The cave was cool and quiet, a blessed sanctuary from the chaos beyond.

Merrit could hear it. The sounds of war and death fading as so many breathed their last. Still fading, as it had been these last two hours. The clanging of metal was silenced, only to be replaced by the distant wails of the doomed and dying.

Death was all around. The cave was a godsend, if it was as empty as it appeared.

He set his best friend on the cool stone ground, just beyond the cave’s mouth, collapsing next to her. He could go no further. Partly because he didn’t want to tempt fate with the opportunity to throw a cave troll at him, and partly because Cherisse was so goddamn heavy.

“I… never got to tell you my favorite joke.” She mumbled, hand on her stomach.

The wound was bad. Merrit didn’t need to be a healer to know that.

“Now’s not really the time for that, Cher.” He said, voice straining.

He had to save her. He had to. ‘There’s gotta be a priest around here, or a wizard, or at least something better than a damn-fucking tourniquet!’

“I’d like to tell it to you, if that’s cool.” Her voice was weak, but there was light in her eyes that filled Merrit with hope: a swelling vitality in the brown wells of her irises.

“You can tell me tomorrow, alright?” He said, shaking his head, and squeezing Cherisse’s shoulder.

“No.” She shook her head, letting out a shuddering breath.

Merrit’s heart plunged into his stomach, and his jaw tightened as if bound by corpse-wire. “Bullshit, ‘no,’ you’re telling me tomorrow, because you’re gonna be fine. We’re always fine, right?”

“No,” She insisted. “There’s this whole setup… it’s supposed to be organic, you know? You’ve never let me tell it before, or I forget about it, and… just, let me tell you before I forget, okay?”

Something—maybe it was the light dancing in her eyes—compelled him to nod.

“Okay,” she repeated, shifting and grimacing, as though she could find a lying position that could make a stab wound not hurt quite as much.

“It starts… with someone making me eggs.”

“Eggs?” Merrit echoed.

Cherisse nodded weakly. “Eggs.”

“We’ve known each other for three fucking years, Cher, I’m pretty sure I’ve made you eggs before.” He smiled weakly at her.

“Yeah…”

She let out a high, wheezing sound that might have been a cough, her body shuddering under the effort to make it.

“But then, when you give it to me, I give you this look, and I tell you… I tell you…” she shook her head. “I say, ‘This isn’t how I like my eggs.’”

She demonstrated a look that Merrit had seen before. One which read: ‘Humor me at your own peril, fool.’

“And then— agh, you’re supposed to ask me back, ‘How do you normally take your eggs, Cherisse?’ But you always say—”

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Do I look like your personal chef? You can get them scrambled or burnt.” Merrit finished.

She let out a shuddering breath that may have been a laugh. “Yeah, asshole. Three years I’ve been trying to get you with this thing, and you always shut me down. You have no idea how annoying that’s been.”

“Yeah,” Merrit bit down on his lower lip, lest it begin to tremble. “I’m the fucking worst.”

“So…” she looked up at him expectantly, a strange energy burning behind her brown eyes. “If you don't have a question to ask me, I swear to every God I’ll die right now to spite you.

“I—” he swallowed, throat aching. “How—”

His voice cracked, and his jaw snapped shut. He sucked his lips in and forced himself to speak in a light, steady voice.

“How do you like your eggs, Cherisse?”

He did not succeed, but the question was nonetheless uttered.

“Thanks for asking,” she smiled wryly. “Normally I’d have eggs in front of me for this part, but I’d…”

She twisted her neck, lifting her chin high.

“…I’d take the plate from you and stand up, looking all indignant-like. And I’d take a fork-full of eggs, and shove it in my mouth. Can you picture it?”

Merrit nodded. He could picture her all too easily.

Cherisse nodded back, with a satisfied look on her face.

“And then I’d say—with my mouth still just full of egg, all muffled—I’d say… ‘I like my eggs the same way I like my women…’”

She looked Merrit directly in the eye as she breathed in, shuddering with visible effort.

“‘Eaten standing up,’” She grinned. “And then I walk away like the smoothest bitch Heaven’s never seen.”

“That’s—”

He choked back a sob, eyes glistening and red. He sniffed deeply, blinking hard, and tears fell from his eyes.

“—That’s so fucking gross, Cher.”

“It’s funnier with the eggs.” She leered, face pale and dirty. “Helps with the—”

She coughed. It was an ugly, racking, convulsive act—and when she stopped, blood stained her lips.

She spat, and smiled like a letch once again. “Helps with the visual imagery.”

Merrit bit hard on the insides of his cheeks, blinking hard and fast. “You’re so gross.”

“I’m hilarious,” she countered, paler than before. “Death isn’t normally this patient with people on the… express ticket, but she’s got a weird sense of humor too, I guess. Likes me enough to give me time for an encore.”

“You’re still here—” croaked Merrit, “—because you’re gonna be fine, you pervert. Not because Death himself is a fan of your comedy stylings.”

“Death’s looking a whole lot like a ‘herself’ from where I’m standing,” Cherisse said in a small voice.

Her eyes were wide, and the vitality burning in them flickered like a candle.

She was not, a distant part of Merrit’s brain noted, looking at him, but past him. Almost through him. That could only mean that one of two things was happening, and neither of them was acceptable.

He didn’t know what to say.

“I love you, Cherisse,” He said anyway, surprising himself.

She blinked owlishly, still not looking at him. “I love you too.”

Her voice was distant, like she was speaking from far away.

“Last words?” She said, tone questioning.

Her hands, formerly tight against her stab wound, were slack, not even trembling, and soaked with dark blood.

A cool breeze swept past Merrit, and the little hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.

“Last words,” she said again, staring up into something that he could not see. “How about… ‘leave ‘em laughing.’ I never did get to… tell Merrit the one… with thhuu…”

The light faded from her still-open eyes—leaving Merrit to weep alone.

And he did.