> Perspective: Elfie
> Date: October 29, 2013
> Location: Unknown — A Golden Crescent over a Black Lake
He had been asleep for 7 days, and I had been crying for all 7 of them.
I didn't know where we were. Somewhere so far out that no star had a name, a golden crescent hanging over a black lake with no shore. I made it because he liked quiet places.
I made the lake so the moon would have something to look at.
His head was on my lap. His hood had slipped back, and his dark hair was soft under my fingers, and his chest went up and down. Up and down. I watched every breath. I counted them.
Around 140,000 breaths in 7 days, and I didn't miss 1.
Breathe again... Good. Again.
The hole in his chest was gone. I closed it on the 1st night with 4,382,911 souls and my own hands.
His heart was warm now. His fingers were warm. Everything I took apart, I put back.
Except me.
I looked down at my own hands in his hair, and they weren't my hands anymore.
Longer fingers. Pale, smooth, no scabs on the knuckles from climbing the orphanage wall.
My hair fell past my waist now, too pink, too long, glowing faintly at the ends.
My face felt different from the inside. I had grown older than him.
And my eyes.
I had seen them in the black water of the lake. Blue and pink, turning around each other, and a star in the middle of each 1 where my pupils used to be. A diamond star with 4 points, spinning slowly.
Forever, now. It wouldn't go away.
He won't recognize me...
He's going to open his eyes and see a stranger in a black veil, and he'll be polite to her, because Kai is always polite to strangers. He'll say "excuse me" and get up off her lap.
I'd rather die...
I pulled the black lace down lower over my face and kept stroking his hair.
"Hush now, sleep my love..." My voice shook. "Sleep till the everlasting night comes for you..."
A tear fell off my chin and landed on his cheek. I wiped it off with my thumb. Another 1 fell.
"K-Kai..." I whispered. "I'm s-scared."
He didn't answer... Yet I've been talking to him for 7 days.
"I d-did a very bad thing to bring you back... I'll tell you. I p-promise I'll tell you. Just... not the number. Not yet. P-Please not yet."
"I d-don't look the same anymore. I'm taller. My eyes are w-weird. Even my voice is different, did you hear it? It's lower... I hate it. I hate all of it."
"If you l-look at me and don't know who I am... I d-don't think I can take it, Kai. I really can't."
"So p-please... when you wake up... please still be my Kai."
His eyelashes moved.
I stopped breathing.
---
> Perspective:Kaiser
> Date: October 29, 2013
> Location: Unknown
The last thing I remembered was the beeping slowing down.
Then nothing. Then a voice, very far away, singing badly on purpose to keep from crying, and water hitting my face.
Rain? No. Warm. Salty. Somebody's crying on me.
I opened my eyes.
My heart was beating somehow after death. A bullet went through it, and now it didn't hurt. Above me, there was a golden moon cut into a crescent, and behind it, stars. A ridiculous number of stars...
Okay. Either I died and the afterlife has excellent pillow service, or something extremely weird just happened.
I looked up.
A veil. Black lace, hanging over a face I couldn't see, and under it, a mouth pressed shut so hard it was shaking. Pink hair spilled out from under the lace, long and glowing at the ends, and fell all around me. Above the veil, sheer black sleeves, layered robes that faded at the edges into something closer to smoke than cloth.
Beside us, a lance of silver-black glass stood driven into the crescent, with 2 red ribbons hanging still from the grip.
The person holding me was trembling.
Pink hair.
She didn't say anything. I didn't either. We stayed there looking at each other through a layer of black lace, and I watched her hand freeze in my hair, waiting for me to decide who she was.
I sat up.
My body did it easily, which was rude, considering it had been dead.
The crescent was solid under my palm, warm gold. Around us, the space bent. Not much. The stars nearest to her leaned in a little, curving toward her, the black around her folding inward by a hair.
Everything out here was pulled toward her.
That's not magic. That's authority. She's so powerful now that space has to bend to make room for her.
She shrank back when I looked at her. She pulled the veil down with both hands and turned her face away...
"D-Don't..." she said. "D-Don't look at me. I'm... I l-look wrong now..."
Her voice was lower than I remembered. It was still her voice.
I reached out and put my hand on her cheek, over the lace. She flinched. Her face was hot and wet through the fabric.
I lifted the veil.
She didn't fight me. She closed her eyes and turned her face down into her own shoulder to hide it.
At 7, she hid from Sister Clara that exact way after breaking a plate.
Older. 2 years older, at least.
Her face had lost the round baby fat and gained a sharp, quiet kind of beauty that made my brain stop. Long lashes, wet. A small straight nose, red at the tip from crying. Lips bitten raw from 7 days of trying not to make noise.
Okay. Hold on. Give me a second.
I've seen the Empress of Asura... I've seen elven queens and demon princesses in paintings. None of them get to compete anymore...
That's the most beautiful face in the universe, and it's crying on me.
I couldn't lie about it even if I tried. Looking at her made something in my chest go warm and stupid and happy, and I just came back from the dead, so I'm counting that as medical progress.
