build

A,

I hope this letter finds you well. Actually, I hope it finds you at all--if you knew the trouble I went through to find a messenger who seemed like they might be able to find you... anyway, I do hope you're well.

I know we didn't exactly part on good terms, but . . . I'm trying to build something here and it wouldn't be the same without you. Any time we tried something crazy, knowing you had our backs made it feel possible. And right now I need someone to convince me this is possible. We're trying to build a new community out here, somewhere out of reach of the dying empire and all the petty warlords and their dreams of conquest, somewhere built with love and the desire to create instead of claimed with swords and strategies.

There aren't a lot of us, and it's hard work, but everyone is happy to be a part of something. Even me--I can't remember the last time I was able to sit down at the end of the day and look at something and say "I helped build that. That was mine." You and I watched a city drown, survived countless battles, and for how many years now have we been wandering, convinced that war is all we're good for, looking for answers we'll never find? It doesn't have to be that way.

The messenger knows where to find me. I hope to see you soon--and if not, I hope you find what you're looking for. But so long as this village stands, there will be a place for you here. That's a promise.

Yours,
D

freeze

The first hard freeze came too early--one night it was clear and bright and the next morning a thick fog had crept in and coated everything with ice, making the world at once impossibly beautiful and impossibly cold. I was already ill-prepared for the autumn--as I woke shivering in my tent I wasn't sure I'd survive to see nightfall. All the firewood I'd spent most of yesterday gathering was coated in ice, and my tent was frozen stiff as well. No fire, no tent, and all I had left of food was some mushrooms and wild berries I'd gathered on the way in. So I dressed myself as warmly as I could--which was not warm enough--and I left my tent and I walked and promised myself not to stop for anything.

At first the dull monotony of the journey helped keep my mind from focusing on the cold, but then the forest thinned and a bitter wind began to blow and the only thing I could think about was how much it hurt. And then my mind pulled away, and I was somewhere far above, watching this poor miserable creature trudge her way across the icy roads. Her pain was palpable even from my remote vantage, but it was no longer my own. Her fate was no longer mine. I watched her stumble her way into a village, and finally collapse within view of an inn. Perhaps she cried out, or perhaps someone saw her--someone ran out to drag her inside, the poor thing. And then everything went black.

I was more or less myself again when the world returned, wrapped in blankets. Someone had put me in a change of clothes--nothing I owned was this warm--and tucked in some hot water bottles. And someone--a young woman--was watching me. When she was satisfied that I was well enough, she led me to the common room and introduced me to "the regulars." We spent the night just chatting and for once it felt like home.

I shouldn't have stayed. Trouble always found me sooner or later, and I'd rather it happen around strangers than friends. But I tried saying I'd leave, when everyone had gone home and it was just me and her, cleaning up and finishing off a mug of hot cider together, and she wouldn't hear it.

"The roads aren't going to get better from here," she said. "We've got room to spare and could use an extra set of hands around the place. It's going to be a hard winter. Please stay?"

"Until spring," I told her. It's so much easier to stay if you really believe it's only temporary.

bait

After the dust had settled, when the chaos of the collapse had calmed into something more stable, a steady slog of survival, I started getting dreams--dreams where all of us were back together again, where instead of fighting just to survive we were fighting to fix the world. Yes, we'd failed, but in the dreams there was still time to be heroes. The dreams were so clear and so vivid it was hard to imagine they were just the product of my sleeping mind--these were visions. Someone wanted me to go back.

It was, of course, a trap. How could it be anything else? How could anyone imagine that this world could be fixed, after everything we let happen to it? Whatever had sent these visions, it did not have my best interests at heart--the hope it offered was false hope, and whatever fate awaited me if I heeded them was not, I was certain, a happy one.

And yet. The others were still out there somewhere, lost in the chaos, and I had no doubt they had received the visions as well. What if some of them decided to follow, to head back to that dead city? Could we avoid the worst of it if we returned knowing that we were walking into a trap? Was it worth risking everything for a chance to see some of them again, to maybe save them from whatever horrible fate awaited us?

If I was the most sensible of us, and I was considering heeding the visions despite knowing they were a trap, certainly some of the others wouldn't even hesitate. I settled my affairs in town and hit the road once more. No one here would miss me.

mindless

I always thought that what she needed most was loyalty. She had enough enemies and critics to go around--if she wanted me to question every effort she would have asked. So I did what I could to make sure that, whatever goal she set, someone would be there to help achieve it.

