I sit by the waterfall alone, gazing at the water and saying goodbye to Nawie. I can’t even drink anymore, because we’re supposed to go tomorrow, and I must be sober.
So when we fail, no one will blame it on my drunkenness.
“Try to sleep,”she says, the cunty little tease. She hasn’t fucked me even though she promised.
“Come here. Let me breathe into you, make you more powerful. Maybe that will save us.”
She is silent, and I throw diamonds in the water, taking perverted pleasure in sinking this glorious, glittering wealth where no one will find it.
They will destroy Nawie. All of it. Every last one of my creations will be spoiled, and I will be nothing.
“Where are you?”
I sit up, my heart beating with painful hope. I should know better, because she’ll just tease me again, and nothing will comeof it. And yet, I am beyond lost, and so I’ll take whatever she gives me.
“By the waterfall.”
Flames come to life behind me, and Jaga steps through. I stare, mesmerized. She wears a black dress with red trimmings, long-sleeved and made of soft fabric that clings to her skin. Her feet are bare, her hair braided.
“Is this what you wear to bed?” I ask, staring shamelessly. “I’m going to move in with Rada. Fuck.”
She heaves a long-suffering sigh and sits by my side in the grass. We look at the waterfall splashing into the river, and it’s warm here, like on early summer nights right after Kupala. A lone bird trills somewhere in the branches, a soul.
“Can you imagine what they must feel?” I ask, my voice hoarse from all the screams I haven’t let out. “Trapped forever. Sentient, feeling, magical beings born of my breath and magic, and they can never come home. Dead bodies will decay around them, and they will still be trapped. I don’t think they will find sleep. In Nawie, souls are able to lay to rest, but that’s because they’ve recovered from the trauma of death. Those trapped cannot. They will exist forever, awake, afraid, in torment.”
“I think we both can imagine how they feel,” Jaga says, and her voice is flat, her hands tight as they grip cool grass, tearing it out with clumps of wet earth clinging to the roots. “Like being buried alive, isn’t it? With no escape. An eternity of suffering.”
I release my breath into the sky and lie back, looking at the stars and willing them to imprint on my mind, so that when Perun chains me again, I’ll at least see them when I close my eyes and weep.
“That’s why you must stop this,” she whispers. “Weles, you didn’t make us for eternal suffering. You made us to live, to play, to cry and love, and then to come home. To you.”
I close my eyes and heave a shaky breath. “He’ll take everything I’ve ever loved,” I confess, and I hope she’s not looking at me, or she’ll see the tears flowing down my temples. “He’s already taken so much. My beautiful people, my city, all my shrines. He will take you, too. And I will forever have nothing.”
When her lips press to my wet temple, I know she sees them, but I don’t mind it as much. Jaga licks off my tears and kisses the corner of my eye, and I don’t dare breathe or move. This is so precious. She was never so sweet like this.
“You said you’d breathe into me,” she whispers, straddling me. “Do it now.”
“Let me see it first.”
When a red glow penetrates through my eyelids, I open my eyes and behold her broken glory. Her soul spreads out above her like a pair of misshapen, torn up butterfly wings, and I sigh in awe. Her lips press to mine, and I breathe into her with my eyes open, watching her soul undulate and pulse with magical life as she takes in what I give her.
She groans when my breath pours down her throat. I grip her braid, winding it around my fist like a leash, and give her more, watching as the red, glowing tendrils elongate, stretching into the night like seeking tentacles. Her hips snap ungracefully, and she braces one hand on my chest, a low, reedy sound pouring from her throat and into my mouth. I exhale again, and she moans.
I try to force another breath into her, but she turns her face, and I breathe onto her cheek while she shakes, gulping in the night air.
“Too much?” I ask, disappointed. Maybe she would fuck me if I gave her more, but she doesn’t want it.
“It’s too… It’s like I’m raw, endless, exposed. I need time. I have to get used to it.”
I sigh with pleasure, putting my hands on her round hips, my thumbs resting on her hard hipbones. This is such a satisfying fit. It’s as if I’d made her just for me, even though she was born and raised without my knowledge or input.
“So I can’t just pump you full and aim you at Perun,” I murmur, caressing her curves through the soft fabric. “Pity.”
She straightens, and I let her thick braid pass through my loose fingers, letting go. Jaga looks down, her face in shadow, framed by the stars.
“This will not mean anything.”
Before I can ask what she’s talking about, her lips are on mine, soft and gentle. I sigh into her mouth, and she shivers, pinching my ear. A warning. So I try to breathe through my nose, kissing her back like my life depends on it, because it does.
