67-Zach
The memories unfold like a stage curtain being yanked back again and again.
Endymion stands center, shifting between forms. Scenes flicker before me; always endings. Someone dying. Him waiting. Lifetimes collapsing into one another like pages turning too fast.
In every version, he’s left behind, wandering as he clings to the remnants of a cycle he doesn’t know how to break. Wanting to leave, but unable to fathom existence without it.
The next image slows, and like the inside of a sleeping creature, a cavern yawns open, vast and hollow-ribbed.
Arching high, the roof glints with mineral veins that catch what little light there is.
The walls curve inward, layered in sediment, each striation a record of centuries pressed into silence.
A prickle of dread crawls up my spine.
Under my boots, the ground is smooth in some places and jagged in others. Stalagmites rise from the ground like crooked teeth. Stalactites hang long and narrow, dripping steadily, each one echoing through the cavern.
A pale shimmer emerges from the back of the cave’s throat, growing more blinding the closer it gets. Like moonrise caught in human form, the figure steps forward, revealing the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Slender and long-limbed, she’s tall but not towering.
The presence strokes me with a foreign reminiscence.
Her hair moves like water rippling across a lake at midnight, alternating between silver and blonde as she turns her head. It drifts around her as though defying the laws of gravity. Her skin is a paper-white, but the luminescence ignites her from within, giving her radiance rather than pallor.
“If I am to die, then he is to live,” she declares to the cave, her desperate shout filled with conviction that rattles off the walls like aftershocks.
“No,” a voice booms from the cavern.
It provokes the darkness; a shape rising from the shadows.
Endymion steps forward slowly, as if the cave is reluctant to release him.
His indigo chiton is worn thin in places, the hem frayed.
Gold feather pins hold the garment together at his right shoulder, tarnished but regal, marking him as someone who once mattered.
“Not like this.” There’s rage in his abyssal glare, simmering just under the surface like a volcano. “I shall not be a tool for your suffering. I do not want to be yours in a dream or for a mere blink of countless mortal existences, but here. As an equal.”
His voice cracks, and the sound vibrates through me.
“In this realm, you shall never be my equal.” There’s a quiet strength about her steeled posture that reminds me of dancers; balance, breath, and control. “Somewhere in the shadows, the part of me that believes I am still worthy of love weeps, knowing what must come next for your enlightenment.”
Endymion gulps in air like he’s been running. He holds an object, a shard of bone, maybe. It trembles between his fingers, knuckles as white as the weapon itself. A muscle jumps in his clenched jaw. He’s a contradiction; young in form, but ancient in spirit.
Her clothes move before she does. Layers of gauzy, silk-linen fabric catch her strides, drifting around her like low clouds.
“Stop!” Endymion catches the advance, his body going rigid. “Please!”
He steps back, palms raised, as if distance can undo her decision. His hesitation is visceral, bones and veins of his hand protruding from his tawny skin as he clamps the weapon in a death grip.
“There is no other way,” she whispers, moving across the uneven ground in slow, deliberate steps, shoulders shaking. “You must see that you can live without me, for my love is with you always.”
Silver tears slip down her cheeks as though she’s already mourning. Endymion shakes his head, brunette waves falling across his blown pupils.
“Please,” he begs, stepping back until his heel hits a jagged outcrop of rock.
Her nimble fingers fist. Breath stuttering, she gathers herself like a wave about to break.
Her resolve solidifies, terrible and luminous.
She swipes her arm in a desperate, reckless motion, a silver, gem-pleated dagger in her left fist. Endymion flinches, his free hand reaching out as if he might stop her.
The dagger’s tip plunges into her sternum, staining the tear-blue dress wet crimson.
She stumbles, but Endymion catches her before she hits the cavern floor. With her weight in his arms, he drops to his knees. He pulls her close, one hand trembling as he brushes her hair back from her face.
She’s lovely in the way that a breaking dawn is beautiful, soft edges and an impossible sea of light. Freckles scatter across her nose and cheeks, faint as dusted gold. They remind me of Kit. The same quiet bravery sets her thin lips.
Endymion’s fingers come away streaked in scarlet, the shade of wounds he’s carried for lifetimes.
He’s losing her to an unfinished ending that has haunted him for centuries.
He bows his head over her, tears falling into her hair.
