“Do you see why I keep refusing your advances? I feel like the longer I do, the longer you’ll keep me alive.”
Torin just laughs at that.
So I trail after the strange god in this strange world. Although the sky is still blue and the grass is still green, there’s something peculiar about it all. And all too soon, I discover what it is.
The green grass beyond the area surrounding the palace has withered to nothing and the trees are barren of leaves, their bark cracked and blackened. I turn and look back at the palace where green trees reach for the sky and the grass and flowers flourish. It’s almost like there’s a circle around the palace where the green grass stops and the beautiful world turns into a wasteland.
“What… is going on out here?” I ask hesitantly.
He looks around like he doesn’t notice the drastic change. Out here, the beauty of the palace is washed away as I get a sinking feeling about all of this.
“Torin, why is everything out here dead?”
“It’s not. Come on,” he says, and I question how far I should follow this god I really don’t even know. Is he a malevolent god? Has he consumed every surrounding resource for himself so that his palace could flourish while the world outside fell to ruin? Or am I being dramatic and this is just a seasonal change for them like winter is for us?
He keeps walking and I really have nothing to do but follow him. He seems eager, almost, not at all caring about any of this. I notice there’s a trail through the dead grass that he follows step by step. The trail is only one person wide, so when I walk beside him, the grass cracks and crumbles to dust beneath my shoes.
“You’re going to love this,” he says as he leads me over to a ledge.
“Are you planning on pushing me off?”
“I feel like if I was going to kill you, I could have done it a number of different ways. No pushing needed.”
“That… should make me feel better, but oddly does not.”
Torin just laughs while I reach the ledge and realize that across from us, I can see a breathtaking waterfall. It crashes down into a large pool of water that steadily flows into a small river. The water below sparkles like gems as the fall cascades down.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“So beautiful,” I whisper. “Why does the water glisten like that?”
“The metal used to create my weapons is made with resources found in that river,” he says.
“It’s beautiful.”
“I can take you down there, but it’s a bit of a walk unless you’re willing to jump.”
I glance down at the extremely long drop. “I’m good. Thank you.”
He chuckles and sits down. “I spend a lot of time out here.”
“I bet,” I say as I sit next to him. Kit jumps off my shoulder to explore, and I suddenly feel anxious about the drop before me and scoot back. For most of my life, I never really experienced anxiety. But once I lost my eyesight, it crept into my life and took root deep inside of me—the feeling of not always being in control, of not knowing what was going to happen.
Torin’s hand brushes my shoulder. “I wouldn’t let you fall.”
“Yeah, I just… it seems more daunting when you can’t see it properly.”
“Very true,” he agrees. “There was once a fence that lined this area after a child fell in. Thankfully, he was fine. There was aselkie in the water who pulled him out and made us trade her far too many pretty gems to get him back. But after that, we had a fence built.”
“I don’t blame you,” I say, wondering why it’s no longer here. “Why’d you remove it? So you can push your victims off now?”
He grins. “Sure. It became my primary method of sacrificing people. Good kick in the ass.”
We sit in comfortable silence for a little while before he stands up and Kit returns to me. Offering his hand to me, Torin says, “Let’s go back and be tortured with books a bit longer.”
Heading back toward the palace, we follow the path we took coming here. Torin walks right down the middle of the worn path, and since I don’t like the sound the grass makes when I step on it, I try to put each foot on a space where I previously stepped. But just as he turns at the crossroads to head into the palace, I realize what was off about the waterfall.
There was absolutely no wildlife.