Then she opened her eyes, because she couldn't stand not knowing.
Blue and pink, spinning slowly around each other. A white diamond star in the middle of each 1, turning.
Huh... That's new.
She was waiting for me to flinch. Every part of her was braced for it.
"I know you." I said.
"You're my Elfie."
Her face broke.
She made a sound I'd heard only 1 time before, in the medical room, and then she threw both arms around my neck and pulled me into her so hard my spine creaked. She cried into my hood. Big, ugly, hiccuping sobs, the same ones she cried at 6 when she thought I had disappeared.
Some things the universe can't change.
I put my arms around her and held on.
Okay. Okay. She's here. I'm here. Somehow. Questions later.
"Y-You d-don't—" She hiccuped. "You don't th-think I'm a stranger?"
"You're squeezing my ribs the exact same way. A stranger would show some restraint."
"Kai!"
"Still you."
"Hehe..."
She laughed into my shoulder, and it turned straight back into crying. I let her. I wasn't in a hurry.
Apparently I had already been dead for a while, so I had time.
---
It took a long time before she let go enough to sit next to me instead of on top of me. Even then, she held my sleeve in her fist.
"How long was I gone?" I asked.
"7 days."
"And how?"
She went very quiet.
"You d-died, Kai. You were gone. Your soul was c-crushed, the bullet was made so nobody could ever fix it, and I..." She looked at the black lake.
"I c-couldn't. I couldn't let that be the end. So I p-pieced you back together..."
"Elfie..."
"4,382,911." She said it fast, to get it out before she lost her nerve. "Th-That's how many lives I took to bring you back. Demons, elves, fairies, dwarves. Everyone. In 1 afternoon."
Her hand tightened on my sleeve until her knuckles went white.
"I s-sang to them while they died."
4 million.
She was the girl who cried when there was a spider in the room...
"S-So now you know," she whispered. "Now you can h-hate me... Go ahead. I'd hate me."
"No."
"You don't have to be nice—"
"Elfie. I taken 25,000,000 lives with my own hands... You're telling a murderer you're a murderer and waiting for him to be shocked." I turned her chin toward me with 1 finger.
"There's nothing you could ever do that would make me hate you. So stop waiting for it."
She stared at me. Her star pupils stopped spinning for a moment, then started again.
"Y-You're supposed to be the 1 who hates himself," she said, wetly. "N-Not me."
"I'm very good at it. You should leave it to the professional."
She hit my arm. It was a goddess hitting a 14-year-old, and she must have pulled it, because my arm stayed attached.
---
The stars moved slowly overhead. The lake below us didn't move at all.
"Elfie," I said. "Can I tell you something you won't like?"
"No."
"I'm going to anyway."
"Then why did you ask?!"
"Manners." I looked at my hands.
"You shouldn't have done this for me."
"Kai—"
"I mean it. You're going to find out more about me. Worse things than the war. Things I haven't told you. And 1 day you're going to look at me and wish you'd let me stay dead."
"Th-That won't happen!"
"You don't know that. You don't owe me anything, Elfie. Not because of the orphanage. Not because I fed you or read to you or stood in front of some soldiers when you were 8." I made myself say the next part.
"Back then, I wasn't being a hero. I wanted to spend time with you. That's all. I wanted you to need me, so I made sure you did. I made you this way. And now you're older, and you're... this, and I don't want to keep you tied to me with a promise you made when you were 6."
She was quiet for so long that I looked up.
She was glaring at me with both diamond eyes.
"Are you done?"
"...Yes."
"Good. Now it's my turn." She sat up straight and grabbed both my hands.
"I've been asking you for things since I was little. Read me a story. Stay with me tonight. Carry me. Don't get adopted. Don't leave. Kiss me on the roof. Every single day, I wanted something, and every single day you gave it to me, and you never asked me for anything back. Not 1 time."
"I didn't need—"
"Let me finish! You went to war for me. You came home with injuries and lied and said you tripped... I bandaged you and you thanked ME for it. In the Academy, in the orphanage, everywhere, I couldn't give you anything. I was just the girl you protected." Her voice cracked.
"I'm n-not that girl anymore... I can give you anything now. Anything in the universe. So let me. P-Please. Let me give something back!"
"You already did."
"WHAT?! What did I give you?!"
"You're the reason I didn't stay a monster." I shrugged.
"Everything else is extra."
Her mouth opened and closed.
"And no," I added.
"I didn't love you because you can do magic. Or because you can give me things. You could cry at me for 100 years, and I still couldn't come up with a list of things I want from you. That's not how it works."
"That's so annoying!"
"I know."
She pulled my hands into her lap and looked down at them. Her thumbs moved over my knuckles. 3 of my fingers on the left hand had been cut off when I was 8. They grew back crooked. She traced each 1.
"The cliff," she said quietly. "What you told me. About my parents."
I didn't say anything. I didn't have the right to.
"I c-can't forget it, Kai. I tried. I'll probably never forget it." She lifted her eyes to mine.
