“Okay, okay. I got one,” Luna set her phone on the night stand next to the water pitcher and scooted her chair closer to the bed, propping her feet up on the metal bed frame. Molly rolled onto her side, pushing back some of her fire coloured locks behind her ear. Her chapped lips were crusted over with white in the sliver of light that splayed onto her. Luna wondered if they’d split completely if she smiled. She paused to grab the glass of water on the night stand. Molly weakly lifted her head and put her lips to the glass and drank slowly. “So, there are these two cops from real big cities in this small little town in Illinois where nothing happens,” Luna started with a small smile. “Usually, they spend their days picking on each other because they don’t like each other, and eating fast food, and complaining about being out of shape, protests, and the government…”

Molly pushed the glass from her and took a deep, ragged breath, pressing the side of her face into her blood-stained pillow. “What do they complain about the government for?”

“I don’t know…taxes probably.” Luna wiped at one of her hazel eyes as she set the glass on the wooden nightstand. “Or maybe they’re mad that the government won’t tell Dunkin Donuts that their donuts should be free,” she said through a yawn.

“Maybe they’re upset that the government is starting to hold them accountable for their homicidal blunders,” Molly chuckled.

“I’m already knowing,” Luna smirked and reached up to twirl one of her dark chocolate curls. “But moving on. So, while they’re complaining about how terrible the U.S. government is, they get a phone call from their captain telling them that there’s been a gruesome murder that’s happened in one of the forest preserves. So, they run off to find a little girl that had been raped brutally then posed strangely. She had her throat slit and all the blood drained from her body.”

“Posed strangely? My, it sure is dark in here,” Molly grinned before coughing violently. She pulled up her sheet instinctively, coating it with a bright scarlet.

Luna’s expression darkened. She’s getting worse…she knew coming to see her today was the last day they’d ever see each other but she still had hope that somehow, she’d pull through. That somehow, she wasn’t really that bad. She stroked Molly’s hair. The waves were damp with perspiration and that vivid orange seemed dull like dying autumn leaves in the shadows. Its trunk of life was pale like the white sheets she was wrapped in and Luna swallowed, wondering if she could stand to see her best friend like this. Molly calmed down and took staggered breaths, clutching at one of her breasts in pain as she regained control of her body. Luna could feel her fever through the thick strands of her hair. “Should I call for a nurse?”

“Why?” Molly wheezed a laugh that made her cough again. “They’re just going to sedate me. What kind of story telling would we do if I’m breezing into death without consciousness?”

“It’d hurt less. Story telling isn’t worth you being in pain, Mollz,” Luna whispered, retracting her hand as Molly turned onto her back to stare at the ceiling.

“I’ll stop hurting when I’m dead.” She swallowed, her tongue running along her bottom lip before she brought her bloody sheet up to wipe the remnants of her fit from her mouth. “Modern medicine is nice and all, but I’ll serve my penance.”

Luna rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Dramatic even when you’re on your death bed. I can’t believe it. Theatre majors.”

“All the world’s a theatre.” Molly didn’t laugh, but she did at least smile. A strange smile. A forced smile that made her cheeks look sallow and her skin too tight. She looked like a skeleton with just skin over those bones. Luna shifted in her seat to avoid shuddering. “Aren’t you going to finish your story? Why was the girl posed weirdly? And what is weirdly? Like sexually?”

“No, not really. I mean, maybe. She did have her legs open but she was on her knees and tilted back, propped by a metal pipe going from the back of her head through her mouth. It was buried into the ground. She was in a weird sort of triangle.” Luna pulled her wild curls over her shoulder and began French-braiding them. Molly nodded and motioned with her hand for Luna to continue. “Anyway, so the crime scene was virtually clean. She hadn’t been killed there and there was no evidence of the killer anywhere. The two detectives--let’s call them Kisshan and Benji—well, they were taken on a wild goose chase of a serial killing nightmare. Each of the bodies were posed into odd shapes, mostly triangles until the sixth victim whose body was maneuvered into a kite-like shape. All of the victims had their blood drained from them too. The seventh victim, though, wasn’t posed in any kind of shape and was killed on scene this time. Also, the other victims were small children. Mostly virgin little girls under the ages of ten who were raped and then drained and posed. The seventh victim was a male of middle-age. White collar businessman who worked in the downtown area of Chicago. Over there near the Chicago Stock Exchange.”

