Page 115 of We Were Eternal Once

We stay like that until I feel the tug of the sun on the horizon. Then you help me to my feet and lead me, bleary and morose, back to our home.

You bring me to my grave and help me into it.

“If it is a companion you long for, I shall find you one,” you say.

“Don’t,” I shudder, curling into the dirt. You join me, smoothing my hair.

“I will fix this,” you say softly.

“Forget about this night.”

I killed her. I killed Zora. It was my teeth in her neck, my blood on her lips.

I killed her.

I killed her.

“There is more. Remember being reborn.”

The ground vibrates, and I curse my luck. My head is turned, this time I will not taste the blood. I am so close to death. The river Styx is not so far, if I concentrate hard enough, I can see it. I try to run my tongue over the coin in my mouth but it will not move.

So close.

The vibration grows stronger and I curse it. I want to die in peace. I do not want the blood of the injured, sick, and scared to keep me alive for another indefinite amount of time.

Something brushes my cheek. A worm, perhaps.

My body moves.

At last, I think. At last.

My face is turned skyward. Overhead is the moon, though I barely see it through the dirt in my eyes. The dirt is wiped free, and something dark goes before the moon.

Your face.

I am truly dead, I think. And in my death, I’ve seen you. My lover, my maker, once my world, come to lead me to the afterlife.

Something warm touches my tongue, slides down my throat.

I am no longer in the dirt.

There is blood on my lips.

I swallow and swallow and drink and drink.

“Yes, Melinoë. Rise again.” Your face, your hands. The pain of rebirth is excruciating. I try to scream but I cannot muster the sound. I am too weak, so I scream to myself, in my head where no one can hear.

Every human that you drain for me brings me closer to life, and with it comes pain. My throat burns as the liquid blood coats it. My teeth regrow, having fallen out sometime while I was buried. My hair grows back, my nails, my skin. Sometimes I catch glimpses of what I look like.

A corpse.

It’s a wonder you recognized me, a wonder you found me.

“I would know you in any crowd,” you whisper to me. “Drink, Melinoë. Live.”

I live, though it is against my will.

I do not know how many humans or how many days or months or years it takes before I exist at last. I stare at you from where I lie on the floor, too weak to get up.