From my vantage point atop the sphinx I saw the Underside unfurl before me. A quilt of Courts and their psychedelic domains flowed into an impressionistic blur. I wanted to try and appreciate it—I was flying after all—but at the center of my vision was Amber’s slumped body. Her life dripped around a wound that would’ve been better served on me.

“Guilt is ill served when walking the way,” the sphinx said.

“How do you know I’m feeling guilty?” I asked.

The sphinx chuffed. “Our natures are fibers interwoven, summoner. While your soul proves expansive enough that our thoughts don’t blend it hardly means I hear nothing at all.”

I searched my own thoughts trying to find any sign of the bleed that the sphinx spoke of. Yet my mind was a house in a tornado. I’d never find any trace of it, but I could exhaust myself in the search. That was the most efficient method an entity used to undermine their summoner. Make them doubt their thoughts, doubt their family, and reduce them to a sorcery casting shell that sought succor in power. At the end of those tales the summoner would attempt the trial to graduate their entity into one of its upChain forms only to fall short. Dad had said we lost most of the Old World leadership that way.

“Doubt is. . . better for the way.” The sphinx added, “but let it not curdle to paranoia. My Sovereign has need of you, and shells of men are ill-fit to bear the weight of Revelation.”

I did my best to block out the slowing pace of Amber’s heart beat. “What happens when she doesn’t need me anymore?”

The sphinx was silent for a moment. I couldn’t see its face, but as I fixed myself on trying to interpret the small tilts of its head I felt. . . discourse? I wanted something firmer than that but before I could press the curtain of trees that surrounded camp came into view. In preparation for landing, I gathered Amber into my arms best I could.

We glided downward through the trees—their density forced us from proper flight. From branch to branch the sphinx made light work of the arboreal obstruction. Until we finally broke free from the treeline into the “clearing” that the hunter encampment had nestled into.

To their credit, the hunters had already formed hand-spells of their own on the off chance it was an attack from some unbonded entity. There was even someone who brandished a gun in one hand. A dull piece of metal scuffed from use. Not common anymore—most didn’t want to waste the resources on shaping bullets—and functionally useless against entities. A reminder that despite Amber’s talk of peace we still needed ways to put down our own.

With my hands full I propped Amber up and gave her a good wave.

“It’s me, Nadia Temple. Amber, she needs—,” and before I could finish the medics on standby claimed her.

I watched as she disappeared into their white tent. Looked down to see my own hands—metallic, empty, and stained—and slid from the sphinx’s back. The rest of the hunters had already lowered their hands. Though the one with the gun walked over with it still raised.

“You in charge?” he asked.

“Pretty sure,” I said.

He drew back the hammer and leveled the gun at me. The barrel settled into my blindspot—I had to cross my eyes and look up to even see it—while the now doubled crowd pressed in.

Someone shouted, “Put it down, Reggie, she’s good!”

The gunman, Reggie, turned away to shout back. “She ain’t in her ‘suit. For all we know she’s riddled with curses. Alls below, look at what she rode in on. You think that thing is soldiery?”

The bystander was silent. “Thought not,” Reggie said.

Standing there gun to temple, I was furious. Here I survived an encounter with a baron—without an entity mind you—and could nearly be domed by this camo clad asshole. On reflection, he was right to be wary. I was forgetful and left my suit—ignore the fact I was rushing to save Amber’s life—and yeah, the sphinx was beautiful. Too beautiful for most soldier class entities. Heck, I’d even give it to him that there was a fair threat that I bonded to something beyond me and had become a puppet under its power. It’s what the lindwurm wanted me for afterall.

All the same, I was tired of being treated like I was powerless. The image of the Sovereign—unincarnated but still powerful—returned to my mind. In the pocketful of seconds Reggie had turned away from me I had deduced my first sorcery.