Molly’s brows furrowed, very intrigued by the tale.

“Anyway, there were large amounts of cocaine in his system as well as alcohol and he too had been sexually abused. But! They found this one hanging from a tree with his throat slit. He was naked like the others, but he had a nine carved into his forehead this time. Upside-down, obviously it looked like a six.”

“Oh, one of those…” Molly chuckled. “Maybe you should contact the writers of Supernatural. They want their bullshit back.”

“Shut up,” Luna grinned. “You wanted to hear the story!”

“Right, right,” Molly coughed softly, but thankfully without haemorrhage.

“So, they started to piece together that maybe these were more than just serial killings. They started looking in to the known occult practisers in the area and surrounding areas, especially those who dabbled in the Satanic arts.” Luna finished off her braid, twirling the end of her ringlets together to help it hold. Molly pointed to the drawer of the nightstand where Luna pulled it open and found some rubber bands. She grabbed one for her braid. “They didn’t have any real leads though until the second victim who had been grabbed outside of a boxing school. She put up a good fight and had skin cells underneath her nails. She too was killed on scene with a nine carved into her head. She also hung from a tree, though she had a significant amount of stab wounds on her body, clearly having angered the murderer—“

“You really should stop watching so many ‘Forensic Files episodes,” Molly snorted.

“You know…” Luna stuck her tongue out. “Let me tell my fucking story.”

“I’m just inserting commentary,” Molly flashed her a yellow smile with accompanying dull grey eyes that once glittered like the stars they could see in the country.

Luna forced a smile though she felt a lump in her throat. It was then that she registered that the room smelled funny. Stale, stagnant, asphyxiatingly so. She couldn’t pinpoint exactly what the smell was but she knew she smelled this before. She smelled this before but she couldn’t remember where…where had she smelled this before?

“What’s wrong?” Molly asked, turning back onto her side and reaching for her water glass slowly. Luna snapped out of her thoughts and moved to help her. “You got really far away.”

Luna held the glass to her lips but Molly was having a little bit of difficulty lifting her head enough to drink. Luna opened the drawer to fish around for a straw. “Far away?”

“Far, far, far away…” Molly said softly as she sucked from the straw, weakly tilting it lower at the bend so she didn’t have to work as hard.

“I got to thinking.”

“About mutilating children?” Molly asked in between swallows.

Luna opened her mouth but realised that she should’ve seen that coming. She grimaced which nearly made Molly choke with her attempt to thwart laughter. “God, you make it seem like I’m sick in the head.”

“Aren’t we all sick in the head?” Molly pushed the straw away and Luna put the glass on the table, refilling it with the pitcher before calling the nurse for another.

Luna shrugged. “Possibly. Maybe living just makes us sick.”

“We wouldn’t die if it didn’t,” Molly said as the nurse came in. She pointed to the pitcher and the nurse wordlessly did as requested. When she filled the pitcher and left again, Molly rolled her eyes. “I really wish they’d transfer her somewhere else.”

“Why?” Luna laughed. She never did understand why Molly disliked the woman so much.

“When she’s in here ‘helping’ me, she’s always complaining about having to work with us ‘walking skeletons’. Always with the, ‘I don’t know how much I can take of this’ bullshit and the ‘How can people let you all suffer this way’ bullshit. If it was up to her, she’d euthanize us all like dogs.”

Luna’s eyes grew wide and she sighed in exasperation. She could understand the nurse’s sentiments but she wholly understood what Molly was getting at. “The spirits should be raised not lowered with one’s weak spine.”

