CALLIOPE
When I wake, I reach for Erebus before I open my eyes.
My hand finds cold sheets.
For one terrible second, I think he’s gone.
Then something warm touches my face.
Sunlight.
I open my eyes.
The room is flooded with it.
Not the weak gray imitation that sometimes slips through Blackthorn’s fog, but full, unapologetic morning, pouring through the windows and painting everything gold.
I have to squint against it. After seven days of condensed night, blackout curtains stapled to the horizon and every hour measured by the blue glow of clocks, the sun looks almost violent.
Yellow is not supposed to be this yellow.
The sky is not supposed to be this loud.
I sit up and stare.
He did it.
Erebus kept his promise.
Outside, every single atom of Blackthorn Bay is losing its mind.
In the old fisherman’s flats, my building flexes and stretches awake, a hundred windows yawning open.
Some guy in the unit below yodels a string of Spanish so happy it bounces up three floors and through my barely-there walls.
Kids shriek and clatter along the fire escape, their faces lit with the greedy certainty that this hour is an extra, a freebie, a whole bonus package of day.
I climb out of bed and go to the window.
The streets are packed.
Humans and human-adjacent entities spill from houses and apartment buildings in pajamas, bathrobes, slippers, and whatever else they happened to be wearing when the universe restarted.
People hug strangers. Someone is ringing a cowbell.
A goblin in boxer shorts stands in the middle of the intersection with both arms lifted toward the sky.
For seven days, everyone wanted morning.
Now that we have it, nobody seems quite sure what to do with it.
Except Petra.
Because, of course, there is sunrise yoga.
I take a shower and let it scald me back into my own skin. I try not to think too hard about Erebus, but he’s molecular by now, woven into my synapses and joints. His absence should worry me.
Instead, I understand it.
He said he would let morning come.
He did.
Now it’s my turn.
Downstairs, the hallway is a tidal surge of neighbors in pajamas, cats with bedhead and dogs dressed in sweaters. On the stoop, a girl is rolling a cigarette with surgical precision. When she sees me, she offers a fist bump.
“Happy New Year, babe.”
She’s only off by about three months.
At the intersection, Tibor the hotdog man is doing brisk business. I don’t know where he gets his supply—no one has ever seen a delivery truck—but Tibor has hotdogs and soda at all hours, as though his cart is a dimensional portal directly connected to a municipal baseball stadium in 1997.
He hands me a hotdog wrapped in foil.
“Victory Wiener. Free of charge. For the lady who brought back the sun.”
“I didn’t bring back the sun.”
“You know the guy.”
Apparently, proximity counts.
I accept the sausage of destiny with the grave reverence it deserves.
By the time I reach the bay, the yoga crowd is already at full capacity.
No one wants to miss this.
Not after last week.
Petra is, to no one’s surprise, front and center. She is dressed in outrageously neon Lycra, blind to the concept of shame, with a butterfly bandage over one eyebrow and her left knee wrapped in enough compression tape to stabilize a midsized bridge.
Beside her, Mrs. Garcia is herding three goats who, rumor has it, now attend yoga regularly as part of their recovery.
Mrs. Garcia herself appears completely unharmed.
Naturally.
I snake through the crowd as Petra leads everyone into Sun Salutations, despite the fact that she can only bend one knee and every third movement produces an audible geological complaint.
The crowd moves together beneath the morning sky.
No moon.
No stars.
No eternal darkness.
Just sunlight.
I find Petra during Warrior Two.
“You’re crying.”
She glares at me.
“No, I’m not. It’s sweat.”
“Your sweat is coming out of your tear ducts?”
“Shut up, Calliope.”
She holds the pose, trembling slightly, refusing to acknowledge the tear rolling down her cheek.
Around us, the entire town seems to breathe at once.
People tilt their faces toward the sun. A few openly cry. Even the goats look confused by it.
On impulse, I drop into a lunge beside Petra.
She looks at me.
I look at her.
Then she sticks out her tongue.
I laugh.
Somewhere behind us, a kid yells, “I CAN’T FEEL MY FACE!”
Someone’s grandmother answers, “That’s enlightenment, honey.”
By the time the session ends, the applause is riotous.
Someone starts a “goat, goat, goat” chant, which the goats apparently interpret as their cue to revolt. Two chew through their leashes and make a break for the playground, scattering small children and at least two dads.
Mrs. Garcia takes off after them.
Petra watches.
“I’m not helping.”
