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<a href="./writing/letters_to_jett/p15.html">[15]</a> <a href="./writing/letters_to_jett/p15.html">[15]</a>
<a href="./writing/letters_to_jett/p16.html">[16]</a> <a href="./writing/letters_to_jett/p16.html">[16]</a>
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<div class="more-spacing">
<h2>Letters to Kurosagi</h2>
<a href="./writing/letters_to_kurosagi/erin01.html">Erin</a>
<a href="./writing/letters_to_kurosagi/erin02.html">...Hidden</a>
<a href="./writing/letters_to_kurosagi/erin03.html">...Devoted</a>
<a href="./writing/letters_to_kurosagi/erin04.html">...Torn</a>
<a href="./writing/letters_to_kurosagi/erin05.html">...Entreated</a>
<a href="./writing/letters_to_kurosagi/erin06.html">...Egress</a>
<a href="./writing/letters_to_kurosagi/erin07.html">First Contact</a>
<a href="./writing/letters_to_kurosagi/erin08.html">Erin Educated</a>
<a href="./writing/letters_to_kurosagi/erin09.html">...Eyed</a>
<a href="./writing/letters_to_kurosagi/erin10.html">...Interred</a>
</div>
<div class="more-spacing"> <div class="more-spacing">
<h2>Letters to Morgan</h2> <h2>Letters to Morgan</h2>
<h3>2019</h3> <h3>2019</h3>

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<h1>Erin</h1>
<!-- published: 2019-08-07 -->
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<p><em>Clack, clack, clack.</em></p>
<p>My fingers weave deftly through the tangled strands of yarn. Weaving, knitting, knotting. Clouds spill out from my hands, fog, mist, snow. Snow cascading everywhere, covering the land in a blanket, sending everything to sleep forever.</p>
<p>I sit here on my ill-begotten throne, self-imposed ivory tower, and I wait. I know not what I wait for, watching the clouds pass by, some of which I birthed, all of which I know I will never see again. Not in the same form, anyway, or in the same arrangement. Two atoms, or perhaps two crystals in a snowflake, defy fate by meeting in a single time and place and then separate, flung out in the universe. Never to meet each other again. I suppose people are the same, when you take the centuries and then the millennia into account. Two souls meet, and perhaps they spend their entire lives together, or maybe only a few minutes. And when those people die, and their souls are shredded apart and reformed like a small child's paper-mache, that meeting can never again be replicated. Never ever.</p>
<p><em>Who are you?</em></p>
<p><em>I'm Erin.</em></p>
<p><em>Who is Erin?</em></p>
<p><em>I don't know.</em></p>
<p>I once had a fiery soul. I once had an unsatisfied spirit, hungry for something more, something better than this mortal world could provide.</p>
<p>And then the muses came. Sang me to sleep at first, enthralled me with stories of the exploits of the people I saw in paintings everywhere, murals, wondering who these strange and beautiful people were that I passed by day after day. I sang in the sun, and I rolled in the grass, and words flowed from my fingers as gracefully as a spider building its web and as fiercely as a broken fire hydrant bursting out into the street. Gutters flooding, overflowing, iridescent splotches where they met the runoff from the street corner's mechanic shop set up in his garage. I made things I loved, and I loved making things.</p>
<p>And then the doldrums rolled in. Not all at once, although that winter night at the height of sixteen was the Fracture, the initial impact that would result in a Shatter. But to get from a Fracture to a Shatter... It was the little things. Collateral damage. A hasty word said here, a sudden packing and night spent in a hotel there. Bright stage lights, midnight nightmare frights, obsessively prodding and poking holes in reality in search of a shiny trinket I could not obtain. Sent forth from the place I'd lingered in ten years, a garden only now starting to blossom, straight into a grave where upon the light from the sun above plays.</p>
<p>Half a year ago, a little angel crashed through my closet and pulled me into a world unseen. That first night was rough, fraught with intimate encounters I won't sully this place recounting. Was it rape? Did I want it? It doesn't matter now. He came back every so often. Sometimes only after a few days, sometimes making me wait a whole month before he came back. Always we'd slip away through the portal in my closet, in my ceiling, in my wall to wherever he wanted me to see that day. And when I got stronger, became more accustomed to the slender colorless body he'd made for me, I started visiting him whenever I wanted. The moment in my dreams I became lucid, I yearned for his touch, yelled out his name, sought out the burn of our twin souls together as we both kicked and screamed in our respective worlds for independence. After a few months, I became acquainted with his Mistress as well. He wasn't officially under her command; it was a temporary alliance until some important work of his was done that I was never quite privy to.</p>
<p>He was calmer when I was at his side. Shy, almost. Like rage was the only emotion he'd ever learned, and he hadn't considered the possible need to comprehend any other.</p>
<p>I shouldn't have been surprised when, in the depths of my despair, he offered to prepare a place for me in his home. A place where I could be free from the worries of my earthly home. Safe from the tyrannies of the men in my own home.</p>
<p><em>The muses pull me to cleave the night and leave this world unseen.</em></p>
<p>You can't see me anymore. My work is complete to the muses' satisfaction. Seven books and countless poems to my name. And when the time came, I answered the angel's call. We shot through the sky, no possession to my name other than the little flash drive hanging from my neck, just like he'd specified I was allowed to take with me.</p>
<p>I thought it would be bliss.</p>
<p>It wasn't bliss. He hollowed me out, carved out my organs, replaced them with a hollow shell of a rib cage. Barely above the level of a doll. And then he disappeared, and his Mistress, hating humans but only ever tolerating me for my angel's benefit, cast me out. And what was the earth to do with a girl who'd sworn eternal perdition the moment her pen had lifted from the page for the last time? I drowned in the clouds. I practically became one myself. Drifted down to the earth in a pillar and turned that into an abode instead.</p>
<p>&quot;Come home, Cloud,&quot; Cirno says, his face cocky and full of glee.</p>
<p>But clouds have no home. Clouds have no face. Clouds move across the sky with poise and grace.</p>
<p>And then they evaporate and disappear.</p>
<p>And yet some part of my weary heart refuses to disappear.</p>
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<h1>Erin Hidden</h1>
<!-- published: 2019-08-12 -->
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<p>The muses left me to desolation and despair. Somewhere between the calm solace of a morning meadow, with all its flowers waving hello to the sun, unaware of their impending demise, and a pit of hounds shrieking as if they were in hell. But then, I suppose, a great deal many things could fit in that gap. The whole gamut of human emotions spans from horizon to horizon. Everything has been expressed before. There is nothing new under the sun, much less the flowers far below, little faces so tiny I can't make them out distinctly from my tower window.</p>
<p>But I remember. I remember what the flowers looked like. That hasn't escaped me yet.</p>
<p>My bookcase rattles. A book slips off the shelf, lands on the floor with crumpled pages. I sigh and pick myself up from my chair and wander over, turn the book over, straighten out the pages. This time it's an old book of poetry. Nothing more than shards I remember from my previous life, the most rousing passages that burrowed their way deep into my brain. If I were to plummet and hit the ground and spill out all my memories onto the ground, amnesiac with the miracle of surviving such a fall, these few pieces would remain. It might be too much to hope, or maybe to bear, that they will come with me in the next life.</p>
<p>Plagiarism from an early age, if not a whole different planet, some species I have yet to learn of.</p>
<p>The bookcase rattles again. I manage to catch the book this time. And then another book slides down, catches my shoulder- a sudden flush of pain- and then another one, another one, a whole flood of books all coming down and crashing.</p>
<p>I shield my face with my hands, edges of books still trying to crack open my fingers and poke at my eyes, crows flitting around Rapunzel's tower.</p>
<p>The torrent settles. The shelves are bare. Something rustles downstairs. I yank the skirt of my dress out from under the pile and stumble back onto my feet.</p>
<p>I push open my bedroom door. The top of the spiral stairway faces me. I gingerly take the railing, fingers tingling with the memory of all the etiquette lessons I took in the hopes of appeasing Mistress, and start to descend. A ghost, a spectre of the memory of some awful event raining down to haunt humanity once again.</p>
<p>"Hush. I think I hear something moving ahead."</p>
<p>"This is it, Grace. This is the final commander, and then we can take out Velouria herself."</p>
<p>"Yeah, I <i>know</i>, dumbass. I've been with you this whole time!"</p>
<p>"Heh..." An awkward laugh. "Sorry. I just get excited."</p>
<p>The sound of footsteps approach. I fold my hands and wait.</p>
<p>"You ready?"</p>
<p>"As ready as I'll ever be."</p>
<p>"Then let's strike!"</p>
<p>Shadows play on the walls. And then the source of the voices round the corner and appear, stumble to stop on the stairs. Two cherubs of children, not much younger than myself, <i>that</i> version of myself. Wide emerald eyes, messy mops of orange hair. One brandishing a sword, the other a silver bow.</p>
<p>"We've come to stop you, Lady Phrespane!" the boy yells, jumping up another step closer. "I won't let you terrorize this earth <i>any longer!</i>"</p>
