When we wake

by DistantSong

Ash will defy the will of Gods. He will go against his father and his father too. He will defy the current of life, the very pillar of the world. He will not live, I think. (The world, too, might not. Irrelevant. He is mine, without him, I shall not exist.)/ Inspired by The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. Written in 1st person.

I am five the first time they give me an apple – round like the Sun and strikingly grey - and tell me to paint it.

Soon, it is evident I am awful with shapes - my lines never quite laid flat here, or there. What is round is awkwardly elliptic. What is straight is bent as a bow, and on worse days - it is as the sea before a storm. My lecturer cringes often; but praises my talent. His stroke is swift and infallible, eyes watchful like a hawk's.

A bit rounder here, he suggests. Bolder. Bolder, Eiji!

Unlike with shapes, I was more confident with the shades - pearly white where the rays caressed it, raven black where it touched the table, ash grey as mother's eyes in the centre of the plump. Ibe-san seems pleased.

A week into my lectures, they hand me a pallet with strange, mud-like liquids that smell like soil after rain, and tell me to colour my apples. I am five and do not know what they mean, so I dip my brush and work, careful, circular motions as I was instructed.

The apprentice is appalled once he peeks. Insult sparks in me like wildfire, my tone vicious as I command Ibe-san to reproach him. He does not.

I remember Mother, the feathery feel of her fingers against my cheek. She kneels beside me in Father's bedchambers, eyes creased with worry. Father hollers at Ibe-san.

Mother takes one of her shiny earrings and hands it to me.

"Do you like opals, dear?" I nod, giggling at the prancing motion of their sway. Her lips spread.

"Can you tell me what colour it is?"

I think, for a moment, weighing the perfect answer. (My veins would throb in consternation as heat swelled to engulf my cheeks any time an opinion was asked of me. "Some are born heroes," My swordmaster would tell me. "Unrelenting and ever-bold. Others are born pleasers.")

"Gray. Lake-gray."

The brightness of her visage wanes, giving way to impassive smoothness. I've seen it on features carved out of cold stones, laden with wispy greyness, and displayed in throne rooms. The thought strikes dread in me – and I weep, fearing her metamorphosis. Mother holds us, length to length.

The following morn', an unfamiliar shake wakes me from my sleep. The individual is masked, thus I scream. They urge a liquor down my throat and I struggle to dam its entrance. It warms my insides. The sleep that overcomes me is senseless, barely skin deep.

The anguished thirst of my lungs for air is what wakes me anew. The scent I smell is earthy, like raw iron in a smithy. I rush towards it. Mother. Mother, I think. The court does not seem to share my worry - a deep dark shade stains the marble halls as throngs of men gather to watch. (Vultures driven by blood.)

I see hands. A head stares at me, moon pale and hawk eyed, a thin spear for its neck.

I am five and quite ignorant. Laughter tears its way out of my throat, a wobbly wave. Then another. And another. Eyes pry at me, silent in their condemning. The circle is never ending - and I ache. I am sound only.

Hands come to hold me. Mother's skirts shield me from the world.

I am led away.

The priests of Binzuru-Sonja are summoned at the dawn of the other day. (Mother's hair is dandelion soft in midnight as she lays, moulded around me.

"Apples are red." A half-question. Her chin moves against the tuft of my hair - yes.

"Why are they grey to me?"

Silence. (It does not withhold the truth. It cries it, instead.))

They spare me no glance.

"Have they forsaken me?!" Father yells. "What demands your god?"

A moment. Then:

"Nothing." Their voices rise in unison. "The child shall remain rotten."

A fierce white rage comes, seething through the throne room. (He makes it then; the decision of my exile. For it, mother dies.)

~x~

First, it is sounds - soft-spoken prayers of peasantry gathered before the atrium; wails of maidens, the soughing of their dresses in the breeze.