"But I forgive you. I decided on the 3rd night. I was sitting here, holding you, and I thought about it for a whole day, and then I decided."
"You can't just decide that!"
"I'm a goddess now. I can decide whatever I want." She sniffled.
"Mama and Papa gave me to the world. You gave me everything after that. My love for you is worth more than what you did on that road. That's my decision, and you don't get a vote."
She forgave me...?
She sat on a moon for 3 days and decided to forgive the boy who killed her parents.
I didn't know what to do with my face.
So I looked at the lake until it stopped being a problem.
---
"Kai?"
"Mm?"
"L-Lie down." She patted her lap. "You were dead a week ago. You're not allowed to sit up this long."
"I feel fine."
"L-LIE. DOWN."
I lay down. The universe was hers now, and I wasn't going to argue with it over a pillow.
"Do I really... l-look okay? Honestly?" She tugged a strand of her new long hair and frowned at it.
"My face is different. Everything is d-different. I don't even know what I look like. I only saw it in the lake."
I looked up at her from her lap. The long pink hair, glowing at the tips, falling around both of us. The star pupils, turning slowly. The black lace veil pushed back over her hair and spilling past her shoulders, thin enough that the starlight came through it. The same crooked frown she wore when she couldn't solve a math problem.
This is a problem. I'm supposed to be the smart 1, and I can't think of a single thing except how pretty she is.
"Honestly?"
"Honestly."
"You were already the prettiest girl I'd ever seen. Now it's just unfair to everyone else."
"The most beautiful goddess in the universe..."
"And keep the veil... It makes you look like a bride who I'd marry."
Silence.
Then her whole face went red. Not pink. Red, from her collar to the tips of her ears, and the stars in her eyes spun so fast they blurred.
"W-W-WHAT?! You c-can't— you don't just— Kai, you can't SAY things like that with a n-normal face! You're ON MY LAP!"
"What face should I use?"
"A-A NERVOUS ONE! Like a NORMAL PERSON!"
"I just woke up from being dead. This is my nervous face."
She covered her face with both hands, which didn't help, because I was lying right underneath it, and made a long, high noise through her fingers.
Around us, the crescent moon brightened by several shades, and a few of the nearby stars got noticeably warmer.
Note to self: compliments cause solar events now... Use responsibly.
---
We sat together on the edge of the crescent with our feet hanging over the black lake. She leaned against me. Her head fit on my shoulder better than it used to, mostly because she was taller now, and she had to slouch to do it, and she did it anyway.
"Kai."
"Hmm?"
"If I change again... if I get bigger, or weirder, or my eyes do something else... will you still know me?"
I turned, and put my hand on her cheek, and kissed her lips.
It was short. Her lips were cold from the void and then warm, and she made a tiny surprised sound against my mouth, and when I pulled back, her eyes were wide open and both stars had stopped turning.
"You're always in here," I said, and touched my own chest, right where the bullet went.
"Whatever you turn into. Whatever you look like. I'll know you. And I'm not letting you go..."
She stared at me. Then her lip trembled, and she laughed, and cried, and laughed again, and hooked her little finger around mine, the same promise she made under the oak when we were small.
"Promise?"
I hooked it back.
"Promise. This time, I'll keep it."
She sniffled, wiped her eyes on her black sleeve, and then went very still.
When she looked at me again, her star pupils had narrowed.
Uh oh. I know that face. That's the face from the orphanage kitchen right before she stole all the jam.
"Kai."
"Yes?"
"You p-pampered me my whole life." She poked my chest, right over my heart.
"You fed me. You read to me. You carried me. You put me to sleep. You took care of everything, and I let you, because I was small and useless."
"You weren't useless—"
"Now it's MY turn." She smiled. It was a beautiful smile. It was also the most dangerous thing I had ever seen, and I had just heard she erased half the world.
"From today, I'm taking care of you. Everything. Your food. Your clothes. Your bedtime. All of it."
"Umm. Excuse me?"
"I'm going to be your mommy now."
OH SHIT.
I NEED TO ESCAPE!
"Elfie, I'm 14—"
"And I'm 16, and a goddess, so I win." She pulled me back down onto her lap by the hood before I could escape and started stroking my hair with terrifying tenderness.
"Rule number 1. No more skipping meals."
I have been alive again for 40 minutes, and I have already lost all of my rights.
Maybe I should have stayed dead.
---
> Perspective: Kaiser
> Date: November 2013 — January 2014
> Location: Everywhere
When I was little, I didn't even let my mother take care of me.
I took care of her.
I brought her the water, I counted the coins, I fixed the shutter when the wind broke it.
Being looked after was something that happened to other people.
Elfie expelled from the Academy, me dropping out before 3rd year out of solidarity and a deep hatred of homework, and suddenly, for the 1st time in my life, it happened to me.
I didn't know what to do with it. I still don't.
---
Every morning started the same way.
I'd wake up, and before I opened my eyes, there would be a small cool kiss on my cheek.
Chu.
Then another on the other cheek, because apparently 1 was LOW.