My index and middle fingers crossed. Their tips settled against the elbow of Reggie’s outstretched arm. The blustery fuck didn’t even realize people had stepped backward. I felt the energy of hundred steps walking a million roads bind into those fingers. Then I split infinity. Reggie screamed.

I don’t recall what he looked like after I released the spell. My eyes were fixed upon the bouquet of chalcedony fire that sprung from my fingers. I had cast my first true sorcery. Not the civic minded domestic garbage that we called, mortal tier—the garbage my father had dedicated his life to—but rather the kind of glorious working that became the stone that had shattered the foundations of the Old World. A weapon that could sever an arm. Could kill a father.

“Nadia,” the crew lead said. His hand wrapped over my own. Turned my outstretched fingers—because I had aimed them at Reggie’s fallen form at some point—into a fist inside his. “No more.”

I moved my gaze from Reggie—clutching his now severed arm as bystanders hustled him to the medical tent—back to the crew lead. There wasn’t any judgment there. Just pity? My lip quivered as I couldn’t face that. Still can’t. So, I lowered my arm.

“Good girl,” he said. “Congrats on becoming an adult.”

I gave him a half-hearted smile in thanks—he deserved more than I had—and retired to a spare tent. It wasn’t a camping tent necessarily, but more of an event kind. Where the ceiling was high, had smooth canvas walls for rain to roll off of, and was big enough to hold some cots and trunks. Most hunters ran this sort of set-up because graduation hunting was usually easy. The sort of affair where hunters could roam out, get a few catches and come back in time for a beer and a barbecue.

My head fell against my arms to a bassy clang.

“I messed up,” I said to no one.

Lips pressed against my forehead. I tilted my head to meet the eyes of the sphinx.

“That too is the way. Revelation is unseen where perfection walks,” it said.

“What?” I asked, humor edging into my voice.

Its mouth took a downtilt—no doubt sensing my poorly restrained chuckle. “Comfort is spoiled upon those without eyes to reflect.”

It turned its face away from me. I lifted my head fully and set a hand against its shoulder. Felt the muscle that rippled beneath the fur that was soft as any Knitcroft-made fabric.

“I’m sorry.” I admitted, “I just didn’t expect it. Comfort that is.”

The sphinx’s eyes met mine at its corners. “Really? I see so many velvet ties wrapped around your heart. Even the mummer you had me ferry is still wrapped about you.”

The humor in my voice chilled. “Amber wants to comfort me?” I hardly deserved it.

“Open hands find it easier to give than a fist finds it to receive. If you could see more deeply you would know this.” It continued, “Even now you fixate on a perceived failure. Yet look beneath, you found yourself a weapon by which you might wound others. Have saved the life of a friend. Accomplishing all you sought to do by your arrival.”

“Now who has to see more deeply?” I said, “Because I didn’t accomplish everything. I—” and found the admission caught in my throat like a bone. I had forgotten Melissa in it all. Sprinted past the very thing I promised to bring back. The very reason I charted a course that brought us to our cross with the lindwurm.

“I didn’t get a symbiosnake for Melissa.”

The sphinx stared at me before it settled against the tree root that formed the “floor” of the clearing. I heard—no, felt—it engage in discourse again.

“Who are you talking to?” I asked.

The sphinx’s eyes cracked open. “So now you see things, hmm. If you must know I was deliberating,” it said. The sphinx had set the lie between us, but I didn’t have the heart to point out as much. It continued, “This task that weighs on you can still be completed.”

“Really? How?” I asked eagerly.

“Rein thyself first,” it said. “It can be completed, but your time with the maiden ends upon delivery. Any path with her is a beleaguered one.”

I scowled, “So I cut her from my life?”

“That’s the bargain.”

“Deal,” I said. “This isn’t anything I wasn’t already going to do.”

The sphinx chuffed before it rose to its paws and padded out the back of the tent. I rose with it, but it pawed the air dismissively. Stay here. So I stayed and I waited until sleep claimed me.

