Page 24 of We Were Eternal Once

An emperor falls, another rises.

“What is an Elder?” I ask.

“There are no Elders,” you say.

Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat.

We hunt through the sordid streets. We go to the theatre under the moon. We laugh and dance and make love and life is beautiful.

“This is what I promised you,” you say, looking over the city below. It is dirty and loud and full to the brim of food. We want for nothing, we don’t look over our shoulder in fear of being found.

“This could be our home,” you say.

Home. My home is you, wherever we rest our head.

I want to want this. I want to be satisfied in the calm, in the monotony. I want to find comfort in the familiar. I want to be worthy of you.

But.

“When were there Elders?” I ask.

“Once,” you say.

I open the book, you shut it. I pick around the edges of my questions.

“How old are you?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” you say.

I believe this—I don’t know how old I am. The rat of the temple had no age, no name, no status. She did what she was told and was thankful for a place to sleep. I look just as I did when you gave me a new life. My hair may grow longer, but I do not age. I don’t grow ill.

Every decade I grow stronger.

“Where were you born?” I ask.

“It doesn’t exist anymore,” you say.

Every thread unravels in my hands. I time my questions to when you’re in a giving mood, to when I think you’d give me some semblance of any answer. Never the full truth, that is not your way. You love to hold things close, revealing them only when it suits you.

(“At least I know the secrets I keep.”)

I am between your legs, my knowing tongue darting across your flesh. My fingers press inside you, curling at that spot that arches your back and threatens to unravel you. I pull back, leaving you on the edge. I have you chasing release, begging for more, your body pliable under me. When you finally crest, it’s an explosion of flavor, my name moaned between panting breaths.

Afterward, when you are euphoric with release, I speak.

“Who made you?”

You say nothing.

“Are you the first?”

Nothing.

I know you are not asleep. The sun is hours from rising, the moon making her lazy trail across the sky. Yet you don’t speak.

“Stop asking questions, Melinoë. I won’t warn you a second time,” you say.

I may be a predator, but I know a threat.