Outside, the moons’ blinding light blankets the damaged forest beneath. The devastation created by an incipient god’s mad rush to the tunnels tore a great rent through the bushland, which has since been expanded to make way for a strip of tents dyed in all eight House colours. The heat is sticky and cloying – the kind that urges daytime naps and nights spent turning in bed.
It’s the end of Summit season, where temperatures across the land begin to slump down from their peak in preparation for Bite’s mild chill. An entire season has passed.
The phantom of that season lingers over me. Though it’s gone, it still feels tangible – like part of my being remains where that divine rain falls. If I reach out, I can still touch the trailing gossamer of that endless moment as it recedes back into me. It’s like I’ve left a fourth eye – a ghost of the present – in the past.
But more than that, it feels as if an avalanche has fallen upon me, and I’ve somehow found myself on the other side, blinking in open air, despite all odds. Too stunned to celebrate. Wondering at the light.
I’m sitting on the shell – the outer edge of a gargantuan structure buried in the ground that will undoubtedly collapse in the coming days – which I’ve torn myself from. Wildflowers and vines curl around my body. They grow visibly, seeming to reach out and touch the shattered ghosts walking past. The Shrike’s aura – now mine, I suppose – is potent but dangerous, and despite inheriting the fallen god’s long experience understanding how to restrict it has been an ordeal. For mortals, it’s too much, too quickly. Yet the way the weeds crawl up my legs offers small comfort in the wait for my visitor.
She’s getting close, now. Since I fell into that hole, she’s come every night to wander around the bone walls – too full of thought to sleep. Each night, the swordswoman found little changed. This will be different.
I sense her notice the crack in the ivory skull and freeze, surveying her surroundings quickly. Either I’m better hidden than I thought, or my stillness throws her off, because it takes two sweeps for her to find me.
Kit blinks. “Vin?” she asks.
“Hey; it’s me,” croaks from my only mouth. The words are stark in the night air, and tears press from behind my eyes. “Your favourite god.”
The former swordswoman stares for several moments. Then, a short, laughing wheeze escapes her as her lips stretch into a huge smile; less about the poor quip and more the fact I made it. “You’re cryin’,” she mocks as tears roll down her cheeks, “you godsdamned big oaf.”
When I chuckle, she goes to lightly punch my shoulder, then apparently thinks better of it and withdraws her fist.
I wave a dark hand. “It’s fine.”
“Yeah,” she drawls, still grinning, “forgive me if I don’t go an’ punch you, yer divine-ness. What’s with th’ new style?”
I go to raise an eyebrow, then remember I don’t have any. Only a big, beaked skull for a face. “You don’t like it?”
The young woman shrugs. “S’alright. I would’ve made myself taller, bein’ honest.”
“Eh.” I sway a hand in a ‘so-so’ gesture. “Being ten feet tall was a hassle.”
“Must’ve been pretty nice, though,” Kit muses. “Never have trouble reachin’ anythin’.”
“You’d be surprised.”
We watch the campers below flit between the tents. Cookfires chuffed smoke into the sky. Kit’s being kind, in her own way; my appearance resembles a wrung-out dishcloth more than any man. Ivory plating and bark speckled with old scars and scorch-marks. The cleaned bones of old wounds; a walking battlefield, but thankfully one whose war is suspended.
“What were you doin’, in there?” the former swordswoman quietly asks.
For a time, I eye the blade around my waist as I consider the question. She allows my silence to stretch without interruption.
Eventually, a response makes itself known. “Just sorting myself out.”
She goes to ask more, then stops herself. “You finished sortin’?”
“No.” A smile crosses my face. “But I’ve sorted something.”
Her dark throat bobs as it swallows. “…Did you hear us speakin’ t’you?”
I nod.
“Did we help?”
My eyes affix her own. “You did. You all did.”
She nods as she wipes at her eyes. “Right.”
We watch for a little longer.
“I was lucky.”
“Lucky? What d’you mean?”
“If I had lived a different life, I might not have made it out,” I tell her. “Thank to you, I didn’t.”
“…Aw, you sap,” she groans. “Ha. ‘Different life.’ I dunno if you’re thankin’ me or insultin’ me.”
“I also have to apologise,” I say. “For what I took from what. It’s not mine. I stole it.”
