It's textbook.

---

in the fall I loved an apricot girl, golden and tawny, sharp and toothsome, sweet enough— but not for me. she wanted me to stay, I wanted, always, to go, we both wanted the world to stand still just for a second, just for a moment. we danced and laughed and fought, grew fat and ripe together— then tender and sinewy, better with age. even after the fruit fell from the tree, the roots were still there, deep under the soil, still good— yes, still good.

---

in between was her, cherry wine, august haze, the deep, sad part of a Sunday afternoon. in the last days of summer we laid together, tangled in the sheets: the sun sinking, the shadows claiming, the light burnt and dusky and swallowing everything whole. and the air, it was electric, warning of a thunderstorm, and the seconds, they went slow and thick as honey, filling my mouth. she fed me kisses like pomegranate seeds, asked me, “do you love me? will you stay?”—

long after she was gone, I dreamt of crimson juice running down my chin, sweet as sin, red as blood.

i have lost you for twice as long as i have loved you: the fates were unkind to us.  i have loved you for half as long as i have forgotten the shape of your face, the sound of your laugh—  you are a stranger i have known my entire life. i started a war just to meet you.

cassandra tells me it will end in tragedy, but she is always telling me things i already know. in your gaze i am a pillar of salt, a face of stone, a sweet farewell, in the last steps out of hell. if i fall on my own sword, i want you to hold the hilt.  i forgive you for turning back. 

so ragnarok will come. so the world will flood. so this ends, before it begins. the desperation, it was for love, and the devotion, it was for love, and the terror, it was for love. i am made whole by your missing parts. i’m not scared when i’m with you.

let the gods live forever. i am content for just one lifetime with you.

            I am sitting at brunch in the city and all I can look at is the ghost in the road.

            Across the table, Cassidy frowns. “Lei.” She follows my line of sight out the window; seeing nothing there, she turns back to me even more confused. “You okay?”

            The woman in the road stands facing me, unbothered by the cars rushing through her. She wears a headdress in the style of Chinese noblewomen from the late Qing dynasty, and her qipao bears the elaborate floral embroidery only the wealthy could afford; but she is drenched from head to toe, dripping rancid water that spoils the fine fabric. Her hair hangs matted in her face, knotted like river weeds over deep, dark eyes sunken into her skull.

            “Lei,” Cassidy repeats. Now she is beginning to look worried. “Did you hear me?”

            I wrench my gaze from the road and fumble for my drink. “Sorry, sorry.” The alcohol in the sangria burns as it slides down my throat. “Thought I saw someone I recognized, but…” I swallow and past on my best smile. You’re normal, Lei. Act like it. “It wasn’t them.”

            Cassidy gives me a sympathetic look. “You look tired. Are you tired?”

            I roll my eyes. “Thanks, Cass.”

            “No, I’m serious. Is it your mom again? You’ve been all out of sorts since she came to stay with you.”

            Cassidy has always been frank, not a bone in her body capable of bullshitting. It’s part of the reason I like her so much, why she’s one of my few friends from college I kept in contact with after graduation. But now her ability to see right through me feels a little too much like needling. “I’m fine, Cass,” I say, as firmly as I can when so much of my energy is devoted to keeping my hands from trembling. “Mom’s fine, too, though I appreciate your concern.”

            Cassidy squints at me. But my mask must pass muster, because after a moment she smiles. “I can’t believe she’s here in New York. I still remember when she would call you in college, the crazy things she’d say. Remember when she made you put oranges on our windowsill in the middle of winter? My god, it drove you nuts.”

            In the road, the drowned woman watches me. I force out a laugh. “Yeah, well, that’s her. Driving me nuts to this day.” I signal to the waiter to bring me another drink. “Now, what were you saying about your new job?”

---

Ghosts, my immigrant mother tells me, haunt every part of our lives. They are the imprints left behind on our world by those who died before they were ready and could not relinquish their hold on the living. There are trickster ghosts, mischief-makers who caused trouble and confusion to further their own means and could not pass peacefully with their truths half-buried; now they remain as mèiguǐ that stalk the country roads at night, transforming into terrifying animals. There are pestilence ghosts, the enduring wills of stubborn grudge-holders, who let their resentment of those who wronged them poison their souls; now they linger on in the walls of broken-down buildings and overcrowded tenements, leeching disease and decay into the air. Most dangerous of all, there are the hungry ghosts, and all their variations: Those who committed evil deeds in pursuit of their greatest desires, but died without achieving them. Now their unfulfilled longing and poisonous guilt combine to torture them for eons, cursing them to wander through their next dozen lifetimes howling for an absolution they can never quite reach.