* * *

“Awaken, summoner,” the sphinx whispered. Its voice was different from the goddess’—the Sovereign—raspy and low like the singers on Dad’s records. A texture unlike the Sovereign’s which was a honeyed intoxicant that dragged you below the threshold of sense. Still, my eyes fluttered as I pushed away from the cot and to my feet.

“Can we stop with the ‘summoner’ and ‘my summoner’ stuff?” I asked. “My name’s Nadia.”

The sphinx’s head tilted ninety-degrees. “Is it critical to our partnership that I do?”

I nodded. I needed at least the illusion of companionship. The feeling of need must have touched the sphinx at the place where our minds intermingled. Its head righted itself as its tail flicked through the air.

“Fine, Nadia,” it said.

“Can I call you anything?” I asked.

“Soldiery have no names.”

“Technically, but even Amber gave Nahey a nickname.”

The sphinx rolled its eyes and spun its head. “The soldiery have no names. It is only by the right of graduation to a higher station that we might gain them.”

My own frustration edged in to meet its own, “Why are you so firm on this?”

“Because my purpose is to be a gatekeeper. Not a friend. If you find fault in this then blame yourself for you summoned me, Nadia,” it hissed. “Now, gather your gift and let us make haste. The camp is departing.”

It was then I looked down to see the symbiosnake that had been placed just ahead of where my feet had fallen. The shifting twining thing squirmed against the red bindings which kept it in place. I stared at the bindings for the slightest change in hue. Nothing. Released a breath and plucked it up by the handle that the prism caps formed once deployed. Then set off for the surface with the rest of the hunter crew that had already begun the breakdown process.

Up the lightless Staircase we ascended, and free from my Undersuit I felt the change from Conceptual Space to the Real. It reminded me of my young years at the lake with Melissa—and the rest of our school to be technical—where we’d kick our feet hand-in-hand to break for the surface. Feel the way the water slid its fingers against our skin. The memory of moisture rapidly disappearing when met by the sun’s light. Yet the passing was marked by the way our fingers wrinkled and skin glistened. It was like that—feelings and all. My skin even seemed to wrinkle, but as I pinched my skin to look more closely I just finally saw the damascus pattern of my spirit which gave the impression.

The sphinx was the one whose transition from Conceptual to Real was perhaps most jarring. I hadn’t realized that the time with which I had looked at it its body had been so illustrative. As if a painting you could view in the round. Yet now the painting had become not an idea but a compromised manifestation. Its fur was now distinguishable as a not-yet infinity of hairs. While its wings were such that each feather could be made out. Its lips made glossy in a—

“Nadia, you’re staring,” the sphinx said.

I blushed and turned away. “Sorry, it’s just so. . . so ya know?” I asked.

The sphinx smirked, “Would that I could say you have hit upon the unspeakable nature of our Court.” It shook its head. “However the nature of this transition can be described effortlessly. Awful.”

The sphinx increased its pace until we broke from the pack of hunters dispersing to their left behind transport. Took a stretch and then shook wide its wings—they had grown.

“A negotiation with what you humans call physics. Don’t stare too long at it lest the bitch know we’ve cheated.”

I mounted the sphinx hurriedly at that insistence. There was a honey’d lilt at the end of its voice. As if the emotions from some higher force dribbled down onto its words. Amidst the crowd I noticed an older man and a boy—a kid a grade below mine—finish stacking crates of entities up at the checkout booths. Checkout booths that I had passed unknowingly.

I said, “I think we have to stop—”

“Dad, I swear we’re missing one!” the boy screamed.

“Nah, sure we got everything,” the dad said.

“It was a symbiosnake. Red as the bindings but super glossy with an amber central eye. Come on, I was going to use it to ask out Mrs. Knitcroft’s daughter.”

