A good soldier can kill a lan-ka in seven seconds, but I was never just a good soldier. I don’t think as I kill, but I do count: one to sight my mark, two-three to stab it through the throat with the leaf-blade of my spear, four-five as I plunge forward to slice through the creature’s gurgling throat and six as it falls back into the sea. I don’t count out loud. The lan-ka rejoice when we scream, so we fight in silence. The counting I match to my heartbeats, never too slow, never too fast. If I’m counting, my heart is still beating, and time is still passing. I’m still living. Maybe the counting is how I’ve managed to survive this long, when everyone else I’ve known and loved has died.
Did it hurt when you died? I hope it was quick, less than the six seconds it takes a very good soldier to kill. Do you want to know a secret? Here it is: I used to count for you. I counted the seconds to kill, the seconds until the next sunrise, the sunrises until the day you said you would be home. I counted sunrises for three years and then, for a while, I stopped. I’m not sure when or why I started counting again, after that. Thousands of kills, thousands of breaths taken, and thousands of seconds in years of growing older and slower, measured in heartbeats and breaths and showers of blood. Once, I imagined what you would do if you saw me now. You would run your tender, gentle fingers down my shoulders and over the rounded mounds of my biceps and whisper that you like me older. Your voice would slither up my chest and around my neck like smoke, and I would forget to breathe. You would notice and say, “What, Captain, a mere touch and you shake in your boots like a recruit?” I’d smile, wrap my scarred hands around your waist and lift you to meet my eyes. I’d breathe the smoke back into your mouth and say nothing.
An interruption. My recruit is coming, so I push you to the back of my mind. Her eyes are wide, pupils dilated in fear or excitement. Does it matter which? Maybe to her. They’ve become the same to me. She’s young, this one. She’s wearing my old armor, and it sags off her thin shoulders like sacks of grain. She tells me the lan-ka are massing on the reef outside the sea breaks at the harbor’s edge. She says this like it’s news, like it will explain the sudden smack of wet boots along the sandy streets and the smell of iron as leather slides off leaf-blade tridents. I put my hand on her shoulder, unthinking. It’s a habit I picked up years ago, after you told me I frightened the recruits. “You should see the way they look at you,” you said. “You scare them.” Scare them? I suppose I do. Maybe not me, now, with my burnt-black leathers dotted with the triangular holes of lan-ka teeth and the inky whorls of torch fire. But I remember what you said, and so I keep my hand on the recruit’s shoulder. A curl of blonde hair has fallen out of her helmet and rests on the back of my hand like a dove on a rock.
My boots crunch one-two through the sand mixed with dead coral as I follow her. Each step grinds the dust finer, deeper into these wet, gritty streets, thick with cook fire smog and rotting fruit, caged birds silenced by the coming night and filthy children running home before curfew. They want to see the lan-ka approach, the way I did when I was a filthy child staying out before curfew. Back when the lan-ka were curiosities beyond the reef, stories our older sisters told us as they leaped down from their fishing boats wrapped in bright sashes and whirling curved finger knives. Back before I met you.
* * *
I puff out a ring of purple osha smoke and watch as it drifts in the thick air of the tavern. I aimed it at the bald, sweaty head of the fisherman who used to be sitting next to me. He moved away as soon as he saw my tattoos. I didn’t like the look he shot me as he clutched his warm beer to his chest like a child with a toy. Hatred? Fear? Ha ha. The smoke smells like bellflowers from the south, something I am sure he’s never smelled before. He should thank me, really. I’m a tourist attraction! Me, one of the last of the Queen’s Own, fresh from the front in Malu, here in this shithole tavern in this shithole village at the fucking end of this shithole world. I purposely took off my cloak before I came in. I wanted these people to see my arms. They don’t look like they used to, babe. You wouldn’t recognize them. Would you recognize me? Me, the daughter of a fucking reef fisherman, now one of the last Queen’s Own. What would you think of these tattoos? Each one is a kill, you know. Not a kill like you used to count them, with the steady one-two, under your breath, methodical as the goddamned sun. These tattoos represent entire fucking regiments and each one was carved into my flesh by the Queen’s tattooist herself. Painful doesn’t even begin to describe the process. But that’s what war is all about, right? Pain? Ha ha.
These fucking people. Hovering in the corner whispering like cowards while the soldiers gather outside. I don’t need to look to know the sun is setting, and those kids are out there sharpening their spears before the onslaught. Children! Part of me wants to tell them to come inside, get drunk, start a fight, fuck a stranger. Have a little fun before they die! Because they will die here. “Everyone dies everywhere,” you’d correct me, in your calm and utterly reasonable voice. Well yeah, babe, but you don’t have to go down easy.