Chu.
"G-Good morning, Kai."
"Morning."
"Arms out."
I held out my arms. She checked them. Both sides, every old scar, the 3 crooked fingers on my left hand, the place on my ribs where a spear went in during the summer of the war. She turned my wrists over and looked at them for a long time, frowning, and only when she was satisfied that nothing new had appeared overnight did she let me sit up.
"No new ones," she said, relieved, every single morning.
"I was asleep. What did you think happened?"
"You're you. Something always happens."
She wasn't wrong.
Then she'd just hug me.
---
I tried to escape exactly 1 time.
She was humming in the conjured kitchen, and I slipped out the door to walk to the market alone. A normal 14-year-old activity.
I love freedom
I made it 3 steps.
On the 4th step, she was standing in front of me with a ladle.
"Where are you going?"
"Market... For shopping... For independence!"
"Okay! Let's go together!"
"That's the opposite of—"
She hugged me. Then, because I wasn't hugging her back fast enough, 2 more arms grew out of her back, wrapped around me, and squeezed.
She has 4 arms now.
She grew extra arms to win a hugging argument.
What am I supposed to do?Who helps me? May god help m— oh. Right. The god is the 1 hugging me. There's nobody above her to complain to.
The extra arms faded once I gave up and hugged her back.
---
We had no home. We didn't need 1.
Whenever we got tired, wherever we were, she snapped her fingers, and a house grew out of the ground. A small 1, with a warm stove and soft lamps and a bed so comfortable my spine wept with gratitude.
1 bed. Always 1 bed.
"Elfie. There's only 1 bed again."
"I know."
"You made the house. You could make 2."
"I could." She climbed in and held the blanket up for me, smiling.
"I didn't."
This is cheating. This is shameless cheating. Lucas has a whole Bullshit magic, and even his nonsense can't compete with a girlfriend who builds houses out of magic because she's sleepy.
I got in.
She hugged me from behind, tucked her chin over my shoulder, and rubbed her cheek against mine until I fell asleep.
Every night.
---
Food was worse.
I didn't cook anymore. I wasn't allowed.
She summoned whatever my body needed, and somehow she always knew. Iron when I was tired. Something warm when I was cold.
Honey bread when I was in a bad mood and hadn't told anyone.
Then she took the 1st bite herself.
"What are you doing?"
"T-Testing." She chewed seriously, eyes narrowed. "It's good enough for you. Say ahh."
"Elfie, I have hands."
"Say ahh, Kai."
I said ahh.
She fed me the rest of it, 1 spoonful at a time, sometimes using her hand.
And in between spoonfuls she leaned over and rubbed her cheek against mine, humming, perfectly happy.
I fought a war... Now, I am being spoon-fed by a goddess who rubs her face on me between bites.
...It's fine. Honestly, it's fine.
...
BRO WHAT HAPPENED MY CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT?!
---
Oh I forgot to mention.
She paid for everything.
On our 2nd week, she took me under the sea in a bubble of starlight. We walked along the floor of the ocean, past drowned reefs and blind white fish, until we found a whole fleet of sunken treasure ships from an old imperial war. She lifted all 9 of them out of the mud with 1 hand and floated them to the surface.
4,000 gold. Enough to live on for years.
That evening, she took over our finances.
"Can I see the money?"
"No."
"No?"
"You'll overthink it." She hugged the money to her chest.
"You'll see how much we spent on your coats, and you'll lecture me, and then you'll stop letting me buy you things."
She's right. I would do exactly that.
"So if I want money, I have to ask you."
"Yes!"
"I don't ask people for money, Elfie. Money asks me."
"Then you'll be poor." She smiled sweetly.
"You're making me angry..." Top 10 lies I said for dramatic effect.
"You can't make ME angry," she said, very pleased with herself.
Is that a challenge?
That sounded like a challenge.
"I can get money from anyone in this town," I said. "Watch."
"Nobody's going to give you money."
"Watch me."
---
There was a girl at the fountain in the market square. Brown braids, a basket of apples, nobody else around her.
I walked up to her.
"Excuse me, miss. Did you forget something?"
"Huh? What did I forget?"
"Your beautiful smile. You left it at home."
She stared at me. Then she laughed, covering her mouth with her hand.
"That's terrible! Where did you learn that?"
"Street corners, mostly. I'm a professional. Could you spare a copper for the arts?"
"For a line that bad?" She was still laughing.
"Maybe 2."
Behind me, the temperature dropped.
I turned around.
Elfie was standing 10 meters away, perfectly still, in her black veil, and her star pupils had narrowed to 2 sharp white points. The sky over the market went a shade darker. Somewhere, a dog stopped barking.
Oh.
Oh, that's a bad face.
She walked over, took my hand, and laced our fingers together very tightly. Then she looked the apple girl straight in the eye and smiled.
"Hello. I'm his mommy."
"His... what?"
"His mommy." Her smile didn't move at all.
"So you should stay far, far away from him."