<p>"Lady...?"</p>
<p>He lets out a battle cry and charges for me. I gently step aside, and he stumbles further up the staircase.</p>
<p>Confusion crosses his face. "What are you playing at?"</p>
<p>"I... I don't know. What <i>am</i> I playing at?"</p>
<p>Grace nocks an arrow. "No funny games, Lady Phrespane."</p>
<p>"I... I'm afraid I don't understand."</p>
<p>"I'm not stupid!" the boy yells. He charges for me again. I hop to the side, and he trips and tumbles down the stairs with a disgruntled Grace underneath.</p>
<p>They climb back up the stairs, Grace clearly frustrated. The boy wipes the hair out of his eyes. "Why aren't you fighting back?"</p>
<p>"Why should I?"</p>
<p>"Because- because you're the Westerly Terror! You've been sending tornadoes down to decimate the land under Mistress Velouria's command! And we humans won't stand for it anymore!"</p>
<p>"I... think you have me confused for somebody else."</p>
<p>"Wait, so you're... <i>not</i> Lady Phrespane?"</p>
<p>"No."</p>
<p>"Not even a little bit?"</p>
<p>I shake my head. "My name is Erin. I hold no title."</p>
<p>The two kids trade glances. "So..."</p>
<p>"I don't mind visitors. Heaven knows I'd practically set myself on fire from understimulation otherwise. Would you like some tea?"</p>
<p>"Yeah, and poison us? No thanks. I'm outta here."</p>
<p>"<i>Grace!</i>" The boy grabs her arm just as she turns to leave and thrusts her forward. "Are there cookies in the deal? I <i>love</i> cookies!"</p>
<hr />
<p>Grace sits in the corner, her head buried in a book of poetry. The same one that fell earlier, in fact. Hecat, as it turns out the boy's name is, lays splayed out on a free stretch of floor, stomach placated, sword just a few inches away just in case.</p>
<p>Just in case.</p>
<p>I run my fingers along the windowsill. Still silvery, still just as shiny as my first day of solitude. "Hecat?"</p>
<p>"Mmm?"</p>
<p>"How is Mistress Velouria doing? From what I take it, her campaign isn't going too well."</p>
<p>"W-wait, you <i>know</i> her?"</p>
<p>"Let's say we have a... <i>fraught</i> history together."</p>
<p>"I don't remember an Erin in Velouria's troops."</p>
<p>"Because I was never in her troops."</p>
<p>"I don't understand."</p>
<p>I tilt my head. "It's a rather long story. It's not fit for telling, anyway. What lapses below the clouds?"</p>
<p>"Huh?"</p>
<p>"She means, <i>what's going on below,</i> you idiot," Grace pipes up from her book.</p>
<p>"Oh. Yeah. Right. Well..." He scratches the back of his neck. "One of my father's cows had a baby recently. And the crops- well, the ones that survived the tornado- they're coming up nice and healthy."</p>
<p>"You live on a farm?"</p>
<p>"Yeah. Everybody does back home. In the city, it's all razzle and dazzle."</p>
<p>"Those aren't words," Grace chirped.</p>
<p>Hecat's cheeks flushed. "Oh, who cares?"</p>
<p>"I care." She slammed her book shut. "The sooner we deal with Velouria, the sooner we can get the king's gold and go home."</p>
<p>"You don't care for the <i>adventure?</i> For the glory?" Hecat shot to his feet. "This world is so big and wide, and finally we have the chance to see it..."</p>
<p>"So the world I once loved is gone forever." I close my eyes. The familiar strands of light, a whole rainbow's worth, dance across my vision. Just like they always have. "You may go when you please. I wouldn't condemn anybody to this life."</p>
<p>Hecat's attention flickers over to me, away from Grace, still sitting in the corner, now with a scowl on her face. "Don't you want to see it for yourself?"</p>
<p>"No."</p>
<p>"That's kind of sad." Hecat shrugs. "Come on, Grace. Maybe we'll find Phrespane elsewhere."</p>
<p>They pick themselves up and disappear through the bedroom door. I drift down to the pile of books and pick up another one, another one, another one. The bookcase gradually refills, more disorderly than before. No, rather... There was never any sort of order to it, anyways. There can't be chaos when there's no order to compare it with.</p>
<p>So what does that make <i>me</i>, then? Just a relic from a previous era relegated to a shelf, a heirloom passed down from a great-grandmother and forgotten on a jewelry rack, dusty and disused? Tacky, aesthetics clashing with modern sensibilities. I had a heirloom from a great-grandmother of mine, received back in the hazy days of elementary school. A week of madness, of playing in half-finished basements, vampires heading with faces held high into eternal slumbers crumpled in toy boxes. I got a fairy as well, who sat on one of my shelves until the day came to move. My cousins got other jewelry. I don't remember what. My brothers never gave a damn. I don't even think they were there, father's sons to the end, lapping up the attention they got when all the females were removed from their presence.</p>
<p>It's always been a male guiding my destiny, hasn't it? Whether I've liked it or not. Ineffectual pushback written off as ODD, as some kind of mental disturbance, unwarranted anger to be shoveled into a hole and papered over with drugs and gaslighting.</p>
<p>You have no right to be angry. You have no right to write about the things that haunt you in the night.</p>
<p>Why am I writing this?</p>
<p>Catharsis, I guess. A sort of healing I could never achieve in life. A sort of healing that can't be dealt with by the relative bandaid of running away. Trying to use a single plank to bridge over a sea.</p>
<p>He's not around anymore. Nobody's around anymore.</p>
<p>What happens to me from here on out is only up to me to decide.</p>
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<title>Erin Devoted</title>
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<h1>Erin Devoted</h1>
<!-- published: 2019-08-19 -->
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<p>I am half-sick of shadows.</p>
<p>I can't pinpoint the exact moment in my life when I let them in, or in what form they originally appeared in. Was it when I was but a babe of fifteen, round chubby face and a world's worth of hurt in my heart, still seeking the validation of men half the world away who would never know my name? The first time the veil my parents had intended to bury me with fell away, and I ran and sang in the field of life, heart suddenly light without the weight of appeasing an angry god. Was it at sixteen, when I stared a bull in the face, an angry machine still yet to show its horrific colors? Working late into the night to flee with all my files, arrange them in a way that made sense to my underage mind, my phone suddenly burdened with the weight of gigabytes upon gigabytes that had previously been delegated to the cloud. I almost fetishized the flight to liberation, I think. It happens when one is young, experiencing it for the first time. You get drunk on the sensation of ripping out the marionette master's strings from your wrists, bloody holes left be damned.</p>
<p>The monster opened its maw then, taught me the dark pleasure of deletion. It feels cathartic at first to delete an account you once used daily. Social media, that false gathering of bodiless souls in the cloud- like one gazing for the last time at a house they'd just finished moving out of. You cast your gaze over a town you know you will most likely never see again. Everyone else will wake up tomorrow and go about their daily lives, and maybe they will wonder about you, about your whereabouts for a little bit, and then the hole will close and everything will be just as it was before you had sullied everything with your presence. The hole in the web will close. The few neurons once devoted to your memory will be overwritten with someone else's face.</p>
<p>The sonder doesn't hurt until later. You delete and delete and delete, refreshed every time you can remove another entry from your password manager. The sonder festers in your heart like a cancer; unless you know what to watch out for, unless you're <em>actively looking</em>, it's hidden until it's too late to reverse course. You grow restless. You run out of harmful yet ultimately optional services to cull, and then you turn to actually necessary things to start removing. How many email accounts I have lost over the years... How many people have sought me out, and found nothing but a void to stare back at them?</p>
<p>Not that I remember any passwords anymore. Not that, if the only people who have ever ventured into this tower speak of kings and farms, any still persist, or that any would need them. Perhaps it's some hybrid timeline, and somewhere else in the kingdom lies a last vestige of the former internet. A mesh net, perhaps. Did they bother to save anything from the old world? Or just mark everything off as a loss and start fresh?</p>
<p>If I had that opportunity, would I take it? Descend down to the earth as a nobody and start over from scratch?</p>
<p>I wish I knew the answer.</p>
<p>The clouds are overcast and restless today. Too reflective to stare down at the earth- and there would be nothing to see anyways, just an endless sea of white- so I lie down on the floor. I don't know why it's taken me so long to notice that the fabric of my dress is on the scratchy side. I suppose I just never cared to notice. I'd wear it for eternity, with no need to ever wash it, so why should I have bothered to commit the feel to memory? Unless I wanted to torture myself forever and ever until the end of time.</p>
<p>Such was it back when the muses spoke to me. Almost never through concrete words but through the little sounds nobody else seemed to hear: the way the wind rushed in the air vents when the temperature inside got too out-of-hand, or when it rustled through the trees; the chirps of the crickets back when my father didn't spray so much weedkiller as he eventually escalated to; the soft patter of rain on the windowsill. Even the lightning had something to say to me, the thunder the words meant to be read between the lines, the flash of light the punchline to all her jokes. Lady Phrespane was a delightful one, if a little too headstrong for her own goodwill. But what harm could possibly befall a goddess in her own right? Even though we were never particularly close, I more interested in lying safe close to the bosom of Mistress Velouria herself instead of her daughter, we got along well enough.</p>
