THE BOOK OF END.

V’s incredibly lost and confused soul stands there, dismantled by the cold air among his wet clothes.

Petite curses at him: he doesn’t know the language, but he can read the tone just fine. Wide eyed, he asks her what’s wrong.

What’s wrong? What’s fucking wrong is I walked my ass into the ocean to disappear, not to show up on the other fucking side.

V points at Petite’s chest, squeaking out a small nudge of concern in her general direction.

Petite looks down at her hand, pressed to her chest, a wound that cannot heal.

God wounds, they don’t heal. Big fuck you. Atonement.

V tries to plead with her and offer some assistance. He cannot help. Petite bestows memory upon him: I know you, you don’t know me. You’re just a fragment of a life that isn’t mine. Already lived it. You’re just stuck here in this time piece.

V shakes his head, he remembers. He knows Petite, but only through memories of the bodies she inhabited before. Now, she is raw. The soul no longer wears the stories of others.

V takes her to the house, still weathered and beaten by the abrasive coastal winds. Inside, the broken furniture and decrepit walls are warmed by fire light and the family; already taking residence in Petite’s memory realms.

She opens the front door and stares, grimacing. Why are they there already? Is no space sacred?

Death’s namesake, the little one, calls for her attention from behind her. He tugs at her tattered dress,with oily blood stains. He can see words welling in Petite’s throat. At once he stands upright, a wayward teenager. Aunty what’s wrong?

Is it that book? What book? The book you came with? He takes Petite’s hand and guides her to the wilted garden, and throws the salt-ridden tome down upon the table. A starfish scuttles out.

I don’t want it. We already know what it says.

She asks him to consume it, like all things.

It’s too salty, I wouldn’t like it. He jests, but seeing Petite’s sincere disappointment, he takes the book and gives it a wild toss to the air.

Petite laughs, heart released by her nephew’s willingness to destroy worlds for the sake of happiness.They sit in the flooded out garden for a while. Watching the moon sitting too low in the sky.

I did something to deserve this. I hope it was worth it. I am being punished.

A wound that never heals, a feeling you cannot escape. That is truly torment.

I hope I did something truly amazing to deserve this.

What is true however, is that for the first time in history, Petite arrives as only herself. When Black Cat gave herself to the ocean, it stripped away all that did not belong to her anymore.

The bonds remain. The illusions don’t. This is age. Somewhere far away she feels a familiar grip on her throat. An angered, false god. Go ahead, she tells him. Take the book. There is nothing you can change in it now.

Brother pours her scalding tea from inside the wreckage of the once-was home. We’ve waited for you. We always have.

Petite points to her stained chest.

Resilience slumbers often. Survival is not always active, but knowing when to remain stagnant, make peace, and when to arise again.

Restlessness wakes Resilience, out of boredom, and sometimes out of childish play. When Restlessness falls down, Resilience puts him to bed.

Wonder always sleeps beside him. Wonder, too, sleeps often, and almost always. Resilience has never seen Wonder awake. Despite the shared dreams, neither has Restlessness.

Resilience leaves the lovers alone and sits atop the tower waiting for Restlessness to strike his own heart.

Pain? Yes, but a crashing tower will surely wake Wonder. And like all men,

Follow Restlessness into the dark. Resilience will shackle them to the waking world.

You cannot sleep your own fate.

And perhaps this requires one to never be truly whole. To fit the other soul’s pieces into your own, to turn the lock pins.

Do I get to love on my own?

Do I do the work because some older part of me knows love is insignificant to the end game.

Do I break for reason? Is the friendship deeper than the cost?

Is everyone I look at with love really just a future patient?

In petite’s heart, she confronts the voice of the shadows. While they usually spend their days together, nylon feet dangling over the edge of a unused bed, she corners him (he, them, the names he isn’t sure of but keeps anyway), wanting to know why they are frozen in this perpetual grace.

Petite laments her solitude. She is comfortable alone, but doesn’t want to be. While content; not whole.

As he cleans his finger tips habitually, he softly murmurs that he’s known her longer than she thinks. For this, Petite cannot remember. While she accepts time is far beyond comprehension, questions spill out. Petite wants to know was everything lost to the two gods she paid homage to. If she paid love for the love of others deserving. For great Sophia to reunite with God.