“Right? So naturally, I had to complain. It was quite moving. You should’ve seen it.” Molly smiled and then flew into another coughing fit.

Luna sighed, turning to grab the glass, careful of the straw. She let Molly calm down before she held the glass to her again and let her drink. “See, this is what you’re paying your penance for. Starting trouble when you’re supposed to be making peace. That’s not how you’re supposed to go.”

“How am I supposed to go?”

“Be chill.” Luna said with a smile. She pushed at the air with her free hand. “Be chill, be cool…be humble. Turn the other cheek, or whatever Jesus said.”

“Humility is for chumps,” Molly laughed. Luna held her breath and the glass in case she started another fit but instead, Molly sobered and grew quiet. “Humility is for those who know forgiveness lies ahead…”

Luna frowned, not enjoying the dramatics. She propped her head into her hands, leaning onto the bed next to Molly. She and Molly went to church together a lot when they were younger and the little pets of the head Sister but, that was a long time ago. Neither could claim themselves a good Catholic…or even a good Christian now. Luna looked over at the gold encased Athenian coin with Apollo’s godhead carved on the front side and his lyre on the back. She looked at her own bare clavicle that held no pendant of crucifixion or even that weird little fish she saw other Christians wear. And yet, she could feel that searing ink on her back of Ra’s words spoken through man’s hieroglyphs of old:

I am He who cannot be repulsed amongst the Gods.

“Repulsion…” Molly muttered. Luna looked over to her. Grey seemed bright even though there was no light to shine through that darkness. The shades were pulled over the blinds, casting them completely in shadows with few slivers in between. That’s how Molly liked it now. She didn’t want the sun inside anymore. Everything was dark with only slivers of light. 

Luna blinked. She thought, for some reason, that Molly was making mention of her tattoo. Thrown off, she had no response when her friend turned to her in the dying flicker of the sunlight that cast her pale face in bars.

“What if, in Death, the After is repulsed by me?”

Luna stared at her friend, searching those hollowing eyes. Those eyes that used to hold mischief, secrets, and plans for where they’d explore next. Those same eyes that she searched before they opened their college acceptance letters to Tufts University. The same eyes that she searched when she found out that she was pregnant by the same man who thought it was entertaining to slam her head into the dashboard until she got a concussion. The same eyes she searched when Molly told her she had an incurable terminal pulmonary disease. Molly shifted onto her pillow, staring into the fabric with just one sliver of light on her face. Luna watched her silently, waiting for her to say something else. Molly looked to her with that one visible eye that was caught in the light. For a second, Luna thought she saw that familiar glitter again, like the storm lifted from that light, nearly translucent, grey that she remembered.

“What if God never accepts me, Luna?” Molly whispered.

“Why wouldn’t He?” Luna’s brows furrowed.

She shrugged, adopting a childish expression as she turned away. “What if He won’t forgive me? What if He hates me?”

“Well, He should’ve thought about His decisions more carefully then.” Luna forced a smile that wasn’t returned and so she sat back, looking at the top of her black Adidas. “If He is who He and everyone else claim Him to be, then He wouldn’t hate you anymore than anyone else. Jesus included.”

Molly looked back at her. “What if there is nothing after this? What if there is no Jesus, no God. No anyone out there. No Beyond. What if, we just turn into nothingness?”

Luna didn’t want to think about there being no God or gods. She didn’t believe in nothingness but she didn’t want to say that it wasn’t possible. She looked up and then toward the window where she could catch the sunlight that flickered as the trees swayed in the wind outside through the space between the blinds and the pane. There was a storm just some ways from the hospice. The sky was dark over there and Luna wouldn’t have been surprised if the sirens went off soon. Yet, from what she could see in that flicker, their sky was still blue. “My grandma told me a few months before she died that when angels die, the weather becomes remarkable. Unusual and awesome.”

Molly looked towards the sunlight and then her gaze dropped down to her Apollo godhead coin.

Luna stood up, peeking through the blinds. “This is the only sunlight while there’s a storm just down the street.”