Kit turns her eyes away. “Weren’t yer fault, what happened. It wasn’t you. Was the blood.”
A weak smile makes its way across my face. “Kit,” I say, “I am the blood.”
High above, the stars glitter like lighthouses scattered across an endless sea. A cloud rolls across the firmament, knowable only through the way those lights are temporarily extinguished. Yet when it passes, they are born anew.
“Well,” she sighs. “Not much we can do.”
My fingers drum across the ivory. “Unless I give some of it back.”
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Her neck cracks as she turns. “How?”
“Making you a Blooded,” I tell her. “I don’t know if it will give you a new arm. And you’ll have to police your own being. Plan around traits new and old. But your memories will return.”
Both dark brows furrow. “You didn’t even let Ronnie keep th’ Owlblood.”
“It… shouldn’t have been my choice.” My three eyes flick to her. “You’re trustworthy, Kit. To respect it; to be careful – you’re capable of both. And…” A laugh rings out, high in the air. “I think I trust the blood, as well.”
Kit ponders my words. After a few moments, she snorts. “This’s a lot o’ drama fer yer first night back. Knowin’ you, I should’ve expected that.”
“So what’s your decision- “
“I know you got godly business t’attend to,” she interrupts. “But I got a few people who’d really like t’see you. It’s gonna be a nice time, Vin. You can hold off fer a while.”
My hands raise above my head in surrender. “Alright, alright. Why don’t you lead me to them?”
“Can’t wait t’see th’ look on their faces.” Kit cackles, and her laughter rings out over the forest, the landscape, and the fallen Fort, far in the distance.
I find myself caressing the scabbarded sword at my waist. The firmament shines high above us. A raiment of moonlight has settled upon our arms.
Kit’s correct. It is a nice night.
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Ground crunches under our feet as we walk down the forested hill. The past season’s heat has left a layer of dry detritus across the forest floor, and our path breaks leaves untouched for weeks. There’s a vibrancy to the sound lacking in most gaits. Cicadas creak through their foreign songs, hidden amongst the trees.
We speak idly during our descent to the camp. Mostly of small things: the absurd jauntiness of a passing possum; how difficult it is to gather water in the morning for the camp; the arduous rituals she must go through to please Head Maleen. Wisdom compels me to stay silent on the latter matter.
There’s a spring in her step; a jauntiness that’s entirely new to her. Occasionally, she’ll smile at empty space – recalling some secret exchange to chew on, like a dog with a bone. I can see her actively attempt to supress it, but each time she shoves it down it creeps back into her gait minutes later. She scowls when she sees me grinning. That quickly fades as well.
While I put myself together, the world and the people within it kept moving. With that knowledge comes trepidation. I wonder whether they’ll resent me for my absence. But I’ve no regrets about the time spent stowed away.
As we grow closer to our destination, conversation turns to a way to sneak me inside without the Houses noticing. Apparently, the sudden arrival of a new god might destabilise negotiations – who knew? Surprisingly enough: Kit. We brainstorm how she might smuggle me into camp, then, when that proves unviable, how to lure the others out without spoiling the surprise.
She leaves me at a small glade, where I get to work gathering and trimming fallen branches for a campfire. Aided by decades of fire-starting experience, I quickly have a blaze merrily licking the walls of a pit. The rest of my time is spent searching for nuts and roots to roast; food which I myself have no need of.
After a time, my gaze falls into the fire. Though I possess no internal organs, it feels as if burrs are sticking to the inside of my stomach. My mind churns: predictions, recollections, extrapolations – the intricacies of them all another reminder that the mortality within is slight and distant. Godhood is my mantle, now.
Which is why I’m incapable of ignoring the group hiking to my position.
“Not much further,” Kit’s saying. “You’ll like th’ surprise. Put a lotta work into it.”
“What is it?” Sash asks. “Did you create something? I feel something weird out there.”
There’s a quaver in Head Maleen’s voice. “I think I know what it is.”
“Me too,” comes Ronnie’s hoarse whisper – the Owl’s capricious gift to them.
“Ah,” Bhan realises. “You sure?”
“Look at her,” Taja states, presumably gesturing. “She’s barely keeping a straight face.”
Then there’s a sudden acceleration of footsteps as Dash begins running, with his sister calling “What? What is it?” after him. Somehow, bereft of a guide, he manages to find his way to the glade. Where I sit prodding at the flames.
