PROSE

I refuse to believe all my efforts have been for nothing. I refuse, I refuse, I refuse. 

My feet pound against smooth stone as I sprint across the remains of one of the city’s elevated walkways. Air scrapes against my lungs like sand; it tastes like salt and smoke. 

A bolt of white lightning zips across my peripheral. Crap! I barely have a second to process the thought before it slams into my chest like a comet. For a brief moment my world spins and I get a glimpse of the sky – blue, gray, and orange – before my back hits the walkway.

Any air that might have been left in my chest feels like it’s gotten sucked out of me. I violently blink to get my eyes to refocus, but even so I already know who I’m going to see.

The wrath of the storm incarnate. She stands over me, lightning sparking off her body erratically. That’s how I know she’s especially riled up. Her short hair is tied into double braids. She looks at me with an air of disappointment or the self-satisfaction of a guard who’s just caught a criminal. But beneath that feigned, and I know it’s feigned, expression there’s the real emotion; a seething anger that I’ve come to expect. 

“Even now you’re still trying to run away?!” she asks incredulously. Her foot digs down further where it’s planted on my chest, right beneath my collarbone.

“Lera!” I rasp. “Get off of me.” Uncomfortable heat spreads from the contact throughout my body.

My sister snarls, eyes narrowing to slits. They glow like two suns. It’s as if her own light could replace our own sun that’s currently hidden by the eclipse. 

She sweeps her arm out to the coastline. “Look around you, Lera! What do you think you’re going to change now? How many people are you going to sacrifice for your selfish insubordination?” 

I let my head fall to the side. The waters of our ocean planet are dyed red by bodies. What’s left of the armada continues to fire into the massive cloud of black in the sky. A shape with spindly limbs dives away from the cloud: a Reaper. It tears three soldiers from the deck at once and flies away screeching. My stomach twists; none of them are going to survive. Nearby I hear an explosion as the battle rages on somewhere I can’t see. Our people will fight until they can no longer go on, but right now they’re outmatched. They’re missing their champions. 

I look back at Lera and grit my teeth. “Selfish?! If you’d just listen to me instead of acting like some kind of machine–”

“No!” she snaps. “I’m sick and tired of hearing it! I’m sick of you always running! The moment is here and now so you’re either with me or you're dead.” 

She doesn’t choose to mention it and I don’t either: if the scriptures come true then we’re dead anyway. I won’t let it happen, but Lera is partially right. Everyone is counting on us and I won’t make it without her by my side. This is my last chance. 

Lera holds out her hand for me. I take it.

*

I am eight years old. I’m standing side by side with my sister underground. 

We are below the citadel: our home, isolated from the rest of the world. It sits on the tallest hill in the city with towers that climb so high it’s said they can hear whispers of the heavens. 

In front of us is a semicircle of priestesses, all dressed in their traditional white embroidered robes. Devout servants of the Gods, they are the ones who raised us here from infancy. They educated us, led us in honing our powers, but most importantly, they taught us about the prophecy. 

Our prophecy, really. An endless hunger from afar will fly. It will drain the world and leave it dry. Sent down from the divine before I was even born. 

Standing in the center is the head priestess: tall, immovable, with hair just beginning to gray. Behind her stretches a maze carved out of smooth stone. The walls are so tall that it’d be impossible for me to see over it. This is our first test. 

I glance to my right and see Lera already looking at me with a face that mirrors my own. The same golden brown skin and pale silver eyes. Her hair, loose and down just below her shoulders, is white with a stripe of black while mine is the opposite and slightly longer. Blessed with magic from most high, twin sisters born of Star and Sky. 

It’s before she gets that scar above her left eyebrow or the burns on her arms. Before people are able to tell us apart with just a glance. 

“Astinaleil and Levincora.” The head priestess smiles at both of us in turn as she says our names. The four syllable names of holy figures. Prophet-kings, heroes, martyrs, just short of gods. “In this maze there are two entrances, yet only one exit. Today, your task is to navigate your way out. This must be done by your wits alone with no use of your powers. One of you will go through each entrance, for you must learn to live without each other. Now go children, go. We will be waiting for you at the end.”

