light buried me beneath roots. i measure time by tablecloths gathering mold. i sweep, tidy spoons and forks, catalog souls milling in the foyer, cradling severed heads like sack lunches.
shadows i smooth like linens. dark drinks dark without complaint. my halls have no lyres. no choirs. no throat needs bleed song for supper.
but then comes the herald, riding still that eight-legged horse slick with grease of the living, clutching proof of every weeping mouth that refuses to close.
they want their hero back. they want their sun to clot into veins, don golden skin like a coat, and shoulder again the weight of shining.
i gaze at the boy. he lies quiet. a pale, peeled almond. for the first time in a millennium he is just an assortment of limbs folded into bed like any other rotting body.
the messenger screams, catastrophe! and bids me reach between ribs to pluck branch like a splinter, uncut the umbilical that tethered him to life.
look at my hungry, bowled hands. one warm as fresh bread. one cold blue as drowning. they know how light bleaches bone. the violence adoration brings.
no. i will not budge. mount your beast and your hope. skitter back to the feast, knee over undignified knee, through gale you thought to outrun. i have already stoked my hearth with his fire.
this boy is sleeping. do not wake him. do not ask him to perform the magic trick of breathing. the pillows are cool. nobody needs him to save anyone.