Gone is the baby-fat that clung to his cheeks, and the earnestness of his eyes. In their place stands a lean, sharp-eyed fourteen-year-old; pale as lightning in a storm. Made hard by years of self-sufficiency. His blue eyes glitter in the firelight. Like so many times before, I wonder what they see.
Dash stares. His jaw wobbles. “Orvi?” he asks.
I nod. “Yeah. I- “
At hearing only one set of words emerge from my throat, he begins stepping forward, unblinking. I freeze, form coiled, barely managing to keep the tension below the my blackened flesh, where it cannot scare him. That struggles persists until he’s before me, eyes immense as the moons above.
I await the verdict.
But instead of saying anything, he bursts into tears, and stands bawling in front of me.
Then Sash is sprinting into the clearing, finger levelled to rebuke any who would bully her brother, and when the adolescent sees me she too begins crying.
My arms hover over them for a moment. Awkwardly, I draw both into an embrace. They latch around me immediately; bodies feverishly warm. Their tears trail down my skin as I stare blankly at the canopy above. While the others approach the clearing – misty-eyed themselves – the twins only sob louder.
As I did long ago, I start to rub their backs as they weep: firm circles around once delicate bodies. They’ve grown up.
“It’s been hard, hasn’t it? You’ve both done so well. I’m sorry I took so long. But I’m here, now,” I promise them. “With you.”
Next comes Bhan, creeping behind to rub my head and cackle uproariously. Then Maleen and Ronnie – one after the other – folding themselves into the hug. Kit grabs Taja and dives onto all of us, spilling everyone onto the fallen leaves. It’s a miracle we don’t fall into the fire.
A laugh escapes me, and when the twins punch me in the arms for it I only laugh harder.
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When all’s done, they ask me where I’ve been. What I did, in the cocoon I made for myself. They ask whether it was the Shrike’s influence, mending from within, or some other, latent strength given the chance to flex itself. Many of their questions request answers I don’t have. I crawled out of that hole under my own power, but the nature of my divinity is still occluded. There are depths to it I’ve not yet touched. All I know is that I was fortunate.
It’s a strange thing. To know that the slightest variance in the path I’d taken would’ve left me impaled upon my own soul for eternity. No idle luck, nor idyllic faith pushed me here. Just other lost souls, offering the right words at the right times.
I struggle to release these musings into the open air. My being is contained – kept in a tight grip by the laws that bind it – and forcing it into words feels impossible. And it’s a long story. One I increasingly feel is banal, despite the god it stars. For my scalding epiphany amidst the falling blood bleeds heat with every second that passes, and soon enough, it will reach equilibrium with my body and become as mundane as any other organ.
But I owe the people looking at me – Bhan, Maleen, Sash, Taja, Ronnie, Dash, Kit, and all those lost to the present – for seeing something that I did not.
So I talk; haltingly at first, through a meandering path full of switchbacks and digressions that seems to have no ending. I pass the blade I hold around, explaining what is cradled by its dark contours. Everyone holds it – the twins longer than most. When it returns to me there is quiet. No one knows what to say.
“Well,” Kit suddenly drawls. “That’s a lot.”
I huff. “To be fair, we all had to deal with your baggage at the Fort.”
She scowls. “Yours as well. And Maddie’s.”
Maleen gives the taller woman a scathing frown at being brough into the argument.
“Not me,” Ronnie hoarsely claims.
“Or me,” Taja states.
“Or me,” Sash mimics.
Dash turns to her. “We weren’t there, Sash. We couldn’t have.”
“Exactly.”
“If we competing for drama,” Bhan says, “I brought least of all.”
“However, getting you out of Spires was another ordeal,” I point out.
For a long moment, he stares at me. Then he sighs. “You be you, eh?”
“Who else am I going to be?”
The campfire crackles loudly as we continue conversing. Full of jokes, random interjections, and stutters. Around us, nature is alive and vibrant: full of life growing adjacent to our own and treading their own small path underneath the starry sky.
We speak well into the night. Of hopes and dreams and the people gone to use and what they left behind. We speak of our grievances with them, and the little things about them we loved. We speak of the people we once were and who we might become.
We speak until the sky blooms red, and daybreak finally comes.