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notapaladin...Right?
(Wrong.)
-
Lord Death sat over the bones of the dead, and He thought. The bones were His responsibility, and He would not shirk them, but He was a busy god—a very busy god, now that mankind had been wiped out and the others would have to start anew. Perhaps...yes, perhaps for a time, He could have another watch the bones. (And perhaps, he thought with the ghost of a smile, I will see my Lady.)
He cleared what passed for His throat, and summoned His most loyal servant.
The shade of a priest stepped out of the dust. His feet were bare, but once he had worn bone-white sandals. His hair was unbound, but once it had been tied back with white cords. His cloak, now trimmed in shadows and owl feathers, had once been gray. He knelt in front of his lord’s throne, eyes downcast, and waited for instructions.
Mictlantecuhtli did not keep him waiting long. “I am busy. You, little priest, shall sit upon My throne and guard the bones of mankind while I tend to other matters.”
The priest inclined his head. “As You wish, my lord.”
And so it was that Mictlantecuhtli left His throne in a rush of chilling wind, and the priest—after a moment’s hesitation—climbed the steps and sat down upon it. The stone was cold. But then, everything was cold in the underworld. He closed his eyes, extending his magical senses to the borders of the underworld. There were the rivers of blood, the fields of knives, the roaming packs of beasts. All was in order. He should have been pleased, for he loved order and the safety of knowing that everything moved (or not) as it should.
He was not. He didn’t think he remembered how. In fact, as he stretched his legs and wriggled his toes in the dust, he realized he was...bored. He prodded the feeling like a loose tooth. Yes, that dull malaise was definitely boredom. It wasn’t something he was used to; Lord Death kept him busy seeing that each new arrival in Mictlan was cataloged properly. (Actually making it to His throne...well, that was something every soul had to manage for itself.) But now he had free time, and he wasn’t sure what to do with it. It wasn’t as though the bones were going to go anywhere, after all.
He didn’t need to breathe, but he let out a long sigh anyway. I see this is how my lord rewards His most faithful servant. Guard duty. (Acid cynicism also wasn’t something he was used to, but it felt distinctly familiar—and therefore, comforting.)
Still, he had been given an order, and so he would sit and carry it out. The throne didn’t get any warmer under him, but he stopped registering the numbing cold. Soon, he’d stopped registering much of anything; if anything happened, he would notice, but until then he would simply...sit. And dream.
(Deep, calm water. A great stone temple. Voices in his ear, beloved but indistinct, unfamiliar. A child’s smile.)
The stale, dead air of the underworld stirred around him, and he sat up. Something had changed. Something was wrong.
The first thing he noticed was light. Light in the underworld came from everywhere and nowhere, a dim bluish-gray color that outlined the surroundings without illuminating them; it offered no relief and no contrast, and the shadows it cast never changed. But this was a pale golden-yellow filtering down from above, turning the dust to little specks of fire, and it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. He didn’t even think to summon Lord Death—Lord Death would have made it stop.
And then it grew brighter and brighter, dazzling his eyes until he had to squeeze them shut. Now he felt the first stirrings of fear, and it occurred to him to beg for his lord’s protection—but before it could be more than a half-formed thought, the light blinked out, and he slowly opened his eyes again with the certain knowledge that he was no longer alone.
There was a young god ascending the steps of Mictlantecuhtli’s temple throne. His hair was obsidian, his skin a rich brown glowing with life; his cloak and hair ornaments were trimmed in quetzal feathers. There was gold on his sandals and at his wrists, and his smile held all the bright confidence of a man who had never been gainsaid and didn’t think it was going to start now. The priest couldn’t tear his eyes away. He certainly couldn’t summon the beasts of the underworld to drag him off; that would require speech, and he absolutely couldn’t manage that.
The god stood in front of him and bowed the precise depth necessary to convey respect to an equal, but his eyes were alight with mischief. It was horribly familiar. “You don’t look like Mictlantecuhtli.”
He found his voice somewhere. “I am not.”
“Do you have a name?” He sounded oddly hopeful.
