Bloom

IF I DON'T KNOW WHO I AM,

HOW DO I KNOW I'M NOT A GOD?

written by

SARAH

Bloom

If I don’t know who I am, how do I know I’m not a god?

Copyright © 2019 by Sarah

All rights reserved.

Please feel free to share this story.

Please do not take any of the language or expressions herein, and claim them as your own.

First Printing, August 2019, US

ISBN 9780463658888

Published by Smashwords, Inc.

Cover Design: Sarah

Editing: Karin Kempert

Interior Formatting: Sarah

There’s an untouchable intimacy between people who meet at the bottom of this life and decide to hold hands instead of climbing back up.

A somatic memory that never goes away, even when one of you does.

A link, that weighs more somehow in absence than it ever did in presence.

Rabbit misses you, and she doesn’t care what that says about her.

She wanted me to tell you.

That you were her friend, and she’s glad you got out.

Soak up the sun.

Maybe she’ll feel it too.

For the boy with sinking ship eyes.

You could live forever if you want to.

BLOOM

ONE

“Has yours kicked in yet?”

“How do I know when it’s kicked in?”

“Let me see your eyes.”

As two girls on my left lean close enough to kiss, I look anywhere else.

Overpacked and underventilated, the entire House of Yes reverberates deep jungle-grime beats. Flashing LEDs meant to turn the ceiling intergalactic make everything beneath it shine neon purple while glow in the dark confetti sticks to everyone.

Including me.

Out of Hart’s apartment, I’m part of the party in the back of the club because it’s Marvin’s birthday, and no one’s seen me in weeks. I’m dancing with somebody’s friend of a friend because she thinks I’m cute, and that’s what you do, and she’s cool, I guess.

The thing is, none of it is effortless.

A handful of mushrooms got me here and helps me be around it all - the pills, the blow, the doubled-up cups - but nothing feels good. My nerves are knotted rubber bands and my head’s a spinning mess of everything I could be doing but don’t anymore.

“Fuck, Cassie, how much did you take?”

“Two. We were supposed to take two, right?”

“Not at once!”

Dry for almost two months, I blink tight under a hundred disco balls, and swallow craving spiked with no longer belonging.

The feeling I keep hiding from comes on strong anyway.

The pressure of everything I used to love, closing in on me.

Walls made of mirrors. Black lights and sub-bass. Even the bare arms around my neck and lace-draped hips moving with mine feel like a burden. The balance I’ve gained is shaky at best. All losing it takes is one misstep, and it doesn’t even have to be my own.

“Hey, watch where you’re going -”

“What the fuck, man -”

“My dress -”

When someone trips and spills dirty Sprite, it soaks more than just soft curves. It gets all over my hands. It’s all I can smell, and the friends I have left don’t get it.

They’re not still trying to wake up from a two-year codeine coma.

“Bro, where are you going?”

“Come on, don’t leave.”

“You’ll never get back in.”

Outside, a noisy line wraps around the left side of the club, so I head right. Night air microdoses relief, but my chest doesn’t relax. I rub Schedule II sugar off on my jeans, but my hands stay sticky, and craving hits me with heavy chills.

Crossing Wyckoff Avenue, I pull the silver tin from my back pocket. I walk until there’s a bench so I can sit down, wait for the bus, and go back to Hart’s apartment.

Alone.

Sparking a joint from the tin, I inhale deep while somewhere down the block, a cloud of bats takes off. Hundreds of them fill the scarlet-tinged sky, leaving blurry tracers in their wake. I watch until they fade, then drop my eyes to cracked blacktop and spot a splash of violet on new white hi-tops that makes my heart pound. My veins twist tight, and I close my eyes, trying to breathe through it, but all I can think is how much easier it would be to get back in than to stay out here. To find Marvin and tell him to pour me a cup. How much better I’d feel back under black lights, pulse drowned in an 808, licking what I need off a girl who wants me.

“This seat taken?”

The sudden presence of someone else startles me, but my back is so tense I hardly flinch. I just sit there, exhaling haze while a stranger holds his hands up.

“Easy, killer.” He’s got rings on almost every finger, and light vapor shines like a halo around loose black curls. He smirks dismissively. “May I?”

Hiding palpitations, pins, and needles behind straightening up, I make sharp eye contact and some room on the bench, but the stranger doesn’t waver. He sits down, and the velvet varsity jacket he’s wearing pulls my attention. Glimmering gold folds disappear and reappear along the sleeves, begging to be chased down and felt in full. They throb gently with my breathing, in time with the Tesla parked across the street, the concrete itself, and the wildstyle wrapped warehouses lining the block.

The caps I took to get off the couch and out of the house, just kicked in.

“I’m sorry,” I hear myself say between my heart and harder beats, coming from around the corner. “Do I know you?”

Rubbing my eyes with the heels of my hands, I catch a breath of cough syrup, and my skin tingles and crawls, aching with knowing how quick one sip would stop all of it.

Overhead, two bats swoop and soar in a wide circle. I lower my hands, and find the joint I lit to calm down has gone out. I’m rolling fast and longing hard, and my sense of time is drawing a blank.

Dark eyes, dark jeans, dark boots - everything dark but his red-light-lit skin and flashy jacket, smirks again.

But it’s a more sincere smile this time, and twice as tempting as the fabric.

Antique gold signets glint when he sparks a flame, showing me letters I’ve never seen as I bring the joint back to my lips and tilt toward him. Breathing in deep, out slow, I watch my smoke cover his fingers as the fire vanishes, and my stomach plummets.

There’s no lighter in his hands. No match. Nothing at all as he leans in.

“Wanna get out of here?”

TWO

“Stop fluttering so much. You’re getting it everywhere.”

“I have to get it everywhere. Otherwise I’ll be splotchy.”

“Okay, but you’re getting it on me.”

“Good, there’s enough for us both. Get in.”

I sit up to make room in the tub, but my best friend shakes her head.

“I don’t know why you think this is going to be any different from the moonflower powder or the unicorn tears or the … ” She trails off without an ounce of hope, but pours another cup of milk that smells like coconut and jasmine down my back anyway.

“I traded my taaffeite circlet for it,” I counter, cupping some of Pegasus’ potion in my palms and staring into it. “It better work.”

Sinking under, I come back up and massage the milk over my face, my neck, my arms, all over my rosy opal-toned skin. The washroom we share with our entire flicker is quiet for a few minutes, but impatience hisses and swears loudly inside me as I rub my calves. My knees. My thighs. Waiting for them to turn pale. Watching them stay the same.

“How long is it supposed to take?” Padget asks, leaning against the porcelain rim. Skeptical. Bored.

I criss-cross my legs so they’re completely submerged and there’s room for her.

“I don’t know. The sooner the better. Come on.”

“You wouldn’t have to hide your shimmer if you just picked someone.”

I cup my palms again and splash my face, scrubbing what I hope is magic into my cheeks.

“Fawn, my dress -” Jumping up, the only other chromafae that still has her blush scowls at spattered lace and sighs hard.

I feel badly I wasted even a drop, and worse that I messed up her slip, but as the seconds stretch between us, all I feel is frustrated.

“Why did you say that?” I ask, staring down at the bath.

“Because you got mystery milk all over me.”

“No, the other thing.” I feel my eyebrows narrow and my lips tighten. My whole face tenses so much, it takes effort just to speak. “About picking someone.”

A few more seconds go by. The washroom is spacious, enough to hold rows and rows of tubs. The ceiling towers above us, and there’s a wall of open windows, nighttime air flowing freely in and out. It’s huge in here, but it feels like a cage right now. Overcrowded by nerves. Deafening with unanswer.

When I finally look over at my friend, who’s avoiding looking at me, she’s fidgeting with the hem of her dress, smoothing it out and chewing her bottom lip while I wait and wait.

“Padget?” I finally snap.

She throws her arms up, groaning, entirely exasperated all at once. She pulls her hair back, then over one shoulder before tossing it back again.

“I’m going to the pairing ceremony tomorrow, okay?” Her voice is harshly defensive, but it goes down like a knife in my back.

Whatever it takes to process what she just said, I don’t have it.

“Look, I’m not ready to mate either.” She holds one hand to her pearl-pink chest. “You know I’m not.”

For a second, I can’t do anything but stare at her while everything around us blurs. Then the shock of what she’s saying wears abruptly off.

“Then why are you going?” I hear myself ask around sharp hurt I feel everywhere now.

“Because.” She says it like a full and complete argument, then changes her mind when I dip back down into the tub. “That stupid bath isn’t going to help you. The only way you’re not going to look available is if you aren’t. You don’t get to just opt out of pairing. If you don’t choose -”

“I have chosen,” I say flatly, slipping deeper into the milk until it’s up to my chin.

“Not choosing isn’t a choice,” Padge spouts, snatching a towel and dabbing hastily at her dress.

“It’s my choice.”

“Well, it’s not mine. If you want to bloom at random and be stuck with some stranger forever, or get shipped off so some cave hag can pick apart your petals like tea leaves and bind you to a stag you’ve never met -”

“They don’t do that anymore.”

“Donna Mother brought it up twice today.”

“Donna Mother is full of it.” I close my eyes and beg for my shimmer to fade. For my best friend not to betray me. For everything to be different.

The quick whisper of her towel hitting the marble floor fills my ears. When I open my eyes, Padget’s walking away.

I sit up so straight and fast, milk spills over the edge of the tub.

“Traitor,” I shoot. “Bind yourself up for the rest of your life if you want to, but I’m not staying in this medieval village forever.”

The friend I thought I’d have until the end turns around, glossy, galaxy-filled eyes hardened and glowering at me. “What are you going to do then? Run away? Seriously?”

“That was the plan. That was our plan.”

“Come on, Fawn. That was never going to work and you know it.” It hits like salt, spit where she stabbed me, and she looks like she knows it. “Not choosing isn’t going to stop you from blooming. It’s going to happen whether you choose or not.”

Soft tears slip down incensed cheeks before she swats them from her jutting chin, and I drop my eyes to find my own skin, still giving me away.

Virgin.

Unvowed.

Vulnerable.

“Just ... Think about it,” Padge murmurs, nothing but doleful hope in her voice now. “We don’t have to choose tomorrow. We could go together and just look. I know you like to look.”

I close my eyes and lean back, sinking into the milk bath until it swallows me so wholly, I barely hear the door close.