            Ma talked about the ghosts everywhere we went: In the line at the grocery store, when I whined for treats and she told me to quiet down, or the foul-tongue ghosts would rot the food in my mouth and turn my breath so putrid no one would ever come near me again; when she caught me giggling over the latest gossip on the phone after school, my homework still unfinished, and warned me to work hard and study well, lest I grew up so ignorant and simple that I fell prey to a trickster ghost’s cons and lost everything I had. In the summers, on the fifteenth night of the seventh month of the lunar calendar, she laid peeled oranges, bowls of rice, sugared nuts and cups of tea on the altar in the kitchen as offerings to the ghosts of our ancestors, who purportedly walked among us that day. “You must honor the past, Leilei,” she would say to me, while I rolled my eyes at the table, too lofty in my American self-assuredness to listen with any respect. “The future depends on it.”

            The ghosts were Ma’s comfort, her support, her partner in raising me. While she worked fourteen-hour-days as the owner and only employee of our dry cleaning business, the ghosts taught me morals from Chinese culture, kept a watchful eye to ensure my good behavior, and granted me luck on everything from my grade school grammar tests to my college entrance exam. But if the stories had any real hold over me as a child, it was long gone by the time I became fluent in English. As I grew older and cooler, and more American with each passing day, I chafed at my mother’s favorite tales. Come on; I was thirteen already, practically an adult. Did she really think I would let some dusty old stories she’d told a million times before intimidate me into ting hua—following every nonsensical command she issued? What did it matter if I ate cold foods during the winter, if I stuck my chopsticks in my rice, if I wanted to keep a pet turtle? Did she have to control everything? Was there anything she wanted from me other than obedience?

Sometimes I think she clung so hard to those stories because they were all she had left of her homeland. There were never any other Chinese in Marlowe, Mississippi: No community to celebrate the holidays, no neighbors to gossip with in the same language, no Asian marts to pick up the ingredients for old family recipes. Walking through the town center on my way back from school, I watched the old white ladies point and whisper at me from across the street and understood what it might feel like to be a guǐ—a freak from another world. Those moments were the only times I felt grateful to have my mother’s stories at my side; to hope, however wistfully, that there was someone looking over me, even if they were ancestors long gone.

            But whoever our ancestors were, whether or not they were watching over anything, my mother didn’t say. She never named a single member of our lineage; I never knew the names of my grandparents, if I had any aunts or uncles, where our family line hailed from in the vast diaspora of China. She never told me my father’s name, no matter how much I begged, no matter how many times we fought. It was as if to speak the names of the people we left behind was to invoke a terrible curse, as defiant to the natural order as wearing white outside of a funeral. Eventually I gave up trying, too exhausted by a lifetime of miscommunications, too hurt by her silence. I went away to college and moved on with my life, watching from a distance as my mother continued to worship ancestors made into ghosts by her refusal to name them, wondering what it was like to live a life haunted by the restless past.

i long to sleep in the orange leaves, and watch maples grow overhead— but it is not my time yet, not yet, and the land is already full. for now, and a little while more, find me on the empty beach, long after summer has gone; and there is only the ocean, crashing on the shore, calling for me from beyond the waves.

angels, angels, angels. they’ll be the death of you.

~*~

the one who lives at the end of the floor never comes home, only appears sometimes in the smallest hours of the night, dressed in glittering black, always ready for a party. she laughs with her mouth wide-open, lined in crimson, and moves like a storm, coming and going in a flurry of slamming doors and spluttering lights. sometimes she brings girls back with her, girls with sharp stilettos and even sharper cheekbones, and their cawing laughter whirls through the hall like a flock of crows, thumping and fluttering against the peeling wallpaper, dark and cacophonous and just as foreboding. you’ve lived next to her for maybe a month, or maybe ten years, but she never remembers your name, doesn’t care to try; only half-smiles at you, pityingly, and asks “sorry, darling, did you say something?” on the rare occasions when you remember to ask her to quiet down. on cold rainy nights, you can hear her stomping shake the walls, the very bones of the building trembling with the effort it takes to contain her; and sometimes you think her laugh follows you, even into your dreams.