Father is tall, almost God-like on the dais. Mother's seat is empty - she lays on a bed of maple and olive, wax-skinned and breathless. I am seated amongst servants, father's "most trusted" confidants (Weary bone against a breath of skin. A skin-tearing cry. Mother's hands are shells against my ears.) - where I tear up and hide. (I was an embarrassment. Boys did not cry so openly, not princes and kings. Father never cried.)

Flames rise from the pyre. (Soft warmth caresses my face like wings of a moth.) Then, it is colours - serene whites, eerie darks, and soft, vivid greys. Sometimes it is even greens (Dazzling. Glowing, like olives.)

I remember the first time it was green.

I was a boy of three and the pale grey of my mother's hand was the only warmth I had ever known. Her lips on the crown of my head, her skirts shielding me before Father's wrath - later, I will understand that not all things beautiful and bright withstand the "law" of man's hand. (He too never did.)

However, there was her then, and the endless vastness of colours - greys, whites and blacks, blacks, greys and whites - melting in the pastel twilight to birth new shades. I've never seen such richness on a canvas, not one picture in my father's palace could shadow that one. (The world was the canvas of gods, and I was yet to see how calm, pretty greys could be painted darkly horrid. But I was a child then, nescient still and in awe before the sight.) My eyes feasted on it like those of my peers did on victory and glory; a fragment of Gods' might bathed in the white of the Sun.

Greys and whites swayed like women and fought wars in lulling sounds; I decided I liked the war of colours better than I did that of men. They whomped against the rocks guarding the shore - and I giggled like a girl when a thousand little pearls sprinkled my face.

I wanted to cry at Mother for forbidding our maids to bring my artistry, but the sight was so pretty I dared not look away.

The shades, the whomping, the weeping, the warmth, the exhilarant inebriation...I could leap and scream and dash in joy. (It was the first time I'd felt as if I had wings. For a second, I might've been freer than ever in my life.)

The green crept in silently compared to the salty water, like a breath of a lover. My brows furrowed and lips parted when I registered the unfamiliar tone. Alive; tiny like dust, but alive and breathing in the transparent sunlight amidst the silver. A speck of light in a monotonous world.

"Mother,"I said. "I see."

Her feet thumped the darkish rocks. Confusion sparked in me, blended with fear as I recalled the image of Father ever tall in his throne. Mother smiled at me. She raised her snowy dresses and sat, legs fading in the grey. Her lids were closed, body bent backwards - she looked so young without the dark staining her skin.

I relished her for a minute before she spoke.

"I know. I do too."

The scent of sandalwood wakes me from my haze.

(There was no such wood in Japan; although I've breathed it once, when a traveller came from the east, offering seasonings and perfumes. The scent was musky, yet acrid, almost vanilla-like in its sweetness. Mother had politely refused it then.) His eyes meet mine in a sea of boys, and I wonder if eyes indeed were mirrors - but of the world. His hold vales in ripe noons of summer when I'd sit, smitten by the sight. The skin of lakes and rivers in midsummer where peasant boys would bath and play.

I find myself aching to speak to him. (His eyes hold memories of happier times.)

Suddenly, it begins to drizzle. I stare at fires that wither and grief-stricken thoughts come find me. (I think of how accurately it paints mortal life - weakest at its birth and flourishing with time. Some perish abruptly, in the height of their glory an unexpected storm holocausts them, leaving nothing but oblivion. Some die of age, quietly. Oblivion swallows them too. I wonder if it ever satiates.)

The maids scoop Mother's ashes up in an intricate urn and carry it to Father. I glance at it then, for a mere second. (The caricature on it does not resemble the deceased - a shallow depiction of her beauty, a lie of her life. Father never held her hand.) The king raises it to Heavens - I cannot stomach his farce.

When I seek the boy again there is another in his stead. His eyes are plain grey.

The stranger must've been a wraith conceived out of thin air, a play of trickster light on my mind.

After the formalities, I retreat to my chambers and grieve. Father sends for me at midnight.