I'm the fraud and she's the stalker. We don't belong in this era. Normal couples hold hands at the market. Mine introduces herself as my mother to strangers and the sky gets darker while she does it.
How did I pull a goddess? Seriously. How? All I ever wanted was to keep her smiling, and somehow it turned into this.
Some people die of thirst. I'm drowning.
The apple girl opened her mouth to say something.
And then she wasn't there.
Her basket was there. An apple rolled out of it and across the cobblestones. The girl wasn't.
"ELFIE."
"She'll come back," Elfie said calmly, squeezing my hand harder. "Later. Not now."
"You can't just—"
"Later, Kai." She smiled at me. Her pupils were still sharp.
"We're on a date now."
Lesson learned. If I flirt with a girl, she disappears. Maybe I don't flirt with girls anymore. For their sake.
She didn't let go of my hand for the rest of the day.
That night she fed me dinner, then dessert, then a 2nd dessert, and hugged me so hard from behind that I couldn't turn over, and she said "You won't leave me, right?" 4 times before she fell asleep.
"I won't," I said, all 4 times.
I checked the next morning.
The apple girl was back at the fountain with her basket, a little confused, holding a free cake she didn't remember buying.
---
The beach was my fault. I made the mistake of saying I'd never really swum in the sea.
"Then let's go!"
"It's winter, Elfie. The water's freezing."
"I can fix that."
"And there are people."
"I can fix that too."
"The beach is small."
She looked at the beach. She looked at the sea.
Then she raised 1 hand and pushed.
The ocean moved back. The whole thing. The waterline slid away from us for 2 kilometers, wet sand gleaming in the light, shells and starfish lying stunned on a beach that had just tripled in size. Then she raised her other hand toward the sun and pulled, slowly, and the sun came a little closer, and the winter air went soft and warm.
"Better?" she asked brightly.
"You moved the sun?!"
"Just a little!"
"Elfie, you can't move the sun for a swim."
"I just did." She grabbed my wrist. "Come on!"
"I'm not going in."
"You're going in."
"I'm not—"
She pulled. I went in face first.
The water was perfectly warm. I came up spitting salt, and she was standing waist-deep in front of me with both hands over her mouth, laughing so hard she couldn't breathe.
"You look so s-stupid!"
"I see." I wiped my face. "So we're doing this."
"Doing wh— Kai, no. Kai. KAI, NO!"
I grabbed her around the waist and threw her backward into the next wave. She went under in a cloud of black lace and came up shrieking, her hair plastered over her face, and then she splashed me with an entire wave she lifted out of the sea on purpose, which was cheating, and I told her so, and she did it again.
We stayed in until the light went orange. She floated on her back with her hair spread out on the water, holding my hand, and I stood next to her and watched the stars in her eyes turn slowly.
"So?" she asked. "Verdict on the sea?"
"Still deciding."
"Coming from you, 'still deciding' means you love it."
"I like that you like it," I said.
"That's as far as I've gotten."
She smiled at me, the one I cherished.
Then a drop of blood ran out of her nose and into the water.
---
I sat her down on the sand and held a pad of cotton against her nose while she sulked.
"It's nothing."
"It's blood."
"It's a little blood!"
"You pushed back an ocean and pulled the sun closer to the planet so I could swim in winter. You're running on 5% of your power, and you spent it on a beach day. Look at you."
"I'm fine!"
"Your hands are shaking."
She hid her hands under her legs.
"Elfie."
"I wanted you to have fun," she mumbled into the cotton.
"I did have fun. That's not the point." I wiped the last of the blood off her lip.
"The point is you're going to hurt yourself giving me things I don't need."
She didn't answer. She leaned her head on my shoulder and let me hold the cotton there until it stopped.
The fight started that night.
---
She built a house on the cliff over the beach. 1 room. 1 bed. She climbed in, held up the blanket, and waited.
"We need to talk," I said.
"Tomorrow. Get in."
"Now."
She sat up slowly, holding the blanket against her chest.
"You're angry about the nosebleed?"
"I'm angry about all of it!" I took a breath, trying to keep my voice level.
"The houses. The food. The sea. The treasure fleet. You use your power for me every hour of the day, and you're not even at full strength. You're going to burn yourself out!"
"Then I'll burn out!" Her voice cracked.
"It's my power! I get to choose what to use it on, and I choose you!"
"That's exactly what I don't want."
"Why?" She stared at me. "Is it because you don't want anything? Or because you don't want anything from m-me?"
"That's not—"
"Then what is it?!" Her voice climbed. "I dragged you back from the dead, Kai. I didn't ask you first. Maybe you didn't want to come back. Maybe you're only staying with me because you feel like you owe me now!"
"I don't owe you anything. And you don't owe me anything. That's my whole point."
"Then ASK me for something! 1 thing! I don't care what!"
"I don't want anything."
"LIAR! Everybody wants something! I wanted things my whole life, and you gave me every single 1, and you never asked me for a single thing back, Kai! Not 1! I can give you the whole universe now, and you won't even ask me for a glass of water!"
"Because I don't want you to spend your whole life on me!"