THREE

Shuffling backwards, I find balance against a wall and hold onto Magnus while he makes the room tilt for me.

But not just the room.

As he drags his mouth down my neck, the whole world goes with him, and I let my head fall back, closing my eyes while the rest of my body rises.

“Keep breathing.” Charcoal dark and softly rough, his voice slips beneath my skin, igniting me from underneath it while cool hands slide down my sides, between my jacket and my shirt.

I grin as I part my lips for a breath.

I don’t know where we are or how we got here, but as tongue and teeth track down the place below my ear that gets me so hard my knees dip, I dig my fingers into plush varsity velvet and hold on.

The clink and tug of my belt from its buckle makes me blink, but when I open my eyes, there’s two of everything and it’s all spinning. Cut by vertical blinds, stark stripes of pitch black night and peach pink light ripple and swell through the living room around us, giving me glimpses of a bolted arched door, an empty one armed love seat, and my silver tin, open on the floor. Little white joints spilled across shiny cherry wood.

Half undone between a stairway and the stranger with the flame, I remember sharing my smoke with him on the bench. I remember his flask of gin. How easily we ended up in another club. Then another. How good it felt to be with someone who has no idea how fucking lost I am.

How good it still feels.

“Keep breathing,” Magnus echoes, slick lips sliding along my jaw until my lids fall back down.

I do it. I breathe in deep, and my bearings falter, but everything dark is right there, planting one of his feet between mine. Holding me up. Letting me ride the highest I’ve ever tripped while his hands find my fly and unravel gravity.

I don’t need balance anymore.

I don’t even want it.

Something stronger has found me and his mouth is on my neck again, pushing me higher, dauntless palms slipping under my shirt, up my stomach as the rest of him goes down.

Down.

I’m not sure if he tells me to keep breathing again or if it’s an echo. My neck feels wet, and a scent like sea-soaked pennies sinks into my chest when I inhale. His lips are on my hips, dipping lower as I fall back against the wall, but he draws me forward, into a rush of heat and heartbeats and dizziness so deep, I grab onto his shoulders to keep from drowning.

Time dies away. Where and who I am go with it. There’s only the heavy heaven of Magnus’ mouth and soft darkness, drawing me in opposite directions.

He wants me to come.

And I’ve never wanted to come so badly.

But the deeper he takes me, the closer darkness edges.

Deeper.

Darker.

Until I’m too close to tell the difference. They’re one and the same, need-filled and not letting me up. Both of them swallowing all of me until I’m drowning in a black star. Until all I see is light. Until all I feel is found.

Until there’s nothing but warmth.

Nothing but quiet.

Nothing at all.

I’m on my back when I wake, adrift on a living room floor and barely breathing around a strange hush. There’s an open window in the ceiling above me, with two peach-pink moons shining down and two bats flying over.

Rubbing my eyes, I double check the sky, but two moons remain, and I don’t know why my hands smell like cough syrup. Or why my jeans are undone. Or where that hush is coming from.

“You made it.” A familiar voice gathers all my attention, and I recognize its dark pitch before turning my head. Dark curls fall over dark eyes as Magnus sits up, and as I sit up too, affirmation flows through me.

He smiles, and it feels like praise as he leans back dragging slowly from a joint as he takes a long look at me.

“Nama-fucking-ste,” he says slowly. “Let’s get you a drink.”

FOUR

Even totally devastated, it’s impossible to feel out of place in Inner City.

Tucked in the humid valley between the Solemn Mountains and the Secretsea, Inner City is an oasis for the out of place. Teenage leprechauns chase a giggling centaurette around one corner, while a fortune teller pulls cards for Persephone on another. A fire-eater and a sword-swallower compete for coins across from a belly dance-off, and block after club-lined block abounds with other creatures from every walk and stage of life. The same rainbow of neon signs promising hot debauchery and cold cocktails shines on Earthlings and Elsewhereians alike, while ancient border walls surround and free everyone inside from the laws of both sides.

Even the three oldest and strictest rules get bent here.

“Guard yourself, little bit,” a wrinkled elf warns, peddling amulets, nazars, and scapulars as I pass. “Darkness has nimble fingers and a sweet tongue.”

It’s hard to take him seriously with the ex-valkyrie on his left, hawking American Spirits and RayBans.

I nod politely and keep moving, peeking into a tattoo shop, then a strip club as I go. A million more vendors line the sidewalk, hustling everything from rambutans to “magic” lamps. Nothing I’m interested in until a boy with a unicorn horn offers a bottle of baby woodrose lemonade.

His kaleidoscopic eyes are mesmerizing, but I don’t let my gaze linger. Looking down at what I have left to trade instead, I unclasp the tiny tourmaline chain from around my middle and swap it for the soft psychedelic.

Uncapping the bottle as I turn down an even busier sidewalk, I take a sip of cool citrus mellowed by petals that taste like honeydew. I’m careful not to make much eye contact as I walk, but my curiosity runs deep. I can’t help sneaking looks at the selkie across the street, all saunter and sinew. The barely dressed will o’wisp, swaying her hips on a balcony. The naked satyr parting the path ahead of me with his slow strut and dimpled simper, leaving nothing to my imagination and everything to a throatful of four letter words.

I duck my head and swallow hard when Dionysus’ wingman catches me looking. Blushing so hot my cheeks burn, I dip quickly into the first open doorway there is, and the change from open air and neon-outlined silhouettes to flame-bright congested closeness is jarring. Commotion and nostalgia crash over me so hard, I almost back out.

Faltering a little, I roll my eyes and flit up to a rafter in the ceiling instead.

This is the last place I meant to end up, but I used to love it here. All around me, chandeliers glow with candles that never burn out, and beams like the one I’m on are great for creature-watching. Rootless wisteria grows up the walls while bass-filled Earth electronica gives the atmosphere a pulse I feel in my bones and know by heart. Linus’ familiar face behind the bar softens the blow of bitter hurt starting to flow through me, but it doesn't stop. The Sticky Sepal is just as packed with memories as it is patrons.

Padge and I stole so many nights here.

It was ours like so much was ours, and now I don’t know what I’m going to do or where I’m going to go -

A deep drink of pale purple lemonade fights back swelling tears. So I lean my head against the rafter and take another.

Sipping slower and deeper, I let my eyes wander between faces. From rogue seraphim to a prodigal changeling. To a half-naked Dryad and the goblin prince she’s putting a flower crown on.

I wonder what their whispers sound like. How their skin smells. How they kiss.

How they might look above me.

How I might feel underneath them.

What it would be like to share yourself with someone and not be stuck when it’s over.

Plenty of creatures mate for life, but fairies mate so absolutely. We bloom the first time, and then we’re bound to who we bloomed with forever. That’s it. After that, whatever one feels, so does the other. When one’s hungry or happy, so is the other. If one dies -

I tip the bottle to my lips again, but it’s empty, and there’s pastel fractals unrolling in my peripheral vision. Everything’s starting to diffract a little, and the faces below me blur easily together.

Everyone and everything looks the same, until the door opens.

The only Elsewherian more alone than me, the most lost of all of us walks in grinning, and I sit up, craning my neck and clearing my eyes to check out who he brought with him this time.

FIVE

“Come on Magnus, what is this?”

“Your fourth, fifth fledgling since Lucius?”

“Try ninth or tenth.”

“Should we put a leash on him for you?”

Even entangled with countless others, every voice in the candle-lit bar is distinct, but only one is familiar.

“Just pour two rococo sunsets, would you, Linus? Devoting him took forever.”

There’s a magnet in Magnus’ black gravel bass I want to follow. I want to go everywhere he is, but there’s two girls wrapped closer around me than candlelight can reach, and I can't remember ever feeling this alive.

“So this one’s a keeper, huh?”

“You know, that’s cruel.”

The rhythm and resonance of his voice draw me from somewhere within while fervent fingertips trace from my earlobes to hip bones.

My head swims.

I remember walking here with Magnus, starving for a drink. I remember two full moons above us and the lush jungle along the way. Then neon lights. Packed sidewalks. Snake charmers, half-zebras, and cherubs with hula-hoops.

I remember following him here and him handing me a chalice. I remember tasting bliss in the first sip.

But everything before waking up in his house?

Dark.

“As long as you told him the rules.”

“Oh yeah. That’s what someone who just had their soul sucked out wants to hear. Rules.”

“Are you insane? Don’t you remember -”

“Alright, give the guy a break. As long as he told this one what he is, the rules will follow.”

Their voices fade under a gently persistent hand, sliding down my chest, reminding me of the strange sensation under my sternum. I can’t shake the feeling that something is off - or this sense that I should feel like something is off - that it’s me they’re all talking about.

But nothing actually feels off to me.

It’s the opposite.

Everything feels really, really on.

“Magnus, tell me this one knows what he is.”

The two smooth shadows outlining me on the dance floor. Every single one of my senses. Even the dark in me where everything that came before should be feels turned up. Wide-awake and completely natural. A tide of warmth follows every touch, right through my clothes, and every brush of skin on skin is a full-body impulse for more that goes so deep, I almost ask for it.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Magnus, seriously?”

I tip my chalice back for another drink. It goes down like champagne and angel food while the only familiar voice drifts through the bar.

“I mean, what really is anyone? Aren’t all of us just whatever we make ourselves?”

Groaning commotion fills floral-tinted air as one girl slips away from me and the one still in my arms tilts her head back. Resting in the bend of my elbow, she parts ruby lips, asking with garnet-dark eyes for me to give her a taste.

But there’s only a little left in my cup.

“Come on, guys. You know it always goes to shit when I explain things. Just look at him. He loves it here. Can’t we just … Can’t he just enjoy the loss of his mortal coil for a little while? Just one night before we burden him with some bullshit he’s got literally forever to come to grips with?”

The first girl slides back up, bearing a freshly filled chalice and taking my nearly empty one. The two of them split the last two swallows, even though I want them for myself, but then they’re sharing a wet red kiss, and there’s a third girl, bringing the full cup to my mouth and brushing her lips against my ear.

“Everyone here would bow if you told them to,” she whispers, kissing down my neck while I drink milk and honey from her hands. “We’d all drop to our knees if you said kneel.”

She pours faster, and I swallow deeper.

I don’t know what came before this moment or how time works anymore.

If it’s drifting by or standing still.