"I have no son."

~x~

He is eight and fearless, and I am but a bird, frightened to see the world outside my nest. His step is fluid like honey, swift like the arms of trees stretching towards sunlight. Nothing he does is ever wrong or needless- not the way he speaks or fights, or laughs and tickles the lyre. I would have disliked him had the circumstances been different and I years younger. I might've loathed the way he approached me; a loud, complacent beauty by his side and a foolish boy ever in his shadow (They were like swords tied to his hips. But dull and utterly useless.). Even then his bones were wider than mine - and he had still been a boy.

He seated himself beside me on the table (I remember how my shoulder prickled where his touched it. I had to strain myself not to recoil.), his gaze already set on the writings in my hands, brows arched in unrestrained interest. I clutched the parchment stubbornly then, jaw jutted in displeasure and eyes narrowed. His face was almost kohl-dark, perhaps from a fight or a run, and his eyes were as vast as spring-strewn fields.

"What are you reading?" The question was kind, pleading even. The beauty disliked the lack of princely authority, the boasty manner in which his chest fell and rose like a beast's. (He was a God and the son of Gods. Mortal humility did not suit him nor was it meant to.)

"Nothing." I folded it then as if to mellow his interest. "Would you leave me be?"

He pretended to overhear the question above the ludicrous gasps of his comrades and the soft tones of aulos wafting through the air. He smiled and I saw lines where other smiles have been.

"I am Ash," I know, I thought. Every man, woman, and child knew his name. It transcended age and kingdoms, continents. It travelled by breath, and pictures and reliefs. He was not yet a hero, yet he was. (He is nine when the Fates tug at his strings in a direction I most assuredly could not follow him. Yet I do.)"These are Yut-Lung and Shorter." Slave names, but slaves never carried them. I wondered how great the pain of their mothers must've been to ensure them a blessing of warm beds and tummies ever full, their skin never dirtied.

"What is your name?" He angled himself towards me then, his hair the scent of the Sun mingled with fresh pollen. It did not smell of royalty as I had imagined - lavender oils and rose perfumes. Perhaps that was the reason why I gave him my name.

"Eiji."

He pulled away; his muscles flexing like those of a mountaincat, barely keeping him in. I readied for mock.

"Eiji" he repeated as if to try the taste of it on his tongue. Yut-Lung perused me, steeled in envy. "It's a good name. What brought you here, Eiji?"

I toyed with the thought of disregarding it, but the new-born hunger for his mind was greater than the whole of me.

"A horse." I said, dumbly.

His joy was knife-sharp, cutting through the clamour of the feast. The crowd looked on, yet remained mum.

Ash grinned at me. "I like you, Eiji."

And who was I to refuse a God?

He made room effortlessly between the shallow gap of my bones. (In his absence I craved him. In his presence I drank from him - his light never wavered.) All was wrong with him and all was right. He was human in a sense no one else was - when he burned the world burned with him. When he walked, the seas rose to greet him. He was swollen with words I couldn't even fathom; dreams and ideas his deeds were not destined to spark to life. His eyes held galaxies, brimming with constellations he was and wasn't fated to achieve. One name could not bind him - thus they gave him many to engulf him all. (The Sun is yellow, said some in my youth. It is orange, argued others. Whichever the colour it did not capture the power. The searing. The heat.) When he died, the great Sun will have withered with him.

(He wears godly skin and angel soul between mortal bones.)

"Eiji!" he calls and I look at him from my drawings. It is spring and he lives again; grass in his hair, dust on his feet, sweat on his face. He is already running. "What is it?"

Nothing, I tell him with looks. Nothing, keep going.

Yut-Lung's stone eyes meet mine.

"Come!"

And I do.