I scowled at that. The boy was going to try and buy off her heart. A pointless gesture—she was mine and had been for years per our parents agreement three years prior. A thought that had me look away from remembering what I’d be doing later.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Hmm, which one was that again?” the dad inquired. Which in turn made his son dye red as frustration overtook him. The sight of which rippled laughter through the audience. Distracting them all from spotting the dad as he shot a thumbs-up my way. Questions opened in my mouth, but shot back into my throat as the sphinx leapt into the air. Galloped twice as gave a hearty flap of its wings. Hot winds caught the tips of its fingers as we rode the wind.

“Negotiations, Nadia. No need to ask for that which you surely won’t want to know,” said the sphinx.

We soared home and once more the world unfurled before me. Though its colors were hardly psychedelic. Rather they were morbid in their beauty. The late evening sun bleeding sanguine reds and new-bruise purple into the leaves and the rock. Rolling hills looked less like slumbering women but ladies freshly-slain. I blinked my eyes. Though not in the Underside, there were things, feelings better left uncomprehended. So instead I focused on the winds as they scythed at my cheeks like young weasels—mischievous but sharp. My eyes moved to the desaturated horizon where heavy clouds crawled fat with rain.

I urged the sphinx to fly faster, and was forced to clutch its fur as payment. The wind now pressing me tight into its muscles. Fortunate as I didn’t want to look down and see the ant-sized lights that’d pixelate the valley. Evidence of families getting ready to celebrate the festival the night would bring. The sphinx stared for me though and didn’t care for my lack of desire to talk on the subject.

“What’s the festival?” it asked.

I kept my lips shut on the matter. Which earned me a hearty bucking. An aerial trial I don’t wish on anyone.

“The festival,” the sphinx said.

“Can we talk about anything else? Behold, the sun, don't you want to know what that is?” I asked.

“Hardly, its nature is simple and an altogether boring existence compared to the alliance of Sainthood and Glory that is evidence in the Painting of the Firmament That Girds All,” it said.

“The-the Underside?” I asked.

“Yes. So no. I wish to learn of the festival.”

“It’s the Omenday festival,” I said.

“Go on,” it growled.

So I mumbled into its fur. “Celebrates the omen of fortune that’d fall on a family. The entity that graces your door—courtesy us hunters—is meant to prophecy how things would go. Strong entity from a less than positive Court, very bad. Strong entity from a more positive Court, very good.” I smirked, “Whole families would rise and fall. While marriages would be. . . announced or canceled.”

“Hmmm, I like this day,” the sphinx said.

“Doesn’t matter much for us,” I said.

“Why not? Sure tragedy has already befallen,” it said. “But that was far before today.”

I perked up, “So then what makes the omen for today?”

“Nadia, see more deeply for its simple.” It preened, “Today you bring home the potent—yet neutral—Revelation and shall make apparent the Concepts which make up your family past and still very possible present.”

“What concepts make up my family?” I asked.

“That, I can not answer. Only your actions will as we see to the completion of your quest and mine.”

On that, I could wholeheartedly agree. From there we flew on in silence. Past the rippling rows of golden pearls that shone atop the town. Out into the heavy mantle of sun-set shadows that stretched on. I pointed out which shaded hill was my own. The sphinx spiraled down to the dirt. Amidst the spiral I noted the minitruck the Knitcroft’s used to make deliveries. In the bed was Melissa reading a book by flashlight.

The pages fluttered angrily as our landing wind toyed with them. Melissa stuck her head up, and I caught full sight of her as the wind pulled taut her sundress for a few glorious fabric snapping moments. Her hair was a slightly gray birch-bark with tiny lake-sized waves that took to the wind nicely. Made it all shimmer. Framed her eyes perfectly—green as spring. While her body was what my mother once described as Rubenesque. I had asked her what it meant and she would always get so sad. Then mutter, “If I could show you I would. We lost those a long time ago though.”

When the wind had settled, Melissa hopped out the truck bed and rushed over to me. A smile crossed my face right before she two-handedly shoved me from the sphinx’s back. Which in turn watered a smile onto the traitor’s face.