~*~

there is one who frequents the new york underground, and you’ll find her at any and sometimes every station, especially at the stops that are never anybody’s final destination. she is the stillness in the evening rush, the back turned to you from every angle, more the absence of space displaced than a being existing. somehow, you can hear her wings rustling even above the clamor of the crowds, and you know when they’re extended by the way their shadows dim the lights and cast jagged shapes across the grimy walls. she stands close to the tracks, too close, and usually when the train comes it’s a thunderous living roar, but when she’s there it’s a vacuum of noiselessness, like all air and sound and motion has been sucked from the teeming masses to create a pocket-realm of deafening silence. the bubble only pops when she meets your gaze through the flashing spaces between subway links, and there’s the feeling crawling up your spine that she doesn’t exist when the cars obstruct your view. when she grins, it’s toothy, feral as something that thrives in the sewers—and her eyes, her eyes, they’re as deep and black as the tunnels themselves.

~*~

the friendliest angel you’ve ever met wears black leather and metal studs, smiles a perfect cupid’s-bow smile from lips painted dark as tar, splashes tequila on you while tossing back overenthusiastic shots like she’s anointing you with holy water. she likes her smoky pool halls and bars with sticky floors, running her blunt nails along the base of your skull, scratching swollen red marks along your jawline and down your neck as she pulls you in for a messy kiss that tastes like salt and fire. she feels the most real out of all of them, you think, with her love for punk rock and her taste for patron, and sometimes you can forgive the cold, vicious glee in her eyes when she watches bar brawls unfold, and forget how she rolls her shoulders back when she’s enjoying a cigarette (like she’s shaking something out). one night, you keep her company while she takes a smoke break in the alley next to the club, and four men with hoods pulled low begin to stalk towards you, like something out of every nightmare your mother warned you against as a child. you falter, swallow, look to her in a silent plea to go back inside—but she’s too busy watching them to notice, the expression on her face like a predator who can’t believe her luck. she grins, delighted, savage, and by the time the men have realized their mistake, her outline is already blurring, lengthening into something with a hundred eyes and a hungry, echoing laugh. you leave before you can see the outcome, but a week later, the news reports four members missing from the local street gang. they never find any bodies.

~*~

there is one you will never forget, despite how the others blur and fade from your recollection, distorting and dimming more and more each time you reach for them in your memories. you see her through the open window of the neighboring apartment building, and it’s like looking through a porthole into another world, slipped between the planes of your own. she is dust-colored skirts and thin, frail bones, translucent skin and eyes the color of still water, so beautiful it almost hurts to look at her. she catches you watching her as she paces around the room, and for a moment there is something terrible and knowing and jarringly, unbearably human in the sadness in her gaze—then the moment passes, and she smiles at you as she flips the knife in her hand so that the curved blade glints in the burning amber glow of the setting sun. when she turns to the full-length mirror on the wall and lifts the knife to her shoulderblades, you feel a sudden, sickening lurch in your stomach; and when she makes the first cut, you close your eyes and turn away, thinking of how, before he fell, lucifer was called the morning star, bringer of light.

~*~

in eastern religion, the concept of reincarnation posits that the soul is eternal, constant from birth to death to rebirth, wearing lives like winter fashion, until it’s time to change coats again. they hold rebirth like westerners hold the promise of heaven: the incentive to do good with this life, so that it might be a little easier the next time around.

living this life for your next: you know the feeling. you always thought you were destined for something more— not necessarily grander, just more. sometimes, it’s four o’clock and the kettle’s whistling, and the kitchen is warm but it’s oh so quiet, and you close your eyes and see gondolas in venice, elephants in india, mountains you never climbed, oceans you never swam. adventures seemed so real in the storybook imagery of your childhood imagination, but somewhere between your college education and grindstone career, every step you take starts to feel like it falls just a little to the left of the footprints you were supposed to leave; and maybe that’s growing older, but you can’t shake the feeling that you’re just a mirror image in a divergent universe that was never supposed to exist.

this is not the loneliness of traveling far from home, of being the only one of your kind in a room, of not recognizing the signs on the side of the interstate. this is the loneliness of a crowded room, blurred faces, like smoke, slipping past you on the sidewalk, standing on a forty-story rooftop and gazing over a city laid out before you, knowing it is full of life, ever-busy, but hearing only the exhale of the cold wind, and feeling only the ache of the lights in your eyes. this is the loneliness of blinking awake on a sunday to the empty space in the bed beside you, and missing someone who was never there; this is the loneliness of soft afternoon light in the window, the rustle of piano keys as they dip from note to note, the ringing silence between the end of the symphony and applause. this is the loneliness that seeks you out and names you, that claims you for its own, that makes you in its image, until you are more an idea than a human, more longing than a life lived, more nostalgia than memory.

this is what it’s like to love an angel of war.