~x~

"He is not like you and me." Shorter says, a thin grin grazing his lips. Yut-Lung is soundless - god-like in the starlight, spread on the grass. Griffin lays with them; wide-boned, yet broad cliffs still seemed to swallow him. (He had never resembled his brother more than in that moment. There was him in the curve of his neck, the steel of his proud back, in the flick of his wrist.) I hear them over the clinking of swords to the rhythm of our breaths. We were children at the height of their youth, playing war with kissing swords.

The joints of my fingers sweat under the heat of flaring iron - his swings are ceaseless; quicker than bloodspring from the gash of a sacrifice, surer than death, the tremble of my chest. I see pleasure rising within him, surging to his throat - he swallows a howl, yet his eyes beam in a frenzy. Glorious emerald; luxuriant. Victorious. (He was born for this. A soldier. A weapon.)

Ire perverts me, tears me to shreds.

(I want him. All of him.)

I leap - his blow meets mine, throws me off balance; knocks him a mere step. I rise from wetted sand and lunge forward, reckless in my hunger to vanquish him. Ash narrowly avoids the slash, ducks, and then thrusts - faster, surer. Our swords meet mid-air; the odour of fight and sweat and dust is not foreign to me; his hair is lawless and storm coloured. We part - he comes again, springs like a serpent. I lean back to avoid it. (I learn then, by the tension of his muscles, the way his feet edge - of foolish human mistakes.)

The metal shimmers in the white light before it alights in a deadly arc. My eyelids shut.

A red streak spills like wine.

The warmth is alien, yet strangely balmy. I lay on spears of grass, unsure of whys and whats and hows and whens. ("He has changed." Yut-Lung said on the morning of his thirteenth moon when the best of men arrived to greet him.

"Why?" I asked when the gentle tones of aulos and lyre veiled my voice. Nothing could ever be hidden from Ash. Shorter cursed gods. I argued - years of companionship had us mapped in his mind; his ears were tuned to our voices, his eyes knew the curves of our arms, the very bones underneath the flesh.

His shoulders fell at the question. He was Yut-Lung with animosity in his vulnerability. "He is a God. Or a God to be. Even now we cannot follow, what will be in years to come? Others will take our place. Then others after them. Then again. And again. As long as he will live."

I didn't say anything then, just sought him out in the crowd. He was smiling, his face like the Sun.

(Whats were selfish; sparked from the need and wish to never lose him. Whens were born then, whys came after, in one of the mornings we'd lay together, reticent and blissful. Hows took wrong turns - I could not keep him. Not with swords or bloodshed or violence. I could only love him.) )

A hand descends to seize my wrist; I do not struggle against its strength.

I see him. (All I ever see is him.)

His face is as kind as his hands, his bones moulded from sunlight and layered with ashen skin. A lion amidst sheep; his lips are two stems beneath a spear-straight nose, a lightning scar fading above the arch of a brow. His hair is powdered with dust; diamonds of sweat glistening on smoke-coloured shades. (Golden, I correct myself. Golden like thrones and cups and crowns - golden like the Sun. Golden like pollen and the fat bodies of bees.)

"Eiji," The stars wreath him. The Moon wanes in the crook of his neck. "Are you alright? Did I hurt you?"

"No," Words fail me. "I am well."

There is no other sound; just the tips of his fingers against the root of my throat.

"Max said he can't run from it," Shorter twists a twig in his hands, every pore of his forehead contorted in memory. "The beaten path of gods."

"He is the Chosen One." Yut-Lung's voice is like honey; tongue well-versed as he corrects him. "God-given. The vanquisher. The golden soldier. It is just one of his many names."

Shorter chuckles. "Ash. He has no other name."

Ash sprinkles the wound with seawater - salt kisses it, blazing like poison. I shiver.

("A man once wrote,"he will tell me later as we leave his father's quarters following the announcement of war. "That the flawlessness of heroes was just a mirage – that they were swarmed with virtues but hollowed by the vices of Godhood. Their souls were made from stardust, doomed in the fires of starfall. War was their mother, Death their longest friend. However, like all alliances, it was fated to end. The traitorous Death claimed them in the most unexpected of moments - in the height of their glory, in the heaven of their happiness.