Did she pay piety out of pity.

In agreement, they prepare to remember; but from his hands comes a great light of power like those of her kin. Having been anchored so deeply in the mundane, it feels overwhelming. She feels more human than ever in the presence of what she realizes is someone so much farther ascended than she will ever be.

In the first sleep; Petite is a low ranking nurse. In and out of interning, and a close friend, a very acknowledged Dr. Something compels her to seek him out. Overhearing conversations, not being able to put her finger on exactly what sparked her nerves. She listens to her instincts without justification and finds him.

The great doctor is in the middle of a meeting, but he takes no annoyance to her interruption. He cradles her in one arm while continuing his meeting. He senses her stress and panic. “Best friend” enters her mind, but her heart clangs against her ribs.

“If you wanted to take a shower you just had to say so.” The active mind in Petite is confused, but the inherent soul remembers instantly. As she feels the warmth of his chest she is brought back to a time of skin to skin. No lust, just comfort. A deep sense of healing and peace. A habit. A thing between them. 

Her comfort is perturbed by overhearing another conversation and suddenly noting the insulin pump attached to his body. The meeting is abruptly interrupted as some other nurses and doctors come in asserting that he must undergo this treatment. His eyes flash with nervousness. She grabs him and runs, gets him into a car and drives him as far as she can before turning around to throw off the trail. Her heart thrashes with the pain of separation. She grips the steering wheel and holds her breath, but the hot tears burn her skin anyway.

In the second and third sleep, they are always edging the line between friends and something else.

“Just tell me who you are and why you aren’t here”, she tells him in the waking world.

“Because like you I have loved, and we have been through so many.” With a gentle shove, he pushes her backwards into the void, the many skins she wore and the many lovers she had rip away from her body, floating towards the surface of the sunless space.

He too falls backward, an empty trust fall, his skins and lovers also separating, until both remain in raw emptiness. They are who they are at their core. They sink in the quietness.

“I’ve known you before you have known all things” he tells her. But she is tired, she closes her eyes and drifts away into his shoulders.

Listen to me. The most important relationships you will have will be your platonic ones. These are the ones cemented in stone, that will bridge the gap between your heart and whatever mercy befalls you.

They will serve you simply because you are you.

I will walk you from the end of the earth and back; and most importantly--

Petite was throwing up in her mouth, and sweating from every pore on her body. A trident the colors of hell and back slipped through her sweaty hands. Petite was well aware this was a dream; yet in all her lucidity she was not able to escape.

The Snake Man sung her accolades for all to hear. Smiling somewhere on a balcony, on an island, in a lush tropic, far away from here. He clung to her waist and innocently expressed love.

Petite swallowed bile, stepping foot onto the platform leading into a blizzard like place. The Snake Man’s soul lived there. Despite having fire in his blood and emotions in a frenzy he thrived on ice and wind.

In the moments of death innocence returned to his eyes and Petite nearly let this drown out all the wrongs he had done to her.

But the taste of stomach acid made her realize how her sweat burned and her skin was on fire as she was bare in the snow.

When snake titan was defeated, and the devil that had become him filled the earth with darkness, Petite was filled with the panic of the regret that follows freedom.

Petite knew this dream was a test.

Petite is no longer that person anymore.

And petite is allowed to be free.

And the snake titan’s abuse of power will never trump a woman’s right to live.

Hot metal burned in her hand and when all the wrongdoings released their hissing grip on her body, the barren cold snow was a welcome relief. She could breathe.

Perhaps Petite hid in the arctic for eons to medicate the burns of survival.

Paralyzed by sleep, Cedar moves her from ground to chair, night after night. His own home sits atop a hill’s edge at the entrance of an ocean. Usually he finds her asleep in the middle of the cobbled courtyard. Despite the waves of magic that bring her there, she can’t talk, she can’t move. She can hear, though it feels muffled and far away.

Cedar takes the opportunity to speak quietly next to her ear. Tales of time she will not remember upon waking. Safe guarded in eternal sleep to be resurrected when relevant.

When she returns home she is usually propped up on Paladin’s shoulder. Deeply asleep; they sit wherever she collapses and he dares not move without his companion. Especially now; he’s been a bit humbled by his solitary journey through town.

