Page 117 of Pareidolia

“Okay. Nox.” He draws the strange name out, and the sound of it spilling from his lips to my ears seems to give it weight and meaning. Names are nothing but syllables that humans call out when they’re trying to beg for mercy.

Mother.

Father.

God.

But Nox…

Nox means something now.

And…

“Aspen,” he offers, and I drink the name down.

Now Aspen means something too.

“Aspen.” I feed it back to him the same way he did for me, and his eyes widen. The tip of his tongue spills out, soft and pink, to wet his lips as he takes it in.

“Right. Moth monster saying my name. I…” He shakes his head. “I’m still pretty sure that this is all a dream and I’m going to wake up soon.”

A dream.

Not a nightmare.

Nothing he says is convincing me that I’m wrong about my claim, that he’s anything other than exactly what I said.

“You’re mine, Aspen. The moment you stepped into this forest, you were. The moment you gave me the offering of a dying man, you were… and the moment you touched my wings and took in my shadows, you were. There’s no changing it. There’s no running.” I step forward, and I notice he doesn’t try to move away again. He just stares at me with those same wide, curious eyes. “It’s best you simply accept the hand Fate has dealt and try to find a way to amuse me, so I don’t swallow you whole and leave nothing but your skin and bones behind.”

His pulse quickens at the threat, but it’s all wrong. It’s a sharp pitter patter that spills across his skin in a streak of heat. My threat is running straight through him in ways that it shouldn’t, in ways that would make most humans recoil.

Aspen leans closer.

“The only person I belong to is me. Just because you’re a… a what? A giant bug⁠—”

“This shape is just a form I created long ago. I wear it to amuse myself.” He frowns at the interruption.

“Okay, just because you’re a shapeshifter⁠—”

“I am the shadow that covered the world before man crawled from the primordial ooze and sullied the ground by walking on it.”

Aspen blows out a breath and raises his hand to cover his face, but he pauses with his fingers a few inches in front of him. The glowing pulse beneath his skin still echoes the beat of his heart, and I can feel that pulse inside me now too, a steady thump thump thump in the center of my chest that didn’t exist before.

“You’re a monster,” he finally says, and I shrug.

“If that’s what you need to call it.”

“And you eat people?” He’s still looking at me like he half believes I’m just in his head. “Did you eat that man I killed?”

I snarl. “No, human meat is vile. But your emotions…” I lean in, running one claw along the back of his hand so I can feel that sweet flood of apathy spilling from him. “Your emotions are another thing entirely.”

Aspen drops his arm out of my reach. “You’re going to get bored of me pretty quick, then. I wasn’t kidding when I said you can’t steal what a person doesn’t have.” He shakes his head and raises his hand again, brushing those glowing fingers over his chest like it aches, along the mark that’s a perfect mirror of my wings. “Fuck, I would have to dream up a monster that doesn’t even fit with me, wouldn’t I?”

I’m starting to get annoyed. “You aren’t dreaming.”

He shakes his head and takes a step back. It’s not the move of prey this time, or the desire to get away. He does it so he can look me up and down, and then he frowns.

“Then I don’t know why you’re here. I’m broken, remember?” he snaps, his light brown eyes full of a fire that draws me like a flame. “I don’t feel much of anything.”