by Sarah
Time dies away. Where and who I am go with it. There’s only the heavy heaven of Magnus’ mouth and soft darkness, drawing me in opposite directions.
He wants me to come.
And I’ve never wanted to come so badly.
But the deeper he takes me, the closer darkness edges.
Deeper.
Darker.
Until I’m too close to tell the difference. They’re one and the same, need-filled and not letting me up. Both of them swallowing all of me until I’m drowning in a black star. Until all I see is light. Until all I feel is found.
Until there’s nothing but warmth.
Nothing but quiet.
Nothing at all.
I’m on my back when I wake, adrift on a living room floor and barely breathing around a strange hush. There’s an open window in the ceiling above me, with two peach-pink moons shining down and two bats flying over.
Rubbing my eyes, I double check the sky, but two moons remain, and I don’t know why my hands smell like cough syrup. Or why my jeans are undone. Or where that hush is coming from.
“You made it.” A familiar voice gathers all my attention, and I recognize its dark pitch before turning my head. Dark curls fall over dark eyes as Magnus sits up, and as I sit up too, affirmation flows through me.
He smiles, and it feels like praise as he leans back dragging slowly from a joint as he takes a long look at me.
“Nama-fucking-ste,” he says slowly. “Let’s get you a drink.”
FOUR
Even totally devastated, it’s impossible to feel out of place in Inner City.
Tucked in the humid valley between the Solemn Mountains and the Secretsea, Inner City is an oasis for the out of place. Teenage leprechauns chase a giggling centaurette around one corner, while a fortune teller pulls cards for Persephone on another. A fire-eater and a sword-swallower compete for coins across from a belly dance-off, and block after club-lined block abounds with other creatures from every walk and stage of life. The same rainbow of neon signs promising hot debauchery and cold cocktails shines on Earthlings and Elsewhereians alike, while ancient border walls surround and free everyone inside from the laws of both sides.
Even the three oldest and strictest rules get bent here.
“Guard yourself, little bit,” a wrinkled elf warns, peddling amulets, nazars, and scapulars as I pass. “Darkness has nimble fingers and a sweet tongue.”
It’s hard to take him seriously with the ex-valkyrie on his left, hawking American Spirits and RayBans.
I nod politely and keep moving, peeking into a tattoo shop, then a strip club as I go. A million more vendors line the sidewalk, hustling everything from rambutans to “magic” lamps. Nothing I’m interested in until a boy with a unicorn horn offers a bottle of baby woodrose lemonade.
His kaleidoscopic eyes are mesmerizing, but I don’t let my gaze linger. Looking down at what I have left to trade instead, I unclasp the tiny tourmaline chain from around my middle and swap it for the soft psychedelic.
Uncapping the bottle as I turn down an even busier sidewalk, I take a sip of cool citrus mellowed by petals that taste like honeydew. I’m careful not to make much eye contact as I walk, but my curiosity runs deep. I can’t help sneaking looks at the selkie across the street, all saunter and sinew. The barely dressed will o’wisp, swaying her hips on a balcony. The naked satyr parting the path ahead of me with his slow strut and dimpled simper, leaving nothing to my imagination and everything to a throatful of four letter words.
I duck my head and swallow hard when Dionysus’ wingman catches me looking. Blushing so hot my cheeks burn, I dip quickly into the first open doorway there is, and the change from open air and neon-outlined silhouettes to flame-bright congested closeness is jarring. Commotion and nostalgia crash over me so hard, I almost back out.
Faltering a little, I roll my eyes and flit up to a rafter in the ceiling instead.
This is the last place I meant to end up, but I used to love it here. All around me, chandeliers glow with candles that never burn out, and beams like the one I’m on are great for creature-watching. Rootless wisteria grows up the walls while bass-filled Earth electronica gives the atmosphere a pulse I feel in my bones and know by heart. Linus’ familiar face behind the bar softens the blow of bitter hurt starting to flow through me, but it doesn't stop. The Sticky Sepal is just as packed with memories as it is patrons.
Padge and I stole so many nights here.
It was ours like so much was ours, and now I don’t know what I’m going to do or where I’m going to go -
A deep drink of pale purple lemonade fights back swelling tears. So I lean my head against the rafter and take another.
Sipping slower and deeper, I let my eyes wander between faces. From rogue seraphim to a prodigal changeling. To a half-naked Dryad and the goblin prince she’s putting a flower crown on.
I wonder what their whispers sound like. How their skin smells. How they kiss.