Molly didn’t comment and so silence ensued. Luna looked down at her friend, growing anxious with that prolonged silence. Molly was still conscious, still feverish, still breathing. “I’m still here,” she said when she felt Luna’s hand on her shoulder. “Still here…”

Luna retracted, looking back out the window. The rain poured down on the earth like the heavens were overturning buckets. The winds threatened to funnel amongst the trees and even outside their little window, where the sun threatened to wage war against the storm, the trees reacted in kind. Bowing and sighing and bowing again. Their branches scratching against the glass in fear. “Fear not, young treelings, for She will protect you,” Luna mused, more to herself.

“Who is She?” Molly looked up at her friend.

Luna pulled the curtains back and lifted the blinds so the glass was exposed. Light flooded through the room and stung at her eyes, making her turn and look at Molly. Luna could see exactly how pallid her friend looked. Pallid and yet, she looked radiant. Her browning sheets didn’t look like blood with the shadows of branches splayed into them. They looked like abstractly painted leaves fresh with the kiss of death. “You.”

Molly stared at her with an unreadable expression before she looked up at the windows as if seeing something new and mesmerising. Luna moved away to open the other two, encasing the whole room in light. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…”

“I shall fear no evil,” Luna continued as she began opening the windows and the first breath of fresh air wafted in, filling her lungs that she hadn’t realised had been so restricted.

“Though I would fear no shadows for shadows are not to be feared, oh, Lord of Light that promises a Heaven to those who do believe,” Molly sighed and turned onto her back again, clutching at her left breast. Luna looked over from one of the windows and realised that she saw tears in her friend’s eyes. She knew that she was thinking of Nassir and their baby; knew she was referring to how cruelly her fiancé and daughter were taken from her. “But promise what thy will for those who do not believe. I will not be afraid of evil but I shall not be comforted by your rod and your staff. I shall have no tables in front of me, opposite my enemies. No anointment shall be granted to my crown. Goodness has followed me all the days of my life but Mercy you ripped from my womb and gave her just a breath and stole it from her in the same kiss. I curse you and the house you meant for me to dwell in. Where is Mercy now?”

Luna looked away, watching the sunlight faze from clear to blurry as the storm was brought into their humble house of death. Where was God when Mercy was taken? Where was God when Nassir walked out of that hospital room, saying he couldn’t breathe? Where was God when he dropped dead outside the doors? Where was God when his heart gave out? Where was God when Molly went into cardiac arrest? Where was God? Where was He when everything had been taken from her? Where was He? Where were you, Father?

Molly sniffed, rolling over, coughed and shuddered and Luna realised that she was sobbing herself into a fit. She rushed back to her chair, grabbing Molly’s hand comfortingly, but she pulled away to hold her sheet to her mouth. Luna crawled into the bed on the other side and held her friend as she cried. “I will never hear my baby laugh…” Molly sobbed. “Never see Nas again…Never be anything again…”

Luna wiped at her own eyes, feeling anger rise in her throat. She stared out the window over Molly’s shoulder, pressing her warm hands against her friend’s stomach. She could feel the scar from her caesarean. Is this what He wanted? Appeasement through Suffering? They stayed like that and the glow in the room seemed to brighten though it should’ve turned orange or dark by then. Luna couldn’t find it in her to comment on it, feeling ashamed that she brought the light in there. Molly’s breathing had finally come down to a wheezy rest and the hum of the wind created a sort of twilight. The smell of the rain wafted in, intoxicatingly. Luna felt her eyelids grow heavier, maybe from her own crying or the emotional distress of the situation. Luna wanted to pull Molly from the bed and dance around like they used to do in their apartment. Like they used to do in the forest preserve when they were kids pretending to dance for the Sun. Pretending to dance for that one God everyone knew deep down inside before organised religion replaced its godhood with rules and a standard, constantly twisted voice. Before that goodness that told you to be happy became that which told you to fear and be repulsed. Told you to betray.