“You probably shouldn’t.”
“I’ve done enough.”
“You really have.”
She turns her face back toward the sun.
For once, I let her have the last word.
By the time I leave the bay, my cheeks hurt from smiling.
Erebus is nowhere I can see.
I don't look for him.
Not yet.
At Ghoulish Grinds, I find a sticky note on the espresso machine written in my boss’s ugly, aggressive cursive.
YOU ARE NOW ASSISTANT MANAGER, WHICH MEANS YOU CAN WEAR ALL THE HATS. DON’T LET THE GOATS IN. LOVE, MANAGEMENT.
I stare at it.
Apparently, surviving a cosmic catastrophe qualifies me for middle management.
I’m going to demand a raise.
The day passes in a flood of customers desperate for something sweet, something hot, something that proves they’re alive. The line stretches to the door.
Every conversation is about the sun.
“I thought night was going to eat us.”
“My cat slept for seventy-two hours.”
“Did you see the moon? It looked like it wanted to die.”
By noon, the pastry case is down to a single ancestral lemon bar. I hide it in the refrigerator for Petra on the logic that she needs all the citrus she can get.
Hours pass.
Erebus doesn't call.
He doesn't text.
He doesn't appear outside the window.
At first, I tell myself I'm too busy to notice.
By four, I have checked my phone eleven times.
Nothing.
I should be annoyed.
Instead, standing behind the counter with the late-afternoon sun streaming through the windows, I suddenly understand.
He's waiting.
Not because he's angry.
Not because he's gone.
Because he promised to trust me.
For the first time since we met, Erebus has no idea what I'm going to do next.
I smile.
Then I make an Americano.
Extra hot.
I set it at his usual table.
Beside it, I put a chocolate scone.
At quarter to six, Ghoulish Grinds is almost empty.
The windows are streaked orange, the whole town lit from beneath by the setting sun. People linger on sidewalks and hesitate in doorways, reluctant to let the day go. I understand the feeling.
We've spent a week begging for morning.
Now nobody wants to surrender it.
But that's the deal.
Day gets its turn.
So does Night.
I wipe the counter.
Outside, the last edge of the sun slips beneath the horizon.
Blackthorn Bay darkens.
Streetlights blink on.
The moon rises exactly when it should.
And for the first time since I met Erebus, I understand what he meant when he said the beauty of Night is that it ends.
Because ending means it can come back.
The bell over the door jingles.
I look up.
Erebus stands in the doorway.
He looks exactly as he did the first night he walked into Ghoulish Grinds—dark coat, impossible eyes, expression carefully composed.
Except now I know him.
And he looks terrified.
“You’re late,” I say.
His brow furrows.
“I am precisely on time.”
“I know. I wanted to see if you’d argue.”
He closes the door behind him.
His gaze finds the coffee waiting at his table.
Then the scone.
Then me.
“You came back,” he says.
My heart squeezes.
“I told you I would.”
He crosses the café slowly, as though any sudden movement might break whatever spell has allowed him to find me here.
“I was not certain you would still want me.”
“I know.”
“I behaved very badly.”
“That is an impressive understatement.”
“I endangered the natural order.”
“You also nearly drowned Petra.”
“She cannot drown.”
“Erebus.”
“I know. Not helpful.”
I smile.
He stops in front of me.
His hands remain at his sides.
He doesn't reach.
Doesn't assume.
Doesn't take.
So I do.
I step into his space and slide my arms around his neck.
His breath leaves him.
“Get used to me,” I say.
Then I kiss him.
For a heartbeat, he doesn't move.
Then his arms close around me.
Not to hold me there.
Just to hold me.
When I pull away, his forehead settles against mine.
“Tomorrow,” he says quietly, “you will leave again.”
“Probably. I have errands.”
His mouth almost smiles.
“And tomorrow night?”
“I'll come back.”
“You cannot promise that forever.”
There it is.
The fear that will probably always live somewhere inside him.
I touch his cheek.
“No. I can't.”
His eyes close.
“But I can promise to keep choosing you for as long as I get to choose anything.”
He opens them again.
For Erebus, eternity has always been a certainty.
Maybe loving me means learning to live without one.
I kiss him once more.
Outside, Blackthorn Bay settles beneath an ordinary night. Tomorrow morning, Erebus will let me go.
Tomorrow night, I'll come back.
Maybe that's all love ever really asks of us.
Not forever.
Just the courage to trust in tomorrow.