The two of them unravel in front of me—a god and a mortal, bound by a story that will never end gently. Because life ends. Always.
My chest aches with a grief that isn’t mine.
“I wish we had never met,” Endymion whispers. “That I had left you the way that you were. Without these cursed memories, you would live peacefully in Olympus. Our love brings nothing. Again and again, we lose one another in death. There is no point to the continual cycle.”
“That is where you are wrong, my youth.” Her eyes are glimmering icicles as she stares up at him. “I have known life before you. But now I see, you have always been the energy that drew me to this earth, night after night. What is eternity without purpose? You are my purpose.”
With a small, shallow intake, she says, “I love you.”
Going slack in his arms, her lids flutter shut. She’s dissolving, guttering like a candle when the wick burns too low. Her outline softens, hair lifting as if caught in a breeze.
Endymion bends over her, body swelling with a jagged sob that fills the cave. He’s a man who has paid for love with the price of grief, never learning how to save himself from its inevitability.
“Please,” he whispers, voice breaking as he cups her cheek. “Do not leave me again.”
The cavern flickers, the shadows quivering as though they mourn with him. He holds her tighter, anchoring her here by sheer will. Light gathers beneath her skin.
Cold silver pours out of her in gentle waves, illuminating the cavern. It intensifies so much I have to shield my sight. Endymion clings to her, shaking, trying to hold her together with his bare hands, but she’s already more light than flesh.
It bursts outward in a sudden, blinding flare—a silent detonation that shoots through the cave like a comet. It streaks past me, leaving a trail of shimmering dust in its wake.
The silver fades, air settling as the cave dims.
Endymion kneels; his arms wrapped around empty space. His shoulders roll inward, his body collapsing on itself like a fruit that’s rotting from the inside. He bows his head, tears falling into his empty hands.
A grief too old for language escapes him as he ripples out of focus. I’m floating through an endless tunnel of shimmering dreams. Each one is a thread of possibility; life.
A story.
I reach for the scene before me, yanked by a force of longing. A hooded figure sits at a keyboard, large hands moving gently over the ivory.
“I can give you endless time with her in the fields of elation. All you must do is tell my story. Tell our story,” Endymion says with a smile, leering over the man’s shoulder.
Pulling back his hood, the slender man peers up.
Kit twists into a whirlpool of shadow and starlight, spinning until he’s nothing but a funnel of draining color. The memory fractures, splintering into light. It’s grotesque, like watching a person get flushed out of existence.
The ground pulses, then swells upward, pushing through my feet. Mustard-yellow coils form as it gathers shape, and a new image rises from the depths.
Endymion and I stand beneath the willow in a place that’s always felt like home. Its long branches drift around us, trailing through the air like threads of a beaded curtain. The grass moves in slow waves, and the horizon stretches out in a gilded haze.
“Why did you show me that?” I ask, drying my cheeks with the back of my hand.
He tilts his head, studying me with a hollow glower that’s worn to the sockets. “So that you may understand your fate.”
“I’ve never believed in fate.” The meadow hums around us, the willow’s branches swaying as if reacting to my declaration. “Why would I want to believe I’ve lived through so much suffering, only to be forced to continue? That’s cruel.”
“Life is a blanket.” Endymion steps closer, his chiton brushing the grass. He looks young, but the load he carries is older than the soil at our feet. “We focus on the heavy weight of suffering, forgetting that moments of joy are the stitched threads holding it all together.”
The analogy lands roughly, too tender.
Endymion reaches for a low-hanging branch, plucking a piece of browning fruit at its stem. A chill runs through me as he takes a bite of the bruised, spotted skin, its golden shine dulled to a piss-yellow.
“You have already experienced the brink of death thrice and came back. When you were trampled, your injuries were to be much graver. Zachary, alongside twelve other souls, you should have perished in that crowd.” His expression crinkles into something like sorrow, drifting his gaze toward the horizon.
“Yet my vessel wielded unbridled power, bending the fabric of reality for countless people because he could not bear to lose you.”
He steps close enough for me to smell the sour tang of the rotted apple on his exhale.
“But you see, it is fate to be lost, then found. To begin in order to end. Fate is a simple tapestry. I told you to stay away because I knew you would do the precise opposite. That is who you are. What I did not expect,” he says through grit teeth, “was this.”