While the kingdom of gods waged war upon one another, ensnared in the timeless struggle of shifting alliances, enemies, and ultimate power, young Brittle’s day started like the forty-two others before it – slamming his head against the kitchen table.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

“That doesn’t sound like school work getting done,” a pained voice called from the next room over.

The kitchen’s happy yellow walls were faded and peeling. An empty fire pit took up the far corner of the cramped room. Its brick walls, scorched black from decades of use, were now cold and coated in a fine layer of dust and cobwebs. Brittle didn’t think anyone had touched it since moving in at the start of summer. Short wood counters and rickety cabinets lined the yellow walls. Across from him, a single window hung above a sink overflowing with clay dishes. A channel of dust mote riddled sunlight bore through the window’s tightly pulled curtains.

Home – Edvin had called it. Whereas most homes were filled with warmth and laughter, theirs made do with dust and the inescapable musk of mildew. And while Brittle was accustomed to living in damp, musty places, this was the wrong kind of damp. It had no color, no life, no clouds of bugs buzzing across the water’s algae-coated surface. It was the dead sort of damp that one would find in a stagnant watering hole.

Thud. Thud. Thud. Brittle’s hollow head continued to bounce against the solid tabletop.

“Brittle!”

“I’m thinking,” he replied.

“Can you do it more quietly?”

He could not. The loud head thumping did not assist with the thinking process, as Brittle so claimed. He kept at it for the simple fact that it drove the rest of the household mad. Was it naughty? Petty? Dare he say a misguided cry for help? Of course. But it was also annoying – the only way he seemed to get a lick of attention these days!

“Brittle.” A disheveled man stumbled into view, leaning heavily against the rickety door frame for support. Sir Thomassin held a hand to his forehead with a groan, pushing the mop of sweat-soaked curls from his bloodshot eyes. “Please stop. My head is killing me.”

Brittle stopped, allowing his hollow gaze to shift from the man’s haggard face to the green bottle held loosely in his other hand. Disdain flowed like a babbling stream from Brittle’s coarse tongue. “Edvin says that stuff is poison. That you’re desecrating your bodily temple with it.”

Sir Thomassin’s face pinched as he hid the mostly empty bottle behind his back. “And he’s absolutely right. You don’t ever touch the stuff.”

“Why is it okay for you?”

“Because I’m an adult and I’m allowed to make poor choices.”

Brittle watched as the former knight crossed over into the kitchen, attempting to disguise the telltale limp in his left leg. As far as bodily temples went, Sir Thomassin’s seemed to align more closely to that of an overflowing outhouse these days. Brittle wasn’t supposed to say things like that, so he laid his head on the table with a sigh instead.

Sir Thomassin tucked the bottle into one of the upper cabinets safely out of reach, and then hobbled closer. “How’s the letter coming?”

“It’s not.”

The man read from one of the stray pieces of parchment scattered across the table. “‘Dear Mara, I miss you. How is…’” He held the sheet closer to his face, narrowing his red-rimmed eyes, attempting to decipher Brittle’s poor penmanship.

“Exile,” Brittle translated, still strewn across the table like the world’s most dramatic centerpiece. The scuffed wood felt cool against the bark on his face. It reminded him of the swamp and how a quick dip within the murky waters would soothe his body on the hot, unrelenting summer days.

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“Mmm,” Sir Thomassin said, still skimming the rest of the letter. “You misspelled ‘nincompoop’.”

A weak smile tugged at the corner of Brittle’s downturned mouth. Sir Thomassin made him write sentences when he made a mistake. He wondered which of them would find more displeasure in pages and pages of ‘Thom is still a nincompoop’ littered throughout the cottage.

Setting the parchment back onto the table, Sir Thomassin lifted his hands to his face and massaged his temples. “I know it’s been hard for you. We’re all adjusting to the circumstances, but it won’t be forever. Mara won’t always have to be in hiding.”

“It’s not fair!” Brittle’s fist struck the table with less impact than he wanted. The wood barely trembled. And now his hand hurt. Brittle refused to wring the pain from his twiggy fingers, using it to fuel his mounting anger instead. “A god can kill anyone they want without any consequences, but the moment she does it back, suddenly it’s a crime.”

