circumstantial-simultaneity

[circumstantial-simultaneity]

(Sorry to have to be doing this, especially so soon after the last hiatus, but I really just need to take this time.)

I’m going to be putting Where’s My Fucking Teenage Dream? and Like A Broken Record on indefinate hiatus due to the situation with Dream. Even if the Dream character in both is an alternate version of a character he plays on a minecraft server, I still want to take some time and figure out what I want to do with that character and if I even feel comfortable continuing either story at all. I’m very sorry to be doing this and I hope I’ll be able to figure something out to at least resolve both in a satisfying way, if not the way I originally intended.

That being said, I’m not necessarily leaving the dsmp fandom as a whole and I’ll probably write more for it in the future even beyond finishing these two fics. For the time being, though, I’m probably going to be pivoting to other fandoms for a little bit and we’ll just see where things go from there.

[circumstantial-simultaneity]

FAUST, MIDAS, AND MYSELF

There was a storm gathering on the horizon. She could see it through the window, past her knight and the shattered sun that framed him as a halo. The distant thunder rang like bells in her head, even with the low murmur of her knight’s voice washing over it like waves lapping at the sand.

“A sign of coming danger, right?” asked one of the masked pair. He wore a frowning mask, though she was sure that they swapped masks whenever she wasn’t looking. Once, it had seemed very important that she keep track of which one was which, cataloguing all their differences to try and find any hint of danger. Now it was easier to just look away.

“It’s just rain,” she said.

He twirled a bone between his fingers, bleached the same off-white as the sky outside. “I went out in a storm as a child,” he said. “The winds were powerful enough to strip flesh from bone and the lightning reduced all it touched to ash, but far worse was the rain, which came down so hard that it was easier to just become one with the earth. It burned. I didn’t think water could do that.”

“I don’t think this storm is that powerful.”

“No?” He hummed thoughtfully. “Well. I suppose you’d know better than I.”

She cast a glance towards him to find the air beside her empty. The only other figures in the room were her knight and a figure wearing a mask with a smile wide as an open wound. They were discussing dissecting the earth with the same clinically off-putting detail as one would use for a corpse. She tuned out their words and let her gaze wander over the room.

This was the kind of room that invited curiosity, cluttered with objects up to its rafters. She peered closer and found that hidden amongst them was various bits of viscera, arranged on plates and sitting in bowls and displayed in jars. It almost looked like food in the dim lighting. She swallowed back her nausea and looked for any kind of exit, but the room was devoid of windows or doors, making it feel so much smaller than it actually was. Though she thought she saw shadowy paths snaking between the shelves, they revealed themselves to be simple tricks of the light when she peered closer. She went to one of the tables and glanced over the items that covered it without really seeing any of them.

“Searching for anything in particular?”

Across the table stood a masked man. A mirror hung behind him, and for a moment she thought that he stood within its reflection, but then he stepped forwards and broke the illusion, picking up a blade as wicked and red-stained as the grin of his mask.

She looked back at the window, but her knight was alone now. He asked empty air how best to cauterise the wound, and didn’t seem to notice that he didn’t get a response.

“Where’s the other one?” she asked.

“What other one?”

“The other you.” She gestured towards the other half of the room, a mirror image of where they stood, though the two sides had not a single thing in common. Despite standing still, she was starting to feel disoriented, so she fixed her gaze on the mirror and watched with a dull fascination as her reflection drowned. “There are two, right?”

The man gave a hollow laugh. “Ah, he got washed away in the storm.”

“No he didn’t. I’ve met him.”

“Did you?” His reflection peered over his shoulder, its face all twisted up in a frown.

“I wanted to see if he could help me.” Her gaze drifted to a tray of knives. As an afterthought, she asked, “Do you ever get that feeling that there’s something rotten in you that needs to be cut out?”