I told myself it didn't bother me that in public she met my loyalty with indifference, that she couldn't afford to reveal how much she relied on me. I pretended to understand. And I had almost convinced myself that it didn't hurt every time I found that she had kept some pointless secret from me or hadn't sought help I could easily have provided.

Then she disappeared one summer, without a word. I considered spending the time moping, and discarded the idea as a waste of time--if nothing else, she wouldn't get anything out of it. Carrying on as if everything was normal was, of course, impossible, since "normal" required her presence, so I resolved to find a new normal. I made friends, I fell briefly in love, I took time to myself. The midsummer festival came and, drunk on summer wine and freedom, I talked about her for the first time--about us, really, but it seemed already like I wasn't talking about myself anymore.

When she returned with the first chill of autumn at first I worried my new self would disappear, but when she smiled at me--in private, of course--my will no longer abandoned me. I could look her in the eye, and smile back, and my mind, at last, was my own.

ring

I didn't have many friends, growing up. Plenty of people who admired me, plenty more who wanted to be on my good side, but a true friend, someone I could trust and confide in--those were vanishingly rare. It was a lonely life--but admitting that to anyone, even those few friends I had, could have been catastrophic. I needed to project perfect confidence at all times.

Sometimes it was easy. Other times, not so much. One one of those occasions, one of those friends--my oldest, truest friend, the one I knew would stay with me through any danger, whose loyalty was absolute--gave me a little ring. She had carved it out of pinewood, given it a simple floral pattern, and on the band carved our initials. "So whenever you feel like you're alone in this world," she said, "you can remember that you have me." I was wealthy enough that I tended not to care much about my possessions, especially when I was so young, but when I promised I would treasure that ring forever I meant it. I kept it on a silver chain around my neck and wore it everywhere.

A few years before . . . everything else happened, I was traveling far from home, traveling with only two guards as an escort--a mistake, in retrospect, but back then I felt so invulnerable. There were problems in the world, of course, but nothing could stop me. The future was so bright. We were robbed on the road, and no matter how I pleaded they wouldn't let me keep that ring. They took it along with everything else of value that we carried.

Having something stolen from you, something you care about, is a jarring experience. The world suddenly seems sharper, everything you thought was a soft surface or rounded edge suddenly becomes suspect, and you feel like somehow you are diminished by the experience. My friend consoled me as well as she could, but I had invested so much hope in that little ring. Somehow without it I knew that bright future I was so certain of before would be forever out of reach now.

Part of me knows that's nonsense, of course. That everything that happened after wasn't because some thieves saw an easy target, that when she finally betrayed me, along with everyone else, it had nothing to do with losing that little ring that bound us together. But I can't help but wonder if things could have been different.

unlikely

We used to believe, the two of us, in that perfect star-crossed connection, some unlikely story bringing us together with our respective loves--it didn't have to be a big thing, of course, but something cute you could tell your friends. We took the same bus every Thursday and then we saw each other at a bar on the completely other end of town and we hit it off. We ran into each other at a concert and there was a spark there, but she disappeared while I was at the coat check, but then I saw the same band at the same venue five years later and there she was, smiling. And so on. The little things that tell the world: this was fate.

And I know a part of both of us still wants that world to exist, of course, but just as obviously the world can't work like that. It's too dark out there for whimsy, even if the nights are perfect at this time of year, when the heat of the summer starts to fade and those first chills of autumn creep in and the stars are so bright and clear.

We both had a few relationships like that in our time, where everything seemed so unlikely and perfect right up until everyone involved realized that coincidence is a flimsy foundation on which to build anything, even if at the time it feels so important.

Maybe it is important. Maybe it's us who have gotten too grim for this world, too serious, too afraid to leap into the unknown based on nothing but that overwhelming feeling that this is too unlikely to ignore. I've been wrong before.

What I know is this: we've spent the evening wistfully lamenting our naivety over some cheap beer left over from someone else's party. How foolish we were back then, and how fortunate to be so foolish. If only we could go back to do it all over again, would we? And if we did, would we make different choices, or relive them all over again? If we were fools then, were we still fools now?

When we were younger it would have been wine or coffee or something we thought was romantic or at least poetic, and we would have thought there were answers to these questions. Of this much, at least, I am certain: the world will never provide answers.

As we stood on the porch, we brushed against each other several times, each one of us daring the other to make a move after so many years of searching for magic elsewhere--but perhaps there's still some of that youthful idealism left in us. We're not nearly unlikely enough.

scenes from a dying empire

She is pacing again, anxious again, frustrated again--I feel trapped is what she told me, and I wanted to tell her I understood but I'm not sure I do. I wanted to tell her I could help but I can't. All I can do is watch, and listen. I'd offer a shoulder to cry on but she doesn't like being touched. She is my friend and she is suffering and there is nothing I can do about it.