All I know is I drink and drink, and my cup never runs out. I feel and feel, and I can’t touch or be touched enough.

Even when curiosity leads me to wander, there’s a girl or something like a girl at every turn. Some with dark red eyes like Magnus and the dancers, and some with irises as bright as sunrises. Some with thorny horns and pointed ears, and some with sky blue ringlets and prismatic scales for skin. Some with feathered wings longer than their legs, and some with cloven hooves for feet. They’re all different, but they all bear cup after gilded cup up to me until I’m drunk on unlimited indulgence, and they’re curtsying and play-bowing, kissing my hand when I reach to help them up, and all I can think is if I don’t know where I came from or how I got here, or where here even is, how do I know I’m not in heaven? Or somewhere better?

How do I know everything here isn’t here just for me?

If I don’t know who I am, how do I know I’m not a god?

High as the sky and roaming slowly through the club, I watch all kinds of eyes watch me, and it feels like someone turns everything that’s already on, all the way up. I can see every tiny vein pulsing through every green leaf on the vines climbing up ebony walls, blushing petals of pouty buds turning into violet blossoms right in front of my eyes, and I swear, even the flowers sigh for me. The surrounding beat of syncopated drums thrums in every muscle, filling my bones, but I can still hear every voice, crystal clear as ever, and I’m aware of the ocean somewhere nearby. I can hear waves and smell salt as surely as I can taste pure decadence lingering on the back of my tongue, making me crave another drink while something like intuition tingles just under my skin.

I feel sensitive all over suddenly. Like I’m looking desperately for something.

Like it’s so close.

I’m turning and searching, and so sure it’s right here until my feet stop.

I can’t move.

I can’t tear my stare from the pitch darkest eyes I’ve ever seen.

No iris, all pupil, black holes bordered by white corners absorb the flame from every chandelier and don’t give a single fleck of light back. Shadow-lashes blink when I blink, and the body in the mirror moves like I move as I take in white sneakers, black jeans, and a white tee. A black satin bomber jacket stretches across my shoulders as I reach up to touch hair the color of cotton candy falling over my ears. As I push it back, I notice black fingernails, and the dark splash of tattoos covering my hands, temples, and neck. Entirely unfamiliar but deeply vivid, permanent artwork creeps around behind my ears and climbs higher up my arms than I can push my sleeves.

I don’t know what any of it means, but I can’t help my grin, and it only grows when I look back up into the mirror, and four small white fangs glint back at me.

SIX

Hiding more than just sitting now in the rafters, I tilt and bend for a better view of Inner City’s newest lost boy, getting a kick out of his own reflection. Holding back lotus-pink strands, he checks out some handwriting tattooed along the top of his forehead. Something about dying. I can’t read the rest before he shakes his hair loose with a laugh I wish I could hear.

He pushes black jacket sleeves as high as he can, and when they don’t reveal everything, he pulls out the collar of his tee-shirt, exposing even more ink. When that still isn’t enough, he lifts its hem, uncovering LOVE scratched in scrawny black print across his pale stomach.

Tucked under his belt, more ill-defined designs slip in and out of view as he nudges denim down just enough to make them out. It looks like he laughs again, but it’s hard to hear in here, even as I climb down a beam.

Just one.

Nascent darkness may not know what he is.

But I do.

Falling for himself, he’s more adorable than a baby panther, opening its eyes for the first time, and those eyes are why I can't look away. Matte-black and infinity-filled, they're why I want to get closer, when all I should do is close my own and disappear.

It isn’t just all the light in the room his eyes take.

It’s all of me.

A few seconds ago, at the first glimpse of open graves for irises, the smallest radicle in both worlds took root in the smallest part of me. Buried deep between my hips, it’s nothing I’ve ever felt before - nothing I thought I’d ever feel - but I know now exactly why they call it blooming.

It’s barely started, and I’ve already never felt so warm.

Tracing black-nailed fingertips along his jaw, brand new in every sense of the word discovers another tattoo along the inside of his bottom lip and flashes glistening fangs when he grins.

Parting my mouth a little, I breathe in and catch myself, sneaking to a lower beam when I taste the downy fledgling scent of him in the air. Still mostly hidden, I crouch small and fold my wings, but urgent, full-body flutters keep starting between them, and I can only hold so still.

Bones that used to be hollow feel full with the need to fly to his side, and there’s this tender ache inside my chest.

Like it’s literally breaking my heart, how close I want to get to him.

Straightening his posture, newborn perdition stills suddenly. I know I should take off when he starts scanning his surroundings in the mirror, but soot black eyes seek out mine in less than a second, and the moment they finally meet, what's happening inside me starts happening all over me. Blooming seeps into my ears like a whisper and wraps low around my middle like well-known arms. It tickles from the backs of my knees to the soles of my feet, elusive and unyielding, and just like that, I go from knowing I should get as far as I can from him, to at least try to hide -

To trembling because I can’t.

His gaze has me locked.

One more second, I tell myself, looking at him, looking at me in the mirror. Just one more second, and I’ll do it. I'll disappear like my kind can when nothing's got ahold of us. Just one more second, and I’ll leave in a gasp of glitter, and it doesn’t matter where I go. Just that he’ll never, ever know.

How petal-soft this sentence is.

How ironclad.

One more second.

I’m not ready to stop taking him in yet.

I’ve never felt anywhere the way I feel in his eyes.

I just need one more second.

Just one.

I swear.

SEVEN

When I finally turn around, there’s a puff of glitter where she was, floating down like amethyst snowflakes from the rafters.

“Where are you going?” One of the garnet-eyed girls asks, approaching me as I head for the door. The chalice in her hands is so full, red drips over her fingers when I brush against her as I pass.

“Don’t leave,” she calls, and something like deja-vu unwinds inside me, rippling the seamless dark of missing memories.

“Slow down.” Outside, a wave of calm warmth comes over with Magnus’ voice, and I do.

I slow down.

“Easy,” he tells me, and I am.

I’m easy.

But I know she’s close. The girl in the mirror. Hyperawareness rushed under my skin the second I found her eyes, and it’s bound in muscle and marrow now. Every nerve I’ve got hums with her proximity.

“You can’t have Fawn,” Magnus says, deep as the sea and as coarse as its salt. Standing beside me on the sidewalk while creature after otherworldly creature passes by, he pats my back and squeezes my shoulder. “Fae are …” His sigh is half resigned, half resentful. “Forbidden.”

I hear him.

Forbidden.

“And total teases,” he adds, his exasperated tone turning apologetic. He takes a bite of something and it sounds like a kiss. “Even if she let you get close enough, and they never do, you’d tear her apart.”

Stepping into the commotion, I scan the crossroads for lacy white-gold wings and curls the color of sixteen-year-old cognac.

“She wouldn’t be more than two or three good drinks anyway.”

I lick my lips, searching the crowd for anything that might lead to a shyly parted smile and shimmering skin. Her nearness is unmistakable. Tensing tendons and filling me with endorphins. But it’s getting harder to focus on between flashing bar signs and rolling spotlights. Ring-tailed acrobats and blindfolded jugglers, shuffling cards and jingling tambourines mix signals I’m trying to zero in on. Everything’s bright and loud and strong, and it’s too easy to get lost in Magnus’ voice.

“Plus,” behind me now, he takes another bite of whatever he has, and vanilla sweetness tinges the air. “It’s sort of a rule or whatever. Here -”

When I turn around, all I can remember extends his right hand, offering a crimson and cream popsicle instead of a flame, and when it hits my tongue, dreamy comfort eclipses the rest of the memory.

“You want girls -”

I don’t know if it’s a question or a statement.

“I’ll get us girls.”

He turns me around, and it feels good to heed his words, to walk beside him.

“Not real fairies, but nacre-pink with chantilly wings if that’s your thing. I prefer laurel crowns and ethereal peplos myself, but whatever butters your muffin - ”

“I don’t believe it -”

Two guys with scarlet-stained antlers step in front of us.

“Magnus the Unthinking?”

One ruffles my friend’s hair. The other reaches for his wrists.

“How’d you get away from those nephilim?”

“And where are they now?”

Magnus greets them half-heartedly as I sink my teeth into the reddest part of the popsicle. Rolling melting bliss slowly over my tongue, I let my eyes wander the street-sea of revelry. On the other side of it, a skinny boy in white sunglasses gives me the finger when I stare too long, while a few feet in the other direction, a pale boy with fingerless gloves and a scar on his cheek winks when he finds himself in my sights.

Closing my eyes, I breathe in, searching a myriad of known and unknown smells until a whisper of coconut milk and jasmine stands gently out. It tickles my nose and prickles my skin with visceral sensitivity as I turn my head.

When I open my eyes, she’s there. Bite-size and beaming behind a palm tree, she can’t hold back her smile, and neither can I.

“You don’t remember?” One of the antlered men asks Magnus, all of them behind me now as I shift my feet to face her completely.

“Sure you do,” the other man insists.

I take a step toward little forbidden. Diaphanous platinum wings twitch, tight and fast, and she bites her lip.

“Let’s jog that memory with a drink,” one of them says. “And do some Unthinking.”

The crowd moves between where I am and she is, and I take another step, craning my neck to find her eyes. Wonder-wide and glinting bright, they fasten to mine across buoyant chaos, and everything in me says get closer.

But for every step I take, she moves one tip-toe forward and darts to the left. Skips back. Flits to the right. Taunting adrenaline and flirting with my reflexes. She plays with me, and I can feel my body taking notes as I play back, chasing her past boutiques and bordellos. Between elephants blocking an intersection. Down a sidewalk lined with glowing telephone booths. All my muscles memorize all her impulses as I close in, and we both pick up speed.

I’m so locked on her, I run into a push-cart, sending kiwis and guavas and my popsicle all flying. A vendor bellows as we turn a corner, but I’m already gone, following the one thing I’m not allowed through a candle-filled necropolis, into an alley.

The only light shining on graffiti-tagged brick walls turns around, facing me as she soars out of reach. Delicate giggles ring in my chest as I push forward, so close I almost reach her.

Then, we’re out of the alley.

My steps echo where her laughter should, and the sudden quiet crashes over like a tidal wave. She must be nearby. My body’s thrumming with the sense of her, and there’s a blush of glitter floating down onto me, just like in the club.

But as I look and look around the loading dock, she doesn’t come out.

