5. Liar-Sage
liar-sage
Icarve the heading deep into the stone.
One hundred days of being your shade. One hundred days of this incessant tug in my chest.
The heat of summer has finally surrendered. The wind no longer carries the scent of scorched earth and pollen. It smells like crisp air and the sweetness of falling leaves.
The peonies have transitioned from an orange flame to a deep, metallic bronze.
They stand like little soldiers around the plinth, their petals crisping at the edges.
My wings are following their lead. The vibrant green membranes have begun to fade into a deep, earthy gold.
The veins of light within are pulsing a bit slower.
I look more like a fall oak than a living male now.
Sage is turning into a tree, Droot chirps, shivering as he huddles in the crook of my neck. Everything is going to sleep, Sage. Does The Sun sleep in the cold, too?
“She doesn’t feel the cold, Droot,” I whisper, draping my wings a little closer to the crystal. “I’m the one who feels it for her.”
Day 109:
Droot has spent the last three days frantically gathering treasures for the transition. He’s currently trying to wedge a particularly bright red maple leaf into the crack of the glass lid.
Fort The Sun, he chirps, his little chest heaving. So she doesn’t forget what the fire looks like while we’re in the hush.
I reach down and carefully help him secure the leaf.
“She won’t forget, Droot,” I say. “She is The Sun, remember?”
Day 117:
I wake up to find the ground littered with emerald dust. My wings are shedding their summer skin. The vibrant green flakes drift down to mix with the peony petals.
It’s strange to see pieces of yourself dying, only to realize it’s the only way to grow.
I spend the day carving a small trench around the plinth to channel the autumn rains away from the base. Droot helped me by moving pebbles, which mostly meant he carried them two inches to the left and dropped them with a proud chirp.
Sage is losing his leaves! he squeaks, his eyes wide. Will Sage be naked for The Sun?
“It’s called a molt, Droot,” I grumble, though I can’t help but smile at his concern. “I’m just changing my clothes.”
Day 125:
Lead has entered my veins. Or at least that’s what it feels like.
It started in my roots. As the maples turn to crimson and the last of the peonies curl into their bronze sleep, the earth begins to pull at me.
It’s a slow, steady thrum, whispering that it’s time to close my eyes and let the moss cover my head.
My eyelids feel weighted with river stones. I slump against the plinth, my wings drooping until they sag in the dry leaves.
Boop.
A cold, damp nose slams into the tip of mine.
I jerk awake and find Droot standing on my collarbone, his long ears pinned back in a look of sheer determination.
No sleep-time, Sage! he chirps, his voice a frantic spark in my mind. The Sun is still here! The Sun needs the eyes!
“I’m… I’m awake, Droot,” I rasp, rubbing my face with a hand that feels increasingly like bark.
Liar-Sage, he huffs. My eyelids threaten to fall again, so he hops onto the bridge of my nose and begins a tiny tap-dance. If Sage closes eyes. Droot will nibble the ears. Very hard. Much pain.
I let out a dry, rattling chuckle and reach up to steady him. “You wouldn’t dare.”
He responds by giving my left ear a sharp, warning nip.
The sting is exactly what I need.
I straighten my spine, forcing my wings to unfurl and shake off the frost. I glance down at Eden. In the dim, copper light of the autumn evening, she looks so warm and content.
Day 136: The earth still wants me back. It whispers of silence and the cool comfort of the dark, but I refuse to listen.
I am the only one who whispers to you about the way your copper hair catches the autumn light. If I sleep, the world goes dark for you, too. So sleeping is not an option.
Droot is a very effective alarm clock, and my ears will likely be tattered by spring, but at least I will be awake to see it.
“í’neeth,” I whisper to the glass. “I am yours.”
Day 139:
The sky is full of V-shapes today. The geese are honking their way south, fleeing the cold.
The grove feels emptier now that the songbirds have gone quiet.
I tell Eden about the great migration and how the birds follow the stars like a map etched in their blood while I carve a tiny bird into the stone next to her name. It looks more like a lopsided potato, but Droot seems to think it’s a masterpiece.
I wonder if I have a map in my blood.
I wonder if that’s what led me here.
Day 152: The peonies are officially skeletons now. The last of their petals have fallen, forming a bronze carpet around your box that crunches like broken glass under my feet.
I spent the afternoon gathering the uncrushed blooms, pressing them into the mud around the base of the crystal.
If they can’t be flowers anymore, they can be insulation.
Droot has started hibernating for twenty hours a day. He’s built a nest out of my wing-molt and dry moss in the crook of my elbow. Every now and then, he’ll twitch in his sleep and chirp a single word: Warm.
I am the only thing in this meadow that isn’t allowed to sleep.
Day 165:
The relentless tug in my chest is the only thing keeping my heart beating. It feels like a hot string of light stretched between my ribs and yours.
The wind is howling so loudly tonight, it sounds like the grave is screaming for me to come home. I ignore it and tell you about the first time I saw a sunrise through the willow trees.
Your hair is the only sunrise I care about now.
Day 188:
The first true cold has arrived. The water in the little stone basin Droot drinks from has turned into a solid block of ice.
When I lean against the glass, it’s the only place I can feel my blood moving. You are keeping me alive as much as I am guarding you.
Day 196:
The air has become a weapon, and I am tired of bleeding.
I can feel the life in the willow trees retreating deep into their hearts, fleeing from the frost turning the ground to rock.
If I don’t do something, the winter will become a grave for us all.
I stand at the foot of the plinth and close my eyes, reaching past the sluggish sleep in my veins to the warmth of her. I pull on it, commanding the earth to remember the heat of high summer.
Nothing happens.
I try again, and again, until I have no strength left.
But then—
The roots of the willow trees slowly begin to move, weaving together, layer by layer, until they form a thick, rib-like dome over the entire clearing. I lace the gaps with thick, velvety vines.
It’s not a palace, but it is a sanctuary.
Sage made a nest! Droot chirps, his little body vibrating with joy as he does a lap around the new perimeter. Big nest for The Sun!
I collapse from exhaustion and reach out a trembling hand to clear a stray bit of moss from the glass near her hand.
And the world stops turning.
Beneath the crystal, her index finger gives a microscopic twitch—barely a flicker. The way a butterfly’s wing might brush against a window.
“Eden?” I whisper, my voice cracking.
She doesn’t wake.
But the twitch was enough. It was the first word in a conversation that has been one-sided for nearly two hundred days.
I will never sleep again.
You moved.