Paladin with his thirst for understanding asks every morning if anything has become clearer from the night before,  but each time Petite mournfully has nothing new to share. She tells him that’s sometimes the way of things, you just accept where you are and wait for clarity to present itself.

There’s no rush.

Gratuitous ruffles shake out over tiny knees. The small Wolf Girl finds the companions in the middle of a sunny alleyway. She pokes at them to stir them out of their stupor and haze.

Petite tells him all stories are the same story. They all tell the same thing; just different places, loves, beings. Diving deep into one [story] brings clarity to other stories. Needless to say, she’s been inspired. Petite had spent a long time in the cave, and replayed the memory of how Paladin and Petite’s mutual guardianship was forged. It makes a lot more sense now.

Petite stretches in the sunlight. She points a finger gun at Paladin; despite his height advantage of a whole foot (however; he wasn’t so blessed in this life). “Your father did me a great favor. The cost is insignificant. I feel horrible now for complaining about having to babysit you. Though to my credit, I did say this is a rather peaceful retirement.”

Paladin doesn’t quite understand, and he doesn’t have time to ask. Petite grabs him by the wrists and throws them off the cliff side. “Come on, we got a crown to find.”

The sunlight in this place is incredulously different from the life Paladin and Petite are now used to living. It isn’t warm. It’s far away, but in its distance, the great star’s reach is so much more vast. It covers everything, and for much longer than other worlds.

Idling among a busy centre square, Petite absorbs the memory of a local mythos.

She recounts to Paladin how the women here paint their nails, because in their story, their great goddess lost her beloved in the cosmos. As he slipped from her grasp, her fingernail scratched a line down his arm, leaving a trace of her cosmic power in his wound. He fell to this place and hence, this is their story of the dawn of “mankind”. So, women paint their nails in the color of whatever they personally believe the goddess’s magic color is. (And all those whom chose to honor her). It is common for men to have a tattoo of a line, just below the armpit and stretching down to their elbow--usually in their mother’s favorite color. A symbol of power exchange. Mothers give life to their sons, just as the goddess gave power to her beloved. Though it need not be physical. Many choose to simply honor a woman who has been important to them in their life--adoptive mothers, caregivers, whomever. It’s in that, that this little city is actually quite nice.

Paladin lifts up his left arm, dabbing a fingertip at a red line. But Petite has already ran off.

They find themselves on an elevator, a solar powered, light weight machine.

They encounter a bell hop who seems suspicious. He regards them as a couple but Petite cuts him off and demonstrates a vague hologram of a blonde woman.

“No, that is his wife. Now let my companion through.”

The bell hop is bewildered by the magic but also not paid enough to deal with such bullshit so he allowed Petite and Companion to enter the elevator.

The glass chute ascends, and Petite shares a little more of her epiphany with Paladin. Recounting how it makes sense that in their anchored world, they do not know each other. It’s a means to an end, to spin the wheel you only need a trigger, a catalyst. Having a public image made Paladin the catalyst. And a father who loves his son will exchange anything to protect him.

At the top, Petite holds out her hand, sunlight gathers, and in a quiet fade, they appear on a grassy hill, very far from the city they just were.

“Take it in, that’s where we’re going. It’s important to remember what things look like.”

The don their garb, and a semblance of happiness crosses their faces, though Paladin tells Petite she really needs to stop obsessing over her favorite game, it’s going to her head.

“On the topic of my favorite game, cameras play and important part and I think it’s fitting since we both have an affinity for the camera”. She teaches him how memory snap shots are made. Before the next breeze finishes rolling over the pale green hill, The Writer appears.

“You look good in white.” Petite chides the old aeon.

“As do you.” Passing his hand over Petite black dress, turning it white.

“Oh come on is this Sleeping Beauty now? Are we really going to do this?” She grunts but accepts her color change.

“You’re my little sister, I get to do such things to you.”

“Tell Papa, that old man, that I understand what he did now.”

The Writer grants them passage to their journey, and sends Petite and Paladin off with well wishes. He departs, disappearing into the cloud as though there is a seamless door just before them.

Paladin and Petite stand on the hill a bit longer, breathing the thinnest air they have ever felt, and the slowly walk their way down the valley, and toward the miles ahead.

“Let’s go find that story, and while we’re at it, get me a new name.” Paladin punches Petite’s arm, “How about pokey?” He jokes.