The priest opened his mouth. Hesitated. Closed it again. He thought he ought to have had a name—he recalled the sound of wind through tall reeds and the sound of water lapping the shoreline—but he couldn’t remember it. Nobody had ever bothered to address him beyond his calling. “...I...”
The note of hope the priest heard in his voice promptly vanished. “Well, I can’t just call you ‘hey you,’” the god muttered.
He thought again of the reeds. “...Acatl. You can call me Acatl.”
The god’s smile was warm enough to burn. “Acatl, then. And I am Teomitl, the Feathered Serpent and Lord of the Breath of Life.”
With some difficulty, he held the god’s—Teomitl’s—gaze. “Teomitl-tzin,” he said, ignoring the minute flinch in the god’s eyes. No god would turn down the extra courtesy, even if it felt oddly wrong to use it for him. “What brings you to my lord’s throne? For you do not look like a supplicant.”
Now Teomitl’s smile was more than just bright. It was teasing, with a friendly lilt in his voice as he parroted back the priest’s words. “I am not. I came to speak with Him on a mission of great and grave importance, and would appreciate it very much if you could carry a message to him.”
The priest sat back on the throne, looking down on him. The cold stone grounded him a little, chasing away the thin thread of unease starting to worm its way through his guts. My lord warned me of this. That the bones are valuable, that they need to be guarded. If it comes to a fight... Well. If it came to a fight, the priest was fairly sure he’d be deader than he already was. Teomitl was armed, and his flint-edged macuahitl looked well-used. “Speak, then.”
The smile abruptly vanished, and Teomitl stood up a little straighter. “We must have the bones of mankind if we are to create new men to feed us with their worship and veneration. If your lord will give them to me—“
“No,” he snapped. “The mortals are dead, and so their place is here. My lord has commanded me to guard their bones, and guard them I shall. You’re welcome to stand here until He returns, but His answer won’t be any different.”
“...Did Mictlantecuhtli foresee a great number of visitors asking about them?” Teomitl looked him up and down with a raised eyebrow that managed to communicate how unlikely he thought this was.
The priest ground his teeth. Annoyance was another foreign sensation, but not an unfamiliar one. He had the faint sense that, at one point, he’d spent a lot of time being annoyed. “I do not presume to know my lord’s thoughts.”
Teomitl had the nerve to look sympathetic. Worse, he even sounded sympathetic. “That sounds like a no. You must be bored.”
He wasn’t going to admit that he had been—that, with nothing to do other than sit upon cold stone and watch unmoving bones slowly crumble under their own dry weight, he’d felt his eyes starting to glaze over in mental self-defense. That, as irritating as it was to deal with Teomitl’s impertinent requests, it was at least much more stimulating than staring at the floating motes of dust in the air. “I am never bored when I can fulfill my duties.”
Teomitl sat on the platform at the base of the throne, looking up at him. He brought his own light with him as he did; it sank into the gray stone just as well as it did into his skin, picking up shimmering flecks of crystal and rendering it something close to enchanting. The priest found his eyes drawn to it, for somehow looking directly at Teomitl was...too much. He was too bright, too shining, and if he looked at him he’d want to touch the iridescent feathers in his headdress. The god’s voice held only curiosity. “Never?”
“Never.” The lie came more smoothly now.
Now he was starting to roll a skull back and forth between his hands, which was more than a little distracting. “What do you do when He doesn’t call you, then?”
He blinked slowly. He was sure he did something when Lord Death was not summoning him for one reason or another, but nothing came to mind. “...Ah. I wait for his summons.”
The expression on Teomitl’s face was one of thinly veiled disgust. “No hobbies? No small pleasures?” He muttered something that sounded like he wasn’t surprised, but in a more normal tone he asked, “Surely there must be more to Mictlan than rivers of blood and fields of knives.”
“There’s also the crushing mountains,” he pointed out. He’d always been rather fond of those mountains; there was something soothing about the way they drew apart and came together so rhythmically. Like the steps of a dance, he thought, and shook his head. There was no dancing in the underworld.
Teomitl flipped out the end of his cloak, and the priest saw that several of the trailing feathers trimming its edge had been broken in half. “I am familiar with the crushing mountains. Is that all there is to this place?”
