“Why should I grant you anything?” The words stung his own tongue as he spit them at Isla. “It is not as if you are alive to watch over me.”
Eleanor laughed, the loud and bubbly sound scratching at that tender scar in his heart. “Oh Finny, there is not a day that passes that we do not miss you and our lives together.”
His eyes burned as he looked straight ahead.
“The river will continue to flow no matter how much you fight against the current,” Isla said in her soft-spoken voice. “The memories we made together were worth every tragic experience we faced in life. Do not mourn us any longer, Finnian, for we are at peace.”
“Let me go.” He lightly squirmed to break free from their embraces, but they held onto him. He brought his hands up to his face, kneading his eyelids with his fingertips. “Let me be alone.”
“Absolutely not.” Eleanor delicately took hold of his hands and lowered them from his face. He opened his eyes and met hers, bright and blue as the Kaimana Sea. “Don’t you get it, Finny? Even though we are a realm apart, we are always with you.”
Finnian hung his head upward, blinking at the sky through his tears. The plum-marigold streaks remained unchanged since his arrival to Caius.
He took a step to remove himself from their hold on him. Otherwise, he wasn’t sure if he ever could. They let him be this time.
Hands gripping his hips, he took a deep breath to recollect himself. He scrubbed a palm over his face discreetly to erase any signs of tears and up into his tousled hair before facing them again.
They both stood side by side, watching him carefully.
He took a moment to truly look at these versions of them. Both young, without the wears and tears of mortal life creasing their skin. It was nice to see them this way again, unriddled by the throes of time. That had been the hardest part, watching their bodies grow old and wither away until none of his potions could heal their illnesses.
His eyes sought for familiars—Isla’s frizzy curls springing in every direction, her long fingernails painted bright yellow; Eleanor’s baggy pants and the pockets spilling with flowers and curative plants.
He stepped up and twirled a finger in one of Isla’s ringlets and playfully tugged.
With glistening eyes, she smiled faintly up at him.
Words were never needed between them. It had been this way since the day they’d met and she’d caught him stealing herbs out of her garden.
“I see you still enjoy tea in the afterlife.” He reached down and plucked a chamomile blossom from Eleanor’s pocket. “You would have enjoyed the twenty-first century. Pants are a thing made for women now, with deep pockets.”
“I no longer need the medicinal effects to help me sleep.” She raised a hand and ruffled his already disheveled hair, grinning happily. “But I still enjoy drinking it, because the taste reminds me of the nights we all shared in those cramped up holes we used to call our homes.”
Memories of them huddled under a flimsy blanket on a dirt floor, steaming, cracked mugs of tea in their laps, Finnianteaching them an incantation to spark a simple fire—they flickered in his mind and his heart constricted.
Pursing his lips to combat the lump forming in his throat, he tucked the flower delicately back into her pocket, and then leveled both of them with a somber look. “Who is Everett?”
They both stared back at him quietly.
“Do you lie to your master in the afterlife?”
Eleanor’s expression scrunched. “Do promise when you leave us, you will learn proper etiquette,” she huffed.
“Eleanor,” he said in all seriousness.
Isla reached for him, giving his hand a tender squeeze. “He was your lover.”
The words felt like a punch to his sternum.
He staggered backwards, pulling his arm from Isla, reeling into the deepest folds of his mind for any recollection of this person they spoke of.
Before Arran, there had been Solaris’s attendant, Emris. A quick-burning series of nightly hook-ups. Nothing more. A few guards here and there. But Arran had been his first love—and his first ghoul.
Arran taught him much about the ghouls and what they needed to sustain consciousness, but turning him into one had been a mistake. Arran stood by his side afterwards, but he wanted nothing romantic to do with him.
After his banishment, it wasn’t long when he released Arran’s soul. The years that followed, he sought pleasure from men in a shape-shifted form to avoid tarnishing his reputation among the Mortal Land. For, at the time, most mortals had been too small-minded to accept two men enjoying each other’s company, among other things. And he needed their favor to grow stronger as a High God, to make his wrongs right.
Throughout the centuries of his life, he’d had many sexual encounters with others, but certainly never anotherlover.