War makes people liars. My parents said Malu was safe. “Lan-ka don’t live in the swamps,” they said. Ha ha. You should’ve seen my face when the lan-ka slithered out of the swamps and ripped their throats out on the first fucking night of the war. And then I got the letter that everyone here had died. But that was a lie too, wasn’t it? All the soldiers died, that’s what these cowards clutching their beers are saying. The kids. The cowards are still here, still living, still pushing every last kid this shithole village has in front of them like goddamn shields. But you. Where are you?
We’re winning, did you know that? We may have been massacred at Malu but the lan-ka attacks are less frequent now. It’s only in shithole villages like this one on the sea where the fighting is still so bad. Tell the kids to come in, out of the darkness and death and wait it out. The lan-ka will go away, and you can go back to being kids again.
“Get you something?” My head snaps up and I look into a pair of soft blue eyes. I’ve seen them before. The bartender furrows her brow. “I know you,” she says, and in that moment I recognize her, too.
“You’re… the Captain’s wife, aren’t you?” I let the corner of my mouth curl up at the side and flex my forearms on the polished wood of the bar. The tattoos ripple like black, writhing snakes and I expect her to look away. She doesn’t. I’m impressed.
“Was,” I say. “Can’t be married to someone who’s dead, now can you?”
She swallows, but meets my gaze without hesitation, bold and unafraid. It looks like she wants to say something, but can’t get it out. She licks her lips, hesitating. I’d be lying if I didn’t say my stomach fluttered a little, which is rare for me. If she keeps this up she may find herself flat on her back screaming my name before the night is out. Lucky girl, right babe? I let my eyes flow lazily down from her face to her long, smooth neck and the collar bone that disappears under her plain, brown tunic, the same kind we used to wear when we lived here. She slams an empty glass on the counter, and my eyes snap back up again.
“You’re different,” she says. “What happened to you?” I keep the smirk plastered across my face, though I don’t feel it. I do that a lot these days.
“War,” I say.
* * *
We’re at the corner of the harbor now, where our sisters used to slide their boats into the water on green trunks still dotted with barkthorn. The recruit is gesturing at the sea with her spear but I can’t hear her over the pounding in my ears, my head. Abandoning her and her excited waving, I turn and see it. The irons are gnarled still, but dusted with the red ochre that covers the harbor after the night cannons have been fired. They’re fired often, these days. I tell my soldiers it’s to reinforce the coral defenses at the end of the harbor but I know we fire red coral because we have nothing else to fire.
I come here, sometimes, when I need to remember you. You wouldn’t be surprised that I do. That balcony is where I first kissed you, where you first rested your hands on my hips and told me, “Come closer.” Where your breasts pressed into mine and we first shared the same breath. It’s where I sat sharpening my spears and we talked about a time when I wouldn’t have to anymore. Funny what necessity can do. Well, I can spare a moment to wrap myself in memory before the death begins, can’t I?
I can imagine you on the balcony now, hands on hips, head cocked to the side, looking at the dust that covers each familiar swirl and knot of iron. The dust would upset you, because it meant more cannons. “Come back to bed,” I would say, standing behind you and sliding my hands under the hem of your shirt. “Come back to bed and leave the dust.” And I’d run my hands up your torso, from the firm warmth of your stomach to the curves of your back, floating along each rise and fall while you sigh and relax into my touch as easily as the sun sliding into the sea. I’d dip my head and let my lips touch you lightly, just where your neck meets your shoulder. Pulling you closer, I’d tighten my grip around your waist and feel you shudder as you arched your back into me, a promise that while the air cooled and the night darkened, you were as certain as a lighthouse, a beacon leading me home.
My recruit is yelling something. She doesn’t know it’s been a year since I’ve seen the balcony. A year since I’ve been anywhere in this town except the docks and my bed. I avoid the people. Most of them think I’m dead, anyway. The little girl who became a little soldier and disappeared more than three years ago, another nameless face in armor covered in blood. Maybe they don’t care if I’m still alive. Maybe someday I’ll tell them. Does it matter? My recruit needs me, now. She’s driven by urgency, by that breathless anticipation to fight back the lan-ka. She doesn’t know that I do this every night, moving slowly, killing swiftly, at six seconds each. I turn away, back towards the night and the sea.