The tips of Sir Thomassin’s fingers dug deeper into the sides of his face as he regurgitated his favorite line as of late. “Life isn’t fair.”

“I died and came back so I could be with Mara! Not this! Not to be stranded out in the middle of nowhere, away from my swamp, away from my friends, learning letters with a washed-up…” Some of the fire raging within Brittle’s hollow trunk petered out when he saw the crease in Sir Thomassin’s brow double. He sat upright with a start and grabbed the quill from where he’d abandoned it, waggling it in the air overhead. “Washed-up pen! I mean, just look at it! The ink’s gone all streaky. It’s no wonder I can’t finish a stupid letter.”

“It won’t be forever,” Sir Thomassin repeated, more so to himself this time, Brittle suspected.

While Brittle threw pity parties in the middle of the kitchen often and with great vigor, he also knew he wasn’t the only one suffering. The former knight was still coping with being stripped not only of his identity, but memories as well. Mara’s spell had done a number on his recollection of the events surrounding Brittle’s death. Sir Thomassin remembered only bits and pieces.

Brittle sometimes found Sir Thomassin’s fragmented memories scribbled down on the back of assignment papers after a night spent sobbing out on the couch. Brittle grimaced at the flood of guilt that swelled within his throat. It felt as if a rock had lodged itself halfway down. He shouldn’t have called Sir Thomassin a nincompoop. At least the man was trying.

“I’m sorry,” he said, even though the words tasted like soot on his tongue.

“Me too,” Sir Thomassin said. “Why don’t we call it done for the day?”

Brittle’s stare immediately jumped to the window. “Can I go outside?”

After having spent nearly a year on his own, it felt downright unnatural to ask for permission for such ordinary things. While the outdoors may not have been the swamp he’d grown up in, Brittle was an accomplished explorer. Besides, the cottage was in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nowhere trees, nestled in the bowl of unfamiliar, nowhere mountains. He couldn’t get lost if he tried! For long anyway. There was that one time involving a ravine and a rather nasty fall, but he’d climbed his way out in the end. And he’d only been missing for three days. Hardly any time at all.

Brittle could tell by Sir Thomassin’s pale expression that he was recalling the incident with the ravine as well.

“I’ll be careful,” Brittle promised.

“You’ll stay close this time?”

One of the benefits of not knowing precise measurements of distance was not feeling compelled to adhere to them. Brittle feared the day he learned what constituted a half mile. “Close,” he repeated, in lieu of actually agreeing to such silly terms.

Sir Thomassin narrowed one eye at him. He’d noticed, undoubtedly, but was also desperate enough for some peace and quiet to ignore it. “Fine, go. Edvin is due to return this evening, so be back by supper.”

Brittle slid from the chair and tottered towards the front entrance as quickly as his wee legs would allow. He threw open the rickety door with a creak, allowing a channel of stark white light to infiltrate the interior of the drab cottage. The sweet smell of pine and wet soil wafted over him, lifting his spirits not high, but enough to pluck them from the ground and give them a good dusting off.

“O blessed freedom!” Brittle said wistfully. “How I’ve missed you.”

There was a three-legged chicken scratching at the dirt at the bottom of the steps. It lifted its head at Brittle and squawked in surprise.

“Son of a gum tree!” Brittle slammed the door shut once more. It was one thing to know you were being watched by the gods and goddesses. To do it so openly, blatantly, lacking glamour or finesse of any kind, however, felt like a slap in the face. “There’s a spy on our front stoop, Thom. Right out in the open. They’re not even being subtle about it anymore!”

“Another two-headed deer?” Sir Thomassin’s muffled voice carried from the sitting room area, where he was most definitely already sprawled face-first over the couch.

“Three-legged chicken, actually.” Brittle threw his twiggy arms over his head as he stomped past into the back bedroom. “If all life was designed by deities, why can’t they get the basic shapes right? You think they’d have this down by now!”

“Just promise me you won’t throw pinecones at this one, alright?”

“I promise.” Brittle unlocked the rickety window and heaved it open, muttering under his breath as he swung his leg out over the sill, “Gonna find me a nice rock instead.”