~*~

throughout history, media—be it summer blockbusters or ancient greek epics—has always romanticized the male as the force of destruction, the unstoppable powerhouse, the wild-eyed warrior with sword raised and teeth bared. you meet her in a dusty bar somewhere in soho, where old italian men come to drink dark red wines out of crystal tumblers and the bartender wears a vest and a pert black bowtie. she doesn’t look like the blue-eyed, red-mouthed femme fatales you see in period films and spy flicks; she’s got on coral lipstick and a white satin sheath dress, a broad-brimmed hat straight out of the 1960s, and when she looks at you over the top of her aged Scottish whiskey, there’s a sharp, feral sort of intelligence in her gaze, one that hints that she’ll just as soon destroy you than love you. when she’s bored of talking to you, her pupils and irises disappear and her eyes blaze bright, burning white, and when you blink, she’s gone and you can’t remember why you were just talking to thin air.

~*~

she does this the first three times you meet, spread out over the course of two years. by the fourth time around, she’s so exasperated of running into you all over downtown manhattan that when she spots you sitting alone in an upscale french restaurant in greenwich village, she sighs and rises to cross the dining floor and seat herself in the empty seat across from you, and your date running late in queens suddenly forgets he had any plans at all. she introduces herself with so much breezy charm that you never get around to realizing how odd it is that a beautiful stranger has taken over your night, and you spend the next hours talking about everything from middle eastern politics to napoleonic warfare to things to do in new york on a budget. you don’t recall this until later, but she speaks with the confidence and precision of a military general, shoulders ramrod-straight even as sits with her spine curved in feline grace, each word carefully enunciated in her rich, velvety voice. at the end of the night, her lips leave a coral imprint on the rim of her wine glass, and when you leave together, she hooks her pinky finger around yours and leans in to whisper in your ear, “come home with me.” you look at her, standing in a cream-colored wrap dress in the city’s effervescent lights, and there’s nothing inside of you that’s capable of denying her.

~*~

you know what she is three months later, tangled under moonlight in her silk bedsheets while she runs slender fingers through the curls at the crown of your head. there’s no process of figuring it out, no slow and dawning realization; the knowledge comes to you in a moment of sudden and perfect clarity, and when she opens her eyes and smiles at you across the goose-down pillow, you know that it’s no accident. her mouth, still smeared with some leftover coral from your night out, purses in a quiet, playful “shh” before she leans in and presses her lips to yours, and you forget the inhibitions crawling up the back of your throat because kissing her is like kissing the sun.

~*~

you’re walking hand-in-hand with her down state street when you see a homeless man huddled on a tattered blanket outside of the corner store, shivering in the pre-winter chill. she halts and gives you a charming smile, eyes twinkling as she says “one second”; then, as you watch, she approaches the man and lowers herself to her haunches, the hem of her peacoat brushing against the pavement. she hands him a twenty dollar bill, and you inch just close enough to hear her when she says “go into the store and buy three Powerball lottery tickets; you’ll only need the third one,” and see the curve of her lips as she reaches out and grazes the tips of her fingers against the man’s temple. by the time she retracts her hand, he is staring at her with wide, disbelieving eyes, mouth open in shock. “the voices should leave you alone now,” she announces, and he’s still staring at her as she rises and returns to your side, linking your fingers together again. “lunch?” she asks brightly, and you let her lead you away as you gape over your shoulder, watching as the man rises unsteadily from his blanket and stumbles into the store.

later, over vietnamese subs at your favorite Asian fusion eatery, you ask her why she did what she did; she takes a moment to pat delicately at the corner of her mouth, taking care not to smudge her pale pink lipstick, before replying, “within thirty-one days, that man will be unfathomably wealthy and enjoying better mental health than he has since he was fourteen. in less than a year, he’ll have reformed his life, claimed to have ‘found God’”—here her fingers curl in sardonic air quotes—“and in three years time, he’ll be a pastor at a church down the street, converting nonbelievers left and right with his roguish charm and passionate sermons.” she gives a fluid shrug and reaches for her glass of sparkling water. “more for our side, right?”

you watch her as she sips her drink, frown lingering on your face because you knew she was a…well, you knew, but you hadn’t ever really known until now. “‘found God’?” you ask, mimicking her air quotes, and the smirk she shoots you only serves to confuse you more.

