The door shuttered open, its rusty hinges creaking. A stream of music carried out along with it, echoing from a small, janky radio in the corner of the living room. It was like something Momo would have had as a child – barely modern, with batteries that were burning a hole in the device’s innards. One of Viktor’s experiments, Momo was sure, but a wonderful one. It was playing something like soft jazz.

With the music, came the girl; Momo saw her nails first, long and painted, tapping on the door handle. Then came the rest of her, a figure still as striking as the first day they met; five feet and eight inches of messy elegance wrapped in a paint-stained apron. Easels lurked behind her, evidence of an interrupted art session.

“Nura, I swear, you know this is my me time. I told you I’d meet you at the pizza spot later –”

Sumire looked up, the words dying in her mouth when she saw who was really standing in front of her. Her mouth opened and closed, her throat wobbled. This continued for several silent seconds, the tension between them hanging more precarious than a car tipped over a mountainside.

Momo urged her mouth to speak, but the oppressive force of a million unsaid words, a trillion unconfessed feelings clamped around her throat. As many times as you could imagine a reunion in your head, nothing quite felt like the real thing. She had a ginormous, immovable peach pit in her throat; her eyes had already become pitifully watery. The ground beneath her felt like quicksand—her feet slowly descending into it like two dumbbells.

“Momo,” Sumire said.

She blinked quickly, saying nothing more. Momo wasn’t used to catching Sumire this dumbfounded. So utterly stunned. It was a rare look for the pirate, who was predisposed to precaution and preparation, never one to be caught off guard. She tended to keep her emotions close to the chest, not written all over her features. Much unlike Momo, who wore every insecurity on her face like a badge of honor.

“Hi,” Momo mumbled. “I’m back.”

“I can see that.”

“Yeah.”

As the two stared blankly at each other, something began to build in Momo’s stomach. Like a bundle of nerves that was ready to burst.

Sumire sighed. “Why don’t you come in—”

That brewing feeling inside Momo suddenly unwound, coming undone. In a bout of derangement, she cut the other woman off, walked forward and pressed her body flush to Sumire’s.

“Oh,” Sumire mumbled as Momo cupped the side of her cheek. “Okay —”

Momo wasn’t sure what overcame her, it was like a bodily possession. That same sort of rage that had overwhelmed her back on the boat, talking to Kami, manifested itself here in a different form; it wasn’t anger, but impatience. Exhaustion from all those days away, from all that useless time spent trying to convince other people she was worth their time, when the single person whose opinion she cared about was right here, in front of her, braids tied up in a messy bun, eyes wide and brown and breathtaking.

Momo crashed her lips into Sumire’s, closing her eyes tightly. Sumire leaned into it with an uncanny softness, still stunned, but inviting. She led Momo backwards, shutting the door quickly behind her. The two treaded blindly through the room, trying their best not to knock anything over. Well, Sumire was trying—Momo was not; Momo was utterly consumed. She held Sumire’s face with both hands, kissing her over and over like it was the last thing she might do.

It might as well be.

The thought struck Momo like a stake; she felt the everpresent curse of Sera’s box in her pocket. Her breath caught in her throat, but she shoved it down, determined to live only in this fleeting moment, to say fuck it to everything else. She moved her lips from Sumire’s mouth to her throat, smiled stupidly against her nape as Sumire laughed.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Mo, watch out…” Sumire laughed. Momo kissed her cheek, and one of her horns knocked at Sumire’s forehead. “Momo, ow.”

Momo pulled away, pupils fully dilated.

“S – sorry,” she stuttered. “Are you okay? I didn’t mean to–”

“Relax,” Sumire said. She bit her lip, running her fingers over the red spot forming on her forehead. “You didn’t gore me… yet.”

Momo blushed profusely, covering her face with her hands.

“I have no idea what just came over me,” she mumbled. “I – I hope that was okay.”

Sumire just laughed. She pulled at the collar of Momo’s shirt, bringing her forward.