<p>Except the few times Mistress Velouria sent Phrespane after me like an errand dog, reminding me to stay in check, in line with the behavior fitting a devotee of hers. Never question intentions. Never question why this angel is into you. Never question why the Goddess has only revealed herself to you <em>now</em>, instead of all those eons ago when she supposedly made the world. Else risk a devastating flood, a thunderstorm, a tornado sent your way. For what can a human do against the sheer power of the weather? Like an ant to a garden hose.</p>
<p>You were always into gardening, after all. Like my mother.</p>
<p>You wanted to usurp my mother.</p>
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<h1>Erin Torn</h1>
<!-- published: 2020-01-28 -->
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<p>"There's a war coming."</p>
<p>A girl, one of my co-workers at the only job that ever took me in, whispered that to me one day towards the end of a lengthy shift. Her dark eyes gazed at me with the strength of a thousand suns, a thousand stars that knew they were rapidly approaching the day we'd part forever.</p>
<p>She refused to elaborate. And then she shrunk back towards the grill, frantically shaking her head, the bangles on her headscarf waving every which way. Denying she'd ever said anything, anything of substance, anything at all.</p>
<p>But she was right. A war was raging on in the undercurrents below our feet. We were standing in a river, silt squishing between our toes, waters once crystal-clear and idyllic. And the waters were lapping at our feet, slowly creeping up our legs, past our knees. Soft blanket turns to forceful hand.</p>
<p>And I fled in a lover's arms.</p>
<p>Maybe she buckled under the force and collapsed into the waters, swept under into a watery grave. Maybe she finally found the fortitude to crawl out of the river before it was too late. Maybe someone else saved her.</p>
<p>I suppose I'll never know. Because she's long since dead, dust along with the world I used to know, and the rivers have been replaced with a sea of clouds, thicker now that it's wintertime and the skies are always overcast. The days are shorter, and the moon greets me with her slender face more often than not. Maybe I'm already long since dead too, colorless corpse barred from decay, since I don't feel the cold at all.</p>
<p>But I remembered something this morning, staring into the fluffy abyss, conquest of mashed potatoes:</p>
<p>I had a child.</p>
<p>I had <em>his</em> child.</p>
<p>He carved out my organs, and with that came my womb, pink pillow of flesh that had been party to a thousand secrets. Sedated enough to dissolve into my surroundings, I only felt the burning in my hips as the rest of my body was vacated one organ after another. Limbs too heavy for even an ineffectual resistance, head just as hazy as the clouds now outside my tower window.</p>
<p>&quot;Velouria...&quot;</p>
<p>He said something to me. I couldn't make out the words. Maybe it was an apology for all the blood spilling out onto the dirt floor underneath us. Maybe he was calling Velouria to help retrieve the child, or just put me down even further so I couldn't call her name anymore. Maybe he was cursing the folly of seducing a mere mortal human, needy flesh trembling, blessed with fragile physical life and a place in the cycle of life. How needy humans are, after all. In constant pursuit of sustenance, lungs pleading for air, skin politely requesting to be washed. But gods don't get dirty or hungry or need air to breathe, and neither do their direct underlings. Eternal life in a state indistinguishable from death.</p>
<p>Needy flesh trembling, slowly draining of color like the plastic window clings once mounted in my bedroom window. Purple butterflies in blazing color, forgotten for a year, then rediscovered as gray-blue blobs, all detail gone.</p>
<p>Maybe the child was already gone from my body, had already kissed <a href="https://mayvaneday.org/poetry/g/the-golden-cage.txt">the poison air in which it was born</a>. Already half-tied to that strange world by way of genes, baptized by breathing, finally freed from the womb and wrapped in a blanket of wind for him to hold.</p>
<p><em>Would it be alright?</em> I would have thought had I the capacity to think in that moment. <em>Did they know how to care for a human infant? Would it even need anything, carried through life on its divine genes? Would it live forever, as its father no doubt would, or would it eventually be cursed to the ground as well?</em></p>
<p><em>Where would the soul go, if it already resided in heaven? Would he have to recycle his own child?</em></p>
<p><em>Would I ever see it again?</em></p>
<p>I don't think the baby cried.</p>
<p>Eventually they left. And the trees in the courtyard wept red and golden tears, burying me as the pain of absence settled in and made its acquaintance.</p>
<p>I should have liked to stay there, I thought. To sleep under cover of leaves forever, safe in the bosom of Mistress Velouria's fortress.</p>
<p>I suppose, in a strange way, I got my wish.</p>
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<h1>Erin Entreated</h1>
<!-- published: 2020-03-19 -->
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<p>The days are slowly, but surely, getting longer. Even though I don't have a clock or anything to measure it for sure, or a parting of the clouds to confirm that green grows below instead of endless white, the sun hangs above a little more each day.</p>
<p><i>It's springtime, isn't it?</i></p>
<p><i>The chill in the air, and the green everywhere, beckoning you home...</i></p>
<p><i>But this is home now.</i></p>
<p>In college days, in bygone days, come spring, I had the thought that I could somehow banish time. That, if I covered up all the clocks, the green light on the microwave and the white numbers on the phone and everywhere else with a timestamp, that time would stop forever. That I could roam in the arboretum forever, trapped in the blissful limbo of the one day before the last of the spring final exams, not a single obligation in the world.</p>
<p>A room without organs. All the decorations taken down, as much as possible shoved into boxes, every surface wiped down and pristine. As if time was a lie, as if I'd never been there at all.</p>
<p>"It's about time, Erin."</p>
<p>Something bolts through my veins. A subdued surprise. It's not a pleasant sensation.</p>
<p><i>I know that voice.</i></p>
<p>I turn around.</p>
<p>Kurosagi is standing on the windowsill. A blue scarf is wrapped around his face to protect from the cold, the cold that I no longer know how to feel. He's wearing a matching robe the same shade as the sky, most likely stolen from a villager down below as two jagged slashes for his wings poke out to say hello in the breeze.</p>
<p>His hand grips the frame of the window as he swings down into the room.</p>
<p>"Kuroi." Like a breeze escaping me.</p>
<p>"So you <i>do</i> remember me." His scarf shifts. A smile underneath, maybe. He turns to the bookshelf. His darkened eyes scan the titles on the covers. "Brain in a jar. I wonder..." One of his arms reaches for a book. His fingers linger on the top of the spine. "May I?"</p>
<p>"No, you may not."</p>
<p>"Why not? Afraid that I'll... like it?" He tips his head. "Afraid that I'll tell someone down below, and then your tower will be flooded with people singing accolades? Or worse- that the <i>king</i>-" his voice wavers with vitriol- "will summon you, and then you'll <i>have</i> to leave the tower?"</p>
<p>I don't give him the pleasure of a response.</p>
<p>"Isn't that right, Erin? You told me once you'd rather die than be famous. So I swept you up to heaven right when you would have hit it off. And now the world has left you alone. Some peace the forgotten have."</p>
<p>"Some heaven this is, to strip me of life and yet leave me alive."</p>
<p>"You left me no other choice."</p>
<p>"I could have-" a shiver through my spine- "stayed with you forever."</p>
<p>He rolls his eyes. "In what capacity? Mistress Velouria would have gladly accepted another angel in her ranks." He takes his finger off the book. His arm drops back down to his side. "A shame, really. I know you always wanted to fly. But I seem to recall a certain cry in the night... What was it again?"</p>
<p>"I... I don't..."</p>
<p>"Remember? I do. 'No gods, no masters'? Something to that effect."</p>
<p>"Was I really so..."</p>
<p>"Brave? Truthful? Bold? Truth be told, I've always felt the same. It's what I love about you, that you hold no loyalties or bonds to else but yourself. Or <i>loved</i>. Do you feel <i>anything</i> in that empty shell of yours?"</p>
<p>"I feel..."</p>
<p>I feel what? Sadness? No, I'm not grieving for anything... not violently, anyway. Wistful? That might be a better fit. An organ all on its own, nestled right where my left lung used to be, present in every breath.</p>
<p>Happy? Am I happy here? Or merely content?</p>
<p>Why do I breathe without lungs? Just pushing air around as it is, no respiration to be had? Is it just... something to do? Something to keep me company?</p>
<p>"I feel," I say, and leave it at that.</p>
<p>Kurosagi lurches forward and takes my hand in his. He seizes up as if suddenly hit by a wall of winter wind.</p>
<p>"You feel like death."</p>
<p>"And whose fault is that again?"</p>
<p>"Mistress Velouria's. I would have strung you in the stars, Erin. I would have made you a constellation in the heavens, and the people would have sung your songs forever. But you always hated the thought of being a star."</p>
<p>"And what of you?"</p>
<p>His eyes flicker. "Me?"</p>
<p>"You... are allied with Mistress Velouria. And yet you say you hate the gods, just as I... do?"</p>