Rubbing her soft sparkle between my fingers, I watch it glisten before disappearing completely, and cold foreboding pools in my chest. Slow at first. Then so much worse. The pale pink stardust on my sleeves vanishes the moment I touch it, and when I look around again under dim yellow lamps, silent pressure chokes up my rib cage, and I realize -

I can’t hear my pulse.

I try to swallow, but there’s something heavy between my lungs. The pressure that’s been there all night is a hush where my heart should pound, and I don’t understand. I press and press at my chest, my neck, my wrists, feeling anywhere for a beat but there’s nothing. Just dread and panic, eating their way down my back, taking over everything.

There’s nothing.

Anywhere.

Until she’s there.

Back in front of me, tremulous and unpermitted stands as still as she can and lets my eyes land on hers. Close-up, they’re dark skies swirling with a thousand stars, and all of me throbs except the one part that should.

“My heart isn’t beating,” I say, and immediately wish I hadn’t. I’m scared and I don’t want to scare her.

Eyes like mini-universes open even more under my own, softening as she worries a kiss-beckoning bottom lip before asking, “Want to feel mine?”

She turns around then, and the slip of nearly see-through lace she’s wearing hangs low, baring illicit, nacre-pink skin from tailbone dimples to gold-dusted wings no bigger than my hands. At my right side, whisper-light fingers find my own, and I exhale harder than I mean to as she brings them up, guiding my palm between dainty wings.

Assurance and relief radiate everywhere we’re touching, but the warm rush of her pulse floods all my senses the second I feel it under my hand. I wrap my other arm around her middle without another thought, drawing her so close her breathing hitches, and she rests her arm timidly atop my own.

This close, I can only see one of her eyes like cosmos when she tilts her head, but even just one holds me entirely.

“Better?” She asks, reverently low-toned and maybe a little scared, and it is.

It’s better than anything.

I nod, and the corners of her bitten-slick bottom lip curl as she watches me find comfort in her curious beat. It’s so quick, more of a purr than a pulse, and nothing’s ever felt more meaningful, more gratifying, or more right to me than this girl’s heart.

I have no idea how much time has passed when she shifts tentatively in my arms.

Going against every reflex I’ve got, I loosen up, but she doesn’t turn around like I expect. Little off limits sways on her feet instead, the sweetly clean scent of fresh flowers filling the air as she presses back against me, tilting her head so we see each other better. Star-filled eyes swim with questions while lips that should always stay parted close against them. Still cradling her pulse, I bring my other hand up from her side, brushing my thumb over the corner of her mouth like it’s okay.

She might not be permitted to me.

But no part of me is off limits to her.

Lips like petals part on contact, and soft lashes fall as she smiles, helplessly high, and I feel myself, getting addicted to the tender beat of small wings against my chest.

“What?” I coax, like say anything.

I’ll do anything.

Just don’t disappear again.

Returning her eyes to mine, she pulls me from my thoughts and touches my lips like I’m touching hers, tethering me to here.

Now.

Her.

All there is flutters just like a heartbeat as she finally speaks. “Want to see something cool?”

EIGHT

“Are you doing that?”

“What?”

“That-”

I peek over my shoulder at black and white in the middle of the dark green rain forest. The only other color on him - hair the exact hue of my birthright - falls over his eyes as he watches a tiny vanilla orchid sprout near his shoe. Dreamy pink brushes the curve of his cheek as his grin grows, and warm yearning tingles under my skin.

“Come on,” I say instead of, I don’t know. Maybe. If soulmate legends are still true, sure. I’m doing that.

So are you.

Another vanilla flower blossoms near my naked heel, and I give the hand that could crush mine a small squeeze. “We’re almost there.”

In one stride, devastatingly irresistible is beside me instead of behind, sliding long, tattooed fingers between my own. Shifting left after a few steps to catch a glimpse of salamanders painted like oil slicks, then right a little later to check out a patch of mushrooms that looks more like cerulean coral, we stop whenever he wants, but our hands never unclasp. He keeps my thumb under his while I keep our fingers twined, and we don’t say much, but I learn more about him this way than words could ever tell.

Well-defined in the center of this lifechanger’s palm, there’s a crease that runs right through the lines that reveal his head and heart. Unlike most of his former kind, it goes all the way up, crossing his ring of Saturn, into his middle finger, and he straightens his spine, walking taller than ever as I trace it to the tip. More orchids that can only mean one thing spring up around our feet as we keep moving, precocious petals and glistening bottom lips opening fast and full, and the truth is:

I don’t know if I’m doing it.

I have no idea what I’m doing.

One minute, I’m letting a fledgling hold my heart because he’s scared without his own, and now, ceremonial flowers are budding all around us. I can’t stand to not be touching him, and every single part of me feels it when I do. Every single part of me aches with what’s happening. My arms, my legs. Inside my chest and under my dress. Even my mouth feels heavy and desperate to stay open for him.

To bloom.

Just like the orchids.

Following his fate line back down his palm, I hide my burning cheek in his black satin sleeve as he seeks the spot on my wrist he can’t stay away from. Soft strokes of his thumb make my heart soar toward his touch, and the small circle he draws there makes it almost impossible to keep quiet. My wings tremble like a goldcrest before a hawk, but we keep walking because I don’t know what else to do.

All I know is he makes me want to break the second oldest law we have so bad.

And I don't know if that can happen.

But it’s happening so fast.

Leaning down, boyish and brutally precious brushes his nose against my hair, and I feel him breathe in as I peek out from his sleeve. We’re finally approaching the understory’s edge, and I remember why I brought him here.

“Okay.” Lifting my face from his arm, I move forward, but only by a step. We’re still holding hands, and I still feel it everywhere. “They startle really easy, so …”

I glance over my shoulder to find sorbent black eyes waiting on mine, and I make myself face forward again before I drown.

“No sudden movements, okay? Slow and easy,” I warn, taking a steadying breath. “There will probably be a lot of them.”

Guiding him between soft fronds I’ve never parted for anyone but myself, I duck as he reaches ahead from behind me. He lifts tangled liana vines out of our way, and as we pass beneath them, I understand what humans mean when they talk about having butterflies.

“Wow.” Under his breath, this half-god, half-demon’s soft awe goes straight to my heart.

Looking around Van Gogh’s Grove, I almost second his sentiment. A few cherry-pink flamingos wade in the cove, while a few hundred nests speckle the beach, each one holding a baby bird. Curled up. Fast asleep. Grey-white and waiting on me.

Tiny-tight stitches of guilt slip into my stomach. I can’t even remember how long it’s been since my last visit.

“I’ve been … slacking off,” I admit, more to myself than him as I step slowly out onto cool sand.

I miss his hand the second I let go, but the heat of his attention clings to me as I ride the breeze down to the fullest rookery I’ve ever seen. Alighting at the outermost nest, I cozy up to a dreaming flaminglet, and toss my hair over my shoulders. Crouched so close, her gossamer down brushes my nose, and the weight of panther cub eyes makes me blush deeply. I can’t wait another second to finally say it.

“I’m blooming,” I whisper to the chick, dipping back with a giggle as fluffy wings ruffle up. She stirs a little, but tiny eyes remain closed, so I lean in once more and tell the truth that’s been coaxing me open since darkness first locked himself to me in the mirror.

“I’m blooming for him and it feels so, so good.”

The flourish of grey feathers becoming baby-bright pink happens so fast I tumble back again, and the freshly blushed flamingo takes off to join the others in the water.

I’m still giggling when the wind tickles the slick path of a tear down my cheek. I didn’t feel it fall, but I feel it now.

I feel just like it.

Little, glistening, and helpless.

Looking over, I spot mine no matter how much it scares me standing closer than before, wide-eyed and furrow-browed. His sharp jaw is slack. His parted lips look impossibly soft, and I wonder if he saw the small drop slip down my cheek. If he heard what I said. If he knows that no matter where I go or what I do, I’m his too.

Goosebumps sneak up the back of my neck, and I flit to the next napping nestling.

I tell this one I can’t stop thinking about brand new’s mouth, and the next one how my arms and legs want to open so much, it’s making my knees and elbows ache. I tell the one after that tear-tracks aren’t the half of it, and the one after that my cheeks aren’t the only place I’m little and glistening and helpless feeling.

I tell them that I’m tender everywhere for him.

That I’m scared because we're not the same, and I know what he’s capable of, but it’s torment to not be touching.

That I don’t know what to do with such unfair fate, but it’s too late.

That I’m blooming from so deep now, every beat of my pulse throbs with it.

Like my heart is opening for him too.

Bass notes of light laughter turn my head, and I find tall, dark, and totally breathtaking drawing near.

“Okay.” He smiles so earnestly it crinkles the broken, ink-black heart tattooed at the corner of his eye. “You’re definitely doing that.”

My already ardent pulse quickens at his voice. Low-toned and tethering, it makes my wings beat so fast I can’t stay down. I reach for him as I float up from the sand, and the predator that makes me flutter takes my hands in his like he was waiting to.

Survival instincts quaver as I lilt into arms I can’t fly from unless he lets me. Arms he doesn’t ever have to loosen if he doesn’t want to. Arms my heart will stop inside of, if I let his instincts kick in.

Arms that feel more like home than anywhere I’ve ever been.

“Want to try?” I ask, lifting bashful lashes and latching onto matte black eyes. They make me want to bow as he lifts one of his brows, but I smile instead, and he wraps his fingers around mine. “Chromafae color pretty much everything. I'm supposed to come here every week and turn the flamingos pink, but as you can see ...”

Searching my eyes, he finds my heartbeat in my wrist and draws a slow circle around it with his thumb.

“I’m not like you,” he admits quietly.

Between my wings, my pulse pangs with knowing, and the lost boy I’m beholden to flattens my hand over his chest like, Remember?

Feel.

How soundless.

How static.

But even as panic laps at my heart, it beats harder for his touch. I’m swimming in his black velvet stare and I’m higher than the stars on his cream-delicate, powder-pure scent.

My intuition can quail all it wants.

I want him more.

With a skyful of butterflies in my rib cage and one of my hands in his, I lift my other from his chest and dip the tip of my index finger into my mouth. He watches me closely, opaque eyes growing forebodingly darker when I purse my lips and shyly suck. Flicker-quick and root-deep, my pulse purrs as he gathers me closer, and I hope against head-over-heels hope that this works.

