>>6328297This time he’s the one withdrawing. He floats up, surrounded by twinkling stars and luminescent clouds. They reach from all around, wrapping him in twinkling sheets of cosmic energy.
“C’è un posto per noi nel mondo di domani, sorellina. Nel mondo che costruiremo insieme. Ma devi capire che le cose sono cambiate da quando siamo capitati qui.”
Ansàrra—the Strander that she used to be—clenches her fists and her teeth.
Her brother turns away from her, the orrery going back to swinging around him.
“Ora ti prego di lasciarmi solo per un po’. C’è molto da fare.”
Ansàrra nods, her chest heaving, shuddering with unshed tears. She glances his way one last time, and then, carrying with her all the shadows as they bow at the passage of her invisible light, she aims for the door, which slides upwards once more.
“C’è molto da fare, davvero…” she mumbles under her breath, so quiet that only Willow thinks she heard it.
The door slams down—and it’s darkness. And—
Willow blinks.
The laden sky does not blink back.
Slowly, her heavy body screams its lamentations, one by one: starting with the dull pain between her thighs.
With a shudder, she looks there—at the lathered films of broken placenta, black with metallic ichor, at the serpentine coils that pulsates with their own life, at the—
No.
No, what the fuck.
She pants, taking in foul-smelling air. It’s an open sewer.
She is laying on her back, surrounded by a pile—no, a cup—of meat and bones and faces—once people, now knitted together in an offering chalice, the cradle to the <span class="mu-i">thing</span> she has birthed.
Fuck.
Tears prickle at her eyes as she looks above. Looming over the Night Lands, the grey expanse of the planetary ring, shielding this place from Ansàrra’s sun.
And behind that, the heavenly orrery. Broken, grinding, skittering ahead in sorrowful spurts.
The sky is a lock.
<span class="mu-s">You are awake.</span> Celaeno’s voice sounds like honey dripping off serpent fangs as her sable hands gently hold her head. <span class="mu-s">You did splendidly, Willow Aurora Stark. Most splendidly. We will be able to embrace our Beloved soon enough, and all thanks to your efforts. Most commendable. But first, the key you birthed us has to work through its appetite.</span>
The <span class="mu-i">thing</span> that was inside her, that had been growing inside her, crunches on flesh and bone. Someone, far away, groans in stunned pain, like an elderly woman whose mouth had been covered in dirty bangs.
<span class="mu-i">And we make waste not.</span>
“What the fuck have I done,” Willow whispers, looking up at the empty sky, as crunching and munching and gulping sounds grate against her ears.
[cont.]