The god sounded scornful, and it nettled him. “...There are gardens.” Dead gardens, where the trees were stone and the bare branches sighed like lamenting ghosts. Gardens without flowers, where dry leaves crunched underfoot forever.
“That sounds wonderful!” Teomitl was starting to smile again. “Why don’t we go and see them? We can take a walk together, you and I.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I have to guard the bones. From you.”
Though Teomitl had to have heard the chill in his tone, it didn’t at all dissuade him. The smile was radiant now, and despite himself he felt something in his chest soften at it. “Ah, but if I’m with you, I can’t possibly take them!”
He drew another wholly unnecessary breath. He should stay and fulfill his appointed task. He knew this. But the gardens were not so very large, and he could be back in a trice if he was needed, and he had a terrible feeling Teomitl would keep badgering him until he gave in. (He had an even more terrible feeling that he might enjoy the badgering. There was really something very appealing about that smile.)
“...Fine,” he said, and stepped down from Lord Death’s throne.
Getting anywhere in Mictlan was only an ordeal if the land decided you needed to be tested. As a denizen of its gray and dusty plains, taking Teomitl to the gardens was a matter of thinking very, very hard about it. When he stepped out of the dust and opened his eyes again, they were standing in one of the garden’s vast courtyards. Winding paths had been planted with basalt trees and skeletal flowers, and from off in the distance he heard the faint burbling of a black and viscous river. The only spot of color was Teomitl beside him, and he was almost painful to look at for too long.
Especially when he was glancing around in wide-eyed fascination. “These are the gardens of Mictlan?”
He nodded. “We are quite near the entrance. There is...more...further on.” More of the same gray and black and white, varying only in texture. Nothing like Teomitl, like this god who was gazing at everything in wonder and who was impossible for him to look away from.
And, worse, was turning towards him with a soft gaze. “Lead on, Acatl.”
Acatl. He swallowed, feeling something twist painfully in his chest. That was right, he had a name now. He had a name, and Teomitl was using it with a smile on his face. “...Follow me,” he managed, and was pleased when his voice didn’t shake.
Teomitl left faintly glowing footprints behind as he walked. The priest left no footprints at all.
He felt moved to talk as they made their way through the winding paths, describing this twisted tree or that utterly denuded bush. The flowers—tiny monstrous skulls on stalks—clattered their jaws at them and caught at the hems of their cloaks, but Teomitl didn’t even flinch. He looked as though Mictlan had so far surpassed his expectations, even though there was a tinge of something like sorrow in his eyes whenever his gaze rested on Acatl.
Acatl, for his part, tried not to look at him—but he couldn’t stop his eyes straying towards him anyway. Teomitl felt like the only real thing in Mictlan, turning everything else into pallid, insubstantial reflections. He even seemed more solid than his surroundings, and Acatl was painfully aware that when the god looked at him, he was dimly seeing the trees through his form. He looks like the sun. Would it burn me, if I touched him? The thought made him shiver, and he raised his voice a fraction louder as they kicked dry, crackling leaf drifts out of their way. He spoke without really paying attention to his own words, mind spinning off along a quite different track. And why does this feel so familiar?
Teomitl smiled, murmured some comment on how no, he didn’t understand how there could be dead leaves when there had never been live ones...and, entirely unselfconsciously, took the priest’s hand without care for the tingling cold of what passed for his skin.
Acatl froze. Even if he’d needed to breathe, he wouldn’t have been able to. He wasn’t sure he could even move; at any moment, he’d disintegrate into his component parts and scatter to the four winds. Nothing—no one—had ever taken his hand before. Teomitl’s hand was warm, a little dry, and so alive. He could feel the blood moving under the skin, feel each tiny shift as his fingers gripped his. Next to this, he couldn’t even register the dry leaves underfoot or the faint sighing of the wind against his skin. Having a living, divine hand in his was something so utterly unlike the scratching claws or wispy, insubstantial brushes of his fellow shades that he couldn’t even find words to describe it. All he knew was that he never, ever wanted it to end.