I am He who cannot be repulsed amongst the Gods…

Molly let out a ragged sigh and turned onto her back, moving her arm in front of her to clutch at her chest again. She made a pained sound and then grew quiet once more. Luna wondered if she felt that drunken, depressive spell that she felt. Molly was probably too in pain to notice it. Luna heard the rain stop and the trees’ scratching petered out. She moved her lips to say her friend’s name when she heard wings flapping. She looked up to see something black shoot past. Molly moved away from her to press her face into her pillow and breathe. Luna looked back to her, flashing back to the last time they shared a bed together. Molly pressed her face into her pillow then too, but her hair was dry and piled onto her head in a bun. She was seven months pregnant then.

Luna looked up to see another set of black wings fly by. She closed her eyes, remembering when she lay down in the meadow of wild grass and flowers by her parents’ house when she was a child. She saw black wings shoot past her then too. A six-year-old Molly ran up after the bird, stopping to peer down at Luna. Come on, Luna! I’m chasing the faerie back to his home! It’s made of candy and sugar cookies! Come on! If we don’t hurry, he’ll disappear into a shadow!

Luna resisted the urge to hug Molly tighter, loosening her arms just in case that would help. They fell into a brief silence. “Do the cops ever catch the guy?”

“Huh?” Luna lifted her head and then remembered that it was story time. “Oh, not before the ritual was complete. Another guy, some virgin band player in college, got sacrificed and the three nines were complete. Detective Benji got kidnapped to be used as the Devil’s vessel and Detective Kisshan came in just as the spell thing was complete. There was a huge storm and the electricity blew out. Something dark came through Benji’s stomach, like a genie out of a lamp.”

“The devil…”

“Yeah. Satan. He was pissed.”

“Pissed?”

“He said to the disciple, ‘Why have you called upon me? Why have you brought me here with all of this?’” Luna cleared her throat to something stereotypically southern. “‘I wanted to help you reign, Lord Satan, sir!’‘But why?’ Satan folded his dark arms and looked out at the disciple through these piercing diamond like eyes. ‘Why do you think I want to be here?’‘Well don’t you want to destroy all that God has created for the wrong he did you?’‘No, I don’t need to. Unlike God, I don’t need three or five books to have growth in character. You all do more than enough to destroy yourselves. I’m tired of being used as a ploy to control you all. I have my own Heaven with my own Brethren and we live peacefully there. We are Gods already and we are left alone. Why should I come here to you miserable buffoons so stupidly believing that you are all loved by He who does not even love his own sons enough to treat them right?’ The guy stared at Satan and Satan, who deemed his speech good enough, disappeared, leaving Benji unconscious but perfectly alright. Kisshan videotaped the whole thing on his cell phone, and the disciple who turned out to not be a disciple at all, took a revolver and blew his head off. All those people died for nothing.”

Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus, did you really just make all of that up?”

“Yeah, just for you,” Luna chuckled.

“I hope you become a famous writer or something.” Molly laughed softly.

“I’ll dedicate all my books to your memory.”

“Even though I’ll be nothingness?”

“Memories aren’t nothing. You won’t be nothing until everyone who’s loved you has either forgotten you or died. And we both know I’ll never forget you. Besides, don’t you know energy can neither be created nor destroyed? Just repurposed and recycled.”

Molly turned over to look at Luna who gave her a smile. Molly smiled back and snuggled close to her friend, putting her head against her chest. Luna wrapped an arm around her and held her close. She stared out the window again, watching those bright strips of sunlight stretch closer and closer to where they lay. The gold casing of Apollo glittered and deflected a light onto Molly’s shoulder. Luna could vaguely see the tattoo of the godly trio they had admired as younger adults. They used to live with this spiritual fantasy writer named V who believed that the holy trinity really was a trinity and not just one person with multiple personality disorder. The supreme God who created himself and light, the Goddess, and the God of Wind and Air,  who also created himself. She had carved them beautifully out of clay. Luna enjoyed the stories but Molly was more invested out of the two of them. When their roommate died in her sleep one day, Molly got the sculpture tattooed onto her shoulder. Luna kept the sculpture in their living room with a picture of their roommate; their own private remembrance of her. Their own private shrine.