(She has told me so many times you are helping just by being there and it is sweet of her to think of my feelings even at a time like this. It breaks my heart, but it's sweet.)

We used to come up here sometimes, when the days were getting long and the nights were just warm enough, to get away from it all, to leave behind who we were by day and just be us, whoever we were. I'm not sure either of us knew. It was a place of comfort then; now we mostly come up here when the world is too much. A place to worry. I hate that I'm starting to dread coming up here. I think she is, too, which doesn't help. This was our place.

She stops pacing, looks at me, and sort of freezes. Like she wants to say something, or scream, or keep pacing, but she can't. Her hands clench and twitch and finally she turns away and says it's too much. It's too big.

And at first I don't understand but--of course. I've been feeling it too, I think. Once, a long time ago, there were places where it wasn't encroaching. It being--hmm. The death throes of a dying empire? But there is so much else. It's not just overwhelming because of how vast it is, but because of how minuscule, how trivial. Even the trivial has been devoured by this creeping sense of--

--of being trapped.

She sees the understanding in my face, smiles a bittersweet smile, and tells me I don't know how much longer I can do this. My breath catches, but you're here. That's enough.

At least at night everything is peaceful. The city is asleep, the stars are shining, and if we must be prisoners here, at least we are here together.

golden

The trails were oddly empty this weekend, when we got up early--as early as we could, eager to beat the holiday weekend crowds. We hiked the first part of the trail in darkness, and at first we were certain that it was empty because, somehow, we were the first ones to arrive. But there was no one, just a few people returning from their own trips. No new day hikers or backpackers. Just us and the mountains and the woods. The weather was magnificent, the mountains were beautiful; it seemed nothing short of a miracle how perfect the trip was, how alone we were out here. Such a marked contrast to the constant noise and static of the city.

It wasn't until we tried to return home that we understood: we were alone because we were the last ones to leave. The city fell silent after we left, and the suburbs and small towns followed shortly after. No one online knew what caused it, before online fell silent, too. So we turned around and headed back.

We can't survive out here forever. Even if we can find enough forage to live on, the winter will come and we aren't prepared. But it was beautiful, and if the silence takes us here, at least it will be someplace too beautiful to be believed.

a diptych of poems

ELEGY FOR A SUNKEN CITY
The city seemed so empty
when you weren't here.
I promised I'd return, didn't I?
Didn't I promise I'd rescue you?
But I fought my way back
to our city,
our home,
and there was nothing left but silence.

Of course I drowned it.
Of course I shattered the floodbanks--
they are,
after all,
my floodbanks, because this city
is mine,
and there is nothing here
worth saving
without you.
They said you'd left
so I did what I had to.
I let the ocean
reclaim her own.

Perhaps they'll remember me as a hero:
perhaps, as the waves crash through the marble streets,
they'll tell themselves stories
of how I sacrificed my city to save the world.
But I didn't. I sacrificed it because
I hoped I'd drown with it.

The waves are calm now,
the screams of my city finally silenced.
It's oddly peaceful,
here alone with the gulls
and my thoughts
in the dead city beneath the sea.
I hope you'll come back home.



ANOTHER CASTLE
You promised me, when you fled,
you'd come back and rescue me.
I never promised I'd wait.
Did you think I would?

I have no time for you to lead your armies
to glorious victory, nor to
defeat my captors in single combat.
I know this prison better than
I know myself.
Did you think it would
hold me?
Did you hope it would?

Life, I'm afraid, is not so glamorous:
no one will thank you for your conquests.
No one will sing your triumphs.
I never asked for war in my name,
for blood to be spilt on my behalf.
I was never going to stay
and you,
my love,
were never a hero.

scenes from a cyberpunk road story, pt. ii

It's just cold by the time we get to New York, the kind of cold where the air burns your lungs even as the sun shines down on you with false promises of warmth. This is the kind of cold that kills.

I do not own a heavy enough jacket for this.

Still, even though Morgan says her sister has taken care of the surveillance to make sure nobody notices that we're here, it's a good opportunity to slip into town unnoticed. There are ways to identify someone who's bundled up for winter, but they don't use that sort of tech for casual surveillance, and I don't think anyone's looking for us here just yet.

Morgan's driving, because this is her town, even if she hates it. But she navigates like she knows it, and pulls into the parking lot of some building I instinctively think is too nice. These places aren't for people like us--well, people like me.

