惚れた病に薬なし
horeta yamai ni kusuri nashi
“There’s no medicine for falling in love.”
~Japanese proverb
Horus
Hours pass, hours of training her on the job. I need a few minutes to think so I go to the bar to set up for the customers. I need silence. And being too close to her was tempting. What if I just say that we don’t return her past to her and what was lost. Memories we can make new, but parts of her that help her exist as she was created? I can’t do that. As a god of the past, I would have been able to create her as new. I would be able to do with her what I did with my brother. But I used the last of my power to rebuild a soul on him, leaving her this soulless creature to walk the earth for maybe another fifty years if she’s extremely lucky, only to die without a soul. A being, no matter how powerful, won’t join the Creator if they have no soul, and she’s already burned through what was given to her by living so many lifetimes in search… of what? Me? Everything around us feels extremely mundane, human. But I still can’t shake what I’ve seen with her and what I feel. Every single time I look at her, I don’t see her the way I’m supposed to.
At times she’s in the black T-shirt she wears for work, but other times she has on a Kimono in colors of bright white and brilliant orange, smiling over at me, serving customers only for the reality to slip back to the black shirt and denim shorts.
I shake my head and approach her. “Hey, you should probably take a break. You’ve been at it a few hours.”
She stares up at me, her dark eyebrows arching like I’m about to get scolded. “I’m fine. I’m not the one who’s going to Hell.”
I freeze, then chase after her as she stomps off toward the bar. “Who said I was going to Hell?”
"I searched it on my phone.” She grabs a tray and starts pulling empty glasses from tables; I’m surprised they don’t break as she puts them on the tray. I don’t reach for her though; I let her speak. She’s angry. Anyone can see it. “I looked up the Abyss, it brought me to the book of Enoch. You know what that is?”
I swallow the lump in my throat over the brothers, who I know are still suffering because of their fall. Anyone else would laugh that she used the internet to find out the truth, but truth has a way of hiding in the most ridiculous places.
“It was never included in the Canon.”
She’s right. Enoch wasn’t included for obvious reasons. It gave humans too much knowledge, too much access, and it was the final middle finger to the heavens for daring to say that the sons of man couldn’t lay with women, that they weren’t on the same level, that angels, while created, were nothing like humanity.
No. Humans were special.
Imagine being created as an angel, an immortal being for the heavens, only to be told this sniffling, sad, pathetic-looking creature…
Was the crown of creation.
Of course, a third of heaven was pissed.
And, of course, the church didn’t want to include it in the Bible, and any other “religion” or sect, left it out as well.
All of them ignore the fact that, at one point, an angelic race of immortals were not just taken down by the darkness of narcissism; they were taken down by sadness and in their own minds.
Betrayal.
“Maybe you should rest,” I suggest again a few hours later, grabbing her by the wrist and pulling her to the side. “Did you have lunch?”
Good subject change. Solid. Give me an award.
She jerks away from me and laughs softly. “I think I’ll be okay.” Her voice is quieter, subdued. I don’t like it. “I’ll just grab a protein bar before dinner. I have customers. I think I’m good, so you don’t have to follow me anymore.”
Is she already imagining me dead? Is this all for nothing? I take a step toward her, my arm reaching out. My fingertips touch her skin.
It’s burning hot.
Her eyes flash at me, going bright blue before returning to the gorgeous chocolate color.
"Tell me,” she whispers in my ear as we sit in the forest.
"You’re pretty,” I say quickly, holding her in my lap.
She rolls her eyes. “Not that. I didn’t even finish!”
“So finish faster.” I laugh. “Tell me what you need. What you want.”
“You’re not in your right time, Horus,” she says sadly. “And yet you still visit me, despite knowing the eye of Ra watches, he always watches.”
I look away from her and up to the sky. “He has bigger problems, and it’s easy to skip through time and memories to find you. I’ll always find you, ever since that first time. Wasn’t that my promise when you gave it to me?”
She cuddles against my chest. “The only thing that allows you to travel through, the only thing that gives me hope.”
"The most important thing in your existence, more than your soul. Your life, your meaning.” I nod. “And now…” I part my lips as glowing red flicks of fire ignite on my tongue. “I give it back, just like I return it to you. I’ll return. Ra said it was my destiny to be with you. Give me a day, and I’ll come back and bring you with me. We can get married at the temple of Horus.”
“Wow, thinking highly of yourself?”