"It's MY life!"
"And I'm not worth it!"
The room went silent.
Her eyes filled up. Her star pupils shook.
"Don't say that," she whispered. "D-Don't you dare say that to me. I love you!"
"That's the problem, Elfie."
She flinched. I saw it hit her, and I couldn't take it back.
"How is that a problem?!" She threw her pillow at me. It hit my chest and fell on the floor. "How is me loving you a PROBLEM?!"
"Because you'll give me everything, and I can't give you anything back!" It came out louder than I meant.
"Look at me. I'm a human with no magic. You're a goddess. What am I supposed to give you, a flower? You grow a meadow every time you blush!"
"I don't WANT anything back!"
"And I don't want to be the thing you carry around for the rest of your life!"
She stared at me with her mouth open. The stars in her eyes stopped turning.
Then her chin went up, and her lip shook, and she grabbed the blanket in both fists.
"F-Fine."
"Fine."
"FINE! Then this is a fight! Our 1st real fight, Kaiser Everhart, and I'm not losing it!"
"Good."
"G-GOOD!"
I picked up a blanket off the end of the bed.
"I'll sleep in the other room."
"There IS no other room!"
"Then I'll sleep on the floor."
I made a bed out of the blanket in the corner, as far from her as the room allowed, and lay down with my back to her. She didn't say anything. After a long time, I heard the bed creak as she lay down too.
I stared at the wall.
That's the part I didn't say out loud. I don't ask because I can't pay it back. She gives me an ocean, and all I have to give her in return is me, and I already gave her that when I was 8.
I don't want her to wake up 1 day tired of carrying me. I don't want to be the reason she bleeds.
And the worst part is, I know she'd never feel that way. She's completely down bad for me. She calls herself my mommy in public. She'd carry me across the universe on her back and thank me for the exercise.
That's exactly why I can't let her.
Neither of us slept.
Then I did, and the war was waiting for me.
---
I was 13 again, and the border was burning.
I was standing on a hill of corpses with half an arm, and I didn't have a plan. I never had a plan. That's the part nobody wrote down.
The histories call me a strategist. The truth is that I was a human boy against gods and sovereigns and armies of things that could level mountains, and I was never strong enough. Not 1 time. I won with poison in the rivers and burning their foods. I won by sending soldiers who trusted me into traps to buy myself 10 minutes. I won by cutting pieces off my own body and trading them for time.
Anything that worked, I did. Every rule I broke, I broke on purpose.
And at the end, I didn't win at all.
I just talked. I stood in front of Malphas with 1 arm and a broken sword and talked until he decided not to kill me. I stood in front of the others and talked until they decided it wasn't worth it.
That's how the war ended. Not with a victory.
With a weak boy convincing stronger people to spare him.
The dream knew it. The dream showed me every 1 of them. The faces of the soldiers I sent into the traps. The villages downstream of the poisoned river. Malphas lowering his hand, not because I beat him, but because he pitied me.
You should have died that night. You should have died, and then she'd still be a girl who's scared of spiders, and 4 million people would be alive, and nobody would need to—
The fear came up over my head and closed.
---
Someone was holding me.
Arms around me from behind. Warm. A cheek pressed against the back of my neck, and a voice humming, low and shaky, the lullaby from the moon.
I was on the floor. She was on the floor with me. She had left the bed and come down to my corner, and she was holding on.
"You were shaking," she whispered. "You were saying sorry in your sleep. Over and over."
I couldn't say anything. My face was wet.
"I'm sorry, Kai." Her arms tightened.
"I'm sorry I yelled. I won't force you to ask me for anything anymore. You don't have to ask." She pressed her forehead to the back of my head.
"But I'm still going to give you everything. Everything you ever want. Even the things you only think about and never say. I'll find them. I'll find all of them."
"Elfie—"
"And you're not sleeping alone anymore. Not on the floor. Not in another room. Not ever." Her voice broke.
"The bad dreams come when you're alone. So you're never going to be alone again... That's not a request. That's a rule."
I turned around in her arms. She was crying too.
"I'm sorry," I said. "About the floor."
"You should be. It's hard and it's cold and you're an idiot."
"I know."
"You're my idiot, all mine... only mine."
She wrapped her arms around me from behind again and squeezed.
"And I'm still going to pamper you. Every day. I'm going to feed you and dress you and put you to sleep and take care of you until you get used to it. You can't stop me."
"Praise the mommy." I said into the blanket.
She went still. Then she burst out laughing, so hard her forehead bumped the back of my head.
"YAYYY! Praise me!"
She pulled the blanket over both of us, right there on the floor, and held my head against her chest, and hummed until the war went away.
We never made up properly. We didn't have to.
In the morning, she kissed my cheek, chu, 2 times, and checked my arms, and fed me breakfast, and it was over.
---
On a random afternoon, a week later, she was lying on the grass with her head in my lap for once, braiding a strand of her own hair, and she asked:
"Kai. Where do you want to go?"
Careful. If I say a place, she'll take me there. And then she'll use power to get there. And then she'll bleed.