Withdrawing my fingertip, I slide it slowly along his bottom lip, then the top as he parts for me. They’re even softer than they look, but this close to little white razors, I shake like the last leaf on a copper beech at the very end of fall.

Never taking his eyes from mine, innocent and ominous cradles my other hand between us as I trace his lower lip once more. Lingering under cupid’s most dangerous bow, I tremble from my chin to sand-locked toes, until the arm I’m anchored in lifts me up.

Gentle and intimate, we press together like lovers as my dress slides down against his tee shirt. My feet leave the beach, and I let my finger slip curiously past lips that were made to be touched. I’m cautious of fatal fangs, but his breath is so much warmer than I expected. It’s instantly dizzying, how warm his mouth is, and somewhere between desire and alarm, I feel the tip of his tongue, flirting with my fingertip. A giggle bubbles from my throat as I touch it. My eyes all but close, and my wings beat wildly.

I’d be soaring if he wasn’t holding me.

Not to get away.

There’s so much sweetness and heat and slick softness. I can't help it. The overwhelm almost tickles. Everywhere.

When I start to draw back, he comes forward. Seeking more, he grins as my giggles deepen into hums, and I brace both hands on his shoulders, steadying us both.

“Try now,” I urge under an exhale, tipping my hips carefully away. They started rocking without permission somewhere in our closeness, and forcing them not to now takes conscious effort.

I swallow as I nod toward a sleepy chick. “Tell it a secret. Something you’re too shy to tell anyone.”

Still holding me up, mine whether he knows it or not is still grinning as he glances at the nest. He licks his lips, and I press my own together, wondering what would happen if I kissed him right now. If he’d chase my mouth the way he chased my touch. If his body would follow mine if he could feel how hard I’m fighting rocking against him.

“Come on, brand new.” I nudge my nose to his cheek, and my own burn as I whisper, “Make it blush.”

Cadent need hardly ebbs as he steps aside and heads toward the nearest nest. Flutters I can’t help keep me hovering a few inches above sand as he crouches down, and I hold my breath as he cups graffiti-veiled, black-tipped hands carefully over the small bird.

I’m the wide-eyed one now, tingle-spined and beaming around a gasp as death’s newest dealer leans in, and the colorless little flaminglet ruffles instantly into vibrant pink flight.

Pink like his crown.

Pink like I was born for.

Pink like perfect with its edges dipped in onyx, the freshly fledged flamingo joins the growing flamboyance, and I turn toward its sire with his shoulders back and head high. Curiosity plays in his amazed laugh, and I wonder what he told the bird as he pushes his windswept hair back. Holding it out of eyes that give me goosebumps and heartache, he reveals the black script etched along his hairline without meaning to, and I can finally read it-

die young

save yourself

Chills creep under my skin, nipping muscle and bone with cold dread before melting where I’m warmest. Where yearning edges on soreness. Where I’m unconditionally and eternally promised.

To him.

As frightened as I am, I can feel my fear, making me even more lush.

More enamored.

More his.

More unease follows, swallowed by more heat as I join the source of both in the rookery. We whisper near and far from each other, making colorless birds blush with our secrets, and for every flamingo that flourishes away, two little white flowers bloom.

Around his hi-top sneakers.

Around my forever bare feet.

All around us until there’s a bed of sacramental orchids where the chicks used to be, and mine for better or worse picks one as he rises. It turns the softest shade of baby pink in his ink-wrapped hands while eclipsed peach moons set at his back, painting him immaculate. Bringing the small blossom to his nose, he breathes gently in from its just opened heart before lifting his eyes, and I know as sure as the waves never stop kissing the sand -

I’ll never look away again.

Standing ankle-deep in the ceremonial caress of tiny white flowers, my black-clad beloved gives the one he picked a playful twirl, and the most sacred of them all - the ancient miracle buried between my hips, the one that makes me his - blooms so fully it nudges my legs apart from within.

I step helplessly forward, and my lips part too, to be open for him, to stay open as long as he wants. My skin radiates heat as constellations of nerves I never thought I’d feel flicker wide awake all over me, and my whole frame shakes as my wings flutter harder than ever. They match the pace of my heedless, captivated heart, and my eyes fill with tears from the overwhelm of it all.

When he holds the little orchid out to me in playful offering, my mate with or without a soul doesn’t know what he’s doing.

What’s happening.

But I do.

And I can’t go anywhere but straight to him.

NINE

Hovering barefoot just above the bed of petals and still shorter than me, all I want rests her hands on my chest, gazing up as a tear shimmers down her cheek.

Not because she’s sad.

Not even close.

I don’t know where we are. On what planet or in whose dream. I don’t know if we’re alive or in-between somewhere, or even real, but I feel how Fawn is looking at me in every part of myself. It’s the same way she looked at me in the mirror, the first time we saw each other, but the love her galaxy-bright eyes are steeped in has swelled so deep, she can’t help the overflow.

She’s bathed in love.

High on it.

Blushing with it from temples to pretty pink tits, needy and peeking through the translucent lace that’s hardly hidden anything from me all night.

Tucking the flower I just picked behind one of her pointed little ears, I lower what’s most familiar to me now back to the beach by her waist. She giggles as she touches down, and stands on tip-toes, doe-wide eyes tugging mine to her like an anchor. I slide the teardrop from her chin while another slips down her other cheek like a tiny diamond, melting fast and catching on the corner of her smile before I take it under my thumb too.

“Do you promise yourself to me?” She asks, soft breath and softer mischief, playing like she doesn’t know by now I’ll play back. Like she couldn’t hear everything I told the flamingos. Like she can’t feel it all, right now.

How I can’t stop thinking about touching her lips like she touched mine.

How much I love that she can’t quite close her mouth or her arms or any part of herself to me.

How hard she has me.

How good it feels.

How persistent and permanent -

“Yeah,” comes out of me so naturally, so easily, I can’t help but smirk. Her already fervent flutters quicken at my answer, and my hands prey up her sides until I’m pressing one over her chest and one between her wings, cradling the shooting star of her pulse in my palms.

Dropping my voice to a whisper and my forehead to hers, I fill sparkling-dark eyes with what they keep seeking.

My own.

“Do you promise yourself to me?”

Nodding before I even finished asking, meek and magical grips fistfuls of my tee-shirt and my knees go weak. Wavy copper falls around her cheeks as she keeps nodding. Gripping tighter. Biting a bottom lip I’m aching to feel between my teeth as I bring my hands to her face. Her shoulders. Her arms and wrists - everywhere because she loves when I touch her anywhere, and there’s nowhere I can’t feel her.

“Yes,” she chimes, smiling high as the single syllable courses through me like power, like purpose, like soul while she releases my shirt and pats my hands.

It’s torment to loosen my grip, but she holds my eyes as she dips down.

Down.

My sense of time and place wavers as nacre-pink and promised to me goes slow, giving me a rush as she sets a hand on my belt. She picks a flower near my heel with her other, while her fingertips skim my buckle, stoking impulses already so prone to her.

Everything from my head to the ground rolls like the ocean as she stands back up.

Fresh tear tracks glisten on her cheeks, but even as I usher them under my thumbs, two more slip down, and her slick little universes swirl with adoration.

“I am my beloved’s,” she play-vows, tucking the flower she picked behind my right ear as a wave of heat washes over me. Bare and lissome legs climb my own as she grips my shoulders and pulls herself up my frame, bringing us face to face while feather-light fingers feel their way behind my other ear. Gathering and twisting a lock of my hair, she keeps night skies for eyes entirely open as she continues -

“And my beloved is mine.”

Another surge of heat engulfs me, thicker this time, knocking my center of gravity and swaying my balance. A chill runs up my neck, but I’m hot all over, lightheaded and treading a tide I can’t pin down, leaning in, urging her to hold on-

“Hold onto me.”

I don’t know what’s happening, but burning up and baby soft clutches the collar of my shirt, pulling us closer. Wrapping shaking legs high and tight around my sides, she crosses her ankles at the base of my spine, digging in with bare little heels, and all I know is whatever’s happening, Fawn is baby beyond all of it.

I reach behind her left ear out of strange instinct, and a wave of heat floods her too. She rises in my arms as her hips start to rock again, and a vivid blush pervades her already gleaming pink skin. My smile can’t be tamed as I duck closer, softly swearing her words back to her.

“I am my beloved’s -”

Licking my lips, I taste how lush just breathing has become - how intoxicating - as I part a lock of auburn from over her shoulder.

I don’t know how to braid, but my fingers do, and I bind her fast, all the way to the end.

Just like she did to me.

“And my beloved is mine.”

Saying the words makes my knees weak, and Fawn sighs the smallest sound as her bright eyes fill up and fall closed. More iridescent tears slide down, and I don’t think twice this time.

I don’t think at all.

I steal her cries with heedful lips, onto the tip of my tongue, and pray for more.

Her breath catches on a gasp as she tips timidly forward, nudging her forehead against mine until I open my eyes. The cosmic halos she has for irises glint with the light of two moons while nebulas older than time unravel where her pupils should be. I know by her eyes alone, she’s infinitely older than me, but this close, she looks like a teenager. All tremble and cheek. Coy cadence and flirty heartbeats. This close, the current of her whole-body pulse makes my whole body throb, and our noses brush with every tilt of her hips. Parted pink lips keep barely a whisper from my own, and this close - the tender scent of her is overwhelming.

Milk and flowers and fruit.

I feel drunk suddenly.

Not just on small, sweet breaths, but her skin, her warmth, everything.

Pressing her as near as possible, I dip toward Fawn’s mouth and sip the barest hint of heaven from her bottom lip before nearby rustling startles us both.

Nimble arms wrap around my neck as we turn at the same time, watching a flurry of flamingos skim the surface of the sea. Half take off into the plum-colored sky and half settle back down, while two blacker than black shadows fly even higher, crossing the two peach moons while two timorous hands slide and clasp their way into my hair.

It feels so good my lids almost close, but softer than anything shivers hard. Emanating a scent as warm and irresistible as my next breath, she looks at me with eyes wider than the night itself, and I don’t know why she’s so uneasy all of a sudden. What’s making her pulse panic or how her little trembles can feel like such inviolable invitation.

But they do.

And the closer I gather her, she only gives me more.

“Hey,” she urges, gently at first, then a little firmer as she shifts in my arms. “Hey-” nudging my shoulders with all the force of a dandelion puff. “Maybe we should head back?”