“They worship me.” I laugh. “And they’ll worship you the same way, bring you dresses and food and gifts. It’s everything you deserve. Nothing can go wrong at this point. My brother’s been grumpy lately, and we’re just about to join our family with the Greek Gods. An alliance like this has never happened in history. We’ll be all-powerful, which means I can do whatever I want. And what I want… I lean down and press a kiss to her mouth. “…is this sly fox.”
“Dumb bunny.”
“Wrong timeline.” I laugh. “But still cute.”
She scrunches up her nose. “You promise you’ll come back for me?”
“I could never forget you,” I whisper, pressing another kiss to the corner of her mouth. “You’re my Kitsune. I’ll catch you any day; I do like hunting.”
“That is how you found me.”
"You should never have come near me or tried to save me and my wounds.”
“You should never have come out of your space. I had no choice.”
I smile. “You’re mine, you know that, right? My destiny?”
I don’t look like my godlike self. I look more human, with tattoos of my heritage down the side of my arm, my hair’s darker, not light, I’m existing as something other than myself, which is fine because I have to wait for her, and if I was full god, my father would see, and while I’m not afraid of my grandfather, Ra, my father has plans for rulings that alarm me, especially now that he’s going to marry Kyra, the Greek goddess.
We have to align the immortal gods now that the worship has lessened, and I don’t know why it makes me feel leery, but it does. In theory, it makes sense, but when has my father ever respected the Greek deities?
I shake the thought off and turn back toward Kit. “Together forever,” I kiss her right temple. “Now, go hibernate. I’ll be back before you know it.”
She nods. “I’ll dream of you.”
“Please do.” A grin breaks across my face, and my heart fills with even more emotion. “And when you’re afraid of the darkness… look to the sky. I’ll always be there.”
"Good.” She nods. “That’s good.”
I leave her.
"Watch where you’re going!” a customer shouts as I collapse against the table and onto the beer-spilled floor.
Kit drops to her knees and starts rubbing her wet rag over my arms. “Are you okay?”
No. I’m not.
I was hers. She was mine.
And yet here we sit—in a bar.
I’m covered in sticky beer and who knows what else, and she has no idea the past we’ve had, and I have no idea how to fix it.
Well, I do. And despite my stated intentions, I have to admit I’ve been wary about actually following through with it, but now I know.
My future was broken, and so was hers.
In order to fix the future, remember the past.
I’ll go.
I’ll dive down deep into the darkness, allowing it to swallow my sky whole in hopes that, in the end, she feels the warmth of the sun again and that the moon yet again rises to guard us.
I’ll go to the Abyss.
Even if it means my death.
She’s dead on her feet. I can tell she’s tired, exhausted really. It’s not a full moon, but her face lacks color. And still, she pushes on.
I growl and stomp back over to the bar. Tarek’s whistling to himself, then he starts singing to himself.
“Who is she?” I ask.
He looks up at me. “Who’s she?”
"Kit. She’s more than a fox. Something’s going on, something I can’t see more. She’s tied to me in a way I can’t explain. I feel things I shouldn’t feel after only knowing her for a few days, and I think I know what I need to do; I just don’t understand what’s compelling me so hard to do it.” I sigh. “I see memories, but then I doubt myself because I’m out of my own timeline. Are they hers, mine, both? I’ll fight to save her, and yet I wonder why. It’s all just so confusing.”
He grins. “Not my journey, not my path, but thanks for asking. Oh also,” he says with a snap of his fingers, “Timber said you hate ham. Are you good with turkey?”
I will kill everyone. “Turkey.” I can barely get the word out.
“That’s what I said, but then he was all like, oh chicken, but he like chickens because they used to sacrifice chickens to him, so it’s like a favorite.”
I remember a lot of chickens and feel actual trauma. “NO chickens!”
Tarek grins. “Good thing you have me then, right?”
"How do I help her?” Other than walking toward certain death.
He starts wiping the bar top vigorously. “You already know. It isn’t a question of how. It's if.”
“If?”
"Or maybe, will you?”
"And if I do?”
"So many possibilities. I mean, that’s my only job, you know that, right? I see multiple possibilities, futures, lives. I’m not even sure at this point; I just know that working at this bar every day isn’t going to give you the happy ending you deserve, god of the sky.”
The entire building shakes for several seconds.
“See?” He cackles. “Your power burns to be set free, but you will never be fully yourself in this timeline unless you sacrifice. Don’t you get it? Sacrifice means sacrifice. Giving up. You have to do whatever it takes to be your true self here. Selfless. Fucking storm the gates. Become who you were here, and you will be.”