* * *
Here’s what they don’t tell you about leaving this village, babe. Here, it’s all sand and sun and smells. There are the good smells, from the coffee vendors and the honey wine they pour on the streets at sunset to ward against the lan-ka. There are the bad ones, steaming off the docks like some kind of fishy smoke. But out there, it’s harsher. Brighter. Louder, hotter, drier, wetter, more everything and nothing that this fishing village ever was or could ever be. I hate fish. Did you know that? I fucking hate them, ever since our sisters used to return from the sea and bring us brightly colored reef fish strung on sticks like glittery wet jewels. They may have looked nice but they still stank, just like this fucking town has always stank. Did you ever try to leave, babe? You promised you would. You promised that as soon as you could you’d follow me to Malu, over the rocks and across the desert and into the steamy jungles that ring the capital like a cloud? The lan-ka rise right from the swamps in Malu, did you know that? There’s no “front” like there is here with the docks and the reef break. They’re fucking everywhere.
I went straight to the army after my parents died. Did you know that? Did you get my letters? I wrote the letters extra large for you since I hadn’t finished teaching you how to read before I left. The first ones had drawings too, drawings of me at the training grounds with the other warlocks and the first time I killed a lan-ka, my magic slithering inside it like a sickness, taking hold of its heart and ripping its beating, pulsing soul (do they have souls?) right from its body before blowing it into a billion reeking fishy pieces with one flick of my wrist. Turns out I’m good at killing. I’m fucking excellent at it. I drew the tattoos for you, too, back when there were only a couple of them to draw. Were you proud of me when I wrote that I could kill in only two seconds? One for the magic, two for the kill, three for the victory. Victory. Ha ha. There was no time for victory.
* * *
I pull my spear out of the lan-ka with a crunch and kick it off the causeway and back into the sea. The corpse floats for a moment, one in a sea of corpses, before sinking beneath the thick water oozing with blood, slick and shiny in the light from the harbor torches. My recruit is grinning, spattered with a hundred colors of blood, shrugging the too-large armor back onto her shoulders. She’s panting with excitement, sweat glistening on her neck, arms shaking in readiness for the next wave. I’m proud of her. She may be young and small, but she’s brave. The same fire burns through her veins that did through mine, and she’s proud of the fire. I nod at her, once, and she nods back, the curl of blonde hair loose from her helmet again. How many will she kill this time? Ten? Twenty? She looks as if she wants to kill them all. I know because I did too, back when I kept count of my kills. Back when one or two was all it took to keep the town safe for another night. Back when one or two was all that stood between me and another night with you.
But wait – something zips over my shoulder and the recruit falls back, a lan-ka blade between her eyes.
* * *
The bartender’s blue eyes are darting back and forth between me and the doorway like a frightened bird. There’s screaming outside, human and lan-ka both. Don’t they know they’re not supposed to scream? Honestly. You’d tell them to shut the fuck up if you were here. Honey wine sits between my outstretched forearms like an offering but I haven’t touched it. The froth on the top vibrates with each crash from the docks and the smell of blood is mixing with the bellflower smoke, ruining my mood. I don’t know why I’m here or what I expected to find. You’re dead. You must be, so what’s here? Home? I don’t remember what home feels like, and I don’t trust myself to remember you. The fun bits, maybe: the laughter, the teasing, the endless nights of your body pressed to mine, hot and wet in the hot, wet night. The other stuff… my mind can’t go there anymore. I made a joke about pain before, about the tattoos – you remember, babe? I don’t remember, anymore, or the pain would drown me.
“Can’t you do something?” the bartender asks, laying a hand on mine. “Help them?” My eyes widen a little at the gesture but I’m choosing to take it as a promise for later. She’s not asking for much, after all, and I intend to repay her in full. At least that’ll be a fun way to say goodbye to this town.
“Fine,” I say, and I roll my shoulders. Fine? I laugh out loud. I came here for closure or something like that, not following the war to the last place in this entire fucking world where it’s still being fought. Catch up, people. I’m supposed to be on vacation.
