Page 114 of Pareidolia

I still have my boots on.

I really did faint.

When I finally steady myself again, I raise my hand up to stare at my fingers… and through my spread digits I see it.

A shadow in the corner.

It swirls and shifts, taking shape.

A large shape.

A familiar shape, like he was hiding in the corner of the room waiting for me to move before he made himself known again.

He?

I’m not even sure if the thing in front of me is a he.

“Who are you?” I barely manage to get the question out through the tight feeling in my chest. I’m not sure if it’s because what’s standing in front of me is impossible, or because my arm is suddenly on fire. It lifts almost of its own accord, reaching out to him like whatever it is that’s beneath my skin—the pulsing red that matches the flick and flutter of his wings—is trying to get back to where it belongs.

The problem is, I think it would take my skin with it if I let it.

The creature in front of me steps out of the shadows, and I’m forced to take in the shape of him again, the impossibility.

He’s not a human, even if some parts of him are human-like… the long red and black hair that falls in waves down his back looks human enough, and the broad expanse of his bare chest is definitely human shaped. The curve of his full lips as they pull back into a snarl is human, but the rows of razor sharp teeth behind them…

Definitely not.

And his arms.

Arms.

Four fucking arms with huge, bulging biceps that would look ridiculous on any person I’ve ever met, but somehow are perfectly proportionate to his body.

An eight-foot-tall dark body accented with red, with glowing eyes. And those wings… those fucking wings that I thought I’d imagined so long ago, flickering and twitching, but laid flat to his back.

“What did you do?” he hisses, the question full of anger and irritation… but beneath that, I can hear something else.

Interest.

Curiosity.

A strange possessiveness that spills out of his posture as he stalks across the room, the antennae that rise from his head brushing the ceiling.

“I didn’t do anything.” Even as I protest, my fingers flex and reach for him involuntarily again. I can pretend I’m trying to ward him off, but the soft glow beneath my skin is proof that I’m a liar. My eyes flick between his snarling face and my flesh.

The red pulses in a slow, steady thump thump thump, echoing the beat of a heart that should be racing in terror, but instead…

“Why aren’t you afraid?”

He’d asked me the same question earlier, but this time I’m not completely taken aback by the fact that there’s a monster in my fire tower.

I probably still should have been taken aback… but I’d been looking at the pattern of his wings in the mirror since I was old enough to get a tattoo. It was hard to be anything but curious.

“I told you before, I don’t know why.” Being honest about it, not trying to hide the fact that I’m nothing more than a fucking nesting doll hiding layer after layer of emptiness is…

Fuck, it feels amazing, like being allowed to fully inhale for the first time. I don’t know how else to describe it as I take a breath and breathe out truth.

“All humans know fear.” He steps closer as he says it, circling me like a predator trying to intimidate its prey. I have to admit there’s something novel about someone so much bigger than me moving with a silent, liquid grace that should be impossible… but I’m not afraid. “Unless you’re a monster.”