“Alls below,” I groaned. My arms crossed over my chest in pain—depending on perspective, Melissa had the best or worst aim when she didn’t mean to hurt someone. Even when they deserved it.

She leaned over the sphinx. “You don’t get to say that, Nadia,” she cried, literally. The tears beading her lashes. I found my feet and took advantage of my height so my eyes could fall just beyond the teary face I had made.

“The office told me you checked out cause you went Graduation Hunting,” she said.

“I did. If you noticed what you pushed me from,” I said as I gestured to the sphinx.

Melissa knocked out a quick curtsy. “A pleasure to meet you,” she said.

The sphinx chuffed. “As is mine. Now, I find myself more interested in exploring the grounds,” it looked around the still devastated hill. “Or what remains of them. Than I do in being between your righteous anger.” Then it padded off to do just that. Leaving no other obstacles.

Melissa’s fists clenched. I quickly raised my arm.

“Your present, before you act on any anger?” I asked.

She set her eyes on the symbiosnake in the binding. I gave it a polite shack and she took the entity by the binding’s handle. Held it away from herself the way one might have their hopes.

Her silence forced more words out. “Red as the blush of your cheeks. Amber eyed to off-set the Spring of your own.”

She blushed. “Is the bonding room?” she asked, unable to state the full question.

“It is. I can walk you to it. Turns out navigating some temple ruins can be harder than when its properly assembled.”

Her anger still half-remembered, she shook her head. “I’ve explored plenty. Waited here night and day in the hopes you’d come home.”

Then she walked. I watched her disappear into the ruin that was my family’s namesake. The sphinx returned to my side.

“You lied,” it said.

“Only a white one,” I parried.

“Any occlusion of the truth is a further step from Revelation.”

“Well some revelations are too painful to give someone.”

The sphinx scowled, “It still doesn’t change what you have to do.” Skewering me where I stood.

I watched as the sphinx disappeared as well. Then watched the shadows inflate with each inch of sun disappearing beyond the horizon. I followed after. Slipping amidst the ruins of a spell given architectural form. The way Dad had brought the NewNet to the valley. Linking us all in the “Akashic Network,” that SIRD had been building for a decade and a half. This temple changed everything for the town. It had helped the Knitcroft create a mini power out of what was once a simple fabric co-op made by three of the founding families that had first settled. Began the slow unification of our families. I was going to spoil decades of good will in one night.

Though I was last to come to the house, it was still another half-hour before Melissa joined me in the tea-and-tv room—as my mother so uncreatively coined it. The floors were deceptively cushioned and warmed via runic inscription carved into the wood beneath. In the center of the room about three large square mats from the television set into the wall, was a mini hearth that heated the tea pot I had prepped. She sat down in time with the pot’s impatient hiss.

“Tea?” I offered. “It’s raspberry and hibiscus.”

“My favorite,” she said with a dark glint of skepticism. She held out her cup. Hers because she had one in my family’s set. Mom had made sure of it when she got it commissioned. Would tease Melissa everytime she drank out of it too. Melissa must have remembered those times as well as she quickly blinked away tears before they ripened.

“Did the bonding go well?” I asked. “When I did mine it was a trip.”

Melissa huffed. “Of course it was. You skipped the classes we had that taught us a good technique for it.”

“A good one, as opposed to a bad one?”

“As many ways to put together a fabric are there ways to bond to an entity. Some safer and saner than others.”

I chuckled at the irony. “The sphinx keeps saying I need to see more deeply. Guess it’s right.”

Melissa joined me in good humor. “Can’t forget broadly. You always tunnel vision once you get something fixed in your mind. Takes all my energy to make you see the other paths you can take.”

We sipped our tea.

“Even now, there’s a lot more in this room than something as simple as two friends. Right?” she asked.

She sipped her tea. Mine sloshed in my shaking hand.

“Of course. We’re also betrothed. Or are we?” I asked.