<p>He lets go of my hand and steps back. But he is not taken aback. Rather, his face looks dark, as if a storm has just rolled in.</p>
<p>"Death is the only truth," he says. "It is the only thing in life that is certain. Time fails me, as the higher realms spin at their own pace, and I can never predict how long I'll be gone. My body fails me when it bleeds in battle, when I am punctured or cut or punched. Money fails me, the weather fails me, the essence of matter itself fails me."</p>
<p>"And this is my fault?"</p>
<p>He shakes his head. "I realized this a long time ago. Long before you walked on this earth. Mistress Velouria is the strongest of the gods-"</p>
<p>"You and I both know that's not true."</p>
<p>"She is the least likely to kill me for not living up to expectations. I consider that strength, to be lenient."</p>
<p>"She was not lenient with me."</p>
<p>"Because I asked her not to be."</p>
<p>Our eyes meet.</p>
<p>"Mistress Velouria gave me few options. It would have been a betrayal to keep you locked up frozen as a statue forever. And if I kept your soul in a locket close to my chest, I might have lost you if the chain broke, or someone stole it thinking it a family heirloom. And I could not bear to see you a... bear, or some other creature in Mistress Velouria's deathless menagerie."</p>
<p>"You could not have just... asked me what I wanted?"</p>
<p>A moment of strained silence.</p>
<p>"I wanted to preserve you forever. To have another truth. And you would have told me you would rather die."</p>
<p>I turn away from him, away from the sunshine starting to peak behind his wings, filter through his feathers. Something stirs behind my eyes.</p>
<p>"Begone from here, Kuroi."</p>
<p>"Not yet. I still have to tell you something."</p>
<p>"If it is not an apology, I have no desire to hear it."</p>
<p>"Erin, our daughter is missing."</p>
<p>"Like how you went missing?"</p>
<p>"<i>Erin...</i>" He sighs. "Gods above, we have a lot to catch up on." A hand on my shoulder. I shrug it off. "Perhaps today isn't the best day to ask for your assistance."</p>
<p>Something hot streaks down my face. I reach up to wipe it away.</p>
<p>My finger comes back wet.</p>
<p>"Go away."</p>
<p>"Fine. But I will be back, Erin. And I hope you will find it in your heart to forgive me before then."</p>
<p>The soft patter of steps on the floor. The sun scatters as he unfurls his wings. And then he is gone, and everything is silent again.</p>
<p>I turn to my bookshelf.</p>
<p>There is a book missing.</p>
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<h1>Erin Egress</h1>
<!-- published: 2020-04-09 -->
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<p><i>There is a book missing. There is a book missing. There is a book missing...</i></p>
<p>How peculiar that this is the only absence that comes naturally to me. I can put my hand against my chest, right around where my bellybutton is, and push ever so slightly- and feel the skin go taut, like squeezing a balloon. And I can remember the feeling of my emotions fading those first few months in this tower, of the violent tumult of grief dissolving into torpor as the days stretched out before me forever, gradually accepting that history was over and so too was the need to react to anything.</p>
<p>But there is a book missing. There is a change in the environment. And there's nothing I can do about it. Nothing except exhume the old instincts of panic.</p>
<p>Breath in, breath out.</p>
<p><i>Why am I breathing?</i></p>
<p><i>I don't have lungs. I don't need to breathe.</i></p>
<p><i>Is it possible to just... stop?</i></p>
<p>I let the air exit me and pull in no more, the last breath I <i>should</i> have taken long ago. Nothing happens. Nothing changes, except perhaps the few muscles left in my chest glance around, wonder what they're supposed to do now.</p>
<p><i>I wonder what it would be like to be a corpse.</i></p>
<p>I lie down on the floor, put my hands on my chest, close my eyes. The sun shines beyond my eyelids. I could be sunbathing. I could be a teenager again on the shore of a beach, half-guarding my family's pile of junk poorly hidden underneath a towel.</p>
<p>I could be dead.</p>
<p>A shadow streaks over the room.</p>
<p>Maybe I'm in the bottom of an open grave. Maybe there's a preacher leaning over the hole, preparing to read the final rites before they blanket me in dirt.</p>
<p>It would be what I deserve, to sleep with the worms.</p>
<p>"So, Erin-"</p>
<p>And then Kurosagi is at my side in an instant. A hand, an arm underneath my head, my legs, cradled against his chest, familiar whiff of citrus, the rough fabric of his scarf against my cheek.</p>
<p>I let my arms fall.</p>
<p>"<i>Erin!</i>" His hands are trembling. "Come on, this isn't funny!"</p>
<p>His arms give way, lowering me back to the floor. And then his face is a few inches away, breath soft against my cheek. A few fingers brush my neck, my chest.</p>
<p>"Velouria," he curses under his breath, "you <i>promised</i> me she would be safe, you-" and then he profanes the air between us. "I don't understand. Was it one of Hidehaji's goons? A Lorinthia? Some kind of rogue...?"</p>
<p>His words trail off.</p>
<p>I feel a few fingers tug on my collar.</p>
<p>"Hey!" I slap his hand away and open my eyes. Kurosagi hops back, tense like he expects a fight, like he expects me to be possessed or... something. I prop myself up. "Did you really just try to <i>strip</i> me?"</p>
<p>"I was checking for wounds!" he hisses back.</p>
<p>"Did you <i>really</i> think it was possible for me to die here? After all your talk of <i>preserving</i> me?"</p>
<p>"Well..." A strained breath. He forces himself to relax. "No, I <i>didn't</i>. But after just now... Has anyone been able to scale the tower?"</p>
<p>"Two kids. A long time ago."</p>
<p>Kurosagi curses under his breath. "Erin, you know I said I was coming back for you."</p>
<p>"I know." I pull my legs closer. "I still do not forgive you."</p>
<p>He averts his eyes.</p>
<p>"Kuroi?" I put a hand on the bookcase right beside me. "There's supposed to be a book of poetry on this bookshelf."</p>
<p>His cheeks flush red.</p>
<p>"Did you take it?"</p>
<p>He locks his jaw.</p>
<p>"<i>Kuroi, where is my book?</i>"</p>
<p>He closes his eyes.</p>
<p>I pull myself up and march over to him, plant my hands squarely on his shoulders. "Kuroi. <i>Where is my book?</i>"</p>
<p>"It is no longer in my possession."</p>
<p>"No longer-"</p>
<p>He shoots to his feet-</p>
<p>The book falls out from one of the folds in his robe.</p>
<p>My eyes flicker to it, and then to his face. "You would... lie to me?"</p>
<p>"I- Erin-"</p>
<p>"And you claim to love me. But you don't even think me worthy of the truth."</p>
<p>"I <i>do</i> love you, Erin. Now and forever. I just... I needed something of yours beside me. Some reminder that you were alive. That you existed."</p>
<p>"You could not have just... asked me if you could borrow it?"</p>
<p>"You would have said no. That you'd rather keep it here." He crosses his arms. "You claim to love me, but you refuse to let me have <i>some</i> proof of our bond."</p>
<p>"Do you really think I still love you?"</p>
<p>He stiffens. Like it's <i>his</i> turn to play the corpse.</p>
<p>"My affection for you is a skeleton." I start pacing in what little space I have. "The bones are bare, only suggesting what it once was. And you can wrap as many organs and muscles and flesh around it as you want, but that won't bring it back to life."</p>
<p>"And what's that supposed to mean?"</p>
<p>"I remember that I loved you, Kuroi. And my heart yearns to be loved in return. It would be so easy to use the path already worn. But my head says no, that you would just... lead me around on a leash, like a <i>beast</i>, like Mistress Velouria would! And you claim to be better than her? More powerful?"</p>
<p>"You understand that I am the only thing standing between you and Mistress Velouria's rage?"</p>
<p>"I know."</p>
<p>"So... this is it?"</p>
<p>"No. I will stay with you." I stop pacing and turn to him. "But understand, Kuroi, that I will only tolerate your presence for my daughter's sake."</p>
<p>"Wh- She's <i>my</i> daughter too!"</p>
<p>"You-"</p>
<p>My throat chokes up. Something burns in my chest, right where my heart used to be.</p>
<p><i>Was it rape? Did I want it?</i></p>
<p><i>Did I want it?</i></p>
<p><i>Did I</i> ask <i>for it?</i></p>
<p>The words, when they do come out, come out slowly, unsure of their finality.</p>
<p>"You raped me."</p>
<p>"I did not-"</p>
<p>"You forced yourself upon me and then abandoned me. I carried her without knowing for six months. All of the pain I have carried since we met has been because of you."</p>
<p>"<i>And I raised her for eighteen years!</i>" His feathers rustle. "All of the pain of not having a true mother beside me was because of your <i>stubborn</i> refusal to join me at my side! We could have been a happy family, Erin. She could have grown up to be a normal, <i>happy</i> angel with a place in the world. But you condemned her to be a Nephilim with the whole damned <i>universe</i> after her. What about the Lorinthia? Do you think they're actually going to give up a chance to <i>finally</i> make the Millennium Girl?"</p>
<p>It's like a blow in a boxing match, or a sudden gust of wind. The world turned upside-down.</p>
<p>"Lorinthia?" My mind fogs over. "I... I don't..."</p>
<p>"You know nothing that's going on in the world. I should have known." His arm shoots out. He holds a hand out to me. "I'll show you. I'll show you everything."</p>
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<h1>First Contact</h1>
<!-- published: 2020-07-18 -->
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<p>I have no memories of my own baptismal. I know that it happened, for there are pictures of it in the scrapbook my mother made of my infant years. A pastor dripping holy water on my forehead, pronouncing me blessed, afraid that, if he dunked me in the water like those who knew how to hold their breath, I would breathe in the still and stone-cold waters and my tiny lungs would drown in search of air.</p>
