“Okay. Can we go back to your world now and eat?”
“We sure can,” I say, hurrying toward the door that leads out of the library. “Should we put things back first?”
“Nah, I’m starving.”
“I know you mentioned having to eat more now that you’re weaker, but could not eating hurt you?”
“No, I’ve gone weeks and even a month at one point with no food. And while it was extremely uncomfortable, it didn’t kill me. Now let’s go.” But before Torin heads over to the Door to go back to my world, he hesitates by the one next to the garden. “I’m just going to grab something. I’ll be fast.”
“Take your time,” I say, well aware he’s going to say goodbye to Quill.
I wander the hall a bit, not really wanting to go just yet. I don’t want to stay here forever, of course, but I feel like since this affliction hit me, it’s the first time I’ve just… been at peace. Though maybe it’s not this place but the very distracting god who has done that.
Torin trots down the hallway to catch up with me. “What are we going to eat? Pizza? Burritos?”
“Nah, somewhere else.”
“Okay, I’m listening.”
“It’s a secret.”
“I’m excited,” he says, patting himself down like he’s checking that he has everything—making me assume he’s already acquired his scythes that he seems to magic up wheneverhe needs them—before leading me off to the doorway. As soon as we near the marble wall, the bricks that make up the wall glow and shift before the Door appears.
“Can we come back here again? I want to see more of your world.”
“Of course. I will do anything you’d like.”
“Not sure why,” I say as he takes my hand and drags me through the Door and back into the field we’d departed from days ago.
“This place seems so boring now,” I comment.
“We can call my place the love nest, if you’d like. We can go there and make passionate love any time you want,” he says with a wink.
I raise an eyebrow, confident that this man is going to break me and I’m going to be sex-hungry enough to enjoy it.
“Nope.”
Torin grins at me. “How sure are you on that?”
“Very.” Not very.
“How disappointing,” he mutters as I pull out my phone and see that it’s dead. “Are you going to use your magic box that you like to stare at and talk to very strangely?”
“Nope.”
“Why?”
“Because I used exactly zero of my brain cells to think about turning it off, so it’s very much dead.”
“I’m very sorry for your loss. I know you liked staring at it and then sometimes giggling… which did creep me out a little,” he says as he pulls out a knife and commences digging.
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t have a shovel, so this will have to do,” he informs me. “Oh shit… do your people do fire pyres? I’ve always wanted to try that.”
“I’m not burying it!”
“You said it was dead.”