I tilt my head, confused as she tries to make space between us.

“To Inner City … Magnus … Remember? Magnus … We left him with those halfharts … He’s probably worried …”

Memories surface and sink, sink and fade as I search her eyes for something it feels like I already know.

“Why?”

Baby unforgettable nips her bottom lip, searching my eyes in turn.

“I just mean … ” Glancing up, she scans the murky sky and struggles to swallow. She’s still trying to make space, but against her effort, her hips don’t stop or slow.

“He’s probably wondering where you are and … There’s so much to do there. We could get a drink or … Something … ”

Opalescent eyelids crease closed, and sigh-soft thighs shake around my waist as she struggles to keep herself from me.

“It’s just … Aren’t you … ” Her voice is delicate. Seeking. Nervous. “Hungry?”

The word unfolds like thunder between my lungs as she peeks back up from under cautious lashes, and I slide my hands down her sylph-lithe sides. Finding hips she’s straining to still, I guide her back to me and ease her slowly lower. Showing her where we fit. Where I'm hers without end. Where she can ride her forbidden little heart out when she's ready.

Keening as her cadence catches up, taking her over and making up for time lost, baby blushing like a bride whips her wings as I fasten her in one arm. Then my other. Holding her in place as I take off my jacket.

She isn’t wrong.

I’m starving, and it isn’t just my stomach. There’s this low, rolling growl creeping through my veins, insisting something is missing.

Something I need.

“Hey - If we’re doing this - Hey, if we - ” Rocking right where she needs to, so intently it’s taking her breath away and coming for mine, she trades back and forth between patting my shoulders and clutching onto them. “Brand new - you have to be easy - ”

Nodding, I let my jacket fall, and the force of Fawn’s nerves lifts her upward, but she doesn’t get far.

“Easy,” she echoes, pleadingly sweet, running her hands through my hair, cupping my face, keeping our eyes together. I nod again, brushing my nose along her nose. Across her cheek. Down to her chin, showing her that I am.

I will be.

I know.

I remember what Magnus said.

But it sinks and fades too, barely another echo as I shift to my knees, and lay the one thing I’m not allowed down onto black satin.

My jacket doesn’t give beneath her meager weight.

And neither do the flowers beneath it.

Wanting a better look, I try to lean back, but little illicit clings to me. Softer than sea foam. She grips onto my arms like she doesn’t want any space, anywhere between us now. So I keep my hands on small sides as I pull easily from her grasp. Just barely. Just enough to see skinny green stems, unbent beneath her. They hardly even sway.

Until barely veiled hips lift, searching, and I tilt my own low enough for her to brush against if she rises high enough.

As she dips back down, adrift on the taste of contact, the crush of satin and stems beneath her fills my ears.

“Easy,” she chants. “Please.”

But I’m not doing anything.

Wrapped from her dew-kissed hairline to curled-tight toes in a blush so deep it redefines need, Fawn’s the one arching her back and opening up to me in magnetic little waves. It’s borderline torture, sharing only the shadow of my own need while she bruises orchids with hers, but I hold myself up. Easy. Just like she asked. I stay still while she feels what’s between us, and watch her try and try-not to ride it.

Feather-soft and supplicating, she clenches fistfuls of my tee shirt, and I smile.

I can’t help it.

The way she’s moving. The way she can't get enough of my eyes. The reticent hint of worship in her begging - please, god, please … god -

I feel just like one.

Tugging white cotton from her hands, I take off my shirt, and bask in soft-spoken fingers, stumbling up and down my sides. Searching for the best place to hold on. Drawing a rumble from somewhere deep and dark in my starving. Somewhere that makes star-filled eyes open wide, and the heart I covet pound so hard, I swear I smell it.

Pinning fairy tale flowers under my hands, over her shoulders, I loom lower, bringing us chest to chest, and leaving enough space between our hips so baby pink and dying for it still has to lift to feel what she wants. As she wraps her arms around my neck, I trace the curve of her hip to the supple slope of her backside, and love watching her work for it. Pushing herself up. Trying to pull me down by my rib cage All her strength a teasing tickle that makes the growl inside me hum.

Serrated.

Bottomless.

“Easy -” she pleads, damp lashes brushing my cheek as they open and close.

“I’m not moving.” Tilting my head as I say it, I seek her eyes. They look lost as they dart from mine to look between us. The absence of space there steals all her air, making her middle shiver and dip, while needful little hips remain. Totally devoted. Locked to my own and rocking with unsubtle intent.

“See?” I whisper, watching her brows furrow and her mouth open a little wider as she watches herself. I drag my lips gently along her cheek. “You be easy.”

Red-gold waves splash against white flowers as her head falls back. Her wings flutter like crazy, and she spills skittish little cries between staccato-small inhales while soft hands, softer hips and her soft, all-over heartbeat all beg my restraint. Making me feel how warm she is. How sweet she’ll be. How deep she needs me.

“I can’t,” she sings. “I can’t help it - ”

A tear slips, wandering wayward down her cheek. I let it slide to the corner of her lips before I take it, and Fawn tips her mouth under mine. Helplessly open, she chases breath after shallow-shaky breath, like all she needs is a real one.

Full and deep.

So deep she won’t ever have to take another.

Brushing my lips over hers, I’m this close to giving it to her when her voice slips between us.

“I’m blooming.”

Half in her mouth, half in mine, the words feel dreamy and dire. Urgent like a confession and enchanting as a promise.

“I never thought it would happen. I didn’t ever want it to, but …”

She’s talking fast, and I’m drunk on the cusp of her kiss. My lips ache while fervid wings press baby filled with heartbeats unambiguously into my silent chest. My empty stomach. My tense hips. Her pulse purrs for more, and it feels so good I can’t help leaning into it.

But she’s patting my shoulders again.

And her hands are getting frantic.

“Wait wait wait - I’m opening for you, look. Look.”

Fighting everything intuition demands, I lift up, and fairy hips slip from mine. When I reach to bring them back, baby against the rules lays her hands on my hands, and edges closer. Ruffling the flowers under my jacket. Trailing sheer lace up.

Up.

Showing me herself.

Lush and blushing.

Bare and brave.

And she’s right.

Shifting her without another thought, resting her bottom on my knees, I press gleaming thighs slowly apart until I hear her whimper.

“It only happens once,” she yearns. Brittle-voiced and pausing between breaths it’s breaking my heart not to slake. Tipping and rolling her hips in my grip. “The first time. So I can bind to you. But I didn't … ”

Her voice breaks too, a shamelessly lustful sound pouring out as I start to touch between her legs, looking closer where she’s familiar to me in the most human way, but infinitely more delicate. More layered. A single brushstroke pinker than the rest of her skin and tightly laden with countless little petals.

Barely beginning to unfold.

Blooming, just like a flower.

Adrift, she breathes out, awe and ecstasy floating around me, “I didn’t know it would feel like this.”

I press pearlescent thighs gently back, high and wide, until her knees meet my jacket.

“You promised yourself to me.” Low-toned and neck-deep in longing, I slide my hands down her legs again and use both hands to part where she’s pinkest. Making her sing more base little notes. Carefully opening folds that slip from lush to soaked the more I touch her, until she’s arching without reservation. Panting hard. Giving me the quickest glimpse of her smallest anomaly.

But the more petals I unfold, the more protective they become.

“Baby,” I whisper, opening her soft little bloom as deep as I can. Holding her open just for a second. Just enough to see the strangest and most endearing part of her.

Two little clits.

Side by side.

Shaped like the tiniest heart.

When I try to touch her there, silk-slick petals slip and close around my fingers while the rest of Fawn comes desperately undone. She reaches out, hands grasping orchid stems and her legs shake as she strains to open for me. She circles her hips while her lips part too wide to ask for anything but more, and my whole body fills with insistent heat. My grin grows, and my curiosity hardens into bone-deep instinct.

Leaning up instead of down, I roll my shoulders through a rush of satisfaction as the fae I’m not allowed to touch, coos and trembles as I softly stroke her.

Slow and coaxing.

Helping her open.

Helping her bloom.

Curling my middle fingers between deeply wet petals, I feel shaky legs start to close around my waist, drawing me in. Rose-pink tits beg for attention under her see-through slip, and she makes the prettiest sound when I palm one through the fabric. Dragging sheer lace down to her belly button, I expose her to me and the moons. Like an offering, she bares herself up as I cup small curves and circle sorely hard tips, and I listen as a flood of heartbeats swells under her skin.

Until it drowns out all her keening and fluttering.

And the growl between my lungs.

The wind and waves.

Her pulse is suddenly the only thing I can hear. Palpable and dizzying, and then red.

Everything goes red.

Fawn.

The beach.

Me.

It takes a few hard blinks to turn her and the flowers pink and white again. Shaking off the dizziness, I lift my left hand from petals too soft, too many to open this way, and reach for my belt. But only get it through one loop before baby beloved whips her wings like chantilly lightning.

It happens so fast I reel. My focus blurs. The ground unsteadies, and all I can think is if I hadn’t caught her, if I didn’t have a hold of her now, she’d have flown right up and disappeared.

Again.

“Where are you going?” Over the tender torrent of heartbeats, I barely hear my own voice, and only sips of hers come through.

“Slow down …Brand new, you have to slow down … You have to … ”

I do. I gather her with careful slowness, watching eyes like the cosmos search the night above us. She says something, but the flow of her pulse swallows it while I wait. Patiently. Letting her breathing ease and her anxious eyes settle back onto my own before I reach for my belt again. She helps, unbuttoning my jeans with her left hand, but then she’s patting my shoulder again with her right again.

“We have to be careful,” she warns, feverish and far-away sounding. “I don't know how to do this, but if you hurt me -”

I stop still, but the whole world keeps moving. Everything clinks and sways and throbs. So I make Fawn stop too, taking her fingers from halfway down my fly, but her hips persist. Unrelenting. Even when I press her up. Firmly against me. Needing her to be still just for a second. She bites her lip and can’t stop riding, and no matter how hard I blink, red keeps seeping into my vision.

Pressing my forehead to hers, I search tear-filled constellations. “Why would you say that?”

We’re so close now.

I can smell jasmine and milk in her skin, and Eden in her mouth.

Laying her hands on my cheeks, this total tease meets my confusion with a compassionate gaze. Wistful. Wishing.