* * *
The lan-ka are swarming now, over the pylons at the end of the docks where our sisters used to catch us purple triggerfish and yellow sunfins. I can’t see them, but their thick, acrid scent fills the air and punches through my throat like the blade through my recruit. There’s too many of them, too few of us. My vanguard unit is only ten strong, nine now that my recruit is dead, lying in a pool of her own blood and the hundred colors of those she killed. Tears sting the back of my eyes, but I don’t cry. We are only soldiers. It would take one of the Queen’s Own to push them back, but our village is too small and too far. We heard about the massacres at Malu, even as far away as we are from the capital. A thousand, or was it a million lan-ka, against the Queen’s Own? Did you hear how the warlocks lifted the sandy streets and threw the lan-ka over the swamps and so far into the sea that they never returned? You wanted to be one of those magic-users, once. Do you remember sitting awake long into the hot, buzzing night, reading and studying in the light of the oil lamp as I slept naked beside you? Do you remember blowing out the light and curling into my arms as the night swept over us like the wind? I do.
* * *
Sometimes I hate you so much that it feels like an animal ripping through my chest from the inside, claws raking down my ribcage. Sometimes I miss you so intensely that I forget to breathe. I don’t sleep. I can’t sleep. When I close my eyes all I can hear, see, smell, is you. Fucking you trudging up the steps to our apartment, your smile that cracks your face like a child’s when you see me and the smell of your neck when I bury my face in it. You first hugged me when we were six years old and I can’t remember a day you didn’t hug me until that last day when the flames from the docks licked closer and closer, and you held me like the world was ending before shoving me out the door.
I understand why you made me leave. I mean, I guess I do. “It’s not safe here,” you said. “Go to Malu, find your parents, get out of here. Survive. I’ll stay and fight.” For fucking what, babe? The fishermen who stare and mutter in the tavern? “Just until the army arrives,” you said. “Just a week or two.” You wanted to save the world. You used to tell me that I was your world. Why didn’t you come with me?
There’s no fire outside tonight. I can tell from the windows. Or it’s gone out, doused in blood or bile or whatever other shit comes out of those things. The other patrons in the bar are cowering under the tables, shaking in their stinky fish rags. I hate them. Those kid soldiers outside are waving their shitty weapons in the faces of those monsters and hoping they’ll live long enough to keep these drunks alive. Poor kids.
Well, okay, I’ll go help them out. For you. For your memory, since you were one of those poor kids, trying not to scream in the night as monsters devoured your home. I pile my dark hair on top of my head and stride toward the door, pain rippling up my arms like a living, breathing thing. My muscles are iron, unmoving and unfeeling: pure concentrated power. My eyes are on fire. I feel nothing. I have nothing. Fuck them all.
* * *
It rained the morning we were married and I didn’t fight that day. The air was so thick and hot that it felt like we could drink it, standing shoulder to shoulder on the balcony and looking out to sea. Paradise birds swooped over our heads, and the rich smells of roasting coffee and grilled sea bream rose from the street below. You wiped sweat off your cheek with the back of your hand and pulled me away from the window, closing the sheer curtains behind you. Inside, you rinsed me in cool water and kissed me, starting at my collar bone and torturously working your way down my body until I fell back against the wall, heavy and bursting, and begged you to have me, there, then, and every day thereafter.
There were no guests at the wedding. Nor was there a ceremony, in the traditional sense. The war had just begun and already your parents and my mother had been called away to Malu, where the lan-ka had started their attacks. Slowly, at first. The Queen called it “exploratory.” Her Own called it “nothing to worry about.” Ha ha, as you would say. We said the words, told each other “forever” and “always” and “you,” as if those words that we’d said a thousand times already meant more when the word “marriage” was attached to them. You thought it was silly. I thought it was romantic. We wore silk dresses the color of the fishes our sisters used to bring us and kissed on the balcony before the setting sun, drunk on the smoke from the street vendors and the bottles of honey wine you bought from the tavern below our apartment. You said you got a good deal, that merchants were unloading their stock before the war. I said the bartender with the blue eyes flirted with you. Neither of us cared.
* * *
I want to say the fight is laughable, but I stopped really laughing a long time ago. Me! Can you believe it, babe? Me, who used to roll over every morning and laugh at the rising sun like some kind of lovesick child? Ha ha. I have to hand it to the kid soldiers, though, they’re doing their fucking best. The lan-ka stream over the destroyed docks like insects, hissing and ripping at everything they see with stabbing teeth and curled blades. Disgusting things. A flash of yellow hair and a scream as some kid goes down, spear dangling at the end of a lifeless hand. Just a kid! Is this how you went down? Or did you grip your spear with both hands and charge straight into the swarm, thinking grand thoughts about some greater good? I hope it was fast at least, babe, and that you screamed a scream for the end of the world. Wouldn’t have mattered anyway, right?
