I had chased Eris for a quarter of a mile, giggling like I never did when I was a boy. Sometimes, I think, we were living as children, free to do so with the targs no longer a worry. She grieved for her father most nights, and so when I saw an undiluted smile on her face, I did my best to make the most of her happy mood for both our sakes. I caught up to her when the moonglow was brightest, and in the empty grey expanse of our world I kissed her, drawing her close and putting my hand over her heart. Whenever I did so, she clutched at the back of my neck. I miss her.

We lay under our robes for as long as we dared. There were still carrion eaters in our region, though with most corpses picked clean we were a temptation to the larger ones, which included a tick-roach that liked to follow us whenever we ventured far from our mausoleum. This night, though, there were no predators about, which made me all the more pensive. Whatever frightened them was easily worthy of our fear as well, so we only lay about for a half hour or so after our affections. I'm glad we rose when we did, for we saw a sight so strange and rare. There was a cloud, it seemed, though no cloud like I'd ever known, but a thing I'd heard and read of whilst slaving away in the Bibliotheca, when once I labored for a month in a small wing of what was called xenoanthropology. But I knew not then what I saw; a spiraling mist of particles that could almost be distinguished, but then rushed together into milky fog once their demarcations were revealed.

We discovered there was a tall ridge between us and the cloud, low from our vantage, but steeply sloped on the other side, which we approached with great care. We both crouched til we were almost prone, then crawled on our bellies to the edge of the rise, seeing that the cloud, dancing as it did, was both nearer and farther from us then we'd thought. We lay still, our small fingers touching, so still we could hear each other's heartbeats. The cloud dispersed, then reformed, particles alive and sensual in the darkling air. We looked upon a voice, a whisper with a body and a face, I could have been anywhere, Eris could have been anyone, we could have both been nonexistent, clouds of our own thought, for were we not always and forever alone? Our fingers touched, and so they were apart. When bodies meet, when fingers touch, they are at war, each fighting under the microscope to keep the other away. And so love is a weapon. This we say, this we were lost in, and in the silence it was music, the love fired into the dying air, so lovely that even Tarthas left it alone; lives not yet lived binding to each other, and beneath them and under the slope the canons that fired this lifeshot held hands as they swayed in an undulating circle. Heads back and necks flared open, eyes open to the sight of their union, their seed, their once in a lifetime moment where they bonded before releasing their warring fingers and vanishing into their long night, where they found the pursuit of loneliness to their liking and shunned the sight of other kindreds, save for those few outlier virgins whose dormant seed impels them to remain alone amidst strange company. Tau, Lafayette, Lafayette, Tau. Such a Yin and such a Yang, one I loved and one I slew. The seeds came together and I was looking into a pillow that grew soft before me, but I dare not touch it. You may feel such a thing, and certainly others have said it, but I truly am an invader in my own body, and another came before me. I do remember who and what came before, though I cannot control them. But that gentle, ambient soul in preformation, it gave me control, and looking into the plasm of the ennui's inner world I saw the face of the first Victor. Brown skinned, nose broken by so many bullies, heart mended by that golden haired Ossie girl who sang to insects swarming over her hands while they writhed in the dirt. Ossie girl... Was Victor Zero's Kendra from Ossary? No. She couldn't have been.. Oh mighty Unconquered Sol! Ossary... The town was not called Ossary. The Dolomites did not give it any such thing as a name, but a designation... Ossuary, a box of bones!

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We basked in the strange splendor of the ennui ritual for as long as it lasted. It was beautiful to see their faces in such awe. I think, having seen the spores rise from the vents in their necks, and having seen the absolute enthrallment it brought them to watch their disparate seeds becoming living souls, that they do not perceive the world in grey scale as many assume, but they empty their hearts of wonder in that unique moment ne'er to be rivaled or repeated, and afterward are incapable of being moved by anything else. I felt a tear slither down my cheek when they let go of each other's hands and parted unenthused. I felt as if a perfect moment ended; a gathering of truest friends long ago separated, the ending of a perfect summer. I would not feel that way again until the Angels fished Pandemonium out of the deep earth. That brave company I was blessed to be conscripted into parted with Abdiel's wings. When Regis took him away to be healed, he took from Turk his only living follower, as I have been destined to walk a solitary path.

"Victor," he told me on the day I left Elvedon, "you may find yourself wondering if I would approve of a choice you're about to make. Don't."

"But I've let you down, and I want to rectify my mistakes."

"I will never journey with you again, and you will feel lonely when that reality sinks in. I worry that in want of friendship, you will seek Lord V's approval, or that of his acolytes. You must learn to think on your own, to decide the proper moral path on your own, or you will end up as no more than a pawn."