“I had a dream about V the other day,” Molly looked up at Luna, realising what Luna was looking at.

“Yeah?” Luna looked back to her, adjusting her head to a better comfort. 

“Yeah, she said she’s waiting for me.”

Luna’s expression darkened, but that did give her a thought. “What if V was right? What if all that mumbo-jumbo fantasy stuff that she would write so vividly as if it was real life really is real life? What if the trinity really is real?”

Molly looked away, chewing on her bottom lip in thought. “Then maybe I’ll get sent to a life where I’ll get to know Mercy.” She smiled, comforted by the thought.

Luna smiled as well, wondering if she would get to see her own little boy as well. “Maybe Nas will be there too.”

“I hope so. I still see his face when I close my eyes. His smile just gets brighter as the days go by.” Molly closed her eyes then, her smile widening. “I can still feel him sometimes, when I’m by myself. I can still feel him lie next to me, smelling like old spice and fresh milk.” She sighed, wiping at a stray tear and opening her eyes. “I miss him so much.”

“I know…” Luna sighed, her smile falling as she thought about when they heard he was being rushed into the E.R. He was gone already by the time they got him on the stretcher but they tried to bring him back anyway. Massive heart attack? In a man that healthy? Luna knew she needed to change the subject then. The topic of Nassir was just going to keep the heartbreak in the room. “I wonder what V’s doing out there in the After.”

Molly chuckled. “Still being stupid V. I see her sometimes.” Molly’s eyes grew glassy. Luna looked at the chair. She hoped beyond hope that she would wake up and find that they had just fallen asleep in V’s old bed, watching Forensic Files after eating hash brownies in V’s honour. No one was sick. No one was dying. It was all just an elaborate dream. “You’re not going to see her, Luna.”

“Maybe I will…if I look hard enough…”

“Dying people see dead people. Living people only see dead people for other reasons.”

“Then why do crows stare off in the same direction when one of them dies? Why do they all see the dead crow fly off to wherever dead crows go?”

“Because crows are agents of another world.” Luna looked at Molly and took a deep breath, hoping not to sigh but knowing she probably would. She turned onto her back, staring up towards the windows. She heard wings flapping again. “Once upon a time,” Molly started, “as my grandmother told me, my gramm-gramm came over from Cork. Freshly married on American soil to some Russian guy she met on the spot—“

“Wow, Gramm-Gramm sure did work fast.” Luna chuckled.

“Anyway, Gramm-gramm had fifteen kids and when the sixteenth one was conceived, she told Baba that God was calling her. He looked her dead in her eyes and told her that she was delusional. Gramm-gramm got up one day, all six-months pregnant, and walked out into the forest. Baba went out after her, walked into that forest with her and right in the thicket when it gets too deep and the light becomes slivers through the canopy, Gramm-Gramm disappeared right before his eyes. Never found a body, never found a baby, never even saw a picture anywhere of a woman who looked like her. Cold case for nearly a century.”

Luna raised an eyebrow at her.

“When I was born on a glorious October fifth, a brilliant young blood moon of a welcoming—“

“Loving this introduction, really.”

“—Mama had to have me in her bathtub because she just had to have a natural water birth. My dad got all sick because he’s spineless and had to go outside for air. He said he saw Gramm-Gramm, looking just like she did in her pictures but pregnant, standing outside the door. And there were crows all in the yard, perched on the roof, the porch, her, everywhere. All their heads turned to her. Dad said he saw the ground wet underneath her like her water broke or something. She went to grab him but he got scared and ran back in the house. Got his camera and took a picture. When he went to tell my mom, she was busy trying to get me to nurse. Picture’s in the box under my bed.”

Luna just stared at Molly. “So, what? You’re a ghost baby?”

“I dunno. I’m just telling you a story because it’s story time.”