My memories jumble together. “I thought I was limited.”
"Limits exist in timelines only if we allow it.” He says it like it’s so simple. “Anyway, I chose chicken, and we have to leave in like five minutes. I’ll grab Kit.”
That’s how he leaves me, with a choice between family dinner at least for tonight or really going toward the Abyss in a sprint. I’m more frustrated than ever and terrified I won’t be strong enough to make it back to her. Does he see something I don’t? Is he trying to warn me to make a different choice?
My only goal is to return to her even if I’m not the same.
She has to know she is everything.
She’s important.
She’s mine. And always has been, even if she never knows it. I watch her laugh with customers. Sure, we kissed, and she feels something, but she has no clue. The past memories, the things we shared. I’m still trying to understand the fuzzy memories, but I know in my soul they’re real even if she doesn’t see it.
She has no idea, so I sit there, and I allow every memory that I can finally reach to pour through my brain.
Our first kiss in the forest.
Tag with the other foxes.
Telling each other stories. Decades and decades of stories.
Her head in my lap.
Me petting her head, running my fingers through her hair.
And then darkness. I can’t see anything other than a dark prison, screaming, and hands. Massive hands reaching through bone and stone-filled bars.
I jerk back.
“Are you okay?” Kit comes up to me and smiles. “You looked terrified.”
I want to say I am scared that even as a god, I’m limited right now, that I may not come back, and then I remember her kiss. I remember memories she has no idea even transpired.
I remember loving her so deeply.
My heart aches.
A fox, according to Cassius.
A fox? Really?
What could a mere shapeshifter give me to make me abandon everything in my world for her?
Part of me realizes I may not remember, not because I didn’t experience it, but because I left my timeline, so maybe my past self did, and I’m just seeing pieces of visions of his memory which almost makes it even more sad.
He got time with this glorious creature.
I got memories.
"I’m fine.” I force a smile. “Enjoy dinner tonight. I think I’ll go get ready.”
She grabs my hand. “You don’t have to do this. I’m fine as I am.”
I nod and meet her pleading gaze. “But I do. Because you aren’t who you’re supposed to be, and without an identity, you lose purpose. Without purpose, you aren’t just roaming or lost—you’re no longer human. You’re nothing. You simply exist. You need more than that. I will give you that even if it costs me everything.”
She shakes her head and looks down at her worn-out high tops. “Why would you do that? A god?”
"Why not?” I answer simply. “Is my job not to be benevolent and love? Are my job and my promise not worth anything? I said I would help you. Save you. Come back. And you said you’d save yourself. So maybe this gives us all a clue in how you, a small Kitsune, does exactly that.”
“Or I die.”
“Yeah, or you die.”
“You’re supposed to be encouraging.”
I smile for real this time. “It’s been a short time here on earth; I’m confused easily.”
She rolls her eyes, showing a bit of plucky personality. “I’m done in five and Tarek can wait. Can we maybe have a drink before we go to dinner?”
"Yeah,” I murmur as a wave of longing—something that unsettles me—washes over me. “Just a drink.”
And a sad dinner after, my last.
A twinkle sparks in her eyes. “Did you want more?”
“Always.” I decide to answer honestly.
She laughs, perhaps a little sadly, or perhaps that’s my imagination. “You barely know me.”
I don’t return her laughter; just simply lift her chin with my thumb. “You have no idea… how long I have known you.”
“So…” I break the silence as we drive toward Ethan’s for dinner in one of Tarek’s many SUVs. “First time eating with a vampire?”
Kit glares over at me. “That’s not funny. I’m petrified, but thank you for that; super helpful.”
We ended up taking too long with our last drink making it, so I had to drive Kit while Tarek went ahead. It’s killing me, being this close to her, smelling her, already missing something I don’t know, but knowing if I fully had the ability to see her past, present, and future, it would probably destroy me.
"He doesn’t bite…” I clear my throat. Though he did bite her, but only to try to find out more about her. Moving on. “I mean not a lot, from what I’ve seen. Then again, I’m new in this timeline, so—”
“Maybe stop talking now.”
“Yup.” I drum my fingers against the steering wheel of the Jeep until we finally pull into Ethan’s compound, well technically, the Immortal Council’s compound. Werewolves are guarding the gates, the doors, basically everything around us just in case, and I can feel the stars staring down intensely, almost like gravity is pushed harder here as we get out of the car and walk across the pavement. Any human walking onto this property would feel a giant sense of foreboding, like an invisible sign that says turn back.
