chewisty's Literatures

The rabbit is a milky brown, all the better to blend into the shadows of the undergrowth. It’s small and fragile and Six can feel its little heartbeat pitter-pattering beneath his fingertips, a metronome ticking in vivace. He tries to be gentle.

It’s Tuesday when he walks in on Galstrod shirtless, just out of the shower. His fur’s sticking to his body in this way that makes him look all lean and lithe and, yeah, Mattias is a little embarrassed. They’re both guys, so it’s not a big deal, but none of the guys on the ice hockey team look anything like Galstrod, delicate and wispy and bright like a stain you just can’t get out.

I throw myself into the dumpster, cursing when I feel the familiar weight of the key drop out of my pocket. I can’t lose that, it was ours — is ours. Mine and Lucifer’s, our quest for something. Mystery boys, I dunno. It’s special, not something ordinary, and Lucifer gave it to me for a reason.

I have to believe there was a reason.

Marriage is about commitment. A promise to be with someone for the rest of your life. And if that’s the only two criteria, then yes, Blue and Mattias may be a little bit married, but it’s not. There’s supposed to be some element of love involved, or feelings, or at least something other than bare annoyance and the urge to bludgeon, preferably with a large blunt object.

Here in the outside world, no one had to know about the way her magic fizzled and died when she tried to cast a simple ward, or the way the heartbeats of the woodland creatures stuttered when she stroked the soft places between their ears.

I know blood. Blood is my trade, the equivalent exchange of cuts on the battlefield more familiar to me than my own family. I don’t know tears, these soft wet things that weep with some inner hurt. I can’t find the wound and patch it up or apply pressure until the bleeding stops. I can’t show the healed scar like it’s a memento of battle, a symbol of survival. These tears — all they do is make me weak.

But sometimes, in these quiet moments, her mind wanders back to the place it inhabited back then, boxed up in the corner of a house where hope was a whisper and laughter was a dream.

He reaches out an arm experimentally, watching as it disappears into the swirling mass of astral magic up to his elbow. It’s cold, and he knows what he’s feeling is just the Boreal Mountains on the other side, but he thinks to himself that this must be what space feels like, out in the abyss of purpled blues and scattered among the stars.

He knows deep within him that there will be a day when he calls out to the ancient, old things coiled around his world and they will answer his call. So he trains in expectation of the time when the evils of the spiritual realm will rise against him — though they have long been dormant — and he studies in preparation of his ascension to Shrine Keeper, the stories so practised on his tongue that they may as well be carved in stone.

Obi used to call her his little firefly, but having the ability to conjure sparks of light doesn’t mean she can carry warmth. In that way, light magic is one of the emptiest of the disciples, full of empty hope and broken promises; a mere husk of what fire could be. She can shed light upon truth or chase away shadow, but sometimes that only shows that you’ve been part of a puppetshow all along.

He froze. Could she feel his heartbeat thrumming within his ribcage like a caged bird? Could she feel the way he tensed beneath her touch, a livewire ready to explode?

I don’t sleep. I guess it would be more honest to say that I don’t want to sleep most of the time because that’s when they can get to me, but I’m not honest, so I don’t sleep. I travel under the dark blanket of the night, melting into the soft shadows like I was born to walk with them.

Secretly, some part of him knows that the only reason he’s made it this long is because he’s dancing on the precipice of insanity. A weaker mind would have crumbled in on itself by now, and yet Day laughs in the face of his assailants, daring them to crawl closer. Like it’s a game.

He’s heavy, and she drags him unsteadily with her hands pinned under his armpits, constellations birthing and dying in the pools of her eyes. When the dam spills, with him tucked into his bed — he’s just sleeping, she tells herself — the starlit teardrops trace the outline of her cheekbones like a caress.

I remember it like it was just yesterday.

I remember it all — the hustle and bustle of the Outpost, all of us about to enter a new era of magical science, and the way that her eyes smiled behind her crash helmet. I remember stealing a moment with her just before the launch, and I remember what she said to me.

They've never felt this way before, their heart like a caged bird in their chest and their face hot all over. They belatedly wonder if this is something that mortals are used to and if there’s a specific trigger for this discomfort — although, even as they think of it as discomfort, they find themselves leaning into the rush of adrenaline a little more.

Everything he touches wastes away to blood and bone and ash. He wants what he can’t have, except there’s nothing he wants that he isn’t prepared to take for himself by force — unless it’s something he can’t understand to begin with.

Their curiosity led them to the brightest spark in the darkest shadow, and when they crawled through and took their first steps, they felt something shift within them. This was where they were meant to be.

It is said that browbirds and satyrs alike heard voices calling to them from the depths and dove in without hesitation, diving deeper until the bubbling signalling their frenzied struggles ceased. This browbird, however, has no intention of drowning in the depths of the lake like the others who have come before her.

Blood would make the surface slippery, he thought, but if he finished it quickly that wouldn’t matter.

Many years ago, a creature made of tumbling wings and fresh blossoms and the soft place between dreams and wakefulness disappeared from Ashen’s life without a trace.

It feels like another world — not too different from this one — but instead of being a wandering traveller, they’re a hero.

They’re not sure why their stomach turns every time they think that.

Family isn’t a place. Reed left his home long ago, eager to crawl out from under the thumb of his parents, and he hasn’t looked back since — or, at least, that’s what he keeps telling himself.

It’s always led her to nothing but trouble, but Tinúviel finds herself drawn to the mysterious and the misunderstood. As a young browlet, she used to follow the travelling merchants around the town for the entire duration of Candleblight, far more interested in the unknown than in the familiar celebration.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. If they had known it would be like this, maybe they wouldn’t have come. Maybe they would have kept their promise. But no god deals in maybes, and it’s too late for regret.