, Asphyxia.” He looked over his shoulder and repeated something his sister said once. “You can only stretch the word compromise so far before it loses its meaning.”

He left her there, playing with her drapery. As he stepped into the hall, he heard his goddess’ voice booming after him, “Be a good boy and water the garden before you leave!”

“Yes, my goddess.”

After his duties were complete, he constructed the ritual once more and returned to his own realm. He slowly dressed in his thick wool garments and donned his goat-hide boots.

He was crouched in the dark of the small room for a long time, listening to the base-tone wails of the storm outside, whining as they slipped through the cracks in the uneven, wooden door.

Anastasius looked once more at the lumber in front of him, his eyes glowing like the embers that no longer stared back at him. Then he unplugged the wooden slab from the entryway and stepped into the flurry.

The gods were a petty lot.

There was no conversation to be had about the fate of his sibling. The gods had made their choice and he was very unlikely to get them to crouch down and see him and his situation eye-to-eye.

He transformed.

Thick fur sprouted down his back, fingers morphing into claws, spine and joints reconfiguring into a hunched then quadrupedal shape.

In the form of a huge wolf, Anastasius walked down a sinuous path carved into the side of the icy peak he had sheltered in. Down, down—the trail was a layer of compacted snow made from centuries of ancient footsteps. His scruffy black pelt contrasted with the surrounding white and the slices of pale blue indicating sky-reflecting ice.

Living on the altitudinous, barren cliffs of the Mountain for most of his life, he had grown to expect the heartache, heartbreak, and heart-decomposition that had befell most of the Tribe of the Rocky Slopes.

His sibling, despite it all, was his poppy. They were the brightness in the storm. But eventually the biting wind would rip their roots and break their back. Anastasius knew this. There was nothing he could do. He dared not rely on fantasies to give him unwarranted hope.

A strong wind tugged at the fur along his spine. Anastasius hunched forward, putting more weight on his broad shoulders.

Fantasies were frivolous. He could not keep hoping for the best because fate was never kind. Especially with the curse that had befallen him; especially with the fate of his sibling written on their eyelids, where anyone but them could see it.

He had seen the work of the Named Gods for himself, but had grown pessimistic about how much power they really had.

Dote, god of love.

Anamnesis, god of memory.

Asphyxia, Estimable, Topor, Largesse.

Names, names—Names until the names lost meaning.

If Asphyxia could (or would) do nothing, perhaps his pessimism was warranted. The people’s myths and legends seemed to do more for the gods than the gods had ever done for the people. Asphyxia was a personal favorite of his tribe.

Anastasius felt a growl boil in his throat. Her clothes, the easiest to replicate of her features, would be worn around funerals and celebrations alike. He often dreamed of yanking those shells from the sages’ and children’s necks.

But her fame. Unchanged and unchangeable to her, but perhaps malleable—manipulatable—to Anastasius…

Maybe then he could fight the fate of his kid.

He felt like a mosquito, flicked around between her intricately braided curls—but perhaps he could work his rank. Maybe he could blend in with those chains of dangling rubies that fell from her scalp to her argentine neckline.

Asphyxia would often flick her hair over her shoulder to expose her beautiful silvered neck then simper and coax him nearer with a purr. She’d whisper into his ear as he growled; her breath smelled of sweet, poisonous fungi.

Her voice was filled with chiding flowers and deceptive fruit, promises that meant nothing to her and everything to him.

That dastardly woman—Anastasius’ fury brightened his internal flame.

If he worked his rank, that would only lead him closer to his goddess.

She would notice anything he tried, the way she studied him despite his open hatred.

Her help would cost Anastasius. He would need to do her another favor.

That meant spending time with her—the needling, ridicule, pain.

He would hide away within his mind because he knew that, as his hostility toward her grew, her love for him would follow at its independence. Despite his yelling, hissing, spitting—

Or perhaps in spite of it, no, because of it, she would dote on him like her puppy.

The thought brought bile to his tongue.

He remembered discussions they’d had long before his sibling had been labeled “lost.” Asphyxia would tell him things: the difficulty behind worship; how being scorned made one the lowest and most mortal.

A worm dug in his gut. Using her was to sink to her level. But, oh, to make her feel his pain—an eye for an eye, a sister for the god’s wrath.

He could almost hear Nisha’s words when he had told her of his vague ideas to get help from Asphyxia.

Are you crazy?, she had said, She’s literally the goddess of death!

That had been last time he’d seen Nisha. Anastasius had parted with her and his young sibling near a grassy cave, the only rest stop amid their route. He left Nisha with orders to remain in the area, remembering his own first time making the trek where he had collapsed from exhaustion. The whelp was much younger and smaller than he had been.

Anastasius had drifted from their camp to collect food only to return to find his orders disobeyed. In his absence Nisha had brought his sibling to the river. She never listens.

Nisha had teased him about his rules and thorny attitude. That twinkle in her eye, that goading simper with a bit of river sand stuck to her cheek—made it hard to retain his even frown. The only way they’d have made it back in time was because Nisha made them run. Imagine—running all the way to the river and back!

They had been in their canid forms when he faced them, his kid’s tail wagging as they bounded around Nisha’s ankles.

His sibling’s matted fur was still tinged with sandy water as they sang about how they had taken an impromptu bath.

He recalled their crystalline smile. Would that smile remain when fate struck them down?

He was surprised they had the strength enough to yawn.