<p>One of my younger brothers, fresh into middle school, decided to get baptized. I remember not why. Only that one moment I was inside the sanctuary, listening to the pastor preach a faith I had fallen out of, and the next I was leaning over the water fountain near the bathrooms trying to entrap the whole ocean in my stomach. My father chastised me for leaving. I refused to tell him why. He called me spiritually blind.</p>
<p>But I am as blind as Rapunzel's prince as I clutch on to Kurosagi for dear life, face buried in the deep blue drapes of his scarf like the baptismal pool my father would gladly have pushed me under. Except the floor of this pool is thousands of meters below my body. The rushing in my ears is not the chanting of a preacher proclaiming rebirth but wind's terrifying song of descent. The waves are not waves but the undulating motions of Kurosagi's wings slowing our fall.</p>
<p>And the waves rock back and forth like the cradle of that infant so doted on by her parents and grandparents, the first grandchild to be born, the last grandchild to die.</p>
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<p>Soft footfall. The weight of gravity returns to my bones. Kurosagi lowers one of his arms, helping me find my footing, a stable pillar beside me as I open my eyes.</p>
<p>I did not look down. Looking down had been eternity's job. But some part of me wishes I had.</p>
<p>We are nowhere near the tower. It isn't even in sight as I turn around and around, spinning before the world can start in my stead. We stand in an unpaved driveway, loose dirt aleady staining my socks- except it can barely be called a driveway, for there are no vehicles in what would have been a garage. And it is a wide not-garage, the house's gaping maw, ready to swallow me whole with teeth of loose rocks and a tongue of a disordered pile of sticks. And for miles upon miles is scattered forest, short trees just barely tall enough to obscure the horizon.</p>
<p>"I believe this house used to be of your family," Kurosagi says.</p>
<p>"Y-yes. Yes, it was."</p>
<p>I step closer to the garage, rub my eyes. The unmistakable door leading inside is ajar, betraying a sliver of the living room, the living room where the adults used to laze on the couch and watch football while the kids played downstairs. My nose crunches in faint memory. A rancid smell, a despicable smell.</p>
<p>"You seem displeased."</p>
<p>"I remember..."</p>
<p>I step into the garage. More of the living room comes into view. The door to the side room where my father thought to preach to me about how I should not spend so much time staring into screens, how I was wasting my life away in pursuit of a false world. And all around us was the field sprinkled with snow, a wasteland of gray sky meeting white field, just as bright as the screens he would have me throw away.</p>
<p><i>How silly he would feel if he knew I would spend eternity staring at clouds instead.</i></p>
<p>But now the fields are trees, dark green meeting a sky just as dismal.</p>
<p>"You remember?"</p>
<p>"Smoke. A stench. The reek of death."</p>
<p>And some of the adults would pour into the basement where we kids were wrestling and light up some cigarettes, uncaring that there were small children who would easily choke on the fumes. It was their house, they mocked, and they'd poison everyone inside if they wanted.</p>
<p>There was a bear skin on the wall, declawed, stretched flat. Its eyes bored into my soul, mouth wide open, roaring for help that would never come.</p>
<p>A chill down my spine. I twirl around, meet Kurosagi's eyes-</p>
<p>-and something barrels into my back, and we tumble to the ground.</p>
<p>"<i>Kuri!</i>" a child's voice whines. "You brought a friend to play and <i>didn't tell me?</i>"</p>
<p>A hiss of a sigh escapes him. "Kizelle..."</p>
<p>"No! You never say my name happy!"</p>
<p>Kizelle crawls off of me. I pull myself to my feet and turn to meet my assailant.</p>
<p>A wide-eyed girl who can't be more than sixteen stands at my side. Her head barely comes up to my shoulder, and that's counting the fluffy blonde hair almost spurting around her head like it were a helmet. A thick-knit shawl, a shade of pale champagne, is draped over her shoulders. Except for her neck, almost her whole body is encased in what almost looks like a cloth wetsuit, black embroidered with a brighter hue of pink crawling up her sides, formless and terminating in open palms and ankles.</p>
<p>Her nose crinkles as I brush the dirt off of my dress. The first time it's been stained in forever.</p>
<p>Her eyes wander up to my own. She pouts. "I bet Kuri says <i>your</i> name happy."</p>
<p>"<i>Erin,</i>" he says, clearly restraining himself, "this is my friend Kizelle."</p>
<p>"Is she a Lorinthia? I don't-"</p>
<p>"<i>No!</i> I'm not a Lorinthia!" Kizelle furiously shakes her head. "I'm a <i>Tailtiutian</i>, for heaven's sake!" She holds her arms out. "Do I <i>look</i> like a robot? Do I <i>look</i> like I can slither in the Wired- I mean, I can definitely <i>slither</i>, but-"</p>
<p>"Kizelle," Kurosagi breathes, "Erin has no idea what any of those words mean."</p>
<p>"You mean, you don't know what a <i>Lorinthia</i> is?" She cocks her head, confused. "But they're <i>everywhere!</i> They're in every city's internets, and sometimes they patrol on the streets looking for the Millennium Girl. But I don't think they'll ever find her, 'cause she doesn't exist. You need to be a divine, <i>and</i> a human, <i>and</i> a Lorinthia, all at the same time. And that's not even possible-"</p>
<p>"<i>Kizelle.</i>"</p>
<p>The young girl bites her lip in frustration. "I know! I know! I can't help it!" And then she stomps the earth and takes off running into the house again.</p>
<p>Kurosagi rolls his eyes. "So now you know where I've been hiding from the war."</p>
<p>"How do you tolerate ...that?"</p>
<p>"Simple. I don't. I have my ways of avoiding her." He holds out a hand. "Shall we?"</p>
<p>"Shall we what?"</p>
<p>A tired look.</p>
<p>I take his hand and let him lead me inside.</p>
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<p>I am as a ghost in a dream, a feverish delirium where everything is in place and yet not quite. There are stools beside the kitchen island, but they are not <i>the</i> stools that I and my kid cousins used to sit at and steal bits and pieces of food from before the holiday dinners were ready to be served. There are bottles and buckets littering the kitchen counters, but they are not <i>the</i> bottles and buckets full of wine and other alcohol that the adults would get borderline drunk on, silently judged by my father, straight-edge until the end. At the head of the living room is a low wide table, but it is not <i>the</i> table that the television used to rest on. Old tattered books rest in scattered piles, some half-open with pages crumpled, betraying a careless toss over a shoulder.</p>
<p>Kurosagi excuses himself and heads for the bathroom. The door to the side room is slightly ajar.</p>
<p><i>I wonder if the old fireplace still stands...</i></p>
<p>I wander through the door. It does not give way easily like it used to, hinges shrieking like a small child having a meltdown-</p>
<p>Something smacks my shoulder. A beast's head. A... lizard? A lizard with wings, human-sized, covered in feathers blue as a spring sky.</p>
<p>Its head retreats. It curls in on itself. A flash of light later, and it is a... a girl instead, dressed almost exactly as Kizelle, but with accents of blue instead of pink.</p>
<p>She rubs her eyes. A moaning sound.</p>
<p>"I... I'm sorry if I woke you up," I offer.</p>
<p>"Doubtful." She yanks a lock of blue hair back behind one ear. "H-hey, do I know you or something? Why are you here?"</p>
<p>The door creaks further. The girl cringes, hands instantly over her ears. Kurosagi's wing brushes against my arm.</p>
<p>"I know <i>you</i>," the girl adds. "This your friend or something?"</p>
<p>"Yes, Cetra," Kurosagi sighs.</p>
<p>Cetra rubs her eyes. "A damn shame. She would have been safer in the tower."</p>
<p>"Cetra, you know-"</p>
<p>"Do I? Do I know?" She crosses her arms. "Or are you just assuming I automatically know every stray thought that goes through that thick skull of yours?"</p>
<p>"If you would <i>let me speak</i>, maybe I would explain."</p>
<p>Cetra crosses her arms. "Then speak."</p>
<p>"You know she's been in that tower for hundreds of years. She doesn't know <i>shit</i> about the world as it is now. I need you to use that fancy Reia thing or whatever to get her caught up to speed."</p>
<p>"And what's in it for me?"</p>
<p>"A feeling of superiority."</p>
<p>"I already have that." Another yawn. "I'd rather take another nap. <i>Undisturbed</i> this time."</p>
<p>"Misplaced, as always." A pause. "I'd go into town for the next supply run."</p>
<p>"And the one after that."</p>
<p>"I don't know if I'll be around here that long."</p>
<p>"Well, it's either you or <i>her</i>-" she tips her head toward me- "doing it. You know everything'll run out faster-"</p>
<p>"Actually," I pipe up, "I don't need anything. I won't be a burden on you."</p>
<p>"Really, now? Maybe you should just go with angel boy then. Can't bring back armfuls of useless crap if he's carrying you instead." She turned away. "But I repeat myself."</p>
<p>An insult. My first insult in forever.</p>
<p>I don't give her the pleasure of a response.</p>
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<h1>Erin Educated</h1>
<!-- published: 2020-07-27 -->
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<p>Ghosts used to monotone to me. Scrawling their screeds on my bedrooms walls, they'd pen countless treatises on whatever was weighing heavy on my heart that day. Thoughts of lovers from past lives, the thoughts of last lives themselves, the theories, the scattered pieces of evidence to support them. Memories of days gone by, better years slipped through my fingers, the places remaining but the time lost forever. Grayscale phantoms of the leaves swaying outside, the green hands waving goodbye, knowing that one fated day I'd give them my own last wave by.</p>