“Your problem is honey, not rot.” He held a lantern aloft, candlelight dividing his face into light and shadow. “Can’t cut honey out, not without cutting yourself into messes, but fire will probably do the trick.”

“But I already know fire doesn’t work.”

“Then it’s poison, and you need to hollow yourself out.” He held a vial now, labelled with skull and crossbones.

She looked down at the loaf of bread that sat between them, still warm from the oven. “It’s not poisoned.”

“Everything’s poisoned.”

Her gaze cut to the still-beating heart on a nearby plate, knife and fork neatly framing it. “If it’s not meant to be eaten in the first place, I don’t know if that really counts.”

“Everything’s meant to be eaten.” He laughed, the sound at odds with the frown on his mask, and added, “How else are you meant to understand anything?”

“I think you’re poisoned,” she said. “You’re rotten to the core, whatever’s wrong with you can’t just be cut out.”

“Not for lack of trying,” he said, the words smothered by a crash of thunder. She heard them nonetheless. Louder, he said, “Takes one to know one.”

“You said my problem was honey, not rot.”

He ran a thumb over the label on the jar of honey he held, twin grins of mask and skull. “What’s the difference, really?”

“Is there a point to this?” she asked.

He was silent for a long time – the entire room was, except for the low murmur of rain hitting the roof. The mirror behind him rippled with every raindrop, distorting the smile on his reflection’s face. The only feature she could make out clearly was its eyes, sharp and ever-curious – the only thing the pair had in common, and the only genuine trait of either. She had to look away, ignoring the familiar prickling of their gazes.

When at last he spoke, he spoke with a million voices, all of them far older than he’d ever sounded before. “The honey’s in your veins,” he said, “all mixed up with your blood – to try and take it out would mean death.”

“Is there really no other way?” she asked, meeting her own gaze in the mirror.

“It’s a part of you now. It is you.”

“It’s not me.” Her reflection burned in golden light.

He said nothing, and she hated him in that moment – hated them both, for thinking they knew better just because they weren’t beholden to someone else in the way she was, as though hiding their shackles was enough to stop them from existing. She wore her heart on her sleeve and that meant she posed a threat, watching them to see whether their loyalties matched up with her own.

But they were past that point now, weren’t they? She’d stopped looking back at them. She just let their gazes slice her open from head to toe, her guts spilling out over the floor.

Framed within the window’s reflection, she watched a child cry on a park bench.

“I’ll figure something else out,” she said, turning away. “But I refuse to be anything other than what I am.”

“And what are you?” asked her knight from behind her.

She walked over to the windowsill and let her elbows rest on it. The clouds were a black stain against the white sky, covering almost the entirety of it now, and the world was obscured by rain and mists. It felt almost like nothing existed beyond what she could see.

“I think,” she said, “I’m happy. Or I’m trying to be, anyway.”

“Is that such a new thing?” he asked, coming to stand beside her. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye and found him staring out the window, his gaze thoughtful.

Her answer was swept away by the storm.

[circumstantial-simultaneity]

(Thought I should put this update here too - apologies for the delay on this next chapter!)

Just as a heads-up, there’s been a bit of an impromptu hiatus on Where’s My Fucking Teenage Dream? as I have unfortunately hecked up my shoulder! It is thankfully on the mend and I do have the next several chapters basically ready to go, requiring only minor editing, so there’s probably going to be a flood of daily updates starting tomorrow and going until… well, pretty much the final chapter! While it’s a shame I couldn’t get Fundy’s birthday chapter uploaded on Fundy’s birthday, I’m really quite excited for the next few and I hope those of you that are reading the fic will enjoy them too!

[circumstantial-simultaneity]

FAUST, MIDAS, AND MYSELF

“What are you writing?” he asked.

She looked across the table at him – the others were singing and dancing in the room beyond, their stomping feet bearing the same lopsided rhythm as a heartbeat. He was singing too, but had somehow managed to slip his question in between the lyrics, eyes boring into her own.