A faint tug on his hand let him know Teomitl had stopped too. “...Acatl?”
He couldn’t speak. He turned and looked into Teomitl’s eyes, and words deserted him. (If this was how it felt to hold hands, came the first whirling scrap of thought, what would it feel like to put an arm around him? To—he couldn’t even think it, but there were definitely ideas fluttering through his head about that soft-looking mouth.) “Gnh.”
Teomitl averted his gaze, dropping his hand as though the touch had hurt him. On a god, the flush of embarrassment actually glowed faintly. “Sorry.”
He dredged up words from somewhere. “...It’s nothing.”
“Hrmph,” he muttered, and kept walking.
It felt like an eternity before he spoke again. They’d come to the burbling fountain Acatl had heard before, and for a long time Teomitl stared at the skeletal fish swimming in its depths. Finally, he broke the silence. “...Look. Acatl. We...”
The sound of his name rang like a silver bell in the priest’s chest, and he had to swallow. “Yes?”
Teomitl drew in a long, slow breath and let it out in a sigh that smelled of burning copal. “We, the gods, need mankind. Without worship, without faith—we will starve. Even your lord. Everything will look just like this place does. Is there—is there anything you can do?”
He blinked at him, taken utterly aback. “...No?”
Teomitl turned his face towards him, eyes soft. “...Please?”
The please almost broke him. He clenched his fists, taking a shaky breath. “No,” he said again, more firmly. He knew his master, and Lord Death would not be swayed.
Teomitl’s gaze dropped back to the fountain again. In the black water, two fish swam in slow, orbiting circles around each other; one was missing part of its tail, but that didn’t seem to stop it. Teomitl’s voice lowered, so that Acatl had to step closer to hear him. “Have you ever seen the world outside Mictlan? Do you remember it?”
He shook his head, belatedly realized Teomitl still wasn’t looking at him, and said, “There’s nothing to remember. I—I’ve never been there.” (Liar, hissed a voice in his mind. He ignored it.)
Teomitl’s fists clenched as he fixed his gaze on the fish below. “It is...beautiful. There is dust, but it’s brown and gold as well as gray. The trees—they are alive, putting forth new leaves every year—some of them never even lose their leaves! The water—oh, you would love the water. It’s fresh and cool, and so clear—you can even see your face in it. The fish are clad in their own scales, shining like mirrors, and the birds...” He shrugged his shoulders, ruffling the feathers of his cape. “Like living jewels. More lovely than you can imagine.”
Acatl drank in the sight of him standing by the pool, straight and solemn. I can imagine a great deal more than you think.
“And that’s not to mention...” Teomitl shook his head. “Mankind can build such wondrous things if we let them, Acatl! If we give them the chance to start again. Great cities, pyramids that shine in the sun—in the real sun, not this pallid imitation. I wish I could show you. I can’t wait to see what they could make this time.”
“...It won’t be the same,” he murmured. Even though as he spoke, the priest could see them in his mind’s eye—see them as clearly as if he’d been standing in front of them. They really had been marvels.
“I know.” And then Teomitl turned to him, and Acatl realized with a jolt how close they were. “It will be better.”
Lord Death preserve me, he thought breathlessly. Teomitl was smiling faintly, eyes alight with confident hope, and he was spellbound. They weren’t touching, but suddenly he wanted desperately for the god to take his hand again—or more, to take him in his arms, to pull him close. (Closer.) He leaned in, feeling the intoxicating warmth that radiated from Teomitl’s skin, and let his gaze fall to the god’s lips. They really looked very soft. I could kiss him. I could.
Teomitl set a hand on his waist, a delicious burn, and he shivered. His eyes slid closed. “Acatl,” came the god’s whisper, “Can I...?”
“Please,” he breathed, and Teomitl leaned in. He could feel warm, spicy breath on his face, the first tentative, feather-light brush of lips against his own—
And then he recoiled, gasping, as a spike of frigid pain lanced through his skull.
“Acatl?!”
He shuddered, wavering on his feet. “My lord is on His throne. I must attend to Him.”
Teomitl straightened, face grim, and swept his cloak behind him so that he looked every inch the young god again. “Take me with you.”