How they might look above me.
How I might feel underneath them.
What it would be like to share yourself with someone and not be stuck when it’s over.
Plenty of creatures mate for life, but fairies mate so absolutely. We bloom the first time, and then we’re bound to who we bloomed with forever. That’s it. After that, whatever one feels, so does the other. When one’s hungry or happy, so is the other. If one dies -
I tip the bottle to my lips again, but it’s empty, and there’s pastel fractals unrolling in my peripheral vision. Everything’s starting to diffract a little, and the faces below me blur easily together.
Everyone and everything looks the same, until the door opens.
The only Elsewherian more alone than me, the most lost of all of us walks in grinning, and I sit up, craning my neck and clearing my eyes to check out who he brought with him this time.
FIVE
“Come on Magnus, what is this?”
“Your fourth, fifth fledgling since Lucius?”
“Try ninth or tenth.”
“Should we put a leash on him for you?”
Even entangled with countless others, every voice in the candle-lit bar is distinct, but only one is familiar.
“Just pour two rococo sunsets, would you, Linus? Devoting him took forever.”
There’s a magnet in Magnus’ black gravel bass I want to follow. I want to go everywhere he is, but there’s two girls wrapped closer around me than candlelight can reach, and I can't remember ever feeling this alive.
“So this one’s a keeper, huh?”
“You know, that’s cruel.”
The rhythm and resonance of his voice draw me from somewhere within while fervent fingertips trace from my earlobes to hip bones.
My head swims.
I remember walking here with Magnus, starving for a drink. I remember two full moons above us and the lush jungle along the way. Then neon lights. Packed sidewalks. Snake charmers, half-zebras, and cherubs with hula-hoops.
I remember following him here and him handing me a chalice. I remember tasting bliss in the first sip.
But everything before waking up in his house?
Dark.
“As long as you told him the rules.”
“Oh yeah. That’s what someone who just had their soul sucked out wants to hear. Rules.”
“Are you insane? Don’t you remember -”
“Alright, give the guy a break. As long as he told this one what he is, the rules will follow.”
Their voices fade under a gently persistent hand, sliding down my chest, reminding me of the strange sensation under my sternum. I can’t shake the feeling that something is off - or this sense that I should feel like something is off - that it’s me they’re all talking about.
But nothing actually feels off to me.
It’s the opposite.
Everything feels really, really on.
“Magnus, tell me this one knows what he is.”
The two smooth shadows outlining me on
the dance floor. Every single one of my senses. Even the dark in me where everything that came before should be feels turned up. Wide-awake and completely natural. A tide of warmth follows every touch, right through my clothes, and every brush of skin on skin is a full-body impulse for more that goes so deep, I almost ask for it.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Magnus, seriously?”
I tip my chalice back for another drink. It goes down like champagne and angel food while the only familiar voice drifts through the bar.
“I mean, what really is anyone? Aren’t all of us just whatever we make ourselves?”
Groaning commotion fills floral-tinted air as one girl slips away from me and the one still in my arms tilts her head back. Resting in the bend of my elbow, she parts ruby lips, asking with garnet-dark eyes for me to give her a taste.
But there’s only a little left in my cup.
“Come on, guys. You know it always goes to shit when I explain things. Just look at him. He loves it here. Can’t we just … Can’t he just enjoy the loss of his mortal coil for a little while? Just one night before we burden him with some bullshit he’s got literally forever to come to grips with?”
The first girl slides back up, bearing a freshly filled chalice and taking my nearly empty one. The two of them split the last two swallows, even though I want them for myself, but then they’re sharing a wet red kiss, and there’s a third girl, bringing the full cup to my mouth and brushing her lips against my ear.
“Everyone here would bow if you told them to,” she whispers, kissing down my neck while I drink milk and honey from her hands. “We’d all drop to our knees if you said kneel.”
She pours faster, and I swallow deeper.
I don’t know what came before this moment or how time works anymore.
If it’s drifting by or standing still.
All I know is I drink and drink, and my cup never runs out. I feel and feel, and I can’t touch or be touched enough.
Even when curiosity leads me to wander, there’s a girl or something like a girl at every turn. Some with dark red eyes like Magnus and the dancers, and some with irises as bright as sunrises. Some with thorny horns and pointed ears, and some with sky blue ringlets and prismatic scales for skin. Some with feathered wings longer than their legs, and some with cloven hooves for feet. They’re all different, but they all bear cup after gilded cup up to me until I’m drunk on unlimited indulgence, and they’re curtsying and play-bowing, kissing my hand when I reach to help them up, and all I can think is if I don’t know where I came from or how I got here, or where here even is, how do I know I’m not in heaven? Or somewhere better?