“You really don’t know, do you?”

Fear and wonder fill her whisper. I search her eyes ever harder and she stays open for me. Staring right back. Searching mine too. Seeking something until it feels like I’m the one hiding.

“What you are?”

Her voice barely registers as a couple shadows fly over, startling her into my chest, and I feel myself go sweet on her trembling. Her lightness. The soft heat she can’t help. The immaculate scent I’d take on hell for just one hit of - the one she’s wrapped entirely in now, the one I know now is her fear - the one coming from her pulse, pounding fervently through her fragile frame.

She’s all pulse now.

All heartbeat.

More heart than she knows what to do with.

Turning her carefully over, I kiss from her neck to her shoulders. I kiss my way between her wings and down her back. I kiss two little dimples while I slide her slip away, and I place her hands on my jacket. Her knees in the flowers. She bends easily as I cover her entire body with my own, hiding her from everything but me, and she folds right up. Fitting herself so perfectly against my frame. The emptiness in my chest aches toward the overflow in hers as she nestles into place, and when she whimpers her need, the hunger between my lungs grows from a growl to a roar. So deep, I can’t tell if it’s inside me anymore or rolling through the sky.

Closing my eyes, I swim in soft, warm red.

When I open them again, Fawn’s arching for me while I breathe in from the bend of her neck. When I breathe out, she spreads her knees so wide they dig into the sand and she pushes her hips up. Leading me closer. Turning closer into a verb. Rhythm into gravity. The heaven of skin on skin into no longer enough.

Lost in the sound and scent of her blooming, I find my place in her rising and falling. As we move together, intuitive possessiveness courses through me, and I fit strong fingers tightly between her fragile ones. I draw this soft little throb of pure warmth up to my mouth and lick between her quivering wings. Slow. Heavy. Making her heartbeats swell and soar toward my lips.

Between strained-small sounds, baby’s breath catches on a flinch, and I go totally still as rich vanilla fills night air. Closing my eyes doesn’t help this time though. A rush of scarlet brims behind my lids and floods my ears with swift, soulful control.

I’m turning entirely bound to me onto her back before I realize it. Little cuts glisten on both her knees as I bend one of her legs to look closer, and what’s seeping out doesn’t look like what I know it is. It looks more like her tears. Beading out in tiny glistening drops.

Clear, but shining.

Like spilled glitter.

Like liquid starlight.

Fawn flutters and twists, trying to pull away as I hold onto her knee. Brushing aside the tiny grains of sand that broke her skin. Watching intently as slick sparkles spread under my thumb and more melted tinsel glimmers out.

“No, no no no no -”

A grin tugs the corner of my mouth.

“Look at me, brand new. Look - ”

Tugging and pushing, “Look, please-” she echoes, and as I release one of her knees, she opens all the way up to me. Parting where she’s preciously pink with her own lighter pink fingertips, she takes my other hand from her kneecap and brings it to her petals. Spreading them with my thumb. Making them glisten even more while I look. Just like she asked.

“Feel,” she breathes, shaking and arching as I do. I spread her bloom, feeling her open and ache at my touch - an instant, overriding reminder that there’s nothing else this soft. This binding. This mine.

“You promised,” she whispers, tears sliding down her cheeks as she seeks my eyes. Finishing my half-undone jeans with delicate hands. Feeling her way up and down uninhibited longing before closing around me, drawing a groan from the pit of my chest.

“You promised yourself to me.”

She strokes me as she says it, so shy and sweet, my whole body falls for her touch. Swaying as she guides my sinking straight to her, and soaks me in a thousand tender petals.

A breathless cry holds her mouth open as she lets go to grip onto my sides. My shoulders. My hair. Anywhere she can as I roll my hips. I can’t help it. Pure euphoria flows everywhere between us, but it’s heavy where gravity drags my need to hers. Weighing me down. Urging me to slide.

Glimmering galaxies swirl and widen as I draw her middle up to mine. She’s too warm to do anything less now. Too warm not to press closer. Too warm not to push her hips down with my own so she can feel what I’ve held back. So she knows what it will be like when I’m inside. So I can part wet little petals with the weight of my length and find where they give in.

Baby sacred and surreal yields wholly to me, holding my eyes on hers and her hips tremulously up as I fill her out with carefully steady pressure. Opening her deep. Feeling her bloom around every insistent inch. Holy warmth climbs up my spine the deeper I give myself, coating my vertebrae in molten gold while indulgent little sounds spill openly.

Like she can’t take any more.

Like she’ll cry if I don’t give it to her.

Like she was made to never, ever get enough of me.

Bathed in petals and basking in heartbeats, I don’t realize I’ve let my eyes close until I open them to find Fawn, lost in bliss. Leaning lower, moving deeper, so deep I feel rooted to her, I brush my nose along her nose and kiss the effort dappled at her temples. I kiss the tracks of tears I missed, up to ones that haven’t fallen yet, swelling in the corners of her lashes. I kiss her burning pink cheek and watch as skies for eyes open to mine as she reaches for my face.

Dazed, her lids fall back down as she tilts her parted lips up. Wanting my mouth. Inviting me finally to hers.

Fawn’s kiss is a daydream. Summer rain and honeysuckle. Sunshine and watermelon. I can’t kiss her enough, and as I open her lips with wider with mine, she arches desperately up. Like she wants all of me. Like she wants me to have all of her.

Like not only am I a god -

I’m hers.

Bringing her legs over my shoulders, I lean down over baby breathless and hold her in place so she can feel all of me. Just like she wants. Pressed against all of her while she takes everything she’s soaked and shaking and so fucking pink for. I let her precious petals kiss the base while I kiss just under her soft bottom lip, watching her try to breathe through blooming all over her reason to.

Forehead pressed to hers, I roll my hips so slow and smooth against this love it makes her eyes open under mine. Pleadingly soft notes ache in and out of her in time with my rhythm, and I know now we weren't playing with those promises.

This feels just like we said.

Like I'm Fawn’s.

And she is mine.

Rapt and unrestrained in vulnerable belonging, my hips fall hard, pushing a high cry from somewhere deep inside her as instinct catches like a spark inside me.

It starts at the base of my spine, and then it’s everywhere. Gripping gilded bones. Goading carefully flexed muscle. It surges through my veins and races up and down my back. Stronger and faster until that’s how I’m moving. Strong and fast, and there’s nothing else. Nothing anywhere but this girl, and how bad I want to give her my come.

Clinging tight and trembling tighter, too warm for her own good flutters everywhere as I dig and push and bury the only pulse I have deep inside her petals.

“Yes,” she begs. “Yes yes yes -”

I come so hard the ground shifts. Goosebumps crawl up my arms. Heat rolls off me in staggering, overlapping waves, but even as my rhythm slows, none of my need lessens. I’m harder than ever and still coming as I sit back on my knees, pressing precious pink ones wide open, out into the orchids so I can watch Fawn take me, when something slick slides under my thumbs.

I barely hear her gasp.

Every sense and impulse I’ve got shifts to pearly kneecaps as the little cuts I’d forgotten about seep fresh at my touch. Glistening iridescent.

Unallowed.

Undeniable.

I hum the second my tongue touches her hurt.

Fawn’s blood looks like icy starlight, but she tastes like warm birthday cake.

I hear her voice, I think, singing to me from somewhere far away, but it fades as new little drops bead up, and I close my mouth over them. Kissing where they come from until her skin gives like thin velvet under my teeth.

I don’t mean for it to.

She’s just so soft.

Gripping the back of her knee, I roll my hips as I swallow, feeling heat tickle my chest as I slide entirely inside her. Swallowing hard this time so I can really feel it.

Baby’s heart.

Fluttering in my rib cage

Warm inside me.

Warm all over.

Purring warm under my tongue and pulsing warm between her petals.

So warm I blush as I push deeper.

So deep it makes her heart feel like a skyful of butterflies behind my sternum.

With another swallow, I’m rocking, making her bloom so full when something sharp splits between my shoulders.

Breaking incoherently from her kneecap, I lick my lips. Incisive pain disappears as quickly as it hit me though. So fast I think I must have dreamed it.

Straightening my back, I reach for her other knee, and hover over spilled and waiting glitter. Savoring the scent of her. So rich now, I can taste her heart, throbbing up to my mouth before it’s even on her little cut.

Halfway through a deep breath, frantic, feather-light hands tap my arms and my grip loosens instantly. A reflex, and that’s all it takes for everything to spin.

Faster than her wings, I reach out to keep hold of any part of Fawn. To catch her before she can disappear again.

But she doesn’t.

She shifts on top of me.

Nudging me onto my back. Warning me, “No more. You can’t take any more,” while she takes me all the way. Hips to warm fucking hips. I hear myself moan as she holds onto my shoulders. Sliding. Searching for her rhythm as I dip my hands around her backside. Gripping perfect little curves as I lift into her. Helping her ride. Watching her take me as deep as she wants. So deep I feel her heart start to ache in me.

Rising lower with each fall, baby so close wraps her arms around my neck. Her braid sways between brandy-colored waves, brushing my cheek when she finally comes completely down, pressing softly swelled tits to my chest as she rocks.

Slow.

Slower.

Until she can’t anymore.

Hardly able to lift her head, she says something I can’t hear. I cup her jaw, tilting her face gently up while she pulls her lip from her bottom teeth, barely opening the wet little windows to her soul.

“Help me,” she whispers, faint with effort as her pulse slips from slow to elusive.

Sliding my free hand between us, I watch dainty brows furrow together over starry-dark eyes, and feel my way through fully soaked petals. Tracing where she holds me while steady need surges through unsteady legs. With my other hand holding her to me by the small of her back, and my voice low in her ear, I urge her to keep moving.

“Keep moving, baby.”

She does, so softly, and I slide and curl my touch. Seeking and finding her second heart. Stroking it between two fingertips until she can’t keep her eyes open anymore.

Crying my new favorite song, Fawn falls forward, rutting mindlessly as she comes and I rise deep into her cadence. Agony slices through my shoulders. Excruciating then gone again, and I don't understand. I groan as I gather her to myself. Kissing all over her neck. Letting my teeth graze whisper-thin skin and sucking gently where it breaks for me.

Just a little.

Just until her wings settle down.