He stops, rooted. His eyes never leave mine. "I am not afraid."

"Of what?"

"Death."

Pain surges through my chest, lurches to my throat. I am rendered speechless.)

Ash's eyes bear into me - something dawns in them.

Then a timid peck of his lips against mine.

~x~

He wakes me at dawn, still swollen with sleep. His hair is tousled, tangled in the white light, his cheeks shadowed - but I cannot imagine him blush. Almond-shaped eyes peek at me, clear and bright under the fine volt of his brows. I lay, just watching him for a moment, and he shifts so the warmth of his lips cradles my cheek.

"I want to bottle this moment," He says and kisses the tip of my nose. My mouth spreads, grinning.

"You can't." I state. "It's meant to be like this – ephemeral."

I know the sigh that leaves his lungs - soft like when he murmured litanies against the ear of a sacrifice. His chin is sharp, his eyes mad in their stubbornness.

"I meant this" His palm is soft on mine, his chest warmer than the silk embracing us, when he lays my hand against his heart. "Can you feel it?" His heart races. It burns.

A feather-like feeling surges through me like ecstasy. Perhaps triumph feels like this; like divine satisfaction, a conceit born between my ribs and heart. A thousand butterflies scorch my insides. I am laughter and fidgeting - but his legs knot with mine, stilling me in place.

"Tell me." His tone is demanding, as if he owns this. "You are never afraid to challenge me, what is it now?"

"Do you mock me, Ash?"

"No!" The sound bolts like lightning through the drowsiness of the morn; birds do not sing. He pulls us close, closer, until we are one, almost.

"Just tell me. Just once."

My gaze connects with a scar on his face. (I curse the sword that gave him this; and a young soldier boy whose throat tasted the frost of my steel. I was merciful, Yut-Lung said. Shorter would've broken him bone by bone.) He reads my intent thus I am freed. Ash leans into me, eyelids closed. (I've never seen him this trusting, this vulnerable.) The tips of my fingers trace the pale line, down to his lips where they rest for a moment. (He is serene, blissful in his silence.) I kiss him. Once. Twice. Thrice. He beams. (If I breathed, I might've burned - kissing him was like swallowing thunder; consuming and relentless. His mouth was sweet like nectar - yet they'd leave a tinge of bitterness anytime we'd part.)

"I've read once of a philosopher who claimed my Gods had once created men with two faces and four limbs. Fearing their power, they split our kind in two, condemning us to search for the other half for the rest of our lives. Have you heard of it?"

"I haven't." He is leaning on the wall now, looking down at me. Bold sunrays play on his skin.

"Do you believe in Fate, Eiji?" The question comes sudden, like waves shattering against the shore. (I am at the sea again. There is white and grey amongst the green. Everywhere; just the colour of his eyes. (I've seen them, I remember now, he was the wraith conceived from light.))

"I do."

His fingers flex as if strumming an invisible lyre. When he was like this, I could not believe him to be the promised saviour, the greatest hero of our age with maps of war hidden beneath human flesh, to whom weapons fit as air did lungs. His hands were not made to end lives; strong and nimble. And fair. Gods, what has he ever done to deserve such a curse?

"Then, do you think it can be undone?"

I offer a half-laugh again. He looks at me, incredulous.

"No man has ever dared to stand before the Gods and chide their law."

The serenity of the morn wanes as the air grows taut - I feel him tense underneath the pads of my fingers. He plucks his hand from mine.

I know the numbness that races through me before I realise it; the hollow pain in my abdomen, the contracting ache in my chest that slowly consumes the heart. It is as madness - methodless. The very abyss of sorrow.

He sits on the edge of the bedside – and sunrays crowd to cast their hands all over him. His back stares at me, defiant, his shoulders rising as a laboured breath is driven from him. (He fears me. The shift in my eyes he'll witness when he declares it.)