She smiled and took a sip of her tea.

“Of course. I’m glad you’d think to ask,” she said. “Though I’m not talking about that. But about what we said the night. . . it happened.”

The night. I watched her awkwardly slurp at her tea. Wounded by having to ask.

“What did we say?” I asked.

She choked on her tea. Looked up red in the face.

“We parted with love that night. So much that we could pour it into the other’s heart and find ourselves threatening to overflow,” she wailed. “Did one night change it all to vinegar?”

I shook my head. “Never, no. I just,” and I struggled to find more words. My throat was dry. I gulped down the tea—didn’t mind that I probably burnt my mouth.

“It’s just that when it happened I woke up,” I said.

“You woke up?”

“In a world I didn’t know anymore. While what was left behind before it it’s. . .” I trailed off. Heart aching and slowing to excruciating detail.

“It’s what?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Barred from me. What I can see is minimal. Let alone feel it most of the time. If there’s love beyond there it’s too much to squeeze through some keyhole in one burst.”

She had stopped drinking her tea. So I went on. “But I can feel it—squeezing—filling every gap so it can fill my heart. So I can remember. Because there’s so much love to remember.”

Our eyes met with the wariness that only comes when you’re forced to see a new layer to your love. A complexity that either adds or mars the beauty of what you had. What you’re unable to unsee.

Melissa moved aside her teacup. She crawled to me. Hands and knees with a predator’s sway. Her eyes looked upwards with a wet and wanting coquettishness. My teeth sunk into my lower lip as I felt an urge of restraint well in me. Still, I slid my cup aside as well. I didn’t want her to accidentally spill it. Yet, with obstruction put aside, she found her way into my lap. Slid beneath my arms and allowed my hands to roam. Something gave in my resistance as I fell backwards.

The sun slunk past the horizon and light fled from the room. Save for the dull glow of the hearth. Beyond Melissa’s head, the starry mural my mother painted glowed into view. Bestowing the girl—no, the young woman as she was an adult now same as myself—a heavenly aura.

“Then let me tear down the wall,” she said. Stood above me. Unbelted her dress and let it tumble down before she kicked it away to some dark corner. Settled back into my lap—though now my hands touched her with even more care. There was a wind today yet she was so hot.

Melissa cupped my face and guided our lips together. Where they met, I could only taste salt. Tears joining where our tongues twined. Her own hands slid from my face and roamed the territory of me. In search of some purchase by which she could take hold and pin me lest I escape. At the touch of such want it would’ve been rude if it didn’t inspire my own. Though mine shattered free from want into outright hunger. If this was to be my last meal with her then I prayed she would forbid my gluttony. Even as a growl rumbled into her mouth—oh how my hunger exceeded her want—and I tilted her from my lap. Poured the beauty to the cushioned floor and took my position—favored and well-tested—above her.

It wouldn’t be for another hour until we had slaked our thirst upon each other. Though, despite my promise to the sphinx, I found ourselves more entwined than I had intended. My thigh was well-set between Melissa’s. Her head made a pillow of my hand—the hand I cut a man’s arm off with. I jerked it back toward my chest ready to apologize for the red on her face. Though there was no red save the gentle blush that joined with her glow made her so divine.

“Do you see it now?” she asked. “The love that’s beyond that wall.”

She pressed her hand over the one I clutched. I looked down at it, and saw the love. Saw the way that might open to me if I only took it. Showers of rice, towers of gifts, and the construction of a new house. Attached of course to the sprawling Knitcroft estate. My lab nestled with hers. I could even see how we’d bother each other every couple minutes. Our hands full with simple problems as an excuse to squeeze even a few more lines into every moment of our life. This moment—the one that had broken me—could be the mortar that builds me anew. Into some woman that values every moment with love and appreciation. We would even have kids together—her family having long developed a technique for couples like us to conceive.