Lera and I only hesitate for a second before taking off in unison. The priestesses cheer their encouragement. This ancient wrath they will defy and its existence they will nullify. There is a line of pillars separating the entrances before the maze begins. We run past them, Lera flashing in and out of my view with her hair flowing wildly behind her. We’re both laughing as we run together, losing sight of each other. Then we make the first turn and I’m alone. But I can still hear her laughter and her steps hitting the earthen floor growing farther and farther away.

*

It isn’t until a few months later that the reality of everything sinks in. We’d always been taught the prophecy, but I’d never been a good student. Eventually our lessons began to include reading the prophecy line by line, picking it apart for every single scrap of meaning or direction. Then, it couldn’t slip over my head any longer. I’m kneeling there on the classroom floor when our instructor reads out the final lines. The fate my sister and I are destined for in written word. 

Yet through the fight in devil’s eye, one shall live and one shall die.

But that’s all a prophecy is, right? Magic words scribbled onto a paper by some bearded coot in a cave and treated as law. Destiny is just coincidence strung together and given meaning. Even if they say it’s so, there must be a way to change it. 

I run parallel to Lera across ruined buildings. We move nearly in sync with one another with practiced efficiency; it's like the maze all over again. 

That day, the head priestess wasn’t just preparing us to think on our own, but to exist in the world when the other is no longer in it. A barely hidden cruelty. But who else am I supposed to attach myself to besides my sister when our parents are nothing but myths to us? Did they have any strong opinions on the prophecy? Who knows! 

We’ve already cut a swath through the Reapers but more are already charging at us. One dives for Lera which is a giant mistake. With a blinding flash she rushes to meet it and the Reaper explodes into a shower of gore. Lera emerges on the other side almost entirely red and keeps going. From the start she’s accepted our fate without question: a perfect model soldier compared to a troublemaker. I’ve never understood why or how she does it. Somehow I’m seen as the weird one for trying to fight it because who cares what happens to us as long as we save everyone else, right? 

I summon my power from inside myself like breathing; the glow of stars that I instantly mold into blades. My stars aren’t as destructive as the storms, but they’ll take the form of whatever I want and work just as well. The Reaper howling at me is sliced to pieces. I leap over its corpse and get ready for the next one. 

Maybe it is selfish, but I don't want to die. I don’t want either of us to die. There has to be a way to do both: save the world and ourselves.

*

I am seventeen years old. I’m returning to the spire after a year off-world. I’d visited a neighboring planet: a world called Jeps where they don’t believe in fate. The people, at least where I’d stayed, were kind and intelligent. They went about their lives as if each decision held weight. It made choices much more stressful, sure, but it also made everything they did feel purposeful. 

I’d considered staying there permanently. After all, the prophecy couldn’t be fulfilled without half of its whole. But eventually doubts started to eat away at me. Waves eroding the shore; I couldn’t help it. The thought of never seeing Lera again hurt my heart. And what if the Reapers came anyway and, without me there, destroyed my planet? 

So I got on the next starship and now I’m home. 

It’s well into the night by the time I make it back to the citadel. Not a single other person is awake as I walk through the dimly lit halls and up the familiar stairs. 

I step into the study and freeze. The head priestess is sitting at the desk, filling out official records on sheets of parchment. 

“Welcome back, Asta,” she says without looking up. I don’t know what to say so I just stare.

“I suggest you return to your room quickly,” she continues. “Cora has torn this citadel apart looking for you.”

The room falls into silence again. All that time I spent looking over my shoulder on Jeps expecting the priestesses to come and try to drag me back home. I hadn’t gotten so much as a warning. Their star child disappears and not a word. Now, the head priestess is talking casually as if it’s only been a day.