Her gaze dropped to the pages spread before her as the song wound itself around her thoughts. With their voices layering over each other, all singing in a round, she couldn’t tell what the words of the song were, though she could tell there was a perfect space for another voice in their melody. A part of her yearned to join in.

“I don’t know,” she answered, tracing the words written in perfect golden ink. It was her own handwriting, she knew that much, but the words themselves were incomprehensible.

“It looks important.” He tapped his foot against hers, keeping time. “You’d better figure it out soon.”

She caught a glimpse of his name and froze, eyes scanning the pages again and again to try and figure out what she had seen, to no avail. The pen strokes refused to resolve into anything that made sense, and she wondered if it had been a trick of the light that made her think she’d seen his name amongst them.

She pushed the pages away, frowning, and when she looked up she found that they’d all left, so suddenly and so silently it seemed they’d all vanished into thin air. Her ears rang.

“Are you afraid?”

The voice came from behind her and she turned, surprised to find there was another member of their party. He sat at the edge of the room, head framed by a window, the sun gilding strands of his hair. He hadn’t been singing either, she realised, if he’d even been there at all.

“No,” she said. “Should I be?”

“I think you’re lying,” he said, looking past her. “You’re hiding something.”

The papers were burning white in her periphery; she kept her gaze on him. “I’m not.”

He frowned thoughtfully, humming under his breath. After a moment he said, “That song they were singing…”

“The song?” she asked when his words trailed off.

He stood and looked towards the door. “Do you really not understand? Maybe you’d choose differently, if you knew.”

“Knew what?”

His gaze fell on her again, slicing straight down to her soul. “It’s a war song,” he said gravely. He lifted a hand to gesture towards the others – to where they had been. There was something dark staining the wood where they’d danced. “Something sung before battle to get the soldiers in a good mood. To help them forget the blood they’d shed come morning.”

She felt sick. She wrapped her hand tight around her wrist, digging her fingers between the bones. “I don’t agree with that.”

A sad smile crossed his face and he dropped his hand. “I’ll see you on the other side, then.”

And then he left. The words she’d wanted to say stuck in her throat, and she could only watch as he took even steps towards the door and flung it open, flooding the room with blinding light. She had to look away, though she felt like it was the wrong thing to do – that maybe there was still something more she could have done to stop him.

She drew her hand back and stared at the blood under her nails. Her wrist was whole, but the blood remained. She curled her hand into a fist and turned back to the table.

There were more papers now. They were piled high, blocking her view of the room beyond, all of them bearing increasingly messy handwriting that was still undeniably hers. When she picked one up, she left dark smudges on the paper that turned her stomach, and she quickly put it down again before standing.

She turned, her footsteps too loud in the empty room. She thought she could still hear distant singing, or maybe it was just the memory of the song still echoing in the depths of her mind, winding between the cracks in her skull. For a moment it was louder – for a moment, there was dirt beneath her feet – but that moment passed just as quick and she found herself back in that empty room.

She sat on the floor, her back against the wall. There were more pages here, scattered all around her, and so many of them were stained now. In some places, the golden ink seemed to change into something redder. She drew them close and, despite her headache, once more tried to understand what they were saying.

The sunlight streaming through the window fell on a puppet sitting opposite her with all its strings cut. She tried her best not to look at it. Looking would make this real.

“I think I’d prefer death,” he said hollowly.

“I don’t accept that.” She splayed her hand against one of the pages, still keeping her gaze turned away from him. “It will be fine. Somewhere here-”

“Success will hurt, won’t it?” he asked, cutting her off. She was almost glad, though she hated the words themselves – she hadn’t known what she would say next. “Victory means life.”

“Death hurts too.”

“Not me.”

She sighed and shoved the papers aside. “That’s the problem,” she found herself saying, honey sticking her back teeth together. “When did my pain stop mattering to you?”

“Never,” he promised. It would have been easier to believe if his voice hadn’t still been so empty.

