Chapter 31
Like mother, like Rabbit
Rabbit never thought az was anything like ahz mother until now.
Az remembers the Moon-Eater being possessive and obsessive, silly, temperamental, with long periods of depression and even longer periods of wildness where he moved faster than thought, changed form constantly, and killed and fucked in unpredictable patterns.
Especially in the aftermath of the Renovation War, when he was vaguely courting a few small kings but mostly with the intent of staying out of city politics.
Mother had killed a courtier in the middle of a party, taking her by the neck and doing something that made it look like he liquefied her throat so that blood and bile slithered down her feathered chest, and her head plopped onto the ground with a crack like a geode splitting.
Rabbit had thrown up and left three days later. Not because of the murder—that wasn’t so unusual—but because the forces had slashed through ahz, too, making it feel like ahz head was what cracked, and az couldn’t regain ahz focus or peace.
Az had suffered under the yoke of this noise ahz whole life.
Designers and physicians had diagnosed ahz.
The physicians said there was nothing wrong with Rabbit’s body, so it must be something wrong with ahz mind or spirit, which the Moon-Eater did not appreciate hearing.
The designer said the mysterious reaction was a result of ahz chimeric nature: neither human nor fairy, and though Rabbit functioned perfectly well in every other aspect of biology, ahz discomfort with the interplay of forces in the crater city was an unforeseen, unchangeable part of ahz.
If az couldn’t change it, Rabbit decided to find a quieter home. Before ahz mother decided to toss him in the Chimera festival bonfires.
Rabbit took little with ahz, but az bade farewell to the Moon-Eater before leaving.
The Moon-Eater, covered in his own blood for reasons Rabbit declined to explore, acted like he couldn’t understand Rabbit’s words. “You’re a baby,” he said. “You can’t leave.”
“I’m fifteen.”
“I’m centuries older than that, and I made you.
” He snapped a finger and the blood dissipated into the air, leaving the Moon-Eater clean in loose robes, his dark hair falling around his face, and the red in his irises melting throughout his eyes until there remained no white, no pupil.
“I worked so hard to make you. Upset a lot of people. Engaged in elaborate cover-ups, some still ongoing! And you want to leave me.”
Rabbit watched him, ahz pulse throbbing in ahz left temple. They stood in silence just outside the Moon-Eater’s library. “It hurts me to be here, Mother,” Rabbit finally said.
Ahz mother sucked in a hiss through too many teeth. The Moon-Eater’s eyes rippled with starbursts, and for a singular moment Rabbit was absolutely certain az was about to die. The air sharpened and Rabbit considered fleeing. But then the moment shattered.
The Moon-Eater turned away, slumped against the wall.
“Little Rabbit,” he said in their shared language.
It sounded different than mai meri, not as cute somehow, but more blunt, basic.
A core of a name. Rabbit shook ahz head, shaking away the disorienting thoughts that often plagued ahz when the noise was most keen.
“If you meet another fairy called Never, tell it to come home,” Mother said, facing the wall.
Rabbit considered thanking him for not tearing ahz into nothing.
Instead az slipped ahz arms around ahz mother, pressing ahz forehead against his neck.
Rabbit squeezed, and the Moon-Eater held ahz arms, hugging gently and inexorably.
They could stand there forever, unmoving and unmoved, except Rabbit’s head would throb itself into pieces.
The Moon-Eater dug his fingers into the cords of muscle on Rabbit’s forearms, bruising.
“I love you, Mother,” Rabbit whispered, and the Moon-Eater let go.
So Rabbit has always loved the Moon-Eater, but never thought to be anything like him.
The Moon-Eater used to find obsessions: people or ideas, the same moment every day, counting the number of stars in the sky, and everyone shrugged, waited for him to move on.
Rabbit considered ahzself to be too unformed for obsessions, even after eight years away from most civilization.
Whatever az’d grown into was wild, a bit ethereal, and very, very uninterested in humans or relationships or being touched very much.
Except now, now az is obsessed with Lyric Aharté. Az can’t get enough. Not of touching, looking, listening, hunting for him, feeding him, listening to him groan when he has to get out of a rare hot bath. Sometimes it feels like Rabbit is Lyric, that’s how attuned az is to him.