Nodding—still shivering from the pain and from, gods, how close he’d been to that kiss—he grabbed Teomitl’s arm and they stepped through the dust back to Mictlantecuhtli’s throne.
Lord Death did not look pleased. A single look from him was enough for the priest to fall on his knees before his throne, legs bending of their own accord. His master’s voice sounded like a stone being rolled across the entrance of a tomb. “Priest.”
“My lord.” He kept his gaze fixed firmly on the floor.
One skeletal finger tapped restlessly on the arm of His throne, and the priest shuddered. “You have failed me.”
Teomitl stepped forward. The priest could feel the heat of his passing, the faint tickle as a feather brushed his skin. He clearly had no fear whatsoever of Mictlantecuhtli. “He was entertaining me at my request, Lord Death.”
Lord Death looked him up and down slowly. The shadows on the floor deepened. “...Ah. The Feathered Serpent. I do not suffer unannounced guests, child.”
Teomitl seemed to glow a little brighter with the force of his convictions, and the priest found himself raising his head just enough to look at him. “I would not intrude, lord, save that it is urgent. Without the bones of mortal men, we cannot make new ones—and without their blood and worship, we will starve. The balance of the worlds will be thrown out of tune, and all will tumble into the abyss.”
Those bone fingers drummed a slow, sepulchral rhythm on His throne. “...And?”
The priest felt ice slowly slide down his throat, freezing him from the inside out. Of course my lord doesn’t care. Teomitl will fail, he’ll go back empty-handed, and there will never again be those marvels that he spoke of. I’ll never see them again. I’ll never see him again.
But Teomitl was undeterred. “I ask your leave to take the bones with me back to the world of the living.”
“...Hmm.” For an eternity, there was silence. Mictlantecuhtli tilted His head, crossed and uncrossed His legs, and gave every indication of thinking it over. (An accurate indication, as it happened; if the other gods truly wanted the bones, it would come to a war—and he had no wish to have his lovely and well-ordered realm of the dead spoiled by heavenly deities with their flames and color and flowers.) Finally, he replied, “Very well—but you will perform a service for Me first.”
Teomitl exhaled. “Anything.”
Lord Death threw him a carved conch-shell horn. “You know how to play this, do you not? Walk four times around the borders of My realm, and entertain My people with your song.”
Judging by the look on Teomitl’s face, he wasn’t expecting that. Still, he nodded. “...As you wish.”
Mictlantecuhtli smiled, and knew he would fail. For there was no music in the land of the dead.
Teomitl turned the conch over in his hands, and Acatl’s heart sank. The shell was solid, unpierced; no sound would come from it. But then—baffled by the sight—he realized Teomitl was smiling.
The god set the shell on the ground and hummed a long, low tone. For a moment nothing happened, and then Acatl watched as worms broke the surface, writhing over the conch; it seemed to take no time at all for them to chew holes in either end and spaced along the shell’s length, creating something that could actually be played. Teomitl—looking distinctly smug—picked it up, wiped it off on his cloak, and set it to his lips.
Silence. Mictlantecuhtli’s smile widened. Acatl felt his heart drop into his stomach.
Teomitl frowned and hummed a different tone. Again there was an instant of stillness—and then the wind picked up. The dust stung Acatl’s eyes, and he had to squint them shut...and then he realized that the dust was not dust after all, but thousands of bees and hornets swarming around Teomitl’s form, packing their striped bodies into the shell and filling the air with their rhythmic, sonorous buzzing.
Teomitl blew into it, and the sound rang out pure and clear. Not particularly musical, Acatl had to admit, but clear. “...Is this a song enough for you?”
Lord Death narrowed His eyes. “Play it throughout My realm, and We shall see.”
Teomitl lifted his head and smiled, but something in his look said that his smile was only for Acatl. “I’ll be back.”
Mictlantecuhtli waved a negligent hand. “Go.” To the priest, he added, “You are dismissed.”
...Nothing for it but to wait, then.