There was a flash of light at the edge of her vision and she glanced over to find a mirror, her own visage staring back at her. She wasn’t sure if it was the mirror or her reflection that was cracked, but whatever it was bled a sluggish golden ichor. The rest of the reflected world was aflame.

She wiped her face clean and looked down at an empty page – then, ignoring the hollow room before her, she started to write.

[circumstantial-simultaneity]

FAUST, MIDAS, AND MYSELF

They met at a crossroads, his clothes shimmering with different colours as thoughts – decisions – raced through his mind.

“Can I trust you to lie for me?” he asked, clothes shifting towards deep burgundy.

“Can I trust you?”

“With this, yes.” His clothes turned bright honey-yellow and he pulled a face. “It suits me, doesn’t it?”

“No, it doesn’t.” She took a step forward, and it rang out against the glass floor. When she checked on her reflection, she found that it was still hanging back. She turned her gaze towards him again. “Where do you want to go?”

He looked towards the right, and his reflection turned to stare in the opposite direction. “It varies,” he said. “I didn’t expect you to ask.”

“Why wouldn’t I ask?” Honey coated her tongue.

He fixed her with a concerned look, but it disappeared within seconds and, when he reached for her hands, his reflection moved in sync. It unnerved her more than she thought it would to see it mirror him so perfectly.

“I want to go home.” His brow furrowed and he amended, “I want to go where I can make a home.”

Wheat sprung up in the fields around them, rich and golden, covering all but one path. They turned as one to look down the path still free and, drowning in honey, she said, “It’s a hard path to walk.”

“So is every path,” he said bitterly. His clothes were so white they almost glowed as he added, “Except one. But I promise I’ll never walk that one.”

“You’ll need help.” A figure stood in the centre of the path, his eyes sewn shut. He smiled at them and vanished again. “The prince wants his throne back – help him with that, he’ll give you a home.”

He closed his eyes and frowned. “I can do that.”

Blood welled up out of the ground, staining the gold of the wheat. The sky clouded over. “The nobles will never give you what you want if they climb to power.”

His hands twitched, smearing red across her hands. “I see.”

“You can have the world, if…” She took a deep breath, copper and honeysuckle filling her lungs. She didn’t want to say the next words, but they were pulled from her throat. “If you kill him.”

His eyes shot open and he dropped her hands. The world returned to the way it had been, with its pale sun and glass-covered abyss. She looked down each of the paths in turn, but they all looked identical now.

“The price is too high.” He straightened his clothes. The bloodstains were hidden well within the swirls of shifting colours. “Give me another path.”

“The other path will take everything from you. You will never have a place you can call home, though you may have people.” She twisted her hands together behind her back and forced herself to meet his gaze. “Is that enough for you?”

He considered his hand for a few silent seconds, tilting it so the light caught on the still-wet blood. His clothes settled into a bright red. “It will have to be, won’t it?”

“Aren’t we past lying?”

“Aren’t we past asking?” He looked at her. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. “You’re the one who told me what would happen.”

“I keep hoping something different will happen.”

“For that, you’d have to change the rules.” He twirled a ring between his fingers. “The current ones are too limiting.”

“This isn’t a game.”

“Everything is.”

She snatched the ring from him. In her grasp, it turned to gold dust, and she flung it into the wind. “I refuse to play,” she said firmly.

The sun shattered behind his head, the dust whisked away and disappearing within seconds. “Then you win.”

“What kind of game do you win by not playing?”

“One where you already held the prize.” He cupped the back of her head gently, a smile brighter than the sun and sweeter than honey on his face. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“And what path will you take?”

“Ah, I thought you’d decided not to play?” He kissed her forehead and turned away.

She blinked, and he was gone before she’d opened her eyes. In her hands she held a scrap of fabric, which had settled into something dark and shimmering, adorned with pink roses. She ran her thumb over the edge of one of these roses and smiled to herself.

