the connective thread of the bone shard, binding death to life. It was there.
“After this…there is no way for me to stay?” she asked.
“You live,” he told her soberly.
“I died, moments ago,” she countered.
“Yes, and I have returned you to your life. Nothing living can remain for long in the Land of the Dead. It will invariably wither.”
“And you cannot exist in the land of the living.”
“No. You forget, besides, my mortality comes to an end. With it, my heart.”
Casiopea nodded. She understood, and if tears prickled her eyes, she quickly rubbed them away. Hun-Kamé, likely wishing to soothe her, spoke.
“You’ve asked for nothing, but I wish to place before you these gifts. Let me grant you the power to speak all tongues of the earth, since death knows all languages,” he said. “And let me give you also the gift of conversing with the ghosts that roam Middleworld. Such necromancy may be of value.”
No show of power accompanied his words, and when the words were said, nothing more remained but to bid each other goodbye.
He pierced her with his gaze, but his face grew softer as he looked at her, like a man who still lies dreaming. He smiled.
He cupped her face between his hands and then he pulled her so very close to him. She slid a hand upon his chest, felt there the heart he’d spoken about.
She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him, willing him to remember her. It was impossible, like asking the ocean to remain in the palm of one’s hand, but he was somewhat mortal. He was, despite his gleaming garments and the restitution of his power, more mortal than he’d ever been, and he kissed her back with the absolute belief in love only the young can possess.
He kissed her knuckles and closed his eyes for a moment. His hand fell upon her throat. No mark of the wound she’d inflicted remained, but he traced the invisible line nevertheless, before opening his eyes and looking at Casiopea.
Then he pulled out the bone shard that lay deep within her flesh, the last piece in the puzzle of his immortality.
The dark thread that bound them snapped. She stared at him as he placed a hand on his chest and gasped. His heart was grinding to dust beneath the palm of his hand, and it hurt to see this, but she did not look away.
When there was but a gray speck of his heart left, he bent down and kissed her again, briefly, a brush of lips. A grain of dust may contain a universe inside, and it was the same for him. Within that gray speck there lived his love and he gave it to Casiopea, for her to see. He’d fallen in love slowly and quietly, and it was a quiet sort of love, full of phrases left unsaid, laced with dreams. He had imagined himself a man for her, and he allowed her to see the extent of this man, and he gave her this speck of heart, which was a man, to hold for a moment before taking it back the second before it faded.
As he straightened up, his eyes all darkness, a curious thing happened. The speck did not fade, instead turning vermillion, and it lodged behind those dark eyes, unseen. But Xibalba, so intimately connected to its lord, must have seen, must have known. Xibalba sensed the echo of this silent goodbye.
The inhabitants of this realm, who had been startled when the land held its breath, now had a second chance to be surprised. Such a dark place, Xibalba, built of bitter nightmares and fever dreams, with the stones of sorrow; a land where lost souls could never find the proper road. But the Lord Hun-Kamé had dreamed a different dream, and this dream that was now nothing but a speck subtly transformed the land.
There were no flowers in Xibalba. Trees and weeds and the strange orchids that were not orchids dotted the Underworld, wild desert anemones grew upon its white plains, but there were no flowers in its jungles, its swamps, nor its mountains. Yet now flowers bloomed in the most astonishing of places, across the gray desert. Tiny, red flowers, as if demonstrating for Hun-Kamé what he could no longer demonstrate, so that Casiopea, instead of observing the cold face of a stranger as he’d warned her, beheld instead the appearance of the red flowers, like the ink of a love letter. The stars, when