Paladin is thrown back into the cave wall.

And I mean real clothes.

He complains, childlike in his persuasion that armor is suited for battle.

Mobility. I need you to be able to move. You’re no good if you’re already stabbed.

Where are we going?

I’m not really sure but we’re going to keep people out of where they don't belong.

Thin Bones takes her companion to the edge of time, a hellscape full of stereotypical fire and cliffs. Tells him he’s her apprentice, and full of mutual favors. Chiding him for his lack of following their lessons. She wraps red cords numerous times around her fists and pulls on the cats cradle violently.

Paladin fell, gripping his chest through the single piece of plated armor he was allowed to keep. A long skirt passes him by.

Don’t fuck this up. She’s good for you. You hear me? Don’t fuck this up. Don’t fuck this up she’s the only hope you have.

As he regains his breath, he watches his teacher slide along the landscape on the body of a trespassing soul.

Like mother fox brings dead meat to the den; finish it off.

Banishment is a skill all should learn, though not pertinent to paladin. At least not yet, not today, maybe very very soon. When all is done, a fine beach house settled into the dune rocks becomes refuge. Both an empty forlorn look on both of them sitting on windowsills watching the breeze carry the ocean in all directions.

From one hurt person to another, please get help. Don’t make me find you. Guardians aren’t ever supposed to meet you in person. I tried ignoring the calling but your father begged me.

Please. A message from your father.

Get help.

---

Dislodging memories of awful times. The face of a magistrate--I’m on the floor, he waves his arm over me and the temple is lit on fire. I stir in my room, always afraid of fire, my eyes open and I realize I left my light on and fell asleep, mala in hand. It’s 5 AM. I turn the light off and drift back into the ocean spirals.

Every dream is bizarrely unreal. I am present, aware, and discontent but my voice remains locked in my bones. I’m a silent observer. Night terrors haunt what’s left of trauma burrowed deep in my head. I don’t like that I’m here, but I know from experience; I’m too many layers deep to leave.

I know I’m cursed. Miserable souls left scorned by me cherishing my well being. I ride it out, I watch whatever dreams I need to until my world becomes mine again. Being buried deep in the land is my comfort. Waking to the rural world assures me I am hidden, albeit in plain sight.

He whom creeps close. I murder him in my sleep a hundred times. Leave me alone.

Bodies are broken. The hair, cut, now burns like straw. It wants to be long. Soul returns to body; it doesn’t feel right. What has my body done without me.

Purity. Death is blasphemous, but suffering is lethal. I cut this broken body free from every chain; either loosely bound, or tightly wound.

I weathered winters in the unchained body. The vacant wind of barren landscapes has brushed my neck, exposed.

You send me love stories. Whatever being you be; you know they’re my favorite. Misery awakens, soul returns to bones.

You’re a golden door outside the universe, outside my kin, my circle, and everything I know. I know you are beyond names. Cosmic entities just exist within space.

I cut my hair so no man would have me. Sisterhood among the gods that hide their beauty in caves, and eviscerate suitors.

No marriage, no consorts. Atop mountains I belong. Even the truest love I seek is second to my freedom. I am married to the sky and the mossy grounds. I belong here first.

I bartered memory for lives, I relearn trials, and relive nightmares every time I shower. Like water vessels hold all my memory and baptize me in my own suffering. Never forget and never succumb. Pulling my hair back, filling my throat with pain laden water jets. I am free. I no longer belong to these memories.

I trace my own steps into the dream world as I watch my memories rearrange themselves into new faces. I see a love I thought I would never recover from; and a man made of dirt and fire for soul ensures completion. He will not allow this love to determine my story.

He respects who I am without love.

And I will unearth the sea for him, with or without love.

I clutch rose colored beads and allow myself to be filled with my own soul. I allow her back into my body. I allow her to regain consciousness.

The train had crashed off course--it must have derailed first, and in a wild tide, fell to its mountain death. The Knight hovers over the princess. Their long hair mingles together in shades of gold and amber. Water drips from an unknown place among the rock walls, and braced across the back of The Knight is the metal shards of broken train walls.

Paladin takes a sit. He’s getting used to the constant caves. He shakes his head as to though to throw off the lingering humanity in him that asks questions he already knows the answers to.

