The girl moans, sputters out a breath, and I can hear the blood leaking from her body. It sounds like rain, the sleet kind, tinkling and sharp. I drift closer.

  “What? Not how you remember it?”

  The seam across her throat is mostly drawn closed now, but it’s not meshed. It’s truly a wonder she’s breathing at all. I see the twitch of her fingers, nudging me aside. I pull back.

  “Oh, I’m in your light. Apologies.”

  Her pale face softens beneath the lush rays, her bottom lip split and quivering.

  I do not stray, for I am too curious, too curious like the cats — I remember the milk of a mother, the first blood of a rat, the adoption of a smelly new kit with the best of scritchy fingers, a friend to provide for and protect, a moment spent wandering, lingering too far, and my confidence befalling me in dank metal talons, a snare that took me quickly and returned me gently.

  “I remember the smell of you.” I lean in again, and her head tilts away. “Still wild.”

  I search deeper and find the one with the skeletal face, heart all broiled in darkness; a secret, a terrible secret.

  My little plague.

  I dive further—find cold hands and colder eyes and lips that curled; oh yes, they curled when they died, curled with the clink. Clink. Clink.

  Again, again, but not for long, not long enough for a boy that didn’t know how to express, how to make the sounds that formed the words that told her he missed her, that he wished they could play again, that he was so, so very sorry for running ahead.

  Again, I find the burned man struggling for breath, metal legs rusting in the depths, a shattered mind with one clear flame, one flame that guided, guided—

  I look up.

  At this big, wondrous world, so different now than it was before. So beautiful. Even with the burnt-out trees. The smell of death warming in the heat, the buzz of flies coming to nest, and then back down and to her.

  Her freckles are darker now, her eyes watery and red.

  “You made it.”

  She’s looking somewhere else. Over the ridge. Wondering why she’s still alive, wondering why this death is lasting nigh on eternity. The pain must be immeasurable, but she reaches out, fingers curling against dried earth, and tries to call to someone. Anyone. Only bubbles form, no words.

  I inhale deeply—tasting someone beyond. Bodies. Several. No pulses, no breath, just the taint on the wind and the stench of ageing death. Then… him. I smell him. Him on her fingertips. Him around her neck. Him on the horizon in the place where we last lay down to rest.

  The place I lost you all over again.

  “You have your fingers in every pot, don’t you?” It’s a compliment, but I’m starting to wonder if she even knows that I’m there.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  No matter. Time is of the essence, and I must decide if this is enough.

  If I’ve seen… enough.

  “You haven’t got much time left.” I know this; even without the crow, I can hear each organ as it shuts down, each clot caught in a vein. She’s suffering. She’s been suffering for longer now than she should have.

  It is not cruelty. I want to know. I need to know…

  What survived.

  So, as I look upon her, gargling on her blood and fluid, I ask myself:

  Has my curiosity been sated?

  I rise and look her over fully. A wretched little thing all torn up and dying. In the daylight, her hair is light auburn, thickly caked with ichor and dirt. Her eyes—amber like coins—roll to the back of her head and tremble there.

  “You’ve grown.”

  Much of her uniform is destroyed, silver plates fractured in places, punctured through completely in others, and a glass spine still gleaming from a wound through her gut. The blade attached to her brace has been snapped, and the other melted down and burned into her knuckle. Despite the ruin and the damage, I can see The Others' sigil on her front. The gold strike of creation unmade—

  Halidom.

  In an instant I burn again, for a terrible second everything I had come to love and cherish and hold tightly has died just this moment and not millennia ago. Fresh, my wound is open, my existence weeping. The pain is immeasurable. Enormous. Felt across all of the ghosts that now tread within my pieces, remembered and felt too quickly, too at once.

  The child is losing strength—no, she has not been a child for a while now—the woman gargles blood and spits it down her chin.

  I ask myself again, is all that I’ve seen enough?

  “What do you become?”

  I glance over the ridge. It’s smoking beyond.

  “What’s over there?”

  If I look further, what else will I see?

  I could extend her for just a little longer…

  …Should I?

  “Can you hear me?”

  Her neck bubbles and pops with a deep wet sound.

  “Do you want to stop?”

  I don’t know that she can hear me.

  Her head falls from side to side.

  I’m closer in an instant. Too eager, too eager for this devourer of life.

  “It’ll hurt.”

  Her laughter is a damp rattle, a wheezing intake of air.

  “You can show me everything.”

  I know she likes that.

  Performer.

  Queen.

  I reach closer, disperse over her knuckles, and fold into the cuts on her hand. Her tendons flex as I graze them; her bones erode just a touch. I try to be careful. Try not to replace.

  Connection. All I seek is connection.

  From her. From you. From that which I covet and love. That which I learn from.

  “Show me,” I tell her. “Show me.”

  I hear the crack of a pickaxe slamming into rock. I feel her waiting, anxious and trying to hide it, trying not to let the overwhelm swell.

  Her arm seizes, jerks in the air, twists and cracks sideways at the wrist.

  “I’m sorry.” But I don’t slow down. “I just want to see…”

  To know. To feel. To understand.

  I catch a glimpse years beyond the dark, a fractal of surging water breaking through ether. Black hair. Grey eyes. Hand in hand.

  “What happened to them?”

  A sword. A bomb. A second too late.

  What’s beyond the ridge?

  A sky. A trick. A second-hand slip.

  What happened to get you here?

  A whorehouse. A plague. A chance to exist.

  Where is everyone else?

  I meet the grief in her elbow. Deep. Wallowing. Consuming. But I surpass it to find her heart. The moment I coil in, her back surges from the crag, flesh tearing further across her limp and hanging neck.

  I latch around the spine — hold it together.

  I’m not sure I could ever describe her scream, the pulse of agony through a ruptured flap of flesh. I cut it off, capture that sound in my fibres, and spread them evenly over the wound before I fill it.

  Hisssssssss.

  A lie. A role. A soldier. A purpose.

  Her feet thrash, blood and bone matter spilling into the air. I try to find them and bring them back, but the right foot is completely liquefied, pulverised into sludge. I cut the blood flow off at the ankle and watch her writhe and hurt.

  “Just a little more.” I console, slipping between sinew, settling over torn ligaments. I pump her heart myself, plugging my pieces into all the parts still spurting liquid life. She begins to seize.

  I reach the brain.

  The sunshine. It is too bright. I miss you.

  I’m sorry.

  I dig in.