[circumstantial-simultaneity]

FAUST, MIDAS, AND MYSELF

“I didn’t keep you waiting too long, did I?” he asked, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head and taking a seat beside her.

She smiled at him, pressing her back against the tree. The sun was warm against her skin. “Not too long, don’t worry!”

The moment was peaceful. They were alone, though she could see crowds of people passing through the streets of the distant city, and the blanket that they sat on was soft. She ran a hand over it before pulling the basket close. It was full of apples, but she reached deeper, searching for something else; her fingers brushed a jar of honey and she fell still.

“Why am I here?” he asked, his gaze fixed on the distant city.

“Who else would be here?”

He shrugged and lapsed into silence again. She forced herself to pull the jar out, though reluctance pricked her like needles. Already, she could taste its sweetness in the back of her throat.

“This is meant to be a happy moment, isn’t it?” She held the jar up to the light, then lowered it to look at the city. “We won, didn’t we?”

“There’s always another battle to be won,” he said, pulling an apple from the basket and tossing it into the air. “Or lost.”

“Life is about more than just the battles.”

“Is it?”

“It has to be. Or else, what’s the point of fighting?” She took a deep breath, taking in the warmth of the sun and the rustling of the tree’s leaves. “It’s the moments like these that give you a reason, right?”

“This is a nice moment.”

Her gaze dropped to the jar and her smile slipped. Dragging her nail down the edge of it, she asked, “Is it our moment, though?”

“You’re the one who dragged me here.” He bit into the apple with a sharp crunch, blood gushing from the wound.

“You’re still the person I want to spend the good moments with.” She turned her gaze on him. He stared, unblinking, back. “But I can’t forget…”

“Neither can I.”

She bit the inside of her lip until it bled. “Do you have any regrets?”

An apple fell from the tree and he caught it and turned it over in his hands, examining it with sharp eyes. When he looked up, its skin fell away, twisting and curling to the ground. “What’s the point of regret?”

“So you don’t make the same mistakes again.”

An apple fell from the tree and he caught it and turned it over in his hands, his gaze slipping beneath her skin like a knife. “You really think people can change?”

“I have to believe they can.”

An apple fell from the tree and he caught it. Its bloody toothmarks glistened in the light from the burning tree. “What’s the difference between change and decomposition?”

She said nothing.

An apple fell from the tree and she caught it, though it crumbled to pieces in her hand and filled her head with the perfume of rot.

“I’m done here,” she said, letting the apple drop to the ground. A rose sprung up from where it had fallen. “I wanted to enjoy some time with a friend.”

“I never know what you want.”

“You never ask.” She held the jar of gold out, catching and holding his gaze. “This was for you.”

“But it’s yours.”

“I don’t want it.” She waited an eternity for him to take it. When it was finally plucked from her hands, she could have cried with relief.

He held it as though it was something precious. “Are we doing the gift-giving already? It’s not your birthday yet.”

“This isn’t a birthday gift.”

“Then you want something in return,” he said, his grin baring teeth still stained with blood.

She had to look away, her gaze slipping towards the city and its sun. “You really never learn, do you?”

“Haven’t we already been over this?” An apple fell from the tree.

“If you must give me something,” she said, plucking the rose and holding it up to the sun, “then just give me this moment.”

[circumstantial-simultaneity]

FAUST, MIDAS, AND MYSELF

She was running over upturned soil, a few bones poking through here and there to mark them as graves, a letter clutched in her left hand. Before her, she could see the bright orange flames of a forest fire. There was some kind of small animal scurrying through the burning trees, trying to escape – she felt for it. The blinding heat at her back, as cruel and unforgiving as the sun, drove her on in the same wild panic of the creature.

It hopped over a ledge and vanished and she came to a sudden stop, sending dirt scattering down the pit she found herself at the edge of. There was a hole in the world that she could not see the bottom of.