How do I know everything here isn’t here just for me?
If I don’t know who I am, how do I know I’m not a god?
High as the sky and roaming slowly through the club, I watch all kinds of eyes watch me, and it feels like someone turns everything that’s already on, all the way up. I can see every tiny vein pulsing through every green leaf on the vines climbing up ebony walls, blushing petals of pouty buds turning into violet blossoms right in front of my eyes, and I swear, even the flowers sigh for me. The surrounding beat of syncopated drums thrums in every muscle, filling my bones, but I can still hear every voice, crystal clear as ever, and I’m aware of the ocean somewhere nearby. I can hear waves and smell salt as surely as I can taste pure decadence lingering on the back of my tongue, making me crave another drink while something like intuition tingles just under my skin.
I feel sensitive all over suddenly. Like I’m looking desperately for something.
Like it’s so close.
I’m turning and searching, and so sure it’s right here until my feet stop.
I can’t move.
I can’t tear my stare from the pitch darkest eyes I’ve ever seen.
No iris, all pupil, black holes bordered by white corners absorb the flame from every chandelier and don’t give a single fleck of light back. Shadow-lashes blink when I blink, and the body in the mirror moves like I move as I take in white sneakers, black jeans, and a white tee. A black satin bomber jacket stretches across my shoulders as I reach up to touch hair the color of cotton candy falling over my ears. As I push it back, I notice black fingernails, and the dark splash of tattoos covering my hands, temples, and neck. Entirely unfamiliar but deeply vivid, permanent artwork creeps around behind my ears and climbs higher up my arms than I can push my sleeves.
I don’t know what any of it means, but I can’t help my grin, and it only grows when I look back up into the mirror, and four small white fangs glint back at me.
SIX
Hiding more than just sitting now in the rafters, I tilt and bend for a better view of Inner City’s newest lost boy, getting a kick out of his own reflection. Holding back lotus-pink strands, he checks out some handwriting tattooed along the top of his forehead. Something about dying. I can’t read the rest before he shakes his hair loose with a laugh I wish I could hear.
He pushes black jacket sleeves as high as he can, and when they don’t reveal everything, he pulls out the collar of his tee-shirt, exposing even more ink. When that still isn’t enough, he lifts its hem, uncovering LOVE scratched in scrawny black print across his pale stomach.
Tucked under his belt, more ill-defined designs slip in and out of view as he nudges denim down just enough to make them out. It looks like he laughs again, but it’s hard to hear in here, even as I climb down a beam.
Just one.
Nascent darkness may not know what he is.
But I do.
Falling for himself, he’s more adorable than a baby panther, opening its eyes for the first time, and those eyes are why I can't look away. Matte-black and infinity-filled, they're why I want to get closer, when all I should do is close my own and disappear.
It isn’t just all the light in the room his eyes take.
It’s all of me.
A few seconds ago, at the first glimpse of open graves for irises, the smallest radicle in both worlds took root in the smallest part of me. Buried deep between my hips, it’s nothing I’ve ever felt before - nothing I thought I’d ever feel - but I know now exactly why they call it blooming.
It’s barely started, and I’ve already never felt so warm.
Tracing black-nailed fingertips along his jaw, brand new in every sense of the word discovers another tattoo along the inside of his bottom lip and flashes glistening fangs when he grins.
Parting my mouth a little, I breathe in and catch myself, sneaking to a lower beam when I taste the downy fledgling scent of him in the air. Still mostly hidden, I crouch small and fold my wings, but urgent, full-body flutters keep starting between them, and I can only hold so still.
Bones that used to be hollow feel full with the need to fly to his side, and there’s this tender ache inside my chest.
Like it’s literally breaking my heart, how close I want to get to him.
Straightening his posture, newborn perdition stills suddenly. I know I should take off when he starts scanning his surroundings in the mirror, but soot black eyes seek out mine in less than a second, and the moment they finally meet, what's happening inside me starts happening all over me. Blooming seeps into my ears like a whisper and wraps low around my middle like well-known arms. It tickles from the backs of my knees to the soles of my feet, elusive and unyielding, and just like that, I go from knowing I should get as far as I can from him, to at least try to hide -