He wished himself to the gardens. They felt darker now, and somehow even more dead than they had been. He sat down on a carved stone bench, scuffing his feet through the leaves, and tried not to think about bright sunlight or brilliant green feathers. (Or the touch of Teomitl’s hand, the soft breath on his face, the knowledge that he’d been about to be kissed—)
He stared at the leaves without seeing them. Duality. Why...why does this all feel so familiar? So right? What am I forgetting? He knew he was a shade, of course, a ghost who had once probably been mortal. But he’d never remembered his life before; it had never bothered him before. But now Teomitl had strode into his life, and the gaps in his knowledge of his own past suddenly seemed like a vitally important problem to solve.
Water. Reeds. A single, shining pyramid. The laughter of children—mine? No, I don’t think so, but...I loved them anyway, I know I did. What were their names? What was my name?
No amount of wracking his brain gave him any more clues.
“Acatl!”
The voice was sweet to his ears, and his head came up like a faithful hound as Teomitl walked out of a gold-limned swirl of dust. The inert lump in his chest gave an erratic lurch at the sight of his smile. “...Teomitl.” He couldn’t call him -tzin. Not anymore.
Teomitl didn’t make him wait for the good news. “It was a success,” he said proudly. “Lord Death has given me the bones of mankind.”
It’s over. He’s succeeded. I should be happy for him. And he supposed he was, deep down, but it didn’t seem to be making its way through the sinking despair that he’d been right, that he really never would see Teomitl again. “Then why are you still here?” It came out more snappish than he’d intended, and he promptly felt worse.
Teomitl didn’t seem fazed. His gaze actually softened where it rested on him. “...I wanted to see you.”
Acatl swallowed, feeling again that sharp twist in his chest. “...Well. You are.”
The god drew closer, and for a moment he seemed about to offer Acatl his arm before clearly thinking better of it. “Walk with me again, Acatl? You didn’t show me all of the gardens last time.”
Because I was distracted thinking about kissing you, he thought, but obligingly he stood and set off down a different path than the one they’d taken before. This one led them along the banks of a canal, where the slow blood-tinged waters occasionally played host to desiccated frogs and three-eyed axolotls. (And for the first time it was striking him as wrong—he thought that the canals should be clear, the frogs and axolotls in their own glistening skins and only the usual number of eyes. But saying that would avail him naught, and so he kept his tongue behind his teeth.)
They walked in silence. Teomitl had taken the side of the path near the water, and seemed mildly distracted by the state of it all. But just when he thought the silence might get awkward, they came to where the canal emptied into a pretty little circular lake where a rotted duck slowly paddled with its equally rotted ducklings. Here there was a bench under a particularly twisted tree, but Teomitl made no move to sit. Instead—still staring at the water—he reached for Acatl’s hand again.
This time, Acatl didn’t freeze. He felt his heart lodge itself in his throat, but he didn’t freeze.
Teomitl twined their fingers together and slowly—so slowly—turned to look up at him. “...Acatl...I...”
“Yes?” He couldn’t quite feel his lips.
“Come with me,” Teomitl blurted out.
What, came the first thought. No! came the second. But then the third thought slid in after them, and it was Duality, yes, I would love nothing more if it were possible. But it wasn’t, and the knowledge tore at his heart. “...I am bound to this place,” he whispered.
Teomitl stepped closer, eyes warm and dark and very serious. “Are you sure?”
The question made no sense. “Am I—“
Rippling water. Wind through the reeds. The laughter of children. The shadow of a tall pyramid gleaming in the sun. Things he knew, somehow. (Because he’d had them once? Because all the things Teomitl spoke about with such fervor were things he’d seen? Because once he’d had a mortal life and a mortal name, not been tethered to Lord Death—Lord Death, who would be furious if he left.)
“...I am,” he said, and knew it for the truth.
Teomitl dropped his gaze. His fingers trembled, and he gripped Acatl’s hand a little tighter. “So you’re staying.”
“I must.” He swallowed. His throat hurt and his eyes burned, and he wondered if he could still cry.
For a moment he thought Teomitl would let go of his hand, but then he drew himself up, rolled his shoulders, and met Acatl’s gaze with dry eyes. Another half-step brought them even closer together, the heat of him sinking into Acatl’s bones. “...Let me say goodbye, then. Properly.”