A sickness rose in me. A vengeful bile that paired with the sound of a strained spirit. Pulled ever so tautly that a voice could run through it.

“The deal, Nadia,” the sphinx reminded, “lest you fray that which keeps us truly bonded.”

And lose the power I had nearly lost someone’s life to acquire.

I shoved Melissa’s hand back against her chest. Disentangled our limbs with disgust on my face. My hand found her dress as I crawled backward, so I handed it to her. It wrapped around her body from my toss.

“Right now, the thing I see is you trying to steer me away from what I’m meant to do,” I said.

“Nadia, I—” she tried to speak, but I cut her off. I was too weak otherwise.

“I swore I’d avenge them because otherwise you’d have me live in a world that just moves on from them. Let them drip away to nothing but memories of a wrong unanswered.”

Melissa told me I was screaming by that point.

“Let the world think I’d just stand aside as those I love are cleaved from my arms. No,” I said. I stomped over to her—my shadow now a vengeful mural in the flickering light of the hearth.

“I could never do that to my parents. I couldn’t do it to you,” I bellowed.

My voice echoed in this dead house I haunted.

“So what are you saying?” she asked.

“That whoever you marry shouldn’t allow it to happen to you,” I said. “I won’t.”

She was quiet as she rose to her feet. Dress clutched tight against herself.

Her voice was soft, “Why?”

“Because—,”

“No,” she interrupted, “not if you’re going to lie to me.”

Her eyes blazed in the hearth-light and turned her tears into crystals that trapped her hurt. My reasons weren’t lies, but they were hardly the truth.

“It was the cost for your symbiosnake,” I said.

Truth was the fan that caused her fury to bloom. She shoved me. Shoved me again. Her tears streamed as her fists fell against me.

“You paid it,” she said. “You paid it and now just throw it in my face. What did I do that was so bad? We’re supposed to be partners, and you just keep deciding things for me!”

I caught her fists. Together we trembled on the precipice of too much truth—and I tossed us over the edge.

“Why not, you decided I was a monster. That night on your couch when I needed my partner, where was she?” I asked.

“I was scared, Nadia. You didn’t feel anything. You hurt me!” she screamed.

Melissa flung her arms free from my grip and stumbled backwards—she used more force than needed. Then kept walking backwards. When she stopped she looked at me. Alls below, she saw me for everything I was—and everything I told myself I would be.

“You. . . ,” she gathered herself. “You looked then like you do now. Like your heart is crumbling. But this time, I’m not going to help you put it back together.”

Then she left.

A few minutes after I heard Melissa’s car start, the rain arrived. From the opposite end of the hallway came the sphinx with lidded eyes and a bemused smile. It found me curled up, flesh nude and heart raw. I could feel the pleasure that it emitted as it strolled around me. The way a predator would its prey. At some point I had forgotten it was dangerous.

“What is dangerous are poorly conceived oaths, Nadia. Especially between such partnerships as an entity and their summoner,” it said. Before it settled behind me in the shape of an oversized bread loaf. Its wing tucked me in against it. A bulwark against the wet-cold of outside that overwhelmed the hearth fit only to warm tea.

Nadia asked, “I’m not in charge, am I?”

The sphinx’s laugh vibrated through its body in a slow dull wave. “Oh, Nadia, you are no more in charge than I. It’s to your luck that we are equals rather than either of us proving deficient.”

“So my orders?” I asked.

“Are to be considered as requests. The same as mine to you. The only guarantee being self-benefit and that to break oaths set between us would harm the bond we depend on.”

Confident, it added, “But, seeing as you’re so broken. I’ll give you a name to call me by. Sphinx.”

It was my turn to laugh. That was to be our relationship—negotiations and malicious compliance. Simple and dangerous. One I’d be navigating alone. My thoughts turned to Melissa as I ached to share my newly sown fears with a heart that beat to a human rhythm. Unlike the alien one beside me that drummed in jazzy syncopations too cruel for a man to ever play.