Page 97 of The Shape of Monsters
“If I could.” Lyric sighs. “It would be easy to live my life here, in this strange place, with you. So easy.”
“But?”
“Easy isn’t always, or often, right.”
Maimeri frowns. “It isn’t right with me?” az says a little sharply. Not enough to disturb the sleepers, but enough to press guilt against Lyric’s chest.
“It has nothing to do with you, Little Rabbit,” Lyric says, knowing that won’t sound very good, either.
“Is this about your holy city? About balance and Aharté?”
“Yes. And my family.”
“It must be nice,” Maimeri whispers.
“What?”
“Having a family.”
Lyric’s lips pop open like he’s been slapped, and he reaches for Maimeri’s face. He holds the other’s jaw. “You…” he says, stunned, and then stops because he’s hit again, but this time with the realization he can take this and—and use it to manipulate Maimeri into what Lyric wants.
Like Amaranth would. Like Iriset would.
He swallows. “Come back with me. To the crater city. Remake it with me into what it needs to be.”
“With you?” Maimeri asks tentatively. Az shifts so az’s facing Lyric fully, expression intense. “With you.”
“With me,” Lyric agrees. “But…” He grimaces.
“What?” Maimeri demands, and it’s ahz turn to grab Lyric’s jaw. Az holds strongly, almost painfully. It takes Lyric’s breath away. He forgets for a moment what was going on, staring at Maimeri’s vivid mirané eyes, the scowling line of ahz brows, the almost cute dimple under ahz bottom lip where the skin presses up like az’s trying to pout but doesn’t quite know how.
Lyric takes ahz hand and pulls it off his face. He keeps it held between both of his, and rubs his thumb against Maimeri’s palm. “No matter what happens, I won’t be here for much longer.”
“Here?”
A little helpless about it, Lyric shrugs. “Here, in this place, in this… life.”
With great seriousness Maimeri studies him. It’s disconcerting and almost a relief to give in to it, and