Come on, Annie! I carried them the whole way there and back, Nisha told him, shoulders lax.

No you didn’t, you made them run!

After the whelp had fallen asleep, he took Nisha aside to tell her what he had planned for this visit… what he had failed to achieve, what he wasn’t strong enough to achieve. What he could’ve done… What he didn’t do.

He had to consider what he would do with failure tied to his neck.

Hours later, his claws clinked against the flat slab of rock that signaled the end of the Carapace’s steep decline. Briefly stretching the tension from his front limbs, he broke into a sprint up the slopes that led him home while the wind smacked at his face. If the weather was on his side, he could make it there before tomorrow afternoon.

But no. As he galloped—ignoring the wildfire burning in his tendons—his lips pulled back across his gritted teeth. His body ached, every muscle strained from the overexertion. He would have to rest. Frustration at the thought sent another burst of energy through his body, rage frothing at his mouth. The anger of the wind rivaled his own.

His conversation with Nisha came back to him. Their words irritated his eyes.

Keep them with the tribe as long as you can. They’ll be safe here, protected, Nisha had said.

Briefly the fire of rage morphed into something cold and fearful, clenching his heart with the strength of a dead man’s fist. His paws thumped against the ground.

Where are you going? Anastasius asked her when his sibling was tucked away and sleeping.

Thump thump, thump thump, thump thump.

You know where, she said.

Thump thump, thump thump.

But I want to stay with you! I… I love you.

Thump thump.

I know. But you love the little one too, and they are, well, lost. It’s okay, I’ve been waiting to see the human villages again! Nisha chuckled softly, then the humor left her face. Don’t worry, Annie. We’ll see each other again. But I want you to promise me you’ll prolong our meeting as long as you can.

I promise.

Eyes blurry with prickling tears. He blinked them away, felt the wind pull them back along his cheeks. He had to talk to Nisha. She’d know.

The weathered stone that was so familiar left scrapes on his pads as his steps faltered and stumbled. There were spots of blood trailing behind from his abrasions. Finally, he stopped.

His body was aching and bruised, his ribs heaved, but he couldn’t bear these thoughts. He needed to rest. To recollect. To finally think.

You always have a choice, Asphyxia had said. Yet as she governed the domain of death, her words made Anastasius’ goal sound arbitrary. What did choice matter when everything had the same end?

Anastasius huffed out an opaque cloud of irritation. The closest rest stop was in the opposite direction.

“You love me, come on,” I said. I kicked his leg playful as he glared at the ground.

“I don’t.”

“You do.”

“I do,” he said, smiling to himself. Then he tensed. He was still looking at the ground when he said, “That’s very bad, Chrissa.”

“Ugh. Why?”

He was already lumbering back toward the cave, shaking his head. “I can’t—!”

“Can’t what?” I followed at a trot. “Can’t what, Annie?”

He stopped at the cave entrance and sat down to climb back inside. “I can’t care about others.” He dangled his legs into the hole.

He was about to push himself off into the darkness, when I caught him by the shoulder. “No, you need Vitamin D. And you need to explain. Up here, please,” I commanded, tapping my foot.

He didn’t move from the lip of the entrance. Instead, he gestured for me to sit on the moss beside him. I begrudgingly sat down, knowing my jeans were the perfect shade of grey to make a glaringly obvious water stain when I sunk into the soggy moss. My feet dangled into the hole beside his.

“Well?” I coaxed him.

He sat there for a moment, fiddling with the book in his lap.

“Well?”

“I have a curse,” he said, briefly.

“Right into the weeds, I see.”

“I do. I have a curse. Asphyxia cursed me when I left her domain to never be allowed to love anyone again. If I care for someone, they die. I don’t know when the curse started, but ever since I realized I was cursed, I knew I couldn’t let anyone else be close to me.”

“Oh my god, dude,” I said. I put my head in my hands. “That’s a lot of baggage to throw at me all at once. You think you're cursed? Like literally cursed? By the goddess of death?”

“Yeah,” he said, ignoring the skepticism in my voice. He cracked open the book and flipped through pages of scribbled lines. He jabbed at a paragraph with his finger. “I have been keeping track for years. I realize I care about someone and then their death date. I can’t find an exact measurement or correlation or anything timeline-wise but they always die. That’s why I don’t love Jacalynn.” He paused there, and looked inward at himself. “I’m not allowed to.”

I rocked my weight around, suddenly feeling extremely uncomfortable with how my body was proportioned, and the general placement of my hands, and the weight of my head on my shoulders. “You don’t—?”

“I don’t.” Annie glared at me intensely. He looked downward and I noticed how his eyelids and eyelashes were completely white, as if only the patches around his eyes were experiencing albinism. Such thick yet fragile eyelashes. “I’m not allowed to care about Jacalynn. I got her this far on an oath and now I don’t need to see her anymore. I don’t—I don’t want to see her anymore.”

I could sense his anguish, like it had built up inside him and now that he was speaking it, the feelings came out of him in waves. “Curses aren’t real, Annie. You’re allowed to care about people. Jacky misses you. I—”

“Asphyxia hates me, Chrissa.”

“Asphyxia isn’t super…real.”

“She hates you too.” He looked up at me again, red eyes searing me like real flames. “Because I’ve admitted that I care about you. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? Sorry for what?” I let out an uneasy laugh.

“I’m sorry, because now you are doomed to die.”