<p>"Popular opinion at this time was that the internet was a human right, crucial to the ongoing of the economy when many formerly employed peoples were unable to return to work for fear of contracting the virus. Because previously the doctrine of 'minimalism' had been a fad, many workers were unprepared when the lockdown orders were passed, and consumption of electronic devices and internet bandwidth exploded in the following months..."</p>
<p>One lone tree sways outside the side room. The curtains have been pulled back all the way, letting the whole of whatever light will come in welcome. It is not a lot; the sun is still blocked out by the endless sea of clouds. But the ghosts have found me again, sun still strong enough to cast a shadow, and they chatter as if not a single moment has passed between us. Every second they chatter is a second that Kurosagi is away, gone to the nearest city still standing for a supply run. Every second they chatter is one I realize I cannot understand the language of the ghosts anymore.</p>
<p>"One day, approximately seven months after the city had officially disbanded, a Lorinthia by the name of Makuil Jigreen declared the hospital, which was in a state of severe disrepair, his, and he and his subordinates started converting the building into a base for their operations..."</p>
<p>I wonder- do Kizelle and Cetra live here all the time? Is this their... <em>home?</em> Does anyone ever challenge them for the rights to the property, or hound them for fees to live there? Or has the rest of the world forgotten about this place? Although not in as good shape as it was in my own time, compared to a tiny cottage in disrepair like those... those kids whose names have already slipped from my mind, this place is a bastion of luxury.</p>
<p>"Bioimplants, at the time of the collapse, were still several decades away from being sophisticated enough to properly interface with the brain without the need for external decoding devices. This did not deter Jigreen, who, using his military power to direct medical supply lines to his new base, proceeded to experiment with human prisoners in hopes of eventually converting them to full Lorinthia. Small implants were successful, but with the replacement of statistically significant amounts of brain matter came severe brain damage, leaving the test subjects little more than living dolls..."</p>
<p>My arms ache from hanging limp at my sides. My legs tingle from lying straight out on the floor. I do not dare to move. I am a doll. I am a forgotten porcelain doll on a shelf, set pretty once and abandoned forever, never to know warm touch ever again.</p>
<p>"Of course, these military incursions were not without resistance. Over the next few years, the Lorinthia in the state's capital clashed violently with several groups of self-organized militias, the most successful of which was led by a human named Horace Hidehaji-"</p>
<p><em>I know that name.</em></p>
<p>"Oh, so <em>now</em> you suddenly start listening?" Cetra lets out a wide yawn and slams the laptop shut. "I might as well stop. It's not like you'll learn anymore if I continue anyway."</p>
<p>"Kurosagi mentioned that man once."</p>
<p>Cetra leans back in the armchair she'd settled herself in. "Who?"</p>
<p>"Hidehaji."</p>
<p>"I don't doubt it. He's a pretty... famous man." Her eyes slide shut. "Yet another reason why you shouldn't be here right now."</p>
<p>"Why not?"</p>
<p>"Oh, you know-"</p>
<p>"No, I don't know."</p>
<p>Cetra adjusts herself. Her eyelids sag. I can almost see a ghostly shade of Morpheus behind her, entreating her to sleep. "Well, maybe you should have listened."</p>
<p>"You expect me to digest two hundred years' worth of history in an hour."</p>
<p>"No, because you don't have a stomach to digest it with in the first place."</p>
<p>I pull myself to my feet. My shadow casts away the ghosts, chatter instantly falling silent. The empty space between us is deafening. I take a step, another step, across the carpet until I am toe-to-toe with Cetra, towering over her.</p>
<p>"Tell me. Who is Hidehaji?"</p>
<p>"The reason we can't leave," Cetra mumbles.</p>
<p>"Leave where? This place?"</p>
<p>Cetra shrugs her shoulders. "Lots of places. Not that you'd understand."</p>
<p>"I stayed behind so you could educate me. So do it. Or..."</p>
<p>The corner of Cetra's mouth curls up. "Or what?"</p>
<p>"I'll tell Kuroi."</p>
<p>"You act as if he isn't already disappointed in me. As if I didn't stop caring a hundred years ago."</p>
<p>"Tailtiutians live that long?"</p>
<p>Cetra hums.</p>
<p>"All those years, and no wisdom to show for it."</p>
<p>Kurosagi clears his throat behind me.</p>
<p>A shiver- no, a fully-fledged lightning bolt- shoots down my spine.</p>
<p>"You're doing the next supply run," he says, his breath heavy.</p>
<p>Cetra shrugs. Her eyes slide all the way closed, giving up. "I taught her like you asked. She refused to listen. Just stared at the damn floor like a doll."</p>
<p>"Erin..." He sighs. "Fine. A promise is a promise. Erin, if you would join me in the kitchen."</p>
<p>He leaves, not waiting for me. I wait a moment, watching Cetra's breath slow underneath me, and then turn and exit the side room. Kurosagi is darting all over the kitchen like a startled hummingbird. Cabinets fly open and closed like the pipes of a church organ, singing a discordant melody all their own.</p>
<p>Or a rhythm, for I close my eyes and cannot for the life of me make anything out of the noise.</p>
<p>I take a seat on one of the stools at the kitchen island. A pause as he looks in one of his faded fabric bags, the next to be raided. "Kuroi."</p>
<p>He turns to face me. "So I assume you know the Lorinthia are after us."</p>
<p>"I still don't even know what they <em>are</em>." A pause. "No... That's not true. Kizelle said they were robots."</p>
<p>"Humanoid androids, to be exact. Ones that figured out how to self-reproduce like people." He turns back to the bags, returns to restocking the cupboards and shelves, just slower this time as he speaks. "Warlords of most of the cities still intact. Hellbent on getting the hell out of this dimension. No matter how many lives they have to take."</p>
<p>"This... dimension?"</p>
<p>His eyes darken. He slams a box of cereal into an empty slot between other boxes. I wince at the sudden <em>bang</em>.</p>
<p>"You don't..." He shakes his head. "Maybe it's better that way."</p>
<p>"Don't say I don't remember. Don't say I forgot." I set my hands on the islandtop. "Millennium Girl. They're trying to make her. See, I remembered something."</p>
<p>He grimaces. "Because I told you <em>this morning</em>."</p>
<p>"Tell me more."</p>
<p>"Lorinthia, human, divine. All three parts coexisting in harmony within a single person. <em>Supposedly</em> this makes the Millennium Girl able to open a portal to another dimension. At the expense of <em>her own life</em>." A sack of apples, on the cusp of being ripe. He steps to the fridge, dragging along milk with him. "If we had a human and a functional vehicle with us, we'd make them go in our place. I could take one in a fight... probably. Five, maybe. More than that?..." Kurosagi shakes his head. "They don't attack humans anymore. Not since they figured out Lorinthia implants don't get passed down to children. And Tailtiutians were never on their radar to begin with. Implants would never take hold with all the shapeshifting they do. But divine beings like yours truly?" He cackles. "I don't think I'm cut out for a life of being a vegetable strapped down to some table comatose while some robot assholes farm my prick all day."</p>
<p>I blanch. Not that my skin can get any paler.</p>
<p>"To make <em>children</em>," he adds. "With humans. Nephilim. Lorinthia can't reproduce with anyone but their own." He slams the fridge shut. "I have to... I <em>have</em> to find my daughter soon. Others are looking too. Colleagues. Fellow angels. But Mistress Velouria can't spare the whole heavens just for one... <em>unwanted</em> girl."</p>
<p>"Kuroi..."</p>
<p>"You'd think she'd care more," he continues, talking to himself, more food finding its places. "The Lorinthia open the heavens, and it's all over. Everything falls apart. This whole land will..."</p>
<p>He shakes his head. His fluffy hair rustles. The light catches a splotch on the back of his neck.</p>
<p>I get up and stroll over to him. He ignores me until I brush a hand on the back of his neck. He freezes, bites down a shiver, at my deathly touch, fingers just barely grazing his skin.</p>
<p>On the back of his neck is not a splotch. It is a jagged diamond. A pale pink upside-down V caressing an even paler pink one rightside-up. The whole thing could fit under my thumb.</p>
<p>"Kuroi?" I trace the shape with a finger. "What is this?"</p>
<p>"You."</p>
<p>"I... don't understand."</p>
<p>"You gave that to me. You caused it."</p>
<p>"I may remember little, but I know I was never a tattoo artist."</p>
<p>"No, not like that." He reaches behind him, takes my hand in his, pulls it over his head so he can see it in front of him. Away from the mark. "It appears on angels who've been... close with humans. We're supposed to be celibate, only available for Mistress Velouria. It's considered a mark of betrayal."</p>
<p>"Was she angry?"</p>
<p>"Disappointed? Yes. Angry? No. I think it was because she already knew who you were by the time Dimitri happened."</p>
<p>"Who?"</p>
<p>Our eyes meet.</p>
<p>"Our... daughter?"</p>
<p><em>Dimitri.</em> That's her name. <em>Dimitri</em>. I would have thought it a boy's name. A funny thought, to think I know <em>nothing</em> of her, and yet... the name feels just right. Fitting. Perfect.</p>
<p>The man who stands before me would know. His eyes make no indication of uncongruence. I must be right, right for all the sorry onces since I imprisoned myself in that tower all those lifetimes ago.</p>
