Page 115 of The Shape of Monsters
But it rests surrounded by the vibrant pulse of Shade’s life. The humans believe their savior—the wife of Aharté, themotherof Shade! Ridiculous!—unraveled the Moon-Eater, their apostate, wild god. And yes, Never can imagine Shade liking such a reputation, but how dare they view such a thing as an ending, when instead it is a prison Shade has been trapped inside for four hundred years!
Never has rarely felt the urge to destroy, and always fleetingly. But while it waits, it steeps in killing intention. It hates. It grows into disdain.
But a human gives it a drink one night, and when Never touches her skin, and her flesh feeds it the same way Silence drew sustenance from the air itself, it knows. Finally, finally! This one can free Shade, can remake this crater back into the home it is supposed to be.
Sunderer, it whispers to her.
Never never predicted the sunderer could change not only material but time. It wonders, vaguely, as it drifts inside the form of its brother, if the old man three hundred years ago suspected such a thing, or if Silence knew, if she remains nearby in some way, a shimmer of light on water, or every shimmer of light on water all around the world simultaneously. The shimmers now, the shimmers before, the shimmers in the future that is also Never’s now.
It accepts seemingly contradictory notions a lot more readily, after everything.
Shade does not keep it from listening through the layers of Shade’s existence, though Shade does hold tight so that Never can’t separate itself without doing damage.
It almost relaxes. Almost sinks away into Shade, into itself like they are the same, like it was always right. Ha! It could let go completely, stop yearning, stop leaving, be consumed and subsumed.
But! It can’t quite manage to be anything but leaves. It wonders what it would be like for leaves to be unraveled the way roots want to be, want to be threaded into the fabric of an empire, a massive array supporting millions of little human lives. Like mycelium and sleeping cicadas and worms wound into and part of a root system.
For a split breath it understands Shade.
When the sunderer drags it apart from Shade, everything is sticky and stringy, and Shade groans while Never’s skin tears away from his skin.
“Numen,” the sunderer says, gathering it up in her arms. She’s touching it all over, and Never suspects she pulled it out in this shape because she imagined it, not because of any preference of its.
They’re sitting on the floor in a pyramid room. Never’s shoulders are half collapsed as it bends over itself, unused to form, unused to being so separate. The sunderer… Iriset… is flushed and on her knees, holding it. Nearby Shade scowls at them from his youth form, the boy with a topknot and red eyes glittering with tears.
“What the fuck,” Iriset says, and Shade bares his teeth at her, but Never… laughs. It’s dry and rasping, but laughter.
They both look at it like it’s lost itself, Iriset surprised and Shade’s scowl falling into a massive pout, like he’s been bullied horribly. Never laughs more.
Laughter is the only sound in the room for a while. Iriset releases Never, and Shade hugs his knees against his chest. Never slowly reaches for Shade, taking his wrist. It tugs until Shade loosens up and scoots closer. “You’re teaching her wrong,” Never says.
“What?”
“The sunderer can’t learn the way she learned design. It isn’t design. It isn’t diagrams and threads of force knotting and snapping. It’s not what she does, it’s who she is.”
“I said instinct!” Shade cries. “I said that, I told her. It’s like howbutterflies find their way here to the sea every year. Or how bees know how to dance and spiders how to fly!”
Iriset says, “It’s difficult to make something happen that I don’t exactly understand.” She sets her jaw and takes a long breath through the nose. “I am trying.”
“You don’t have to understand it to do it,” Never says. “I don’t understand how I change form, but I do it.”
Shade nods. “That’s true, you don’t understand how your body makes food into energy and shit, but you do it. You said you mitigated alcohol inside your body.”
Iriset scoffs. “Maybe I did. There’s no measure to know.”
“You sundered when you gave Lyric Aharté your eye.”
“You brought us back here,” Never says.
“By accident! I thought I was freeing the Moon-Eater! I only broke open an array.”
Her flushed cheeks are getting worse, and Never canfeelthe urgency of her ecstatic pulse, the tumult of forces in her inner design.
Shade leans closer. “You know what it feels like. Focus on that.”
“No,” Never says. “It can’t be taught, only willed.”
“That’s useless,” Iriset says ferociously.