“well,” she says, with a sharp, tinkling laugh, “can any of us really find God?” she returns to her sandwich without another word, and you sit back and reconsider everything you thought you knew about religion.

~*~

it’s a balmy, beautiful saturday morning, and you have plans with her to grab lunch at that new gastronomy restaurant that’s opening downtown, but your morning routine is cut rudely short when you walk outside to grab the paper and something hard collides with the back of your head, sending a burst of pain through your skull before you collapse on the sidewalk in front of your neighbor’s petunias. you wake in an decrepit warehouse tied to a kitchen chair, and when you lift your head and blink the bleariness out of your eyes, it’s to find a ring of men and women standing around you wearing velvet capes with the cowls pulled low, outfits that look like they’re headed to sunday mass visible through the gaps in the robes. a woman with hay-colored hair and a small, pinched face steps forward and brandishes what looks like a goddamn letter opener, and when she raises it and demands, “where is the servant of God?”, you spit out the blood in your mouth and resist the urge to laugh because, really, a cult kidnapping? on a fucking saturday morning?

you realize that the letter opener is a lot sharper than it looks when the woman slashes it across your collarbone, and the pain is so great it burns the breath of your lungs. as scarlet blossoms around the cut in the front of your new shirt, she holds the knife in front of you and lets you watch your own blood drip off the edge; then she snarls, in a voice that’s supposed to be intimidating, “we know she is here, in new york; we know you know her.” she gets close, close enough that you can see the freckles across her nose, close enough that even through the haze of pain and irritation clouding your mind, you can see the hint of self-delusion in her eyes. “she will lead us all to salvation, and if you keep her from us, we will—“

you never find out what “they will,” because at that moment, the entrance to the warehouse explodes inwards, and a form made out of pure, molten light steps through the opening. you’re no stranger to anger—you do live in new york, after all—but the thing that comes into the warehouse is fury personified, rage so fierce and deadly and absolute that it sweeps outwards, blistering the skin of the cultists that stare in dumfounded shock. they try to run, but find that their feet are rooted to the floor; so, instead, they wail, arms coming up to shield their eyes as your angel of war stalks forward, leaving pools of melted concrete behind in her footsteps, fire trailing from the crown of her head, eyes nothing but vacuums of scorching white. “Who are you to claim my name in vain?” she roars, and in the next instant she is wielding a sword so enormous it looks like it could split the world in two, searing blue in its heat; it almost seems to vibrate in the air, and you swear you can hear the sound of a thousand distant screams emanating from it as she lifts it in her hand. “I am bellum, praelium, cassida; I am mortem and exitium; I am carnage and ruination, the abolition that scorches this earth, and you—are—judged!” she raises the sword above her head and the cultists scream, and the rope cuts into your wrists as you jerk forward against your restraints and shout out, “wait! don’t!”

the desperation in your voice is just enough to make her pause, those all-seeing eyes turning to you as her mouth creases in a frown. “don’t,” you repeat, voice weak, feeling like all the energy has been drained from your body. “they’re not worth it.”

she tilts her head, and it’s yet another reminder (on top of the holy fury and body made of fire, that is) that, while she may be good at playing human, she decidedly isn’t. “They hurt you,” she says, as if it’s as simple as that; and maybe it is for a servant of god, but it’s not for you.

“i don’t care,” you say, and that’s not right—you do care, because your head and your chest still hurt like hell, and you were really looking forward to trying that new restaurant today. “i mean—it doesn’t matter. they’re fanatics; they’re just desperate. they don’t—it doesn’t—” you sigh, too tired to finish the sentence, but she seems to understand, because she lowers the sword and frowns again, this time looking at the whimpering cultists like a scientist might look at a mouse running around a maze. then the sword is gone and the cultists are no longer glued to the spot; they trip over their robes and each other as they flee, and that’s the last thing you see before your body and mind give up in tandem, and you release yourself to sweet unconsciousness.