So I'll say somewhere impossible. Somewhere nobody can go. Then we stay right here on the grass.
I am a genius.
"The moon," I said.
"Okie!"
She snapped her fingers.
I was standing on grey dust. The sky was black. A huge blue-and-white planet hung over the horizon, swirled with clouds, so close I could see the continents.
I breathed in.
I could breathe.
"This is not possible. There's no air on the moon. Why can I breathe?"
"Because I said so," she said happily, and jumped.
She went 10 meters up and came down slowly, laughing, her veil floating out behind her.
"This is our moon now! Do you like it? Do you want a theme park? I can make a theme park! With rides! A big wheel so we can see the planet from the top, and a carousel with star horses, and a roller coaster that goes all the way around the moon!" She spun in a circle, kicking up silver dust.
"Or a theater! A whole theater just for us, and we can watch moving pictures on a screen as big as a mountain! Or a garden! Or a palace! Kai, ask me for something. Anything. Just this once, ask me."
I looked at her. Bouncing in the dust, glowing, offering me a theme park on the moon with her whole heart.
I'm a speck. Compared to her, I'm a dying microorganism standing next to a supernova.
I have no power over her. No authority. There's nothing I own that she needs.
But I know 1 way to pay her back.
I walked up to her, put my arm around her waist, and pulled her in.
She froze. Her face went red instantly.
"K-Kai? Wh-What are you— what are you doing?"
"We're going to be the 1st couple to kiss on the moon."
"Wh— what— WHAT—"
I put my other hand behind her head and kissed her.
She melted. Every bit of goddess went out of her, and she stood there on the moon, holding my coat in both fists, while the planet turned slowly over our heads.
When I let go, she was a mess. Red to her ears, star pupils spinning, mouth open.
"Th-That's cheating," she managed. "You can't— when I'm the 1 trying to spoil YOU—"
"You asked me to ask for something."
"I m-meant a theme park!"
"I wanted you."
She hid her face in my chest and made a long, high noise, and the moon around us grew a meadow of pink flowers in about 3 seconds.
We never built the theme park. We sat in the flowers and watched the world turn until she fell asleep against me.
---
My life was beautiful those months.
I could ask for anything, and I got it, and most of the time I didn't even have to ask.
I was fed and held and kissed awake and sung to sleep. I had never been taken care of in my life, and for 3 months, I let someone do it.
I knew that in 3 months, her power would come back in full.
I knew that when it did, everything would change.
I didn't prepare.
That was the mistake.
The whole world knew what she was by then. A god had walked through 4 continents in 1 afternoon and erased 4 million people. Every throne, every church, every guild with a grudge wanted her gone before she reached full strength, and there were 2 reasons, and both of them were true.
She was a god who slaughtered the races. And she was mine.
They came for her in the Asura Crisis.
I was enjoying myself. For the 1st time in my life, I let myself be happy and stopped looking at the enemies.
I let myself be unprepared.
I never allowed myself to enjoy anything that much again.
That's how I lost her.
---
> Perspective: Kaiser
> Date: February 8, 2018 — 6:35 AM
> Location: Sylvaris — Kaiser's Rented Place
I opened my eyes, and the room was dark.
I was sitting on the edge of my bed with a silver pendant in my hands. A sun with 2 spread wings, cold from the night.
She came back to my memories again.
I lifted the winged sun and pressed it against my forehead, and I held it there, and I didn't move.
Then I stood up and opened the curtains.
Grey morning light came in over the rooftops of Sylvaris. A cart rattled somewhere down the street. A baker was shouting at his apprentice. The world was going on, as it always does, without her in it.
No more time for talking.
I can't beat a god with science. I can't out-think something that rewrites the rules while I'm still reading them. I tried that already, and I lost her.
So I'll go a step further. I'll build stairs up to heaven, 1 step at a time, and climb them, and when I get to the top, I'll take her by the hand and drag her back down.
She became a goddess for me. She gave up being a girl who was scared of spiders so she could spoil me with the whole universe.
I looked down at the pendant in my palm. The sun with its 2 wings.
Gods are only names. Stories we tell each other so we have somewhere to put our virtues and our sins. Celestara was a name. Lillieth was a name. Nemesis was a name.
So when every god is surpassed... I wonder who the world will worship then.
I smirked.
"Sevrain."
The name of a god from the era of Nemesis. The 1 they burned out of every history book.
If she could climb all the way to godhood for me, then why can't I climb to godhood for her?
I promised her that night I woke up. Whatever it costs.
I closed my hand around the pendant.
The demons are already moving, huh. Belial, Mariabell, the conference. Fine. Then it's time I started talking to the worshippers and put a stop to whatever they're planning before it starts.
---
Far above the world, the moon turned slowly in the dark.
On its grey face, in a crater nobody on the planet below had ever looked at closely, a meadow of pink flowers was still growing. 4 years, and not 1 of them had wilted.
---
Even if I have to defeat every primordial thing standing between us, this was always the goal.