Thin Bones throws up a stone to break daylight into the crash. Paladin’s short lived stoic nature sheds as his voice cracks. How are all you little people so strong?

The Knight braces her lover in one arm and raises a boulder in the other. Thin Bones then takes a sit too. On top of the wreckage, on top of the sparkling, accidental creek from above.

Was this his fault?

What do you mean, whose?

Did this happen because he burned the bond?

He what? I’m going to ---The Knight stops. She’ll avenge the unfortunate interruption to their progress later. She truly, honestly, very much does not want to leave the Auburn’s side.

Love is important. Thin Bones waves her anger off.

Leave him be.

Kishkish.

Leave him be.

Thin Bones is draped in a ruined black dress. She drags it out along the ruins and turns to leave. Paladin silently follows. She finds her sharp toothed brother in a clock tower.

She wants to be cold and judgmental, but instead Thin Bones breaks at her knees and Wolf Man holds her. Between wild tears the rusty writer assures her he didn’t write this into the story.

I haven’t started yet, Morvena, I haven’t started yet and I wouldn’t write this story.

The Clock Tower alights on fire just as Cedar did the night before.

The Wolf Man holds his debtor and presses his chin to her hair. I’m sorry, Morvena.

And somewhere, in the embers of a burning London, Thin Bones in a tattered dress sits on top a melting lamp post and stares down Cedar, who burns his own cinders off the sharp angles of his shoulders.

Why did you make so much time for others?

I gave you my time, you did not use it.

Thin Bones watches Cedar’s breath. Labored, heavy. His eyes are dead.

I will sit here and watch you through this. I will walk you through whatever this is.

She cocks Paladin’s helmet below her elbow in her lap.

Whatever it may be. I don’t care I am obviously here.

Endless, miles of sea and no shore.

Thin Bones lets him have his silence, whatever secrets he is spilling out into the motionless water must come out. She skims the ripples with her toes.

Have you finally listened to what I have said?

A down-turned vacancy fills the air. In other words, a “yes”. After many moments of silence he asks his teacher about her dealings.

Is your heart wistful?

I do not allow myself that.

But is it? You should follow it. Who cares. Who will be here at the end follow whatever it says.

She stares him down from her shoulder perch; the judging glance of someone who spent too many years letting a wistful heart determine what roads to take and which knives to stick in her own back. They exchange the questions that tear open wounds and they do nothing to stitch it back up.

My job is to make sure you are ready.

He looks only straight ahead for hours. Finally something breaks between his shoulder blades. I do not even know my own name here.

Then I will name you.

It isn’t until many more hours later Thin Bones recounts The Wolf Man to The Red Queen:

“Do you remember your name? No. Then I will name you.”

But the bickering of men agitated the spaces between her ears. She threw out her arms and slid down the hill; nothing to see but fog.

An unexpected guest in streamlined armor. She sits her helmet on the ground and slings to the ground softly.

I didn’t want to be surrounded by men.

I know, the Knight pours a full tea set and hands a pale cup to Thin Bones.

He is stupid, yet aren’t we all. She scoffs with sincerity and love about our feathered friend.

He is not stupid.

I know kishkish, he’s the least of all. I’m still going to pluck a feather from his butt.

They smile at each other like aged women but their skin reveals a youth.

A foggy tea party full of air, but sometimes the misty air feels good to breathe.

Your feet are not going to touch the ground until someone realizes how precious you are.

He’s emphatic, but also sincere, and terribly literal. Paladin took his companion on a three day journey completely on shoulder. He’d sit her on rocks and they’d both pick flowers that probably spent a long time growing to be the wee things they are, but still they plucked them and found some quiet time watching rusty tin giants cross through foggy mountain hills.

The petite companion from time to time would get flashes of red: seeing her paladin apprentice’s bond to come--it will be turbulent, but in some weird way it will probably ground the Cancerian man. She doesn’t tell him; he already knows and sometimes in the middle of their peaceful breaks she sees the heavy future weigh on his brows.

The Paladin and Willowy girl end their journey on yet another grassy hill. He repeats himself. He hopes maybe it will cement itself into her core and she won’t hurt anymore for careless hands that drop anvils on precious things. They walk on in quiet.

Even if he is not flesh and blood, a friendship is forged.

And in this family, friendships are forever.