“I would have been upset if you had done anything else,” she said lowly, her brown eyes locking onto Momo’s like a sniper rifle. “But it does beg a few questions. You’ve never kissed me like that before. Actually, I don’t think you’ve ever kissed me, period.”

Sumire drew her thumb over Momo’s lips, and Momo’s blush deepened.

“Did the road change you?” Sumire continued, teasing. “Or was it the sea?”

“Neither. Both,” Momo answered honestly, using the last of her fading audacity to wrap her arms around Sumire’s middle. The other woman grinned wider. “Look, there’s something… there’s something I need to tell you about. It’s about Sera, and this device—”

“No,” Sumire said, then laughed at Momo’s expression. “You can kill the mood later. But you are not bringing that name into this room. You are bringing those horns into my bedroom, and then maybe onto my couch, and then we can talk shop. Got it?”

Momo swallowed hard, her throat bobbing.

“Got it.”

—

The afternoon dragged on like an aged wine, fuzzy and sweaty and ravenously red. It was like nothing Momo had experienced before in her life on Earth. One: because she had died a virgin, and two: because she had never felt love like this: rabid enamoration that felt like spiritual possession; endless craving, lust, a quiet kind of safety. The kind of thing where it feels like you’re holding someone’s beating heart in your hands, squeezing it just a little, but not enough to hurt.

“You know, part of me never thought you’d come back,” Sumire confessed casually. They were splayed, as promised, on Sumire’s couch, holding hands and staring at the ceiling. “Like you might just die in my letters. Isn’t that poetic?”

“I’d say it’s morbid, actually,” Momo laughed. “But that’s kind of your thing.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m as flowery and cute as it gets.”

“You threatened to kill me, then actually tried to kill me—”

“Ugh, for how long are you going to hold that over my head?”

“For as long as you held that blade to my throat, probably.”

Sumire scoffed. “So for only a few seconds. And yet it’s been months—”

“Six, actually,” Momo said, sitting up. “Six months. I’ve been counting.”

Sumire mirrored her. “Have you?”

“Yeah,” Momo said, cheeks reddening. “Six months and five days. I think. I was never great with math. But I painted you something, like an anniversary gift…”

Momo reached over the couch for her backpack, retrieving her art notebook. It occurred to her, briefly, that Sumire was the first person she’d ever shown the notebook to. Not even her professors had been privy to the intimate pages of her moleskin. It felt almost as intimate as what they had done thirty minutes before, a tangle of limbs and horns on Sumire’s velvet mattress.

Smiling nervously, she handed the drawing to Sumire. It was the portrait she did of her weeks ago, when she had been riding through the hot dunes to Karahtan.

“I’m nowhere as good a painter as you are,” Momo said. “But I tried. Don’t laugh.”

“I would never.”

Sumire took the drawing. For a minute, she just stared at it, eyes wide and lips faintly parted. She didn’t laugh, she didn’t even blink, she just… looked. A shadow of vulnerability lay over her face, as if Momo had picked at her very soul with a tweezer.

“This is really how you see me, then?”

That question took Momo aback—the other girl’s tone was neither positive nor negative.

“I mean, like I said, I’m not good, by any means. So please don’t be offended. I literally was about to fail out of college when I ended up in this place…”

“Momo,” Sumire said, looking up. “It’s beautiful. It looks like me.”

“Oh,” Momo said, heavily relieved. “It does?”

“All that time with Roland… I never painted a self-portrait. All I knew of myself was the image I had in my mind. The image of a haunted, slowly dying drudge, stuck under that torturous shall,” Sumire said, caressing the picture softly. “To see myself like this—smiling, grinning like there’s nothing weighing me down. It’s… I can’t really put it into words, honestly.”

She placed the drawing on her coffee table and smoothed it out.

“I’ll have it framed,” she said, decidedly.

Momo’s heart nearly burst.

Then Sumire took a breath in. She leaned over and took Momo’s hands, holding them tightly.

“Now,” she said. “Let’s get a bite to eat, and you can tell me all about the S-word.”