I swing my hands in front of my face and lock them together. I stare down my arms, down the swirling, slithering tattoos hungry for pain and aim my fists at the roiling, metallic blackness in front of me. How did you do it? One-two-three or some shit.
Anyway, it’s over. They’re gone. You can come out now, kids.
* * *
Five seconds. It only took five seconds. One for the gritty sand of the street, soaked in the blood of lan-ka and soldier alike, to rise like a cloud. Two for the cloud swirl around the lan-ka, standing wet with dripping blood among my soldiers. Three to lift them off their scaled feet, four to pull their arms and legs off without so much as a murmur in the wind, and five to blow what remained of the attacking force out to sea towards the rising sun.
It’s quiet, now. On any other day, the coffee vendors would be heating up their pots and the fishmongers would be grilling the day’s catch. Today, there’s nothing. The remaining soldiers shuffle their boots in the grime and look to me as if I can explain what happened. I turn on my heel and see a small group of people standing outside the tavern. One is the bartender you bought the honey wine from on our wedding day. I haven’t seen her in a year, but she still works there. You used to laugh at me when I teased you that she flirted with you. But how could you blame me? I can see your eyes now, black and deep as the sea, locked onto mine as you rock back and forth on top of me, a sheen of sweat on your brow. I have never seen anything as beautiful as you.
Another recruit approaches me and I don’t remember her name. She gestures with her spear at the tavern and I notice someone talking to the bartender, back towards me. They’re wearing the sleeveless black tunic of the Queen’s Own. I frown. We’ve never had a warlock in our town, and certainly not one as decorated as this one: the tattoos that curl up her arms are almost iridescent in the morning light and I want to ask you whether you ever made it to Malu. Did you find your parents? Did you ever become a warlock? Maybe you knew her, this warlock who is impossibly here on my filthy street on this sunny morning. Did she train you? Know you? Love you, even? The warlock’s tattoos slither as she talks, and I see her rest a hand on the bartender’s. A friend, perhaps? I remember friends, remember wanting them. You said you would always be my friend, even as you packed your bags that night, shoving clothes and books in at every angle, eyes wide with panic. I laughed when you said that. Of course you would always be my friend--you were my wife! We didn’t know the lan-ka would attack here so soon. I remember you standing there, in the doorway, outlined in fire as our sisters’ fishing boats went up in flames and screams filled the air from the street below. “Go,” I said. “Fight,” you said. “We’ll find each other again.”
* * *
The sun is rising and the streets absolutely reek. Fucking disgusting, all this blood and gore. Why do the lan-ka smell like fish when they aren’t fish, babe? And how many do we have to kill before they stop coming? What would that world even look like? Would there be a place for me in it? My life is fighting. My body is a tool for war, a conduit of energy that exists for the purpose of pain. It’s written in my eyes, woven into my mind, tattooed across my arms. I am the Queen’s Own, her unarmed weapon of destruction. Un-armed. Get it? It’s all about the arms? Ha ha. The hot bartender is saying something.
“Thank you, ma’am. For rescuing our village.” I shrug. Does she know how little effort it took to save this shithole town at the shithole end of the world? Maybe they’ll name it after me or something. Hilarious. The lan-ka will be back, maybe, someday. Who cares. She looks happy.
“It’s my pleasure,” I purr. I’m used to this, you know. The breathless thanks after the battle. The hands laid accidentally-on-purpose on my arms. They want to see my tattoos. They want to touch me to see if I’m real. They want to show their appreciation. Usually for me this involves alcohol and at least three or four naked women in my bed--but I’m not in the mood today. The air smells like fish and salt, and there’s a lump in the back of my throat.
You used to call me “sweet.” “Sweet love,” you would say, cupping your strong hand around my cheek. “Will you be mine forever?” Silly crap, the kind of words lovers moan into each other’s mouths without thinking what they mean. Forever. Ha ha. For that blonde kid on the dock, “forever” came last night. Did she know that when she strapped on her boots and polished her shiny spear? Did she know that when she kissed her lover and said, “I’ll be back soon?” I hope she got laid beforehand, at least. That’s a crucial part of every death or dying scenario I’ve envisioned for myself, when that time comes. “Sweet.” And suddenly I can’t stop the memories before they’re all over me, like a bucket of water dumped over my head. Your hands in mine. My head on your shoulder, pressing light, feathery kisses along your collarbone as we stand on our balcony and watch the sun dip into the water. You squeezing my hands, sliding your hard, strong body behind mine so your breasts push into my back, wrapping your arms around my waist so you can breathe in the smell of my hair. “Light and clean,” you used to say. How can something smell “light,” babe? Fucking silly, all that sentiment.