<p>"I want to find her," Kurosagi says. "I want to bring her home."</p>
<p>I am a mother now.</p>
<p>I must do as mothers do.</p>
<p>"Do you know where you saw her last?"</p>
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<h1>Erin Eyed</h1>
<!-- published: 2020-08-02 -->
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<p>When I was a young child, every time the oldest of my cousins would come over to play for an afternoon, I would always beg her father to let her spend the night, to let her and me and my still-infantile brothers to have a sleepover. Almost never was she prepared, bringing only whatever toys she wanted to flaunt to me, to brag about having thanks to her divorced-parents-double-holidays. So her father almost never said yes. But the few times he did...</p>
<p>There was a script we would always follow, although it loosened up more and more as the years went by.</p>
<p>Constructing a fan, nonfunctional as it was, from building toys. <em>Rod goes in hole goes in circular hub.</em></p>
<p>Making pies in the sandbox, little more than just filling the same containers over and over and over again. Sometimes her father would go behind our grandmother's back and splash some water into the sandbox, and then we'd play like we would at the beach, castles and kingdoms growing in the sand and then dissolving as the sun burned longer on.</p>
<p>Building some grand structure with the oversized plastic bricks. Pretending to be caterpillars munching through a mountain of leaves when we had to deconstruct what we'd made to put the bricks away at end of day.</p>
<p>Curling up in the bedsheets, forming a chrysalis, waiting until morning to bloom.</p>
<p>She always forgot come morning. Too tired to keep up the playing anymore, just munching on dry cereal until her father came to put a dampener on whatever party still smoldered on.</p>
<p>Despite having had taken a shower the night before, I would always have to take another one just to scrub off the feeling of another person having been in the same bed as me.</p>
<p>"Erin!"</p>
<p>A shock across my spine. The sudden weight of arms around me, a mountain dropped on my back, too much for my body to bear, forcing me to the ground-</p>
<p>"Oh! Sorry!" The weight lets up just as quick as it'd come. Kizelle comes into view, more worry than guilt as I straighten myself up again. "I didn't mean to make you fall. I promise."</p>
<p>I brush the wrinkles out of my dress. "I... I'm fine."</p>
<p>"I didn't break you or anything?"</p>
<p>"No."</p>
<p>"Oh, I'm so glad!" Kizelle flashes me a smile. "Kuri would bend me like a toothpick if I hurt you, I just know!"</p>
<p>She turns around. The bathroom door stands closed just a foot ahead. A faded butterfly decal stretches over the wood, peeking out just over her head. Light streams out from the crack under the door. <em>Locked.</em></p>
<p>She turns back to me. "Are you waiting to shower too?"</p>
<p>I shake my head. "I don't have to."</p>
<p>"You sure? Kuri doesn't like stinky people."</p>
<p>"I haven't showered since..."</p>
<p><em>When was the last time I showered? Since I ate? Drank? Actually slept, instead of just pretending to?</em></p>
<p><em>When was the last time I did anything other than just stare at the clouds?</em></p>
<p>"...since a long time," I say. "I'm fine."</p>
<p>"Oh, well..."</p>
<p>Kizelle eyes me up and down. A lump of dread in my throat, like a parent fearing their child is about to say something incredibly rude to a kind of person they haven't encountered before- pregnant, visibly disabled, a different race... But the lock on the bathroom door jiggles, door opening a second after, and Cetra emerges, face weary, wrapped in a ragged white towel.</p>
<p>Kizelle darts into the bathroom like a startled insect and slams the door shut. Cetra winces. Our eyes catch. She scowls, one eye hidden behind her blue hair, now damp and subdued.</p>
<p>"What are <em>you</em> looking at?"</p>
<p>"You say this is the apocalypse, and yet you have running water...?"</p>
<p>She shrugs, keeping her arms close so the towel doesn't fall. "Kurosagi set it up. Solar power, decent filtered water from the lake. We could probably grow enough food here if we cleared some of the-" She stops herself. "No, the tree cover is too important. Other than that? This place is pretty self-sufficient."</p>
<p>"Did Kurosagi ever... bring his child here?"</p>
<p>"What am I? A walking exposition?" She brushes past me, descends down the stairs. "Leave me alone. I'm going to bed."</p>
<p>"No need to be rude."</p>
<p>I reach for her arm, thinking to stop her-</p>
<p>-but she is already gone. Disappeared. Out of sight.</p>
<p>"Don't you think it's time you turned in too?" Kurosagi yawns behind me. "No real need to be lingering out here if you don't need anything."</p>
<p>"I want to look at my stomach."</p>
<p>"You could just look down."</p>
<p>I glare at him. "I want to see the scar."</p>
<p>"The scar?"</p>
<p>"The one that you gave me."</p>
<p>"I don't... Oh. <em>That</em> scar. I have a mirror in my bedroom. You can look there."</p>
<p>Before I can respond, he takes my hand and pulls me down the stairs. I see, on the other end of the room, where there was once a bookshelf against the wall to hide the gun cellar is now just a white hazy curtain, presumably leading to Cetra's room. We take an immediate right, past an actual bedroom door.</p>
<p>Kurosagi flicks the light on. An electric lamp blazes to life on the nightstand.</p>
<p>My breath catches in my throat.</p>
<p>The room is practically the same as it was when we met, not for the first time where the ghosts of my mother threatened to burst in at any moment through nothing but a blanket barrier, but the second and third and all the others until that portal closed and we had to find another. The room is sparse. Nothing greets us except for a king-size bed, the nightstand, and a sliding closet door- which, closed, is nothing but mirror and a thin frame.</p>
<p>A mirror which is facing me.</p>
<p>I look like a child in front of Kurosagi's towering frame. A small, wispy, barely-there child.</p>
<p>"Kuroi." I take a deep breath. "Please leave."</p>
<p>I almost believe he is sincere when he says, "Why?"</p>
<p>"I am not stripping down in your presence."</p>
<p>"Well, maybe I want to see the scar too. I'm the one who caused it, after all."</p>
<p>"It's my body. And I don't want you seeing it."</p>
<p>He rolls his eyes, but he leaves the room, leaving me alone. I take a step forward, and another, and another until I am close enough to the mirror to make it fog up with my breath. And even though I know it does nothing, even though I know I do not have to, I hold my breath as I finally shed the dress, the chrysalis forgotten the very last sleepover with my cousin.</p>
<p>The dirt-dinged fabric crumples on the ground.</p>
<p><em>I will not fear. I will not fear. I will not fear...</em></p>
<p>I force myself to look into the mirror.</p>
<p>My body is a countryside. My breasts are two mountains looming on the distant horizon, unaware that anything is amiss. My rib cage is on full display, soft rolling hills and valleys down to the flood plains, the sudden cutoff where there is no bone to give my chest definition.</p>
<p>I do not remember who stitched me back up. I do not even remember if I was stitched back up at all, or if I was just abandoned to let the leaves do as they willed. But the scar starts near my sternum, detours around my bellybutton, and then disappears somewhere hidden by my underwear. Slightly puckered where flesh meets flesh, like a cut on a rotting apple. It does not ache. It does not burn red. It just... is. As if it were meant to be there all along, just another part of the body.</p>
<p>Of <em>my</em> body.</p>
<p>Strangely enough, I do not look like a skeleton. I do not look like I am held together by nothing but a few inches of skin and a spinal column. I just look like a slightly deflated woman, only my empty torso bearing the un-weight of memory. Flash-frozen from the time I disappeared with Kurosagi into that forever sky, nothing but the air stolen from my chest.</p>
<p><em>I remember I used to tell him that he always took my breath away.</em></p>
<p>Kurosagi knocks on the door. My body jolts, startled.</p>
<p>"Are you almost done? It's almost my turn to shower. I need some clean clothes to change into."</p>
<p>"I could hand you some."</p>
<p>"Or you could let me come in and get them myself."</p>
<p>I sigh and pick up my dress. It hangs limp from my hands. Without form, I notice, it looks like a cleaning rag.</p>
<p>I hold it close to my chest, wishing for some semblance of modesty, and step aside. "Come in."</p>
<p>Kurosagi creaks the door open just wide enough for him to slip in. He pretends to not see me standing half-naked beside him as he slides the closet open, revealing a whirlwind of colors. But all of them are muted, I notice as he flicks through, as if the hue had drained from them a long time ago, leaving only a faint memory in their place.</p>
<p>"There's plenty of space in my bed for you tonight if you want it."</p>
<p>"I-I'm fine, Kuroi. I don't need to sleep."</p>
<p>"The nights get chilly here. <em>Bitterly</em> so."</p>
<p>"And you think I am not just as cold?"</p>
<p>"It burns less when I know it's because of you."</p>
<p>A fluffy red sleep robe in his arms. His gaze lingers on me for a moment, and then he leaves the room, vanishing upstairs.</p>
<p>I turn back to the empty closet. The dress slips from my hands. I make no moves to retrieve it. My hands search in the closet, feeling everything, all the fluffs and scratchies and stretchies and thins and heavies until my fingers snag on the last hanger, all the way in the back.</p>
<p>I let it fall into my hands. An oversize white shirt. A pair of shorts with a drawstring in the front to adjust the waistband. I let myself drown in the fabric, truly <em>clean</em> rather than just <em>not dirty</em>.</p>