“You never came for me,” I whisper. My own voice can’t tell if it’s meant to be a question or a statement of fact. 

Finally, she looks up at me. She gives me a smile as if the answer is obvious, as if it’s all so perfectly simple. “There was no need to. I had faith you’d return. You were destined to.”

I nearly put my head in my hands. 

I am twenty one years old and standing at the end of the world. On a different planet, in a better life, this age would’ve been a cause for celebration but clearly I’ve never been that lucky. 

At some point we fought our way so deep into the horde that the city vanished. Now it’s only us on this walkway – we land feather-light on the stone – and a living geometric darkness all around us. It feels like a different universe. The only light comes from an odd gap where the horizon should be. It’s the blazing orange of an event horizon. Up ahead the path disappears into nothingness, torn viciously away from its other half. Far down below the edge I just barely glimpse an impossibly large mass of roiling pitch black Reaper-stuff: its core. The eye of the storm. 

I’m struck with a sense of finality. My heart drops. This can’t be it. This isn’t how it ends.

Lera is beside me humming with lightning. One of her braids has come undone and she’s covered in dried blood. I doubt I look any better. She starts to move forward. Where is she going? 

“Wait. Stop–” 

“Don’t start this again,” she snaps. 

“Lera please. Stop.” 

“You don’t understand.” Her voice cracks.

“Then make me understand!” I shout. Gods I sound so desperate, but at this point aren't I? I feel tears begin to build in my eyes; try to swallow back the pain in my throat. “One of us is going to die, your twin sister is going to die, and for our entire lives you’ve just gone along with it! You don’t care at all! You’ve never cared! Am I really nothing to you?!”

There’s a pause. There’s only the sound of wind whistling in from who knows where. Lera keeps looking straight ahead.

“I’ve always thought it would be me,” she says softly. 

“...What?”

She shrugs. “I mean all I know how to do is fight, how to kill. What good am I for anything else? You have friends, you know how to talk to people, you have so many great talents and I– there’s nothing there. I serve my purpose and save everyone and then it’s all over. I die a hero and you get to live. What other way would the Gods make it?” 

I want to say it’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard but the words don’t come out. Self-deprication aside, there’s no guarantee that it’s going to be her and not me. There’s never been a guarantee for anything. 

Suddenly I recall a different memory. I can’t remember how old we were, but we were playing out on a knoll near the citadel with some of the children of the priestesses. Sometimes they would let us do that. Or at least I was playing with them. Lera was off to the side staring up at the beasts of flight, watching them wheel across the overcast sky, with a look of awe. After that day I remember coming into the library to see drawings and diagrams of them strewn around like snow. I remember that time she brought one of those four-legged furry creatures inside because she’d feared it’d freeze in the rain. I remember her rare smiles – the light through the clouds – drawn out by the cheers of young kids during festivals in the city. I remember the hidden letters she’d leave for me long after we’d stopped sneaking into each other’s rooms. 

Most importantly, I remember the maze. It must have been old. Worn down over the years by the pressure of the soil in places no soul would’ve thought to check. That’s where I’d ended up all those years ago, lonely and lost. There had been a crack in the wall just big enough for me to fit through. 

Another way out. 

When the priestesses had found me waiting for them at the exit, they’d congratulated me on my speed. I never told them the truth.

Lera is far ahead, moving again, halfway towards the edge. She waves her hand dismissively. “Get out of here Leia, you’ve done all you had to do. You’ll live a good life without me.” 

No. No.

With a burst of power I rush forward, spin so my back is to the edge, and grab her. I hug her with everything I have. 

“I can’t stand you, you know that?”

“Huh?” 

“You’re all I have, Lera!” I sob. “I don’t want to wake up in the morning and see that you’re not there. I don’t care about what the prophecy says, what the Gods say, what anyone says! I’ll rip it apart, I’ll– I’ll claw it out with my bare hands. Why do they get to decide what happens to us?! It’s our lives! We get to decide! So just say that you’ll stay with me this one time. Don’t leave me alone.” 