Did she have a choice? Was there anywhere else she could go? She looked around, but the world was empty save for the tower and the graves and the endless fires and the pit that now lay at her back. She dropped her gaze to the letter, but she’d long since memorised it and she could see that there was nothing new.

“You don’t seem the type to jump,” he said, and she looked up. There wasn’t a soul in sight.

“Where are you?” she asked, her heart in her throat. “Please-”

“I warned you what was coming.”

“The fall?” She gripped the letter tighter. “But-”

“Be careful.”

For a moment, she thought it was the sun that was falling from the tower beside her – a bright sphere that burned her eyes to look at. Then it hit the ground and shattered into thirds, and those thirds fell and shattered again, and she realised it was nothing but glass, now reduced to shards and dust.

“Why did you do it?” she asked. “You could have hurt me.”

“I warned you what was coming,” he said again.

“That doesn’t change the fact that you did it.”

The pieces lay before her, all bloody and broken as a body. She stepped cautiously away from the edge and cast her gaze over them.

“Why did you do it?” she repeated. This time, he said nothing.

She sighed and crouched, reaching for a piece of cracked ceramic. It was near invisible amidst the bones, further hidden by the falling ash, but the gold that gilded its edges caught her eye. She ran her thumb along it and found that the gold hadn’t dulled it any, as it sliced her thumb open so cleanly she only realised what had happened when she saw the red leak across the gold and white. She thought he might say something to that, but he didn’t, and she let the shard fall into the dirt and ash once more.

There was so much she wanted to say, questions dripping from her tongue like honey, but she swallowed them all back. She wouldn’t get her answers, even if he did respond; she felt the certainty like cracks in her bones. And to ask questions would be to stay here, with the world still burning, the land still crumbling apart.

She stood again and looked around, eyes tracing the shape of the fallen tower – she didn’t know when it had fallen, but the pale stones that made it up were now scattered across the land. The fire was pressing in on all sides, nearly close enough to touch. The letter in her hand was stained with blood, though it was her right hand that was bleeding. Despite this, its words remained the same.

“You won’t find what you’re looking for down there,” he said. She looked back at the hole.

“You don’t know what I’m looking for.”

“Whatever it is, you don’t find it down there. There’s nothing down there.”

“There’s at least one thing,” she said, thinking of the fleeing animal. “If I go, there will be two. Maybe that’s all I want.”

He laughed, his voice ringing across the land. “But who’d ever want to go down?” he asked, and she looked up at where the tower had once stood. “The view from the top is incredible.”

Her voice was quiet as she said, “And look how much that view has cost you.”

There were several seconds of silence, though she knew he’d heard her. After what felt like an eternity, long enough that she’d almost accepted that he simply wouldn’t answer, he finally said, “There are worse things to lose than yourself.”

She shook her head and turned away, holding the letter out to the fire so that the corner caught. It went up quickly, burning her fingers and crumbling away. She let the ash that remained fall like all the rest.

“There’s nothing left here,” she said. She didn’t care if he responded; she just needed to say the words. She rubbed at her face, her hands coming away stained with gold along with the blood and soot that had already covered them, and she balled them into fists. As she stared down into the hole, she thought she could see stars at the bottom. “I don’t know where this will take me, but I can’t stay here.”

“Assuming you survive the fall.”

She paused, surprised he’d answered, and looked back at the mess behind her. The shards glittered, bright with reflected fire.

“I’ll see you soon,” she said before stepping off the edge.

[circumstantial-simultaneity]

FAUST, MIDAS, AND MYSELF

“What are you searching for?”

The door loomed before her. In the back of her mind, she heard the echo of something slamming shut. For almost a full minute, she just stood and stared at it, silently willing herself to do something, but she was scared to reach for the handle, scared to even try.

“What are you searching for?” he asked again.

“I feel like something’s missing,” she said, putting one hand flat against the door. Her wrists and fingers were bare, her skin whole and unmarred, and she wondered why that didn’t seem right.