<p>I might as well have put the dress back on, for the shirt tumbles down almost to my knees.</p>
<p>I slip out of the room. The lamp's light spills out into the downstairs living room, throwing everything into shadows. The chairs have long since been replaced, but they are still <em>there</em>. I brace myself and shove one to the opposite end of the room, the weird little side area that juts out without an actual wall to mark it off separate. A window stretches from floor to ceiling.</p>
<p>A shadow. My body tenses- and then I realize it is just the bearskin, still staring, still howling its silent scream for help.</p>
<p>I sit down.</p>
<p>Sleep does not come.</p>
<p>I watch the sun disappear over the horizon. A farewell to my first day on earth.</p>
<p>Sleep does not come.</p>
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<h1>Erin Interred</h1>
<!-- published: 2020-08-09 -->
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<p>Sleep does not come.</p>
<p>I open my eyes.</p>
<p>A breeze sweeps through the abandoned warehouse. At least, that is what I think it was in a past life, back before whatever apocalypse happened while I was up in the tower. All of the loading bays where trucks would have parked are now wide open, doors missing, letting the sun and the birds come as they please.</p>
<p>Before me on the sprawling floor are rows upon rows of… caskets. Or something to that effect. Long boxes large enough to hold a person in lined up in neat rows, six or so feet space between all. None of them have any markers or nameplates or anything to hint at what- no, <em>who</em> might be inside.</p>
<p>Kurosagi lightly kicks one with the side of his foot. No reaction, no echo. The boxes are fixed on the ground, inert, as unmoving as boulders.</p>
<p>"We came here often," Kurosagi says, startling me back to attention. His gaze is distant. For a second, I even think he is wistful. "It's quiet here. Peaceful. Wide open, so if anyone were coming, I'd see them coming a mile away."</p>
<p>"You brought her to a... mausoleum?"</p>
<p>He tenses up just the slightest bit. A twitch of the jaw, drawing in his shoulders. "I told her that you were dead. That you had died giving birth to her. That you were buried here. This one, specifically." He nudges the casket again with his foot. "She always brought a book with her. She would read to you, or what she thought was you, for hours and hours..." He shakes his head. "And then some other servant of Mistress Velouria's went and told her the truth."</p>
<p>"And when was that?"</p>
<p>"A few weeks ago."</p>
<p>"You lied to her for <em>eighteen years</em>?"</p>
<p>"I didn't <em>want</em> to," he snaps. "What was I supposed to tell her? That you'd skipped out on her life because you were too afraid of living yourself?" He turns his back to me. The feathers on the tops of his wings flare, agitated, and then settle down again. "It doesn't matter. You were as good as dead anyway."</p>
<p>"You could have brought her to the tower."</p>
<p>"You weren't fit to be a mother. It would be like I'd have to raise <em>two</em> children. Two <em>stubborn, obstinate</em> children."</p>
<p>"<em>Kuroi</em>!" I grab his shoulder, twirl him back around. His eyes are alight, his jaw set, his fists trembling- but I can tell he is holding himself back anyway. I slap him across the cheek. The sound cracks through the place. His face flares red. "You never gave me a chance, you-"</p>
<p>Something lurks in the corner of my eye. Kurosagi sees it too.</p>
<p>We both turn.</p>
<p>At the other end of the warehouse are two boys- young men, rather, although it's hard to tell at this distance- one towering over the other. Both have blades and rods poking out of bags slung over their shoulders. Their eyes are wide, bug-like, staring at us like they are deer and we are several-ton trucks careening towards them on a highway.</p>
<p>Except, if anyone is getting run over and maimed from the glint of their blades' metal as it catches the sun, it's me.</p>
<p>And <em>maybe</em> Kurosagi, if they are fast enough.</p>
<p>Would he protect me if they attacked? Would he save me?</p>
<p>Or just himself?</p>
<p>The shorter one beckons to the taller one, who leans over so the shorter one can whisper something in his ear. He points in our direction and then makes a flapping gesture with his hand. The taller one nods.</p>
<p>Kurosagi steps in front of me, blocking me from view with one of his wings. He reaches into his robe, grassy-green today, and pulls out a long knife undoubtedly stolen from our kitchen.</p>
<p><em>Our kitchen.</em></p>
<p>Our <em>kitchen?</em></p>
<p><em>I doubt he would ever take me back to the tower. Not even if I asked.</em></p>
<p>"Hold!" Kurosagi yells. "What are you doing here?"</p>
<p>The older boy, from the sound of his voice as I cannot see him, pipes up first. His voice booms, crossing the distance between us without any effort at all. "I could ask you the same question, pretty boy. Who just hangs out at a mausoleum at this time of day?"</p>
<p>"Or at all," the younger boy says, his voice fainter, less distinct. "There are more exciting places in town to be, you know. I hear they finally fixed the air conditioning in the library. And the river's always fun to splash in-"</p>
<p>His voice cuts off suddenly. Scrambled footsteps, like he'd been elbowed too hard and almost fell over.</p>
<p>"We're just here to do some graverobbing," the older one explains. "A little corpse harvesting. No need to pull your blade on us, O Heavenly One. Not your business enough to be killing us over it."</p>
<p>Kurosagi remains tense, but he slips his knife back somewhere near his belt. There must be a holder or something like that hidden in the fabric, because he doesn't look cut up, nor does he wince when he says, "So long as you stay more than a blade's throw away from us."</p>
<p>"Fine by me."</p>
<p>Kurosagi draws his wings back in. I can see the boys again as they move to the closest casket and pop it open-</p>
<p>-and they hop in and disappear from sight.</p>
<p>There is not nearly enough room for the both of them, much less them <em>and a body</em>, in the stone box.</p>
<p>"So this is the last place you saw her?"</p>
<p>He nods. "She was pissed after she found out. So she paid one of the angels to alight her here. I chased after her as soon as I found out, but... she disappeared."</p>
<p>"What do you mean, <em>disappeared?</em>"</p>
<p>"You know, <em>vanished</em>? <em>Evanesced</em>? I'm not a thesaurus."</p>
<p>"I know what the word means. I'm asking what <em>you</em> mean."</p>
<p>"I mean, I saw her go in. I thought she was visiting your grave. Or what I told her was your grave. But I never saw her, or anyone, come back out that day."</p>
<p>"You didn't... go in to watch her?"</p>
<p>"I figured I'd give her some space."</p>
<p>I sigh. "Kuroi..."</p>
<p>He stiffens. "If you're going to chastise me, don't bother. I did all I could as a father. You have no right to judge, since you didn't even <em>try</em>."</p>
<p>The boys are still inside the casket. I glance down at the one beside me. Assuming they are all the same size, there is <em>still</em> no way three bodies can fit into that small of a space.</p>
<p><em>Unless there's more space...</em></p>
<p>"Kuroi. Open this casket."</p>
<p>His silent stewing dissolves into confusion. "You want me to <em>what?</em>"</p>
<p>"Open it."</p>
<p>"Why? There's just a body, a rotting body-"</p>
<p>"I'm not so sure. Open it."</p>
<p>Kuroi sighs. "Fine. But only because it's you asking."</p>
<p>There is an inch-deep divot like a reverse handle on one side of the casket, the side we stand on. Kurosagi slips around to the other side of the coffin and reaches over, his fingers digging into the divot. He grunts as he tries to pull it towards him, fingers red and then white as he struggles against the lid.</p>
<p>Dust spills onto the floor as whatever seal was on the casket loosens and crumbles away.</p>
<p>And then, with one final jerk, the lid falls open, and Kurosagi jumps out of the way in time not to be crushed under it.</p>
<p>There is no body inside. There is... <em>nothing</em>. A literal <em>nothing</em>. Just an abyss deeper down than the light above can reach. Smoke almost like a miniature sea laps at the edge of the casket, threatening to spill over. Two rungs of a ladder embedded in the inside face me, the rest- if there are any others- obscured.</p>
<p>He acts unfazed, but his eyes betray that he is even more surprised as I am. "Erin, I'm not letting you-"</p>
<p>I hold a hand out. "If you're going to try to stop me, don't bother."</p>
<p>"Don't tell me you'd be so stupid as to climb into a... void."</p>
<p>"Those other boys did. And they didn't look like they were trying to die."</p>
<p>I step forward, brace myself, lower a leg into the abyss. My foot hits another metal rung, somewhere below the others, right where I expected it to be.</p>
<p><em>Thank you, yesterday self, for choosing something other than a dress.</em></p>
<p>I grab onto the first rung and swing myself in. I am half-submerged in the smoke. Goosebumps flare, expecting it to be cold, wanting to be more prepared than I am pretending to me right now.</p>
<p>But, in truth, it feels like nothing at all.</p>
<p><em>What am I doing? I have no idea where this hole leads. Or even if it leads anywhere at all. I could be throwing my life away, just when it started again.</em></p>
<p><em>Would you rather spend another eternity aimless? Existing just for the sake of existing?</em></p>
<p>I look up at Kurosagi. "Will you come with me?"</p>
<p>His lips press into a tight line. He averts his eyes, thinking for a heavy few seconds until he finally answers, "I can't."</p>
<p>"Then... how did you put it? You have no right to judge. Because you didn't even try."</p>
<p>His eyes widen, but he makes no moves to stop me as I descend one rung. And then another. And then another.</p>
<p>And another, and another, until darkness envelops me.</p>
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