Just for a moment… He was finally able to rest, and that helped him see…how strange all this was. Somehow the feelings, urges, of being a man had never overtaken him. He had thought himself above such things, with a rational scientific mind…but no longer. He felt a harsh, hot, longing within him. The power of these feelings shocked him. He knew it was his proximity to…her. Fascinating. Perhaps it was due to his circumstances before the world had been destroyed, that he had never been able to match wits with a female before. But whatever the reason, he found himself studying her, much as he would an experiment. She was something new. A part of himself he wanted to explore, a softer part that had lain dormant all this time he had been wedded to science. The urge to procreate was indeed strong, fascinating, exciting. To touch the female form, explore it, and… not to be too hasty. What of her feelings after all? Perhaps she just saw him as a passing fancy? A woman like her, unencumbered by rules of any kind. A girl would could change the laws of physics on a whim. Was it possible that he was, as his friend would put it, “out of his league”? A smirk curled on his face before he could stop it. No. He knew her, as no one else could know her. As an inventor, a thinker. He knew a part of her no other man would. But he wanted the rest of her too. Like any experiment, it would take planning and the right ingredients, right environment, but still, she would be his. And maybe on the way he could get to know this primal part of himself she had awakened. Getting down to the dirty caveman part of his brain would be exciting and fascinating!

I hadn’t seen the moon since the day we came upon the creatures living on it. They had already terrorized our ancestors and us for that matter. But we had found a way to save ourselves. But this is what the invaders could never understand. They couldn’t comprehend why we wanted so badly to live. Why we wanted to be awake. They treasured the silence. We were like nails on a chalkboard to them. So they turned our moon away. But to us, who had touched the moons surface, who had bounced on it, the moon would always belong to us. Our small world, our satellite. We longed to gaze upon it again, but still, the invaders could never claim it.

“Before Icarus flew too close to the sun, he had fun test flying his wings,” the reporter said, as the camera widened to reveal me, floating above the city, wings twitching with excitement. “And now the city’s very own angel will demonstrate her new safety net for our fair city! Welcome to Tenshi Rising!” I flapped my large wings and raised them and began to spin. My wings raised and the feathers began to cover the city. Everyone looked up and murmured at the “blessings of the Angel.” I was eager to protect the city that was so full of crime and death. I tired of the suffering I could feel at every turn. With this I could help them, perhaps, lend them heavenly protection. The feathers returned me, and I tried not to pant and look tired. I needed to finish this. I took the microphone and said “My feathers have discovered everything planned and unplanned. All that is going to happen in the next twenty four hours. And my heavenly protection will save you. This city will smile again.” With those words I fell from the sky.

The sun is at it’s brightest In the summer solstice Setting in the West The sunsets are boldest The sun dies In the depth of Winter We hope and cry For its happy return And in the dark In the cold winter air It is but a weak spark “Do you think the sun gets lonely up there?”

As she pushes her veil back she peers down the aisle to see him. It is indeed he, the man she awaited so long. Fire in his hair and a smile on his face as he proudly beckons her to join him at the altar. She returns his smile and loving gaze as she approaches. The two of them secreted off so many times in the past after they figured out they were betrothed. He was so kind, treating her like a real lady. And tho she wanted him terribly, she was modest and gentle with him, eager to please his rather conservative sensibilities. His eyes blazed as he spoke his vows righteously, for he always did what was right and good. He was a kind man, a good man. And she loved him completely. But as she looked into the audience she spied her groom’s apprentice gazing at her rapturously with tears spilling down his cheeks, mouthing his own confession of love. The same one he had given her too late. The apprentice was bold and forthright. He and her groom were much the same, but this other man was extremely passionate and she knew that she indeed desired him. But his love…his love was pure and noble. And it was for that reason that she watched as he left the wedding, his eyes wet with tears, his hand lifted in farewell, as she turned to her groom, and, no longer conflicted, said, “I do.”

I was like Bluebeard’s wife, only without the murder. I had discovered what my husband was, the secret he’d kept from me. As a woman of faith, I should recoil in disgust. Or make a move to destroy him with my sacred powers. But this was HIM. He who had wiped away my tears, sat up with me on sleepless nights. He’d let me read to him and make the cutest screwed up faces when it was too complicated to understand. And most of all was the truth I could not deny. He had killed his own kind to protect me. My power attracted millions like him and though we had a barrier, I should have been ambushed on every trip outside. So he had to have made a large, bloody, statement to his compatriots. An example. I shuddered at the thought. And he had marked me, I now realized. I should destroy him. I should at least want to. My better nature should drive me to expunge him from existence. But alas, all I saw when he stood there, wreathed in flames, was him standing in his formal attire at our wedding. How it must have pained him to participate in a sacred rite. He had barred himself forever from his homeland and what he was. He had sloughed off his true self. What I was seeing was merely a mask of what he once, and never more could be. For now he was no longer what I hunted and I was no longer what hunted him. We were bound inexorably by the bonds of love. And so I closed the door I should never have opened. Bluebeards wife returned to her bed, and sank back into blissful ignorance, sacrificing the truth for something greater: love.

