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And that ended all attempts at conversation. Sometimes words just didn’t do the job, and you have to sit there in a big cauldron of feelings.
There wasn’t much from high school English I remembered, but I did remember the line from a Steinbeck novel aboutthe road to hell is paved with unbought stuffed dogs.
Everything had been for nothing. The cosmoshadn’tcreated me to open the Gate so everyone could form an orderly line and disembark the blue planet.
Once I’d washed the travel off me and changed, I tucked myself into the corner of the couch and stared at the empty, cold fireplace.
Auryn, still damp from his own wash, joined me, sitting close. I scrunched myself further away.
“Helena.” He waved a hand to ignite the fireplace.
I shifted my gaze to him but didn’t move. Or unscrunch. “There aren’t words for this, Auryn, and I’d rather not try. Everything we went through was for nothing. So that’s what I want to say about it.Nothing.”
“It wasn’t for nothing,” Auryn said.
Were he and I in the same reality, or was he in denial? “The entire point ofallof this was to find a way to savebothcivilizations instead of smashing them together.”
His fingers explored the gouge over his chest.
Right. Great.Nowhe had regrets.
Well, lucky for him:Ihad skills now. I could free him from those regrets if he wanted. “Thinking about things that you wouldn’t have bothered with if you’d known it’d end like this? Like perhaps leaving me in that cinderblock jail like Keon wanted you to?”
He froze, finger in the indent. “No. I’ve never regretted you.”
“But what if you wouldn’t havehadto regret me? What if you’d never gone topside at all because Homeworld was never an option, and there’d never have been aneedfor you to go and try to find alternative treatments to put off the inevitable? It was just a matter of the topside drakespreparingthe inevitable?” I’d never tasted so much bitterness in my own words.
“But that’s not what happened,” he said softly. “Thisis what happened. The cosmos made us for each other. A reality where there was nouswould be very different.”
Keon approached and tried to squish his bulk around me. I scrunched back. “No. No cuddles.”
“Helena,” he said softly.
“Go cuddle with them if you want cuddles. I do not want to cuddle.”
“Love, I know you’re hurting—”
“Don’t tell me what I’m feeling. What I’mfeelingis that it was all futile. What I’mfeelingis we’ve all been through the wringer for nothing. The cosmos beat the fight out of me. I’m done, and I’m done pretending that I’m not done. I quit, because I amnotbeing a cosmic steamroller.”
I should have quit and taken the L when Keon had said it was over. Instead, I’d fucked off to K’Dol to consume a grimoire that hadn’t mattered in the end. My opening the Gate was a useless parlor trick. Hey, kids, want to see the horrible war-torn wasteland our ancestors called home? Step right up!
“Ineed cuddles. Surrender the cuddles.” Auryn pulled his best impression of a large cat and squished himself between Keon and me. Then he rested his throat against my neck despite my best efforts to squirm away and began to trill a dragon lullaby.
Akoni sat on the floor by the couch and rested his throat against my ankle.
“If I wasn’t supposed to open the Gate,” I said, “then the cosmos sent me to be a wrecking ball.”
“Perhaps you were sent to force everything to change.” Keon settled on the floor opposite Akoni, resting his cheek against Auryn. “To make sure ittrulychanges. On both sides.”
And that could just be another word forcatastrophe.
* * *
The Wyrms,A’ka, Mahon, Alana, myself, and my consorts convened in Lemuel’s rooftop garden to discuss Homeworld. Or more, it was Keon giving the presentation, complete with formal shendyt in a blue so dark it was nearly black.
“We believe the Gate complex is here, or here,” Keon was saying, indicating with a tap of his finger on his tablet—which echoed on all our tablets—to a spot on Homeworld. “That’s a rough guess based on the terrain we observed during our brief visit. The stones under the Gate were clearly intended to house the Gate, even though it was hastily made, while Akoni believes that the lower complex with the columns was built at a later date and is not reinforced.”
“Why build anything there?” Mayriel mused.