I'll keep climbing my sequences. I'll become the Fool they praise as a god. The 1 who beats even the beings who think they can do anything.
For you.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
Someone was hitting my front door with both fists.
At 6:40 in the morning? Who even—
I crossed the room and opened it.
Eve stood on my doorstep in a thin nightgown with no shoes on. Her feet were red and bleeding from the frozen road. Her pink hair was a mess. Her face was soaked.
Eve? Why is she here? We're maintaining distance. Why is she crying?
She threw herself at me.
"K-Kai! Kai, you're okay, you're okay, you're— wahhh—" She grabbed my arms and turned them over, both of them, checking my wrists, my hands, my 3 crooked fingers.
"Are you h-hurt? Are you hurt anywhere? Show me, show me your hands—"
"Eve—"
She pressed her ear flat against my chest and held her breath.
"It's b-beating... it's beating... your heart's beating... hic... it's beating..."
"I'm okay," I said. "Why are you here?"
"I w-won't let you go." She wrapped both arms around me and held on so hard her nails dug into my back.
"Please d-don't die. Please. Please stay alive. P-Please, Kai, please— uwahhh—"
She cried into my coat, whimpering and hiccuping, her whole body shaking against me.
The people closest to me are always the ones who suffer the most.
I know that.
Even so.
I put my arms around her. 1 hand on her back. The other in her hair.
"Please stop crying," I said quietly. "It's okay. I'm right here."
A few minutes. Let her calm down. Once she stops crying, I'll tell her to go home, and that'll be the end of it. No more affection. Nothing that makes her think I'll let her close again.
"I h-had a nightmare," she sobbed into my chest.
"A really b-bad 1. I don't want it to come true. Your heart has to keep beating, Kai. It always has to keep beating, okay? Okay?!"
I didn't answer. I stood in my doorway in the cold with a crying girl in my arms, my hand in her pink hair, and I closed my eyes.
Why does she keep reminding me of Elfie?
---
> Perspective: Eve
> Date: February 8, 2018 — 10:47 PM
> Location: Sylvaris — Eve's Home
I had my face buried in my pillow, and I had been screaming into it for 20 minutes.
"MMMMMMMHHHHH—!!"
I rolled to the left. I rolled to the right. I kicked my legs into the mattress until the bed frame squeaked.
Why did I DO that?!
Why did I run to his house in my NIGHTGOWN with NO SHOES and BANG on his DOOR at 6 in the MORNING and then just— just THROW myself at him?!
We're supposed to be fighting! We haven't even fixed the last argument! What made me do it?! My legs just went! My brain wasn't even INVOLVED!
I lifted my face out of the pillow. My cheeks were so hot I could feel them glowing.
He told me to leave, though. Eventually. After I stopped crying. He said it was just a nightmare, and I should go home and rest my feet, and he said it in that cold voice again. So I left... I didn't want to start another fight.
But...
He held me. He put his hand in my hair. He said "It's okay, I'm right here."
He could've pushed me away right at the door. He didn't.
"AAAAH, I'm so embarrassed!" I slammed my face back into the pillow and kicked my legs again.
"He's going to think I'm a little girl who can't even handle a nightmare without crying about it!"
I peeked out from under my arm.
The Kai plushie was sitting on my nightstand, 1 button eye fixed back on with blue thread, staring at me with its stitched little frown.
I picked it up and held it above me with both arms.
It really does look just like him. Same grumpy face. Same hair that sticks up at the back.
I remembered his arms around me. His voice, low and tired, right next to my ear. It's okay. It's just a nightmare.
I pulled the plushie down and hugged it to my chest and rolled onto my side, smiling so hard my face hurt, kicking my feet under the blanket.
Then I looked at it.
Then I kissed its cheek.
Chu.
...No. 1 isn't enough.
Chu.
"Hehehe..." I squeezed it tight.
"I'm so happy. Even if nothing got fixed. Even if he still thinks I'm annoying. He didn't push me away! He didn't reject me!! I was so impulsive, and he still let me hold on."
I lay there with my chin on top of the plushie's head and stared at the ceiling.
Okay. Okay, Eve. Think.
I know about Celestara now... I know about the Eclipse, and the Goddess of Misfortune, and Elfie, the girl Kai sacrificed himself for at the Academy. I'm not stopping here.
Naelor knows more than anybody. I should work with him. He already knows I'm digging, and we have a deal.
Celia... no. Celia hits me with chains every time she sees me. I'm not walking up to Celia.
But Lucas. Lucas is Kai's friend. Kai trusts him. If anybody knows what happened to Kai after the Academy, it's Lucas.
Yeah. Yeah, that'll work!
I looked at the plushie again.
It looked back at me with its little stitched frown.
I glanced at the door to make sure it was shut. Then at the window to make sure the curtains were closed.
Then I kissed it on the lips.
Chu.
My whole face caught fire. I shoved the plushie under the blanket, shoved myself under the blanket after it, and kicked my legs so hard the bed hit the wall.
"WAAAAH, what am I DOING?!"