My eyes snap open and I lean heavily on the wall, anchoring myself in the power flowing from the oozing, slick gore on the street and into my body. I’m stronger than this, stronger than you could ever fucking believe, babe. Remember how strong we used to think our sisters were when they came back from the sea, salt crusted on their hair and finger knives looped through their waistbands? Strong. Ha. I’m stronger than the entire fucking sea. I came here to wipe you from my mind and now I know how to do it. I need to see that balcony.
* * *
I’m standing below the balcony, again. A paradise bird lands on the railing, and I think about how we used to stand there in the morning, shoulder to shoulder, watching the sun. Maybe it’s the battle, or the fact that I haven’t been sleeping well. I’m getting older, but when I close my eyes I almost believe I can smell you: that light, clean scent that comes after rain. The scent that brings promise with it. I don’t want to let this moment go. I think that maybe if I sink into it just a little deeper, I could feel you again: the curves of your stomach and arch of your back and the shudder of your body as it connects with mine. You always called me sentimental and sentimental I certainly am. As I turn away from the building and towards the recruits waiting for me, I take a last breath of that smell and hold it close, deep down where it can’t be touched by smoke or blood. Maybe I’ll smell it again, some day.
* * *
The balcony is dusty, and I wrinkle my nose. No one’s been taking good care of my home. Our home, babe. There’s a bird on the railing, too. Some pink and orange monstrosity that you’d probably call “beautiful” since you care about that kind of thing. Or cared. A soldier is standing there, too, looking up at the bird. Her back is to me, and bits of lan-ka and seawater drip off her armor. She’s oddly calm for having spent her entire night covered in lan-ka entrails and her boots squelch when she shifts her weight. This is what I came here for, you know, babe. I came all the way from Malu just to see this fucking place one last time and remember you and who I used to be before I find some other life to live in this world. The soldier sighs deeply and turns away to walk down the dock towards some of the other kid soldiers. There’s something in her gait that looks familiar, and it occurs to me that she might have served with you, before you died.
The lump in my throat is suddenly choking me, and my head is swimming.
“Wait!” I shout. The sun is rising, warm and calm, and the bird on the balcony begins to sing.
* * *
My spear falls out of my hand, clattering to the ground. I turn around and the world stops. The choking sound I hear, is it me? Is it you? It’s us, I guess. I can’t breathe. Can you breathe for both of us, please? You’re fast. Strong. You, and not you. I don’t care. You’re here. You’re alive. You came back. Why? I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care. Are you okay? The sun is up, are you hot? Cold? Did you get a good night’s sleep? Come here. The tears running down my face taste like the sea. The sea without blood. Yours are sweeter. Here, let me kiss them away. Is it over? Did we make it? Are we here, alive? I’m outside my body, flying through the air like the bird on our balcony. I hope you’re still breathing for the both of us.
Before I was a very good soldier, I was a soldier. Before that, a little girl, running breathless through the sunny streets as little girls do. But I’ve always been yours, from the very first sunrise I ever counted. And you were always mine. One-two. Or one, really. Us.
* * *
I thought I knew pain. I’m an instrument of pain, or was, before now. I probably always will be, in some way. Once you’ve spent that much time with pain it becomes part of you. I’m not sorry for it. Turns out I thrive in the extremes. I’ve seen the darkness, felt the power that comes with oblivion. It made me strong, shaped me. A familiar friend in a world defined by pain. But now--I’m falling apart. I can’t lift my arms, can’t move my legs. I’m upside down, backwards and inside out. Flying, falling. Stronger than I have ever been. Or dead. Maybe I’m dead. Am I dead? Are you dead, too? Let’s be dead together, then. Your hand is on my cheek, your lips on my face. Am I crying, or is that the sea? I don’t care.
Hey, babe, the sun is up. Want to count with me? One for you. Two for me. But let’s stop there. It’s enough.
KEENA ROBERTS (she/her) is a science fiction and fantasy writer and the author of Wild Life (Grand Central, 2019), about her childhood growing up in her primatologist parents’ research camp in the Okavango Delta in Botswana. She is also a PitchWars mentor and a contributor in the SFF anthology DON'T TOUCH THAT, edited by Jaymee Goh (2021). She lives outside New York in the mountains with her wife, daughter, and several pets and enjoys reading by campfires, wherever she can find them.