Page 21 of We Were Eternal Once

My head is above water, but barely. Overhead are stars, stretched across the heavens. How long until I am with them? No, there is no place there for me. Me, who desecrates temples for my own gain, who spat on the gods. They’ll never put me in the stars.

We slide through the water. I’m clutching something—is it you? It’s too firm to be you. My cheek rests against it, my fingers unable to grip it too hard. It’s what’s keeping me afloat.

Our movement is slow.

“Kick, Melinoë,” you whisper to me. “We’ve much distance to travel.”

I try. A few times I’m jolted awake by the pull of the water, by my head sinking under the waves again. The sun isn’t too far off—perhaps an hour or two. The lethargy of hunger and loss, the promise of the sun…I cannot help.

“Come,” you say, and there is fear in your voice. Fear for me, or for you?

“Leave me,” I groan. “I won’t make it.”

The sun threatens us.

“Open,” you say. I am not on the water, I am on the shore. Blood trickles across my lips, onto my tongue. My first few swallows are weak, feeble. Blood coats the cracks of my throat. I grab the human, pull them to me, drink them dry. I don’t care that they will die. I care only for the blood that hums through my veins.

“Stop,” you say. I let go.

“Run,” you command.

I stumble, but I run. Sleep drags at me. My belly is full of blood, the sun peering over the hills. I fall and you drag me up.

My eyes close, the threat of the sun too near. Pain erupts across my face, a great burning like I’ve never known. It forces my eyes open. They’re blinded by the burn of the sun.

Then it is dark. The pain doesn’t abate, but it doesn’t spread. I am blind, my eyes burned from the sun, my face blistered and raw. I scream and thrash, my raw throat tearing open.

“Sleep,” you say. It’s not my arms around me, it’s yours. My body isn’t pressed against a box, but into the dirt. “We are home. I told you I’d keep you safe. I promised.”

“I’m sor⁠—”

Sleep takes me at last.

PART TWO

Bargaining – Rome

I Am Not Alone

Rome—at last.

It took some time to get here. I had to heal. You took care of me like the doting creator you were. Your brand of worship was firm but not unkind. I deserved to be chastised, to be left to die on the floor of our cottage. Instead, you buried me in the dirt of my birth and brought me humans to drink even as you nursed your own wounds.

The wars of man continued. The port city swarmed with soldiers and tired Romans until it didn’t. By then we’d stayed too long, and it was time to leave once more.

We lived much as we had in those early years—wandering through port cities, sleeping on cots crawling with fleas, tasting the flavors of human blood. We found new ways for wealth as the temples crumbled around us and the coin changed in shape and meaning. Each new city brought us a new landscape, a new way to barter as we moved toward Rome.

I saw my first desert. I swam in a water so salty I floated.

I tasted humans not dragged down by war.

I honed my compulsion to be as good as yours.

(“Almost.”)

Had it really been a century since we left Delphi? Or was it two now?

(“Time means nothing to the immortal, love.”)