As I drag my lips to her lips, all of her fluttering goes languid. Weak. Then stops. A smile tugs the corners of her mouth, but she can’t hold it. She can’t hold anything. She gives a small sigh, and her eyes close as she slips against my frame, sinking completely onto me, but I can’t hear her pulse anymore.

I can’t feel it inside me.

I can’t feel it in her.

Panic spikes in my chest, but that’s as far as it gets before agony sears through my shoulders again. Fawn falls beside me, into the flowers as I sit up, and I reach for her, but blinding pain buckles all of me.

There’s tearing this time.

Skin. Sinew. Spine.

I scream but it doesn’t stop.

Not even when everything goes black.

TEN

I’m on my hands and knees when I come to, and the first thing I remember is screaming.

Then the pain that caused it. Searing heat slashing through my shoulders. Splitting tendons. Razing cartilage.

Then the flowers. The ones that didn’t move until she did. The pink orchids all around me now. They used to be white, I remember.

Before we -

A innocent giggle turns my head, and the sea storm of memories flowing through me is nothing compared to the heat I feel when I see cognac-colored curls and lacy, white-gold wings.

Naked as a new bloom, Fawn stands just a few feet away, watching two bats chase each other across a tangerine and lavender streaked sky. She turns to me, and her eyes look different, but I can’t tell how before she looks back to the bats, and everything sways.

My head spins, idles, and tilts somewhere between lucid dreaming and deja-vu.

I can’t stop remembering.

My name. My stunted, blunt-force childhood. The sound of skateboard wheels and the way the fog feels, first thing in the morning. My first lines, first bars, first overdose. Every kiss, every needle, every unfamiliar room I ever woke up in. Every time I wished I hadn’t.

The sharp, slow misery of getting “clean”. The bottomless pit of staying that way. No more pills. No more lean. How lost. How low. How lonely and wasted and hopeless.

As a whole lifetime settles in where pitch dark just was, the most recent parts come through clearest.

Hart’s apartment. Marvin’s birthday. Somebody’s friend of a friend who thought I was cute. Black lights. Spilled Sprite. The stranger with the flame.

Magnus.

Varsity velvet and unraveling gravity. Keep breathing and sea-soaked pennies. I thought it was the mushrooms, but he was helping me.

Just like I helped Fawn.

Squinting through twenty one years of sudden and total clarity, I watch the girl who looks teenage but I know is fathomlessly older, tiptoe through flowers we turned turned pink together, and I remember her most of all.

Flirting in the mirror. Chasing each other through Inner City. Holding hands under the canopy. Whispering to the flamingos. Her fingertip on my lip. My palm on her pulse. Braided promises. A thousand petals. Spilled glitter and warm birthday cake and her heart, beating inside me -

She’s making her way to me now, bringing hints of jasmine flowers and coconut milk, and the downy scent of me, all over her. Shaking pink petals from messy auburn locks, she beams brightly, and I remember Magnus telling me I couldn’t have her. That this was against the rules. That I’d tear her apart.

I remember dying.

I remember her dying.

“I didn’t know this would happen,” she admits, fluttering up and laughing a little as she slips a couple petals from my hair too. Her smile dips slightly as she slides her hand down, running her fingertips from my shoulder to my elbow.

Following her touch with my eyes, I notice not just pale pink stardust - the trace of her all over my skin - but rills and streaks of red. Some dry. Some still wet.

I know it’s blood.

And I think it’s mine.

But I don’t understand.

“I don’t think this has ever happened,” Fawn says, soft with awe. Holding my hands in hers. Warmth flows from the contact and there isn’t anywhere I don’t feel it.

“They look good on you,” she continues, her strange gaze drifting above and behind me.

I tilt my head. “What does?”

Baby lighter than the flowers I laid her down on tips forward, and heat washes over me as her bare chest brushes mine. Smiling, she reaches around my side.

“These.”

The second her fingertips brush the edge of one, they both flutter. I laugh. I can’t help it, and laughing only makes them beat harder, lifting me from the sand. It takes a second to find my balance, but only a second.

Then floating is as natural as breathing.

Joy-stunned and hovering a few inches in the air, I look over my shoulder to find wings. Barely bigger than Fawn’s and just as thin, they feel every inch as sore as they do ticklish. Yearning equally to fly higher and to fold and be stroked, they’re matte black. Rain-soaked ash. Dead of night black.

Fawn giggles again, buoyant with relief as she tugs my hand, and I drift back down.

“We’re the same now.”

I see it when she meets my eyes. Hers are as pitch dark as I know my own are. Just like my wings, and when she smiles, killer little fangs she didn’t have before, glint in the morning light.

If I still had a heart, it would rush as I turn toward the horizon. Instead, my wings twitch as I watch impossible amber rays break across a violet sky and dapple sapphire waves with their brightness.

Fawn looks with me for a moment, laying her head on my chest and wrapping her arms around my waist. She kisses my skin as I hold her, and I want to find her eyes again, but I can’t stop staring at the sky.

I remember everything now.

Everything there was.

And everything there wasn’t.

Baby brand new tilts her head up, but I can’t turn mine yet.

Even as I watch shades of mauve glow into pure blue and the tide glisten tourmaline bright, I can’t believe it. I look until it hurts to keep looking, and even then, I don’t want to look away.

“What?” Fawn asks, voice as soft as her fingertips, soothing precarious wings. “What is it?”

I close my eyes, and smile when I can still feel its rays.

It was gone so long, I forgot how good it felt.

“The sun.”

Bloom

If I don’t know who I am,

how do I know I’m not a god?

a spin-off / side-take from

#prays

littlegreyache.tumblr.com/tagged/prays

acknowledgments

To Beach House, Mogwai, The Acid, The Weeknd, Nightmares on Wax, Maala, The Glitch Mob, Two Feet, Troye Sivan, The XX, Stevie Nicks, Alina Baraz, BANKS, Goldeater, Fever Ray, Big Black Delta, Juice WRLD, and Wolf Alice. To Brand New, because literally everything I write has roots I still find between your chords, and to Lil Peep, because suddenly there you were, and so much I was working on fell and fell and fell right into place. Thank you all for making music that moves and holds my heart, for sharing your work and for being right there while I translated this love from sounds and sights and feelings, into words.

To Amy Sage Webb, for inspiring me then and now, and for teaching me about crossing the distance.

To Juan and Kevin, not just for all the coffee one writer can drink (it’s a lot okay), but for being the first people I’ve ever worked for to acknowledge I’m a writer first. Thank you for all your kindness and for giving me a place to work that’s become my favorite ever. I love you guys.

To Nicola Enslin, Peta Ashfold, Patrizia Adamo, Sophie Dickson, Wendi Collins, Coree Mueller, Raina Thorsen, Kirstie Padilla, Nicole Hampson, Jac Negrete, Jamie DiFrancesa, Jannat Ferdous, Blanca Esquivel, Paola Dei Libri, Jennifer King, Karuna Riazi (you’ll always be carebear to me<3<3), Katie Winkles, Sofia Foster, Ayden Morgen, Alex Owens, Valnice Silva, Daphne Blake, Robin Vaugt Parrish, Stacey Parker, Mollie Iglesias, Mist Mandy, Maylin, packy, cappy, squib, shalu, jusraj, jandco, chicklette, and littlebritelights - two of the best things this life has to offer brought us together. Books and music. At one time or another, you’ve been there for me. We’ve WC’d or traded songs. You’ve sent me something that made you think of Dusty, or Petey, lamb, CL, Marc and Lacie - and it lit my whole soul up. You’ve shared in this incredible, intimate, magical, wild thing that makes me, me - this writing. Thank you so much for sharing this with me. I love all of you.

To Autumn, for asking about this project and talking about it with me. For asking about and talking about every project with me. That means more to me than you know. And for reading this even though it might not be so much your thing anymore. For beach sand and city sidewalk walks. Shows and sleepovers. Coffee and cocktails. Thank you for being there from The Worst of Weather to every Brand New thing. Let’s get to the Russian Vodka Room soon. I love you.

To Cerece, for inviting me to an anthology and starting all of this. For believing in my work and encouraging me, and inspiring me to do something new. For inspiring me just by being you. I look up to you so much and am so grateful for our friendship. This project literally would not exist without you. I could thank you every day for the rest of my life and it wouldn’t be enough. I love these two so much and they wouldn’t be without you. Thank you. With all, all of my heart, thank you. I can’t wait to get together and laugh again. I love you.

To Ziggy, little buffalo baby. Sunshine pup at my feet right now and with me through honestly, everything. I would be lost without you. I don’t want heaven if you’re not there. I love you always.

To Frances Thrasher, who was and would be proud of me no matter what was in this book. Thank you for this backbone. For this gift. This life. I miss you every day and love you forever.

To Izzy, Dayne, Sherry, Birzer, Bishop, David, Rouba, Laura Reida, Sarah Ballerina, and David Curtis Smith - I miss you guys so much it aches. I wish I could see you. I wish I could hear your voices. I wish I could hug you. I love you I love you I love you so much.

And with every fiber of who I am, every beat, every tear, every giggle and hiccup, every bone in my body and every glistening bit of my soul, thank you to Karin. For delicate, seeking, nervous. For claritititty. For finding all the opposites. For endless patience. For listening to me talk about this from stage one to right now. I’m writing this from our kitchen table, to you, in our bedroom, because even though this love has been home to me for years, we finally share a house and I love our life together so much. Thank you for taking care of homework and bedtime and dinner, so I could keep going. Thank you for helping me find my way into the city and home again. Thank you for flowers. So many flowers. Thank you for the best notes a writer could ever dream of and for making a list to ease the pressure. For finding all the metaphors. All of them. Thank you for sharing that podcast about some rapper I’d never heard of and for holding me when I still cry about him. Thank you for the best hoodie in the whole world and taking pictures of milk bubbles and for helping me get every single word right. Thank you for believing in me and in them. For reading every incarnation. For talking about it with me. For talking about literally anything and everything with me. Thank you for reminding me to rest, but never letting me give up, and for always reminding me that this is mine no matter what. Thank you for reading me to sleep, helping me get out of bed, and honestly for having the coolest makeup collection because highlighter is half of this whole thing. Thank you for loving them too, and for how safe this love feels. To say you’re the best editor, beta, partner, and person anywhere, ever, doesn’t cover it, but it’s true. I love you with all, all, all of my heart. Je fais, babyblue.

ABOUT SARAH

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