He took one breath. Another. Then he leaned in, head tilted, and met Teomitl halfway.
Warm. Duality, his lips are so warm. Warm and soft, and careful too where they traced Acatl’s delicately. Too delicately; Acatl heard himself make a desperate noise as he dropped Teomitl’s hand and deepened that kiss, tangling his fingers in short hair to keep him where he was. And this, too, felt familiar. He knew that if he nipped lightly at his bottom lip he would gasp, that if he slid his tongue into Teomitl’s mouth he would make—yes, that sound, that Teomitl loved to bury his hands in his hair and that it would feel so good if he tugged just like that...
They didn’t need air, but when Teomitl’s mouth left his, Acatl gasped anyway, and Teomitl let out a very pleased-sounding hum. “Mmm...”
“Teomitl,” he breathed into the air between them. Not touching him was suddenly impossible—it burned, sweet and just this side of painful, but he ran his hands down the god’s back and was pleased beyond measure at the way he trembled. Good. Let it burn. If this is all I’ll ever have of him...
The thought made him shudder hard, and he had to duck his head to bury it in Teomitl’s shoulder. If this is all I’ll ever have of him, I want it to last.
“Acatl.” Teomitl held him tightly, pressing against him until the frantic thunder of his heart was all that Acatl could hear.
How long they stood holding each other, he couldn’t say—but then Teomitl was letting go of him and stepping back, a sad smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “I’m so sorry. I wish you remembered.”
He already felt bereft without Teomitl in his arms, but the words sent an additional sliver of ice into his guts. “Remembered what?”
Teomitl shook his head. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Goodbye, Acatl. I’ll—Duality, I’ll miss you more than you know.”
I’ll miss you too. I love you. Before he could lose his nerve, he opened his mouth to say just that—to say that it didn’t matter who he was bound to, Teomitl’s place in his heart would never fade.
Then the pain of Mictlantecuhtli’s summons flared in his head, and the priest grimaced. “I’m sorry. I have to—my lord—“
“Go!”
He went. Stepping to his lord’s side took less than half a thought; he could manage it even with his mind and heart still reeling from joy at Teomitl’s kiss and grief at their parting. Something was telling him, rather depressingly, that it wasn’t the first time. We’ve parted before. He’s kissed me like that before—gods, somehow I know he’s done more than that, and I who was surely a priest in life loved him for it—but then...then we parted. How? Why?
He was still trying to sort out the tangle of his thoughts when he realized that Lord Death was smiling at him. It wasn’t a friendly smile, even for His skeletal face. “Priest.”
He knelt as he always did. “...Yes, my lord?”
Mictlantecuhtli sounded smugly pleased. The priest sort of hated it. “I have changed my mind. The Feathered Serpent is leaving with the bones—with My bones—and My lords and warriors will retrieve them. You will head their vanguard, as My most precious priest.”
The priest felt something deep within him freeze. No. No. My lord, no. But all he said, touching his forehead to the ground, was “As you wish.”
If he left quickly enough, he could catch up to Teomitl well before the underworld’s most terrifying warriors—lords of the dead all, mounted upon fell beasts and bearing weapons carved from human bones—descended upon him. Of course Teomitl was a god, and no doubt a valiant warrior, but even he couldn’t stand against a swarm of shades while carrying and protecting such precious, fragile cargo. (He would try anyway. He would try, and he would fail, and he would die and the priest wouldn’t be able to help him.)
The priest had never moved so quickly in his life. He had no magic that would bring him to Teomitl’s side with a wish, but shades had some advantages to not being quite bound to a corporeal form; it was the work of a moment to leap off the edge of the pyramid and throw himself into the howling winds of the underworld, letting the currents speed his steps as he rushed onwards in the search for a single beacon of light and color in the darkness.
There were the fields of knives and the rivers of blood, but no Teomitl. There were the roving packs of shadow beasts, but no Teomitl. Please, he prayed desperately. Duality, please, let me catch him before the warriors do.