“It’s not missing,” he said. “You never had it to begin with.”

“I don’t know what you’re even talking about.”

“And you never will.”

In the silence that followed, she knew he’d left. The door seemed somehow even more impassable in his absence, but the space in which she stood was empty, all hollowed out, and she wished she could bring herself to step through. She didn’t even know why; she’d never seen this door before, so why did it terrify her so? What lay beyond it? Why did she yearn to open it, despite her own fear?

The only salve to her fear would be action – to step forward or away, but a step she had to take. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, then forced herself to reach for the handle.

When she threw the door open, she was hit by a blinding light, visible even through her lids. She flinched away, bringing a hand up to shield them, and opened her eyes just a crack to see what had happened.

A white landscape unfurled before her. She hated it, maybe feared it, but when the door started swinging shut again she quickly stepped through. The door slammed shut behind her, and she was worried she stood on the wrong side, but then she turned and found the tree in its place.

The tree was burning. It had seemed important once, but by now it had been burning for so long that she’d almost forgotten how it started. He stood nearby, face turned towards her, firelight catching on something shimmering and golden at the back of the void where his eyes had once been.

“Was this you?” he asked.

“Are you referring to the tree or the fire?”

“Is there a difference anymore?”

She shook her head with a laugh. The sound echoed oddly around the space – this had once been a place filled with it, but now the air was dead. She returned her gaze to the tree, the only true colour she’d seen so far.

“Do you want to be alone?” The words were asked softly, almost hidden by the crackling of the fire, but they still managed to turn her stomach.

“Never,” she said. “There would be nothing worse.”

“You’re alone now, aren’t you?”

The flames danced in the breeze. “I guess that depends on who you are.”

There was no answer. She closed her eyes to keep herself from looking over, afraid of what she might find.

[circumstantial-simultaneity]

FAUST, MIDAS, AND MYSELF

He found her sitting cross-legged in her living room, gold dripping down her face like a bloody nose and a buzzing energy in her veins. She smiled up at him, and he returned her smile and she felt like herself again, and then he was stepping forward so that his bruise-purple shadow blotted out the sun. It felt a little like privacy and a little like abandonment.

She knew she should speak, could feel the words she was meant to say pressing against the back of her teeth like knives, but she swallowed them back and waited for him to fill the air, as he always would.

“I want to be God,” he said, the shape of his mouth forming different words entirely. She laughed at both what he said and what he didn’t, as though this was a joke, though she knew in her heart that it wasn’t. He watched her in silence until her laughter died, rotting in her mouth, and then he asked, “What do you want?”

He'd never asked her that before. Her smile dropped and, in a voice that was honeysuckle-sweet, she said, “I want you to live.”

“I thought you wanted to be free?”

“I didn’t think it was a choice.”

“You think everything’s a choice,” he said pointedly.

She lowered her head. The sun caught her hair, the colour at the heart of a candle, and she felt her own heart burning as she said, “I can’t do this alone.”

“If you help me, I can give you the world.”

“You could.” She bit the inside of her lip and tried to remember what they were meant to be talking about. It felt like they were getting off track.

“You don’t think I will?”

“Why would you? Why would you give the world to someone like me?”

In the silence that followed her question, she heard an animal cry out from her backyard. That struck her as odd – she’d never seen an animal around here before. She forgot about it when he started speaking again.

“There was a light in your eyes that could rival the sun for its brightness,” he said, his silver tongue filling the room with a warm glow. “I feel like it’s façade now – what has been taken from you?”

“You offered me freedom, power, safety,” she said softly. “A friend. If you are God, you’re a cruel one, giving and taking as you see fit.”

“It would have been worth it.”

“Do you really believe that?” She lifted her head again, watching him through narrowed eyes. When he looked away, there seemed to be a mirror image trailing behind the movement, a second too slow with dark eyes.

“I suppose the point is moot now.”