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Caelan laughs at my other side. He’s dropped his glamour too, and it’s even more noticeable with him. The claws, the point to his ears, the sharp teeth. Those eyes. Neither of them is human.
“You’re sweet, doll. You don’t know how much that means,” he says lightly, dismissive of his own words, but he’s serious, however much he might try to pretend he’s not. “It sucks having to pretend to be something you hate constantly.”
“Humans aren’t that bad, surely?”
He huffs a short laugh. “Didn’t mean it like that. Bad wording. It’sthishuman…” he pulls the glamour up again for a second before letting it immediately fall away, “… that I hate.”
I reach out and touch the back of his hand, then twine my fingers together with his. He looks surprised for a moment but squeezes my hand in return.
They’ve never talked about it. Not that first night, not since. I know they’re stuck here in this dimension, playing as humans when they’d clearly rather exist as themselves, but I still don’t knowwhy.
I glance between Caelan and Elias. “You don’t have to answer, but if it’s okay to ask… why are you trapped here like this?”
Elias hesitates a long moment before answering, and I’m ready to apologize for bringing it up at all when he finally speaks. “Parts of our soulsarehuman.”
Oh.He’s being entirely serious, and the weight with which he says it betrays how reluctant he is to tell me. Caelan has turned away altogether like it’s an ugly admission he’d rather not face.
“What does that mean? How does that happen?”
“Not by fuckin’ choice,” Caelan says bitterly.
Elias gives a humorless chuckle. He reaches out and tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear, carefully evaluating me. “Do you really wish to know? It’s difficult to explain when your worldview is so limited.”
“Try? Please? I’d like to understand as much as I can.”
“You humans have no concept of what souls are. You lack the very fundamentals.”
“Then explain. I’ll listen.”
Maybe I’m pushing too much. Elias is expressionless and aloof, but the shadowy aura of his power seems more volatile than usual. I can’t tell if he’s trying to suppress irritation or find the right words.
“Why?” he asks, eventually.
“Because you’re important to me. I want to know about you.”
Another long pause. “The problem is that you view your world as a material existence when all matter is merely an embodiment of energy, and that energy is inherently encoded with information. Other dimensions, for example, are less material planes of existence so much as alternative frequencies at which the energy is interacting.”
“Oh, jeez,” Caelan complains. “You really gonna try to explain this shit? It doesn’t matter how or why things work. They justdo. Like humans don’t need to fully comprehend the theory of goddamn relativity to get the general gist of gravity being a thing.”
“If she wants me to explain, there’s no harm in trying.”
“Waste of time,” Caelan dismisses.
The corner of Elias’ mouth twitches up. “Youdon’t have to listen.”
“I know I probably won’t get it,” I admit. “But I’m still interested.”
“He’s frustrated since the finer details of these concepts are beyond him too.”
“Hey.”
“Hush,” Elias says. Then he returns his attention to me, hesitating for a moment. “I don’t know how to explain in a way that will be accessible for you. This might be… dense.”
“Like you,” Caelan pipes up, and I choke on a quiet giggle.
Elias ignores him. “A soul is energy, as anything else, with a unique frequency or energy signature that defines it as belonging to an individual. You don’t have a word or concept to encompass the true nature of the information such energy carries. In any case, physical form manifests from that energy. Your quaint human notion of soul mates doesn’t truly exist. However, the energetic frequencies of an individual can resonate with others that complement their own.”
I feel rather out of my depth already, trying to process what he is saying. I always preferred biology and chemistry over physics, which is what this sounds most like with his talk of energy and frequencies.Demon metaphysics.