I look up and smile. They’re out in full force tonight.
The stars, they shine through you, pushing you into the ground, making it hard to walk, to breathe, especially when they watch and know that destinies are about to be changed, decisions made. They press down, they search, and they wait.
"Normal,” I whisper to her and grab her hand. “The stars can’t help but keep us grounded because our souls want to ascend, we want to go up, we want to join with creation, but it’s not our time.”
She grips my hand. “How do you know when it is?”
I hesitate, drawing in a deep breath. As a god, I know these things, but I’ve never spoken them out loud, the secrets of heaven. I stop walking and pull her into my arms. “Imagine this.”
She relaxes against me. “Okay.”
"Look up.”
"I’m looking.” Her head rests back against my chest. Is this perfection? I don't know; all I know is it feels right. Can I be selfish then? And steal more seconds and minutes, more moments from her so that if the worst happens, I can look back on this time, this sky, and say it was good enough? That I used those few seconds thoroughly.
I point up at the sky. “All of them, they sing, they sing day in and day out, they sing during the night. They tell stories of creation over and over again, and each time they sing over creation, they bring about destiny, but they can’t interfere. Their job is to watch, to shine, to speak things into existence. That’s why it’s so important for humans to be careful what they say to the stars, for what they say… they believe.”
She doesn’t tense against me, but she does twist her head to gaze up at me. “So if I say I’m a star, I’m a star.”
I laugh. “No, but if you say, I’m sad, I’m depressed, I’m a failure, if you say things like that, then yes, your mind will follow. Then your star will diminish, and when a star diminishes, it gets pulled toward the earth until it crashes against it. That’s what we call a fallen star, one who has so much hope in its human that it is willing to sacrifice its life for that human. And if the human fails, the star does as well. That’s why they watch. They each pick one—one human, one life, one source to breathe into. It’s where dreams come from. Not the Creator, not your psyche. No, your dreams, they come from the stars, and your nightmares come from the death of your star as it crashes down to earth.”
She reaches a hand up toward the sky. “So, god of the sky, the great and mighty Horus, how do I know my star?”
“You won’t,” I say, sadness filling my soul. “You can reach as high as you want, but your star no longer exists… it fell long ago. It saw you—” Visions hit me so fast my mind barely registers them, so hard I nearly pass out. “It fought for you. And in the end,” I whisper, “your star, it died for you, died for your dreams, tried to fight your nightmares. Your star might one day be reborn, but today, your star is gone… all to save you.”
I never thought to look to the stars, but now I know. It’s as clear to me as the night sky, just another fragment of her past.
Her star sacrificed itself.
Why?
What is so important?
A star doesn’t just fall.
It has to choose.
And once a star falls, there is no redemption, there is no savior, only hope that one day the person they sacrificed for sees the truth for what it is.
She’s special. Not just to me but to others. I don’t know how or why. I see nothing beyond the fact that she has a darkness where her star used to shine.
A single star.
I stare up at the sky.
I am god of the sky.
I know these things.
"…We protect, we save, we love…” The stars sing in unison. “We are one. We are one. We are one.”
A star fell for this person next to me, the person with no memories, only tragedy, a person I want to kiss. A mere human, yet not.
I make a decision.
I will find her star.
I will save her.
Discover her secrets.
“What if it’s you?” A voice whispers in the wind.
Me? Her star? I am the god of the skies, but… I’m not a star. I merely communicate with them; it would be completely impossible. But it does make me wonder, for someone who knew every name of every star at some point, which one was missing during her pasts that’s still missing now?
In the end, wherever her star is, it will go back into the sky where it’s meant to be, and Kit, she’ll know her past; she’ll be at peace, even if it means my death. Maybe that’s the whole reason I’m here in this timeline, for this woman with tails, this person who can’t sleep during a full moon, who has nightmares, who has known tragedies.
What greater purpose would my life hold than to help someone become who they are meant to be?
I think long and hard as the silence builds between us, becoming almost a tangible entity. Then inspiration strikes. “Let’s go.” I grab her hand, she doesn’t see, but with my other hand, I wave off the stars and flick my wrist, allowing a dozen to soar across the sky like fireworks.
Show offs.
She gasps. “It’s beautiful!”
“Yes,” I say in finality, knowing I may not ever see the sky again. “It is.”