Luna resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She looked back up at the window, noticing a shadow against the glass like a bird was resting there. Maybe it was that blackbird from earlier taking shelter from the storm down the road. There was a creak of the floor by the chair like someone got up. The curtains blew inward from the wind that came in and Luna closed her eyes, relishing in the hum of the breeze. Molly shifted on the bed next to her, pressing her face into her pillow again. She looked over Molly’s shoulder again, staring out the window. She squinted, thinking that she saw movement behind the trees. The curtains fell back against the glass as the breeze ceased. A dark hand stretched out to grab a branch, black as tar at first but as it shifted into the light, it became a cinnamon bark colour. V’s face pressed itself against the screen of the window, her other hand coming up to dramatically stretch up against the window. She often did that when she would come home, press herself against the window dramatically like she was in some horror movie and she was the ghost coming to haunt them. Luna blinked but V didn’t go away, staring back at her with those light brown eyes and vivid fire truck red hair that she loved to dye her hair to.

“What’re you looking at?” Molly turned to look where she was looking.

“Nothing, just thinking of V…Wondering what she’s out doing in the After...who she’s become an agent of...”

“Who knows,” Molly brought the sheet up to wipe at her mouth. Luna registered the movement but didn’t look down, didn’t notice that Molly was wiping at the blood that leaked from the corners of her mouth. She coughed once before sniffing. “She’s out there being an agent of someone.” She said in a raspy voice before coughing once again. A deep, chest rattling cough.

V smirked to Luna, saying something again that Luna couldn’t catch.

“Kind of reminds me of that mini-story I wrote once where the dead spirit was running from the Light because he didn’t want to leave his beloved.” Luna looked down, checking to see if Molly needed water but Molly waved her hand. Luna watched V come through the wall and sit down in the chair. Something flapped again behind Luna and she turned around to see a crow perching on the branch of the tree, peering inside. It cocked its head to one side and then to the other. Looking intently through the window before cawing. That smell, that pungent and suffocating smell came back. Luna blinked and looked to Molly who was falling asleep. Luna put a hand on her shoulder, making sure that it was moving with her breathing.

“Still here…” Molly muttered. “Just dreaming of Nas…”

Luna retracted, taking Molly’s hand instead. Her friend gave her a weak squeeze and opened an eye before closing it. Luna looked past her at V, who stared at the crow. Another one had landed on the tree behind the window V had walked through. Luna’s eyes shifted down to look at the slightly exposed area of Molly’s shoulder that showed the God of Light’s head. The Wind God’s hand vaguely seen on his shoulder. “Here but not here.”

“But here, nonetheless.” Molly smiled. “Here and waiting.”

“That night that V died, you know I had a dream that she came into my room? I had a dream that she was trying to tell me that she felt compelled to pray to God. She felt compelled to pray for her soul.”

“Mmm?”

“She said that He started to respond back to her, telling her that she must concede to him. That she must promise her soul to him and all her love. She said for some reason, she couldn’t do it. She felt her gut tell her not to do it, not to sign away her right to exist in the cosmos to a God that she never felt.”

“Mmm…”

“As she was telling me this, I looked to her and I said, ‘Are you scared to burn?’ And she smiled, real bright like when she got her first publishing deal. She said, ‘I’m not going to burn. I will never burn now.’ I asked her how did she know and she did that real dramatic thing where she outstretches her arms, you know how she does when we’re out in public and it’s a beautiful sunny day? That’s what she did. Just like that, and then she turned into a raven and flew away.”

Molly didn’t respond. Luna thought Molly’s hand felt cool, but she also felt that the air from the outside was making it cold in the room. She had goose bumps on her own skin for some time. She reached for Molly’s other hand, her skin feeling like ice in her grasp. Luna saw her vision blur as she stared at Molly’s shoulder, trying to catch her breathing pattern. She looked up at the chair, trying to hold her tears in. The storm had ended. The wind outside had stilled. Their sun patch succumbed to the night. V was gone.