I lay, broken and defeated on the side of the highway. The car slowly burned not too far away. And my mother, bless her, would not give up. As I watched, immobilized, she crawled slowly, painfully towards me. She was saying something, but it wasn’t a language I recognized. Whatever she said, it was her last words, and I watched helplessly as the light faded from her eyes…and burned into mine. Suddenly strength poured into me. I was able to move, and I did, running to her, shaking her. “Mother! Mother!” In the rigger mortis of death, her hand released a swallowtail butterfly. From whence it came, I had no idea. But no sooner had it disappeared into the night, I heard footsteps. I guarded my mother, tho she was past help, as the footsteps grew closer, I put up my guard, the strength of my mothers last gift giving me courage. “Be not afraid,” a woman came into view. “For I bring glad tidings. You who neither live, nor die, are destined to bring second life. You shall be our High Priestess of Ageha.”

I opened my eyes to find him gazing at me. Those eyes that had been fixed on me for a long time, now had me at his mercy. He knew everything about me, save one important thing… He did not know what I am. What power sleeps within me. But I knew what he was. And I knew his weakness. His weakness…was me. As my elongated nail traced my face, leaving blood in its wake, he gripped me, as expected. “How could you?” He said his voice deceptively concerned. As if he cared for anything other than the beauty I was scarring, the possession, the toy. “Don’t harm yourself!” I almost expected him to lick the blood off like a common animal, but he surprised me. He cleaned the wound and cupped my hands in his, saying, “Please don’t use these hands for more violence…” That was too much to bear. “How dare you?!” I spat, rising from my bonds, sloughing them off like water. “You speak to me of violence, you animal! You’ve kidnapped me, and probably plan to defile me and choke me with my own entrails or some such abhorrence!” He chuckled. “That was quite the alliteration.” “Do not mock me you beast!” The man stood, coming over to me, checking me for wounds, or perhaps just leering over his prize. “Kidnap? Defile? Is that what you have dreamed up? Is that what you think is happening; no wonder you seem to despise me so…” He gestured out the window. “Tell me what you see, maiden.” I scoffed and looked outside. What I saw was quite the shock. People I knew, people I loved, were stalking the night, when they found an ordinary person they set upon him voraciously until there was nothing left. The sky burnt a dark sienna, and the moon was a dark round globe of nothing. My gasp choked me. I had not been kidnapped. I had been liberated.

I knew it was him once again. I had thought i had left him behind. He had sworn to never love another. I had not made such a vow and had kissed many men since him; but still the vibration of my lips was a betrayal. I had thought him dead and gone, or hermitized on that mountain. The mountain filled with flight and puffy clouds perfect for sitting and watching the sunrise. He had vowed to love me and only me. And i had not reciprocated. Though I had not, he had insisted on keeping his vow, and loving only me, in perpetuity. This was his way of saying that he would find me in another life and love me. But still even then it was unlikely that our love would blossom. Because my true love was a demon; and i could never love another; for he had my soul. But still my wedding began, my wedding in a black dress; a wedding and a funeral. For my love was of the Underworld. When I saw him his face was turned to his new love, and I craned my neck desperately to see her face. His eyes lit up as they did only for me—now for her. As the music swelled and I took my place at the altar, her face turned, our eyes locked, and I swallowed a scream. We were the same, and yet; Mirrored.

The priestess froze as the tree whispered once more, “Save me.” Her hand carresses the trunk. “The gods have imprisoned you here, I must not defy them.” The branches shuddered as an anguished voice repiled. “Twas not a divine punishment, I was imprisoned by the last priestess to commune with nature as you do, doomed to wait fifty years for her successor, as she herself died at the scene, hoping that we would die together, and none would ever free me.” “And yet you live and do not yet join her,” the priestess said, confused. “Why?” “It was a tragic betrayal, my transformation.” The voice replied. “For in life, I was not human. I was a creature of the forest, a faun, a satyr; therefore the priestess—the witch—anguished to love me. She would rather doom us both to the Underworld; then live askance as the mate of a nymphly being.” The priestess made her decision. “I would like to know you my forest nymph. I would like to know you as my predecessor could not, and show you a love as it should be—for that is why I have this gift—for the love of nature that beats in my breast…and thus, I free you.” The tree pulsed like a heartbeat, and then exploded in a burst of leaves, revealing the nymph—the man—beneath; as the maiden embraced him with joy.