He will defy the will of Gods. He will go against his father and his father too. He will defy the current of life, the very pillar of the world.

He will not live, I think. (The world, too, might not. Irrelevant. He is mine, without him, I shall not exist.)

He will not live. And there is nothing I can do. However, the decision is his to make. (It is made already, I am aware. He offers no consolation.) There is no place to offer futile solutions, only to accept. And weep, for that is all I can do.

He moves, I sense the motion, the faint brush of warmth against my skin – the bed is chill in his absence. Ash approaches the window, bare. I case him spreading his hand, fingers thin and lithe, catching a ray of light.

"Fate is a labyrinth of paths, all of which lead to different directions. Every second I spend breathing is my choice, one of the possibilities within the labyrinth. There are others too, some that have more power over the path I'm trotting. There might be several thousand of them leading toward the same goal, yet, there are also thousands of others leading towards different, perhaps more sorrowful, perhaps more joyous opportunities and goals. I cannot know. But as long as the goal I'm working to achieve is clear to me as this light; I have hope of achieving it."

Was it a trait befitting a genius or a simpleton? Was it Gods or humans who made him this foolish?

"Death awaits me in the war ahead. I suppose it is their understanding of "immortal glory" He chuckles. I swallow a cry - how can he laugh? "I refuse to accept it. What is glory? Men worshiping me? They do it now. Women? I need only you. Fortune? This kingdom already holds half of the world's wealth. How can you desire something you already possess? I desire time. Years, ages to spend with you. Life. Why would I choose glory and death over love and life? I do not understand it."

I wish I had been braver.

"And what will you do? Will you sail to war?"

I wish I could have opposed him.

He turns to me a man; and I miss the mirthful boyishness of his youth. Ash no taller than Yut-Lung, the times we did not halt to ponder how much we had left. Winters spent by the warm fire in his chambers; our playful wrestling, the glow of his hair in the firelight. Autumns we fought, muddy and chasing one another - he always enjoyed it. Summers and springs he wandered high and low in search of what has never been sought. The eclipse of summer and his lips on me.

His eyes pierce me on the bed. I think of the day I first met him - he did not change. It was us who did, out of fear of losing him.

"Staying would be selfish."

"You will sail? Because it is only right." His face falls, distorted by hurt, yet I cannot veil the scorn in my tone. (Gods are rapacious. He lusts to live, yet covets for glory - he will not have either. I would rather him stay safe within the walls; but who was I to wish for it? I am temporary. I am the one cursed.)

He walks to me, sombre and weary. The unwavering emerald of his eyes never leaves me. I do not struggle as he spreads me on the bed, gentler than ever before. My breath hitches in my throat - the years haven't exactly been kind to him. There are shadows in the creases framing his eyes, lines written by worry and woe, by a thousand nights spent sleepless. (Why doesn't he glow? Who is this? Why? Then -) I have caused this - I have quenched his flame. A horror echoes in me, swift as pleasure as he leans in for a kiss. He is a God. Ever-glowing - the gleam in his eyes, the dark heat on his cheeks, his deer-feet dancing through swords and spears. I could not contain him; he swelled with greatness that threatened to tear through; rip the world apart. He is meant for glory. Selfish and people-loving, quick-witted and simple - a hero in a man. Mortality shall not drain the last of colour from him.

("You cannot love a hero." It was winter, and I sat in his chambers as he honed his blade. "Nothing good ever comes from it." I hadn't realised it then; he meant himself.)

"I owe them as much." He sighs against my neck, breath as cold as death. "The people. The Gods. But they will not have my life."

A pleading "Why?" is what I manage as his lips ghost across the length of me, only to falter between my thighs. He parts them with a simple kiss.

"You are the only one I will ever allow to worship me."

My skull prickles, giddy as if sunstroke. "Ash." I moan. Ash, Ash. His lips do not fade.