Az wonders if it’s an instinct az inherited from ahz mother, wonders it so urgently az asks Turo, even knowing how Turo likes to answer questions.
“Numena,” Turo says, and it’s the first time Rabbit has heard the word, “do not love differently than other people.”
And that’s how Rabbit learns az’s in love with Lyric Aharté, and will do anything he asks if it makes him happy.
So Rabbit learns design. Az learns to make anchors and hum with different forces.
Rabbit learns fast, and once they set simple anchors in the bedroom, the design pulls tight the already well-balanced forces there.
Setka says the effect rings in her ears uncomfortably, but Lyric’s smile is glorious.
Too bad they don’t have privacy because Rabbit wants to eat that smile off his face, though az knows better than to say such a thing aloud.
(Another way az’s different from ahz mother, who never holds back delicious thoughts.)
As soon as the wind and sun release them from the house, Rabbit and Lyric hike around the valley several times, taking food and shelter, wrapping their hands and feet against ice.
They mark cardinal directions exactly, using the stars—which Lyric can read, and though he murmurs to himself about changing patterns over the centuries, he closes his eyes and balances his inner design and just starts walking in a pattern Rabbit doesn’t recognize but immediately follows.
Lyric asks where the sun rises on either solstice, if Rabbit knows, and az does!
Rabbit takes a reward from Lyric for this knowledge.
Az melts the snow over soft layers of evergreen needles, az warms the air with a few concentrated bursts of the heat always under ahz skin, and az pushes Lyric down and sucks on his cock and marks up the soft hollow of his groin until Lyric is bucking and scattering pine needles in flailing hands.
Rabbit loves swallowing up the seed Lyric releases, loves the feeling of it, and az doesn’t stop, lost in the scent of sweat and musty winter mud, the gentle sour-sweet flavor and texture of the very soft skin against ahz jaw and cheek, until Lyric is pushing at ahz, lungs full of breathy laughter and begging.
Rabbit kneels back, pleased, to see Lyric covering his face with his hands as he rolls to the side, curling his legs up protectively. A shiver travels up and down his whole body, and Rabbit very much likes that az doesn’t know if it’s pleasure or just the cold.
Az waits, listening to the wind in the icy trees, the cadence of birds in the distance.
Jays, az thinks, barking at each other. Az watches Lyric gather himself.
His sun-and-blood eyes glimmer with tears as he smiles ruefully at Rabbit and tucks himself away from the cold.
“Get over here,” Lyric murmurs, reaching.
Rabbit shuffles on ahz knees, between Lyric’s legs, as Lyric holds on to ahz waist and pushes up for a kiss.
It’s long and slow—sloppy, Lyric called it before—but also said he likes it.
Rabbit holds Lyric’s head, fingers under the big knit hood so az can feel the play of muscles under Lyric’s scalp and jaw and neck.
They kiss, and Lyric says, “I want you inside me, too.”
Rabbit puts ahz tongue farther into Lyric’s mouth and feels the laughter rattle through him even as Lyric opens his mouth as wide as it will go.
Rabbit licks and explores and definitely feels sloppy.
But az also feels exquisitely aroused. Lyric reaches for ahz cock, casually pushing aside jacket and wool tunic and finding ties to dig under ahz trousers.
His fingers are so cold, but it’s good. Lyric says, “Not just like this, but in me, ah—”
Leaning back to make eye contact, Rabbit hums inquiry and Lyric presses his mouth in a line. Rabbit waits. Lyric tries again. “In me—my… ass.”
Rabbit thinks of that ass, the hard muscles, the way Lyric’s naked body curves under ahz, and az shifts in surprise at the surge of lust tearing through ahz, nearly making ahz come just from thinking about it.
Az lowers very wide eyes down Lyric’s body and grasps at Lyric’s waist, flexing to flip Lyric over right now and—
“No,” Lyric laughs, holding Rabbit’s wrists in place, tensing his own body to keep them still. “We can’t just do it right here, just like that.” He’s smiling and Rabbit sinks down onto ahz heels again.