~*~

you wake up in a strange place for the second time that day, but this version involves a bedroom with muted yellow walls and lace curtains over the window, fluttering in the soft breeze. the first thing you notice is that nothing hurts: the wound on your sternum is gone, not even a scar to mark its passing, and you feel more comfortable and refreshed than you have since childhood. the second thing you notice are the fields of grain that stretch to meet the horizon outside the window, and you realize with a jolt that you are most decidedly not in new york anymore.

you blink and she’s there at your bedside, leaning over you to press a cool kiss to your forehead, silken curls spilling over her shoulder to brush against your neck; when she pulls back, there’s a gentleness that you’ve never seen before on her face. “where are we?” you ask, faintly bewildered, and she smiles as she glances out the window.

“kansas,” she says. “farm country. it’s nice, isn’t it?” she laughs, and it isn’t her usual knives-and-cutlery tinkle; this is a softer sound. “idyllic.”

she moves to pull away, but you grasp her hand before she can, and it’s a testament to the time you’ve spent together that she lets you. there’s a resigned look in her eyes when she meets your gaze, but you ask her anyway, voice quiet with the request: “why are you really here?” you let loose a self-deprecating laugh, adding unnecessarily, “no one who carries a sword that big goes anywhere just to proselytize.”

this elicits another small smile, and you wait while she traces formless shapes on your inner forearm, face hidden by the curtain of her dark hair; then she sighs and stands, and you think she’s about to leave until she climbs into the bed next to you, allowing you to move closer and into the circle of her arms. she inhales, deeply, and you watch as her chest rises and falls with the breath, marveling at how humanlike she can be.

“there is a war,” she begins, “between two races of beings that are bigger and older and more powerful than anything humans could ever imagine. compared to us, you are tiny, fragile; seeds in the wind.”

“thanks, i always wanted to feel more insignificant than i already do,” you drawl, but she just smiles and lifts a hand to trace a delicate finger along your hairline.

“tiny, but not insignificant,” she murmurs, and there is something like confusion in the brightness of her eyes, something also like wonder. “some time in the past—entire civilizations ago for you, but not so long for us—one of our own was injured in battle and crash-landed on your world. he was a superintelligent life-form among a species that had just crawled out of the mud, and they looked to him as if he was a piece of god—and so that’s what he became. during his time with them, he realized that, somehow, their belief in him…made him stronger. healed him. these humans, with their simple, limited minds and their frail, breakable bodies, could empower us, rulers of galaxies, through something we did not have: their emotions. when his body had completely mended, he returned to our people and told them of this newly discovered phenomenon, and our military leaders rushed to harness the newfound source of power that was the collective human mind. a defector brought the news to our enemies, and thus began the race to ideologically colonize earth: the species to recruit the most believers would gain the upper hand in the war.”

it’s almost ludicrously grandiose, but somehow, it also makes absolute sense; but she still hasn’t answered your unspoken question, and even though you’re beginning to fear the answer, you press the issue anyways, because if nothing else you’re a foolish human and you need to know the truth. “and the sword?” your voice is quiet to hide the tremor, but you think she hears it anyways, because her hand stills in your hair. after a moment, she exhales and pulls you closer.

“it’s called ‘the world-destroyer,’” she says. “somewhere along the way, we…realized that destroying a believer imbues us with a temporary burst of heightened power.” she swallows, and it’s the first time you’ve ever seen her act uncertain. “i am a high-ranking soldier, a warrior of the holy order; it is my life’s mission to further the glory of my people. the world-destroyer is one of the most powerful and sacred weapons in our arsenal; it was given to me when i was just a child, as the seal that bound me to my fate. my orders were to come to earth, recruit believers, and await further instruction; and, when the time came, it was to be my duty—my destiny—to wield the world-destroyer and sacrifice earth, thereby giving our people the advantage we would need to end the war, once and for all.”

you want to laugh at how morbidly ironic it is, that all of the righteous and loving in the world are just lambs, headed for slaughter. after a moment, you move closer to her, unconsciously seeking a heartbeat as you press a kiss to her throat, trying not to feel stupid when you fail to find one. “’was’?” you ask, softly, and look up at her as she frowns, eyes distant, fingers curling against your neck.

“i used to believe that destiny was everything,” she admits at last, voice heavy. “but now i am beginning to question if there isn’t more merit in will.”