This entire time Lera’s been silent, but then, slowly, a warmth wraps around my shoulders. Another weight leans into my chest. 

Barely audible, she mumbles something into my shoulder. Then again, slightly louder, “Okay.” 

I feel something, somewhere, tear away from me. It’s the ripping of paper, the snapping of strings. I feel it humming through every cell of my body, building in pressure, filling my nerves with sparkling fire. The wind starts to pick up into a gale and I have to dig my heels into the ground to stay in place. Visions of Lera and I flicker in and out of existence over and over and over again. Purple and blue splitting away from each other, from us, into the abyss in both directions. Sometimes her death and sometimes mine; a million different possibilities. Even now the world is trying to tear us apart, but we tighten our grips on each other and stay together. 

After a long moment we pull away just enough to see each other's faces. I see her. I really see her. My idiotic, gloomy sister who I’ve now just realized loves the world more than she’s ever loved herself. I can’t believe I’ve never noticed that until now. She looks so tired. Some twin I am. 

  I’ll make it up to her tomorrow. 

We walk to the end of the path and look into the abyss below. I stare into the Reaper and I feel it stare back. Whatever is down there is waiting for us. 

I hold out my hand to Lera. She takes it. 

We jump together into the darkness.

Limerence. Ah, limerence, limerence, limerence. 

It’s such a poetic word, isn’t it? You can repeat it and never get tired. 

It’s such a nice-sounding word, like what you would think relates with the arts. 

Limelight, limies, lime. 

It’s such a pretty word, with such a sad meaning, 

limerence; an infatuation. An obsession. 

Do you remember when we first met? I do. You talked to me about a common interest, 

And soon, it felt like we knew each other forever. 

Unlike others, I felt like you always understood me; connected with me the deep parts I never revealed to anyone else. 

When you looked at me, my world stopped. 

My heart pounded, and every word you spoke was a word to be remembered. 

I memorized every detail about you, and suddenly, you were everywhere in my thoughts. 

It felt like a dormant part of me awoke, all because of you. I just wanted to be near you, to know everything about you. 

What you liked, what you hated, what your favorite color was, what you didn’t like about life, what you looked for in someone, what you valued the most, what you felt, what you heard, what you saw. 

I wanted to see if there was something I could do to make you look at me, 

maybe just a bit differently. 

Just a bit. 

I’ve always looked up to you;
Admired you like how an artist would to their muse, or a painter to the skies. 

You were always in my mind, but it was never really you. 

To me, you were a bit like berry tarts:

Because, like berry tarts, I would always search for your face in the hallways, through windows, and in rooms.

You were always in my mind, 

Even when I didn't initially think of you, my thoughts always led to you. 

Like berry tarts, your words tasted sweet to me. 

And like all sweets, I always seeked you out. 

I painted you in my mind, a masterpiece of yearning, knowing three words could shatter it all. 

My heart echoed with a silent plea, a confession I could never make. 

If I said anything at all about what I felt, it felt like I would ruin everything that was ‘us’. 

So I kept quiet. I kept looking out for you like berry tarts in the window. 

But too many tarts can make your tongue sticky, your gums itch. 

Too many sweets can rot your teeth, and make your stomach ache. 

The sweet flavor of those pastries can become bitter, then bland, then inedible. 

The crust can decay into black crumbs and crappy textures. 

But even if you can get up again from a stomach ache, I don’t think I can recover from this. 

They say ‘absence makes the heart fonder’, but I don’t think so. 

Maybe, after a while, absence makes the heart wander. It doesn’t forget, not entirely, but it learns to navigate. 

My ache may become a dull throb, then a distant echo. 

I love you. But you're not mine. You never were. 

You were everyone else’s and yours as well. 

You were always yours, and I could never act like you were just my version of you. 

You're made with so many versions, it's a dizzying sight to behold. 

But I guess that's what I love about you — you're a flurry of experiences and emotions. 

And you were everything I love.