Far below him, there was a splotch of vivid emerald green against the unrelieved gray. He spiralled downwards like a falling leaf—too slowly—and sank back into his physical shape to land on the ground just behind where the god was steadily trudging through the dust with a hastily woven sack thrown over one shoulder.
“Teomitl!” he cried.
Teomil stopped. Froze, in fact, and nearly dropped the sack of bones—and then he spun around, wide-eyed, to stare at him. “...Oh,” he said with a tone of devastated wonder. “Acatl.”
Yes, he thought a little shakily. That’s my name. It had been hard to remember in Mictlantecuhtli’s presence. “Teomitl, listen, there’s no time—Lord Death is sending his warriors after you, we have to run!”
Something like hope came into Teomitl’s eyes, and he slowly lowered the bones to the ground so he had a free hand to reach for him. “We?”
Acatl paused. Blinked. “...Forgive me. I meant...you. It’s only—Duality, I wish I could go with you!” The words came out in a rush, torn from the core of him, and if he’d been capable of it he probably would have blushed. Even in his current state, a hard lump of humiliation lodged itself in his throat. I sound desperate. Desperate and gods, like such an idiot. For me to leave this place is impossible.
Teomitl’s gaze softened. “You still can. Don’t you remember?”
A place by clear blue water. Someone holding my hand. “I...don’t know what I’m supposed to...” he stammered. Dry bones. The heat of a pyre reflected onto my face. My voice, chanting.
“Try a little harder,” said Teomitl, and took his hand, and placed it on the sack of bones.
The cloth was thin. His fingers slowly traced the curve of a skull.
And then he remembered that he had once been a man, and that the heart in his chest had once pumped red blood through his body. Some of these bones had been his when he’d been a priest in a village on the shores of a lake, with a high-handed brother and an acid-tongued sister and a small swarm of nieces and nephews who’d loved him, who’d called him Uncle Acatl and laughed as he taught them to swim. And he’d...there had been...
An apprentice. (A prince.) A warrior. (A god.) A man he’d loved, brilliant in quetzal feathers and gold, who’d loved him in return. Who had kissed him even as the world around them had ended, and promised to find him in the new one. And whose heart had broken all over again when Acatl had sat in front of him on Lord Death’s throne and seen only a stranger.
“Oh,” he gasped. “Oh, Teomitl.” Oh, my love. And then it was a good thing that Teomitl had set down the bones, because when he threw himself into his arms the god could catch him and hold him, one arm around his waist and the other hand pressed flat between his shoulderblades where his heart had beaten when he was alive, and Acatl could press his face into the softness of his hair and breathe. Now he knew how it was that his arms fit so perfectly around him, how the sweet heat of his skin felt so right against his. And with his bones in the new world under the Fifth Sun, they could have that again. They would have that again.
“Acatl. My Acatl.” Teomitl’s voice was ragged with emotion, and he crushed Acatl to his chest in a way that might have been painful but instead made his nerves sing.
He couldn’t—no, he could remember being this happy, and the thought made him grin like an idiot and nuzzle into Teomitl’s hair. A quetzal feather tickled his nose. “Yes. Yours.”
And then Teomitl pulled back and they were kissing again, hungry, and Acatl could very happily have kept on kissing him until the dawn of the Fifth Sun if the slight shifting of the bones next to him hadn’t reminded him that they had no time to waste. He broke away with a gasp, ready to warn his beloved, but even as Teomitl stiffened and started scanning the horizon he showed no inclination to step out of the circle of his arms.
“Teomitl—“
“I know. We have to move.” And then Teomitl grinned at him. “Now will you come with me back to my heaven?”
Back to his heaven, he thought dizzily. Never to die, never to grow old—to live forever by his side, as long as he will have me.
“I will,” he said, and did.
(And in centuries to come, the priests of the Feathered Serpent did not say He had a consort. But those who had spoken with Him claimed, sometimes, to feel the presence of another—older, steadier, well-loved. The Feathered Serpent became patron of priests and of knowledge as well as the four winds of the world, and if He ever spoke of how he came to love those pillars of society above all else...well, He kept that to Himself.)