The woman waiting for us looks like Morgan if she were a little taller and a little thinner and a lot more interested in fashion. Morgan's parka is a dingy black thing, warm and functional and street-stylish. This woman's navy blue coat dress is the sort of designer brand that only even sells to corporate royalty. Somehow simultaneously understated and ostentatious.

"I like your jacket," she tells me. "I'm Elizabeth. I'm sorry that my sister has forgotten her manners."

"Nora," I say. "Thank you." Then, because I feel like she's expecting something more, "It's not the best jacket for winter. It doesn't get that cold where I grew up."

"I'll find something for you," she says cheerfully. "You two are popular right now, did you know?"

***

We've been reported as missing, as it turns out, which only means someone wants to find us and doesn't want to have to deal with cops. But whoever put out the bulletin had enough influence to make sure our faces were on every news report in the New England Commerce Zone and a good number of them in New York, which was . . . troublesome.

"It would be much easier to make that disappear if it were an arrest warrant," Elizabeth tells us as she pours us wine that costs more than I spend on food in a month. "Bribes are easy. Making this disappear is going to be hard."

"There's contact info, right?" asks Morgan. "I assume that's a dead end?"

Elizabeth nods her head. "They covered their tracks well."

"But you have a plan."

"But I have a plan." She claps her hands--an affectation, I imagine, both to draw attention to her state-of-the-art cyberhands and to disguise that she is simply sending a command to the drone that walks in, holding aloft a sleeveless dress in black and white. "There's no shortage of high society functions in winter--all the better to stave off madness, I imagine. Stay here for a while, make some appearances. Make it look like you're here to stay. Whoever's looking for you will know you're here, but Morgan the scruffy drifter is a much easier target than Morgan the corporate heiress. If they do make their move, we'll be ready."

I can tell Morgan doesn't like this plan, but I can also tell she's going to say yes. But I'm not sure how I fit in yet. "What about me?"

"What about you? We take your measurements, get you a wardrobe. So long as it's clear you're with us, no one will dare question whether you belong." And then she smiles brightly. "It'll be fun, I promise. And you'll be out of here before you know it and back to your glamorous vagabond lifestyle or whatever it is you two are doing." Her smile takes on a slight edge. "Which M will have to tell me about sometime."

Morgan sighs. "Yeah. Soon, I promise. Not yet." A long pause. "All right. I know you're only doing this because you miss having a tag team partner at these insufferable parties, but all right. But if we're staying still for a week you're doing more than helping us find dresses."

"Of course. And Nora?"

I shrug. "If Morgan's in, I'm in."

"Excellent." She beams at me. "I promise you will not be disappointed."

Maybe we've been on the road too long, maybe Elizabeth's enthusiasm is infectious, but for now, at least, I'm starting to feel pretty good.

scenes from a cyberpunk road story, pt. i

In no order.

It's harder than I thought it would be, leaving New York behind again. It's so easy to feel like home is this awful place when you're not there, to say you hate who you were there, you hate all your friends there. But I miss it. I miss when El and I were an unstoppable team.

Which means she was right, of course. She's always fucking right. I miss that, too.

Nora's driving again, because she likes it and she's better at it, but she keeps glancing at me. There's a question there, an unspoken "Are you okay?"--unspoken because Nora never says anything when she doesn't have to, and she knows I know.

"Home is like a glimpse into another timeline. A life where I never . . ." Here I sort of gesture with my cybernetic hand, because in many ways when I lost that I lost everything. "I spend so much time convincing myself I'm happier where life ended up taking me, but that's a fucking lie. You know? I loved it. And not just because my sister's still there."

She nods. "Would you go back, if you could?"

I hesitate, partly because I'm not sure I know the answer, partly because of the other reason leaving is so hard: because that's not such a hypothetical now. "Only if you can come with me," I tell her, and I'm not sure if it's just idle flattery or if I really mean it.

She nods again. Maybe she's not sure, either. Or maybe she's just processing. Either way, we ride together in silence for a while before she says, "You hungry?"

***

The food at these roadside diners is starting to taste like home, and I'm starting to realize that home is complicated. Home is the shitty apartment in Boston we abandoned when we skipped town just after Christmas. Home is scheming with El at New York high society functions, rubbing elbows with some of the worst people imaginable. And now, maybe, it's the road, all the greasy food and the shitty small towns and all the small town people sneering at the two girls from out of town.

Maybe home is just what happens when you finally get used to not fitting in.

"It's funny," I say, while Nora picks away at what's left of her fries. "When we got to New York I was sick to death of diner food. We spend a few days eating, you know, real food, objectively good food, rich people food, and after that suddenly this is fucking amazing."

"It tastes like adventure," she says. She sounds thoughtful. "Back when--when I was young, and we'd go on these long trips to nowhere because the eastern CCZ is nothing but nowhere, miles and miles and miles of it. We'd stop in at the truck stop outside town or some other diner or burger place and drink too much coffee and eat too many fries and then just drive, and it was wonderful. It was the only good thing about that place, and I miss it so much." She offers me something of a sheepish smile, then falls back to her customary silence.

"You can never quite leave home behind," I say. "No matter where you go it will follow you there."

She nods again.

"So. Do we keep driving or try to find a place here?"

what a fucking year

What a fucking year.

There wasn't a lot of room 2018 for hope or optimism or on some days enough energy to do anything besides get out of bed and go to work. But we made it. The calendar changed a digit, and people complain about how insignificant that is, but it's not. Every time you live to see that digit change it means you've lived another year, no matter how hard it gets. And sometimes that's something to be proud of.

I can't say with conviction that 2019 is going to be any better. But for me, at least, the new year has always been a time to regroup, to gather my strength, because whether you're ready or not, another year is coming. Sometimes you have to fight to stay afloat, and other times everything seems so perfect you wonder if you're dreaming.

I hope 2019 is the latter for you, but if not, just remember: none of us are alone out here, even if it feels like it. And remember that it's okay to be tired and it's okay to feel like it's hopeless. Just hang in there and we'll survive this together.

scenes from a cyberpunk road story, new year's edition

Happy New Year. Here's something.

I'm fading fast in the passenger seat, watching the snow quietly bury the New England countryside, when Morgan pulls the car to the side of the road. We're somewhere in the middle of nowhere and I have no idea why we've stopped, but the change in momentum has me awake for once.

"Hey, Nora," she says. "You awake?"

"Yeah."

"It's almost midnight."

It takes me a minute to realize that's supposed to mean something. It's almost midnight on the thirty-first day of December. We've finally made it to next year.

"I didn't want to just . . . be driving," she says. "You know?" She opens the door. "I'm going to step outside, walk around. If you want to join me . . . ?"

I unfasten my seat belt and step out of the car as well. We're miles away from the nearest town, and nobody else is crazy enough to be out driving in this weather. But here we are, alone together in the woods. Once we're both outside it seems like the only light is coming from the snow, like it's glowing. Other than that it's perfectly dark, the only sound the wind blowing through the trees.

"We made it," she says. "I did not expect to survive this year."

"Yeah," I tell her.

"That's what I like about the new year. You know? It's like a finish line. All you have to do is make it to the end of December and you're done. You survived. And that's . . . sometimes that's a lot. For me, anyway. But I survived. I'm here with you. We made it."

"We made it," I tell her.

The snow keeps falling around us, and she's staring up into it like maybe she'll be able to see the moon or the stars through the clouds--or maybe she's staring at something else, something only she can see. All the ghosts and regrets from the past year.I hand her the thermos I filled at the last rest area, full of shitty coffee, and she gives me something like a smile. "I'm glad you're here," she tells me.

"Me, too," I tell her.

We pass the coffee back and forth for a while. There's something magical about drinking something hot when it's cold out, when the snow is gathering on your jacket and melting on your nose and the wind cuts right through your clothes. The new year is supposed to be cold. The cold reminds you that you're alive, that sometimes you have to keep moving to survive even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts.

Then she quietly counts us down to midnight, because it's hard to break the stillness by raising your voice, and we whisper "happy new year" to each other, and after a moment she sings Auld Lang Syne, softly at first and then louder, more confident. And then when she's done the silence reclaims this desolate stretch of road and, with conviction, she says, "We should do this again next year.'

"You're on," I tell her.

Eventually we get back in the car--without saying anything we both agree I'll take over driving again and let her get some rest. The snow isn't letting up any time soon but it doesn't matter. Even if it takes a while, even if we can't take the direct route there, we're getting closer to where we're going, mile after weary mile.

courage

The Spire sits at the heart of what, I am told, was the greatest achievement that mankind has ever achieved, a geomantic network which harnessed the power of the very earth to make everyone's lives better, so long as they lived close enough to one of our nodes. When it still worked properly, they said, it made the crops more bountiful, it calmed the earth and the sky--and those were, I'm told, just incidental benefits.

It doesn't do that anymore.

You can make it work. It takes time and work and dedication and it doesn't usher in the promised utopia, but it does mean you'll probably have enough food to survive the winter, and the monsters seem to stay away.

Oh right. Did I mention there are monsters? There are monsters. And the nodes that, I am told, once made us so great, seem to corrupt the land rather than blessing it, blighting crops and calling storms on a good year. Sometimes it kills: a slow plague sometimes, a sudden poisoning others. And sometimes it seems to work its way into the mind of someone who lives too close and it just . . . makes them their worse self. And everywhere, throughout the world, this is happening, because once, forever ago, we thought we could get away with it.

I've been studying it for a while now, since every time we talk about it, every time it comes up that this is our fault, that people are dying, that the earth is dying because of us, they deflect. "There's nothing we can do but try to improve things now," they say, every time. And, sure, we help a village here or there. But the blight is spreading faster than that.

And there is something else we can do.

I've been talking to this stranger who seems to know more about the system than the sages who still tend to it--or, perhaps, the sages hope nobody figures out the truth. Because all we have to do is rip the stone from the heartroom of the Spire, and the system will collapse, well and truly. The corruption will stop because it's the Spire that is corrupting everything. The city will be destroyed, of course, but the world will be free at last.

The princess tried to convince her father that we needed to do this, and he refused. She's been locked up in the palace, and they won't even let me visit. They're worried she might somehow convince me to do what we had already decided I'd do if her plan failed.

I'm in the heartroom now, along with the stranger. (I begged the stranger to leave but they wouldn't. They said this was what they had lived their entire lives for. Which seemed odd, but I'm not here to argue.) The sages were nowhere to be found, almost as if they knew what was coming, so together, the stranger's hand on top of mine, we wrest the stone from its socket.

And the world is swallowed in light.

wisdom

The omens say the destroyer is nigh, that I am the one who will save us from ruin, but the omens, they tell me, have said that dozens of times in the past and no destroyer has come. The people have started to see them as omens of an era of peace and prosperity, and I suppose to them I'm a symbol of that. They love me, because they know that with me as their princess they will want for nothing. Which is to say: it's not me they love at all.

The empire I am due to inherit spans the entire continent, and is build on the backs of hundreds of nations, nations who starve so that my people will never know hunger. The songs I have learned that will save this empire from disaster were written because once we were a beacon of hope, a shelter against the darkness. Now we are a symbol of decadence and of oppression and of needless cruelty, and those songs . . . these people had no love for heroes, and anyone who saved them would not be a hero.

When I first met the destroyer, I knew them immediately, the same way that you know your father immediately. But they did not come with an army, and they did not come with the intent to destroy us, and when we became friends at first I doubted that they were the destroyer at all. Then, one day, at the top of my tower, I said to them, "The world would be a better place if this empire fell."

And then I knew. The destroyer, the person I was born to oppose, had come to help me. Had come to make the world a better place.

All empires fall, they explained, but the songs, for as long as other princesses before me have learned them, have kept mine alive and festering, an engine of ceaseless suffering. All I had to do is flee, abandon this people, and it would all finally fall apart.

*** 

The world burned slowly. It was not the great cataclysm from the prophecies, not the cleansing collapse that I had hoped for, but as the years went by the destroyer was clearly right about one thing, at least: all empires fall. Some die quickly. Some, like mine, bleed out slowly, painfully. I found a village in the mountains to wait out an end that seemed both inevitable and impossibly distant. It was peaceful, in its own way, to simply live, not as the embodiment of peace or hope or decadent, but just as a person.

The people hate me, of course, as much as they used to love me. But here in the valley the tax collectors haven't come, and the commissars haven't conscripted any new young people into the empire's armies. Maybe that's enough.

power

I don't know how many lives I've spent fighting her: her, her armies, her champion. Because every time I wake up and find myself in this world again, occupying another mind and another body for another lifetime, I am filled with this single purpose. She is my enemy, and her city must be destroyed.

She doesn't remember the countless lives we've fought, but she always knows me, somehow. Sometimes they know I am coming, from reading the signs and portents, others she seems to simply know at a glance that I am her foe, but no matter how cunning I am, she's ready. And however close I come, she prevails in the end. Her legend grows, and my defeat becomes just another song for her people to sing.

It's the same city every time, but the lands and the people are different. Sometimes even the languages change. And though I remember a hundred lives fighting--a thousand--ten thousand--I over the time the specifics fade. Only the defeat, the sting of the hero's blade, the burn of her magic. Those I will always carry with me.