~*~

kansas is kind to a new york city-dropout, and you spend a half year with her in that sweet little farmhouse, telecommuting for work, going to the artisan’s market on wednesday afternoons and barbecuing with the neighbors two miles down the road on the weekends. sometimes you wonder at how the countryside can hold her, but she seems to be in her element here, waist-high in grain that whispers in the wind, watching dust bunnies blow across the empty road, basking in the hot blaze of the sun on her skin. when you ask her why she seems to like it here so much, in this town where nothing ever happens, she gives you a sharp grin, wiggles her shoulders, and says, “there’s room here to spread my wings”; and you spend the next hour staring at her back, wide-eyed, wondering if she meant that literally.

they come in the middle of the night at the end of the summer, appearing without warning to fill the fields outside. you startle awake in the pale wash of moonlight, skin prickling, to find her already up and at the window, a frown twisting at the corners of her mouth—and, fuck, she wasn’t exaggerating when she said army. there are thousands of them, maybe hundreds of thousands, standing shoulder-to-shoulder as far as the eye can see; they are all slightly blurred around the edges, as if they aren’t quite used to taking on the human form yet, and they are all facing the farmhouse, staring up at your bedroom window, where she stands framed in lace. she half-turns to look at you, and there is such unfathomable sadness in her eyes that your heart twists at the sight of it. “it’s time.”

“no.” in an instant you’re on your feet, reaching for her, voice breaking. “you don’t have to do this.”

“it is my destiny,” she says, and your eyes widen when a single drop of moisture breaks free from the corner of her eye and trails down her cheek, because she’s never looked so painfully, wonderfully human.

“it doesn’t have to be,” you say, desperately, and scramble for the words she murmured into your hair that night after she rescued you from the cult. “what about will?”

she stares at you for a long, long time, and you taste defeat long before she touches her fingers to your cheek and whispers, wretchedly, “i’m sorry.”

she vanishes, and you run to the window to see that she’s reappeared on the front steps—but she looks like nothing you’ve ever seen before, and the breath falters in your throat when you realize that this must be the closest she’s ever come to her true form. she wears plates of some intricate, beautiful golden armor, and her hair is fire down her back; in her hand is the world-destroyer, illuminating the farmland with its eerie, burning blue glow.

a figure steps forth from the crowd, and when he speaks, it is with the rumbling, absolute authority of a king. “Cassida,” he says, in some ancient, hissing tongue, and it almost hurts for you to listen, “it is time. Wield the Destroyer of Worlds; deliver us to our final victory.”

your hands are shaking and you want nothing more than to look away, but somehow you can’t bring yourself to move an inch as you watch her glance down at the sword in her hand. there is a single, breathless moment in which she lifts it, and it blazes a little brighter—and then she is turning and looking up, and your eyes meet across that seemingly endless chasm that stretches between you, the human and the angel. for a heartbeat the fire and righteous fury fades away, and she is smiling at you over the shoulder of a bartender wearing a black bowtie, and she is laughing as she helps mrs. keller down the road prepare watermelon salad—and in that moment, you know exactly what she is, the knowledge coming to you in a moment of perfect and sudden clarity.

she turns back to her leader, her king, and replies, calmly, with the barest hint of mirth in her voice: “No.”

a restless murmur runs through the assembled soldiers; the king’s eyes narrow. “Cassida,” he says, warningly, “do not test me. This is not the time for games.”

“No games,” she says, and she lifts the sword a little higher, twisting the handle so that the blade shimmers in the moonlight. “This war has consumed us for too long, warped our once peaceful society into something shameful and unrecognizable; I will not let it destroy another, innocent race. This blade has the power to end entire worlds; it is tied intrinsically to the very being of our species.” she pauses, and you think she learned dramatic effect from the vintage noirs you used to laugh over together. “What would happen if I were to break it?”

as one, the soldiers all shift back, and you think you can detect something like horror rising from their collective. the king growls, the sound like thunder that warns of a storm. “You would not dare,” he spits; somewhere in the house, a window shatters. “Destroy that blade, and you will destroy us all.”

“Be calm, my King,” she laughs, all knives and cutlery and smirking coral lips, “we will reform. But, by the time we do, Earth will have lived out the entirety of its long and magnanimous life undisturbed, no longer vulnerable to our greed—and we will be forced to resolve this war in peaceful terms, or fight it again on equal grounds.” the king snarls and lunges forward, but it’s too late: she has grabbed the other end of the sword in her hand and brought it down to shatter over her knee.

there is a blinding blast of light that knocks you to the floor, and a cascading, chorusing scream that rises to scrape at the sky—but by the time you scramble back to the window, there is nothing but the endless countryside, serene under the moon.

~*~