"Call me again." His mouth is warm around me. (I cannot disobey.)

"Ash." A prayer. A soft lick of his tongue then a moan, a chant. "Stop." I feel him smirk as he does it all again - moments after, I am mashed; the flower of my pleasure thick on his lips. (A confession. A sin.) He roars.

Our mouths stumble against each other; he moves and my body moves with him. (Making love to him is a war you cannot win.)

Gods, forgive me.

I love him.

~x~

He buckles his nectar-grey armour around me – and I feel my shoulders shrink beneath the weight of it. He thrusts a spear in my hand and coils my fingers around it, one by one. You mustn't let go.

"I know you can fight," His voice is a taut string; I fear it might rupture. "But don't. Don't do anything but defend yourself. Please."

I nod, flashing a smile, only traces of which are visible to him beneath my helmet. "I will be fine."

Ash turns to Shorter who flanks me. "Please." No other word is uttered. We trudge across burning sands to Shorter's chariot – a dark grey beauty (A precaution, Ash called it.) stained with splotches of deep black. Blood – I grip the spear tighter. I will have to spill it.

"You will be okay," Ash says, hand pressed against the side of the chariot. "My men will do all the work."

"I will not fail you." His cheek is warm against the palm of my hand. He leans into the touch for a mere second. "I expect a feast upon my return."

His lids move, eyes riveted on my lips. I know he questions the casualness of my tone. "Come back and we'll see what we can do."

"Take care of yourselves." And the chariot begins to move. My head turns to watch him; a lone figure like a wraith before the sea, tiny specks of green to him. I stare for as long as sight and distance allow – and even after. An eerie coolness creeps upon me, lodges in my windpipe. Soon, my tongue turns to lead.

"We are here," And I know even without the warning. Constellations of men roar before clashing; heated iron cuts through flesh like teeth through the silken meat of grapefruits – without a tinge of effort, rich liquid lawlessly spilling. I merely bob to the movements of the car, stricken by the sight. Somewhere, somehow, a voice shrieks Ash! – and the dam sheltering me from the hungry gazes of our enemies bursts. Inadvertently, my spear-hand begins to move, hitting the metal floor of the car to the beat of their howls. Ash, Ash! I join them. He is like ambrosia to them; I witness beasts form from men, heroes rid themselves of cowardice, children greeting the ripeness of adulthood. I lead them to the gates of the city, their feet beating against the sand, armour clinking like drums of war.

A spear whirs past my helmet, piercing the breadth of space between me and Shorter, but instead of grounding me, it kindles a voracious fury in me. They will not touch him, not even like this. They shall not dare.

My assailant stands at the edge of our vision, east of the gates, the crest of a mountain of soldiers lying in wait. My left foot edges forward; there is a kind of certainty in me as my muscles mould to mimic the stance I have seen him do myriads of times. My spine stretches, sunflower straight, without a hint of awkwardness (without a hint of me) and my shoulder bends – No! Shorter yells, as if from another shore. My movement is fierce – I watch the spear sail away from my fingers, arch across the white sky, and plummet, nestling in the pulse of my assailant. I roar and they bellow with me.

"We are turning back," Shorter hisses against my ear. Our horses veer, away from the direction of the fight. I grab his hands on the reins and tug; he watches me, frozen in shock. He says nothing when I thieve his spear away from him, my eyes wild as they run across rivers of men that come to greet us. I satisfy only when I glimpse the strongest; all ripe muscle and glistening skin. It takes me a second – and the wood glides from my fingers. The giant tumbles backwards from the force of the deadly kiss.

"Triumph!" A soldier hollers and my hands find Shorter's again. Stop, I coax. Stop the car. His face is a mixture of reverent fear and reluctance. We halt – by my hand or his, I do not know – and our troops rally anew as I set foot upon blackened sand. I tear a spear from a nearby dead, twisting it a little to ease out the tip – Ash's men scream in a frenzy as I bolt through them, feet petal-light against the sand. I drive my spear through some poor boy's neck and tug it out – a streak of blood spurts, clinging to armour and blazing flesh.

I don't know how long a time I manage to keep the ruse; the Sun observes me from the comfort of its throne. I wonder whether it knows whilst I grapple with giants and feeble boys. I don't register the sound of a chariot sweeping towards me, nor the panicked yells of my men. I close my eyes, smiling – drunk on the booming sensation inside my skull, the intoxicating jolts coursing through my veins. I will make him proud, the thought sprouts. Here. I will make him –

I feel my skin tear apart like servant cloth – then the cold caress of a speartip as it plunges through my lungs, anchoring itself in the curb of my ribs. Agony blisters inside me but the burst of blood from my mouth turns any shriek to a pitiful mewl. I twitch and trash like a cub – or perhaps bob as the chariot bucks – gasping for shallow breath, gulping the air, yet every tickle of life sears my lungs to ash. No, I weep. No, no, no. Ash! I grip the shaft where it punctured my skin with the intent to free myself of it; I am but a gurgle of my lungs.

Arthur, I hear them chant. Arthur.

Ash, I wish to scream. Run!

I cannot feel anything.

~x~

They bring me to him in pieces, strewn across a many-hued cape, a string of skin connecting a severed arm to what was once the pillow for his golden head. I am in the wind, a dwindling soul soon to rest; yet I find no peace in it. The essence of me aches. I am not selfish enough to want him dead and dreaming with me.

Ash registers Shorter first; Blanca places him on the warm sand near Ash's feet. They whisper something, Ash on his knees. They commune – and Blanca offers a handle of a dagger. Ash accepts it. I watch him kiss Shorter's head, fingers caressing the blood-crusted hair. A second after, he drives the hilt into his neck. He casts the weapon to the side, then struggles to stand – Sing and Yut-lung lurch to steady him, but he swats their hands away. Ash stumbles towards me, nails clawing into the hollow of his cheeks, drawing ropes of blood. He screams – a wounded beast – once he sees the state of me. They attempt to restrain him, but he is quicker, more nimble, and soon upon me. He kisses my fingers, ghosts his own across the length of my arm, and gazes into my unseeing eyes, my open, unmoving lips. He scurries to piece me, but the futility of the quest strikes him once he notes how little of me there is. No thigh he relished kissing, a piece of the abdomen where my moles once clustered to the envy of the Pleiades gone, and the hand he would weave through his hair – torn at the elbow. A cry comes, tearing through him; nails mauling the globe of his skull, down to where the jaw meets the ear. A fistful of blond hair mingles with charcoal dark. And Ash is upon me again, pushing my skull into his heaving chest, the whole of him contorting around it. He wails.

The cycle is never-ending.

~x~

He kills a God and then Arthur, one act more brutal than the other.

His spear – my spear – eats away at the mortal's neck. He drags him to his chariot, ties his wrists to it, and rides away. He does it every day as if challenging, waiting for one of them to kill him.

The wait suffocates him, perverts him.

"I want to die," He tells Arthur's father the night he comes begging for an audience. "I don't care about your son."

The following morning, a dagger pierces his heart.

~x~

My Gods are merciful enough to let me have a glimpse of him. He stands at the riverbank, his soul smouldering like the Sun. Perhaps he senses me or the eyes of a dark-clad being betray my presence, but he turns, wisps of gold rising high into the air as our gazes meet.

Eiji, I hear him. He is reaching for me. To touch him was an instinct, a reflex ingrained in my being from the moment I first drew breath against my mother's bosom - my hand flies to his. They never meet.

The motion is fruitless, for I am not of his blood nor is he of mine. I am not there, in my rightful place beside him on the banks of the Styx, nor will he ever be here, gracing the shores of the Eternal Land.

Wait for me. Wait. I tell him. Our time is trickling. One day, please.

I'll see you when we wake.