I've arrived in her city and it is thriving, and for a moment the old feeling comes back: this is what I was made for. This city must burn. But this time something else has arrived with that feeling: the weariness of it all. After how many lifetimes fighting her, is it worth spending one more, only to fall in the end? Can I honestly convince myself that this is the time I finally win?

(A memory: one time I find her city but she isn't there. Or her heroes. The city burns so bright and beautiful, the smoke painting the sky in such beautiful shades at twilight, and even then an assassin's knife finds my back. Perhaps I set her back some, but even unopposed I still fail.)

I've been around for so long. I could be so much more than the would-be conqueror who fails time and time again. I could impart some of the wisdom of the ages to these people. If this city will stand anyway, I could make it a city worth standing.

***

Years pass. My wisdom draws her attention at long last, and she invites me to the palace, with her champion at her side, and she asks me if I would join her council. "The seers tell me that the destroyer's return is nigh," she says. "And if they do return, I will need your wisdom to fight them."

Some small part of me whispers, "This is our chance. We can betray her. We can destroy her. We can crush her champion. We can burn this city to ash." But it is so small, so quiet, I can almost not hear it over the stirring of pride in my heart. There is so much more we can do.

There is a chamber in the heart of the palace which will not suffer any of evil intent to enter, and she takes me there--the final initiation for all of her advisers. And though I am afraid, I am willing to take this risk--either I will be discovered, and I will die and return in another lifetime, or I will not, and I will be able to help her build.

Nothing happens when I enter. A priest anoints me with holy water and I become the princess's adviser.

***

We are both very old, now. The destroyer is past due now, they say. "Perhaps they are not coming," I suggest.

"Perhaps," she agrees. We have done so much together. Her city has become the shining heart of an empire, the most prosperous that ever existed.

"If the destroyer saw this city," I say, "even they would not wish it destroyed. It is too beautiful."

"Surely that would be a reason to wish it destroyed?"

"Perhaps," I tell her. "But I think it is so beautiful, so perfect, that no being, good or ill, could wish it harm. We have done the impossible."

The fear of the destroyer--the fear of me--inspired her to such great heights. And that legacy, I am certain, will continue for years. For centuries. This empire will never fall, certainly not to the likes of me. Not while its princess is so motivated.

And suddenly I understand what I must do to destroy her, and her kingdom.

I try to put the thought from my mind, but it refuses to leave. It stays until I am on my deathbed, and even then my last thoughts, after all I have built, are of the city burning, and how beautiful that will be.

cracks

I hadn't thought of you for years when I started having these dreams, like little glimpses into a timeline where I hadn't disappeared, where I'd go to parties and meet your friends and laugh and have a good time and when I finally went home I didn't feel exhausted or anxious or broken. I just felt alive. Like a person. Every morning I wake up and feel so much worse than I can describe, because that's not me. But the person in the dreams--it wasn't watching someone else, like so many of my dreams. It was me.

I didn't realize they were about you at first. Of course on some level you've always been there, haven't you? But as the dreams kept coming, and I'd wake with that strangely empty wistfulness, I could just make out your shape as my mind tried to piece together what had happened (and what hadn't). And then, finally, last night, you were there in the flesh. So to speak.

This one was different. It had been years, just like the real world, but you called. You were in town, you wanted to meet. So we met at a place which could have been anywhere, and I cannot tell you how happy I was. I should never have run away.

Then time passed, as it does in dreams, and I started to see the cracks. There were reasons I disappeared, reasons you never looked for me. We can forgive, perhaps, but neither of us were ever very good at forgetting.

When the morning came I was unsure if I wanted to wake up or stay asleep. Fortunately, I suppose, the real world rarely offers us a choice, and even rarer still offers us a chance to do things over again.

I hope you're well. I've lost so much since we last spoke.

had we but world enough

Winter's settling in and it's making me think of that time I took a bus out to New York one January because some band I liked was playing there and I had a friend or two who were also going to be visiting that weekend for some other thing so I figured, hey, might as well make a weekend of it. It was fucking cold out.

I used to just let my feet and my inability to say "no" to anything carry me wherever the night willed, so that night I ended up at some diner with a woman I think one of my friends might have known, because I needed to catch the bus home in a few hours and it was late and I didn't have a place to crash anyway. We drank coffee, we ate disappointing pancakes, and we just fucking talked for hours like we knew each other. Like her presence didn't slowly exhaust me. (Do you have any idea how rare that is?)

Anyway, it was maybe an hour before I needed to catch that bus and I was worried maybe the waitstaff was tired of listening to us so I said I should probably head off. It was probably thirty minutes of walking in the cold to the bus stop (much less by subway but I was young and needed to kill time, what did I care?) so I figured this was the end, but no. She walked with me. We were shivering by the time we got to Penn Station and she sat with me until the bus finally let me on board. We hugged goodbye, did the whole promise to stay in touch thing, and I rode the night bus home deliriously happy.

Sometimes we interact on social media now, but not often. (I think she, like most people, thinks I'm a little much.) I was afraid, I think, that anything else would ruin the magic. That there was something perfect about that night, but that that perfection was something singular: that it could never happen again, that it should always just remain as a perfect memory.

or just the one

If you insist on reducing everything to a life-changing moment, denying all of the countless events that made it so that one radical change was not just possible, but ultimately inevitable, then the moment I realized I was too nice happened when I got hit by a car and nobody did so much as stop by to see if I needed anything. I didn't even like these people, they weren't about to do me any favors, so why did I spend so much energy helping them? I always told myself it's just what any decent person would do, and maybe that's true, but if it is, none of them were decent people.

(We're ignoring all the other times people let me down when I tried to lean on them. The truth, of course, is that being everyone's doormat was not sustainable. But we can pretend for now.)

Practicing saying "no, I don't want to" is easy enough, but it's another thing entirely when someone's right there demanding emotional support. But the anger that I'd built up over the years of giving and giving and giving without so much as a word of thanks flowed through me then. So yeah, when the kid who said he couldn't pick me up from the hospital because he had nebulous plans to "hang out" with his new girlfriend came by the house and started complaining the relationship wasn't going well, I told him I didn't actually care about his sad white boy problems.

(Watching him go from "I need your support" to "fuck you, you stupid bitch" was priceless.)

Being casually but deliberately cruel, in case you're curious, is a good way to alienate your friends, but the only person who ever seemed to think of me as more than a walking source of favors was gone, so what did I care? I was done being nice. A few people, possibly to their credit, asked if I was okay, said this wasn't like me, and I just laughed. "Never fucking better," I said.

This lasted for, oh, a month or two. Then I spent all evening just staring at the wall, unable to move or think or do anything but wonder what the fuck I was doing to myself, and then when the sun came up I gave notice to my work and landlord, packed everything up, and skipped town.

At least it was good practice, I guess.

so many people

I've been thinking about this friend I had back in high school, a million years ago, who was just the nicest person you'd ever meet. She'd drop everything if you asked her, and I definitely asked a couple times. I'd have done anything for her because I had the biggest crush on her but I don't think she ever asked me for anything.

Like, one early September about ten years back I got way too drunk with her, and by "with her" I think she maybe had three beers, and the only part about the evening I remember is telling her I loved her, which . . . fuck, maybe I did, who even knows? I was young and upset about a boy whose name I don't even remember and I was very, very drunk. And you know, anyone besides her would have maybe talked to me about my little drunken confession, or acted a little different, but she was just too nice. Let me pretend it never happened.

Here's the thing though: girl was a goddamn doormat.

So about a year later--November, around her birthday--we're drinking again, right? She doesn't like big gatherings but she's invited, you know, half a dozen people, give or take. Two people show up. Me and her big brother. She doesn't say anything but there's this look in her eye, like something's snapped. She's not okay. But I ask, her brother asks, and she just says "I'm fine, I'm sure they're just busy," and starts drinking.

She's wasted by the time her brother takes off, and I get the check because it's her birthday and I walk her home, hold her hair back while she pukes, you know. The things you do for your friend who got too drunk on her birthday. The friend you might be in love with but you've been dutifully ignoring those feelings because thinking about them is . . . complicated.

I leave her some water and some ibuprofen and I crash on the couch in case she needs something in the morning (and also it's a long walk home and I'm broke). Over breakfast the next morning (if you can call 1 in the afternoon 'morning') she says thanks. Says she's glad that, just for once, someone is helping her with her problems. And for the rest of the day she talks to me about her life. Because of course she has problems, she just doesn't tell anyone about them. Until that day.

I moved out of town a few months later--it's a long story, filled with sighs--and we fell out of touch. These things happen. But like I said, I've been thinking about her lately. I hope she's found friends who will try to put her first sometimes--God knows I never did. And I hope she was at least a little pissed at me for that when she figured it out, that even her best friend, the one who loved her, walked on her just like everyone else.

We're all so many people throughout our lives. I hope she's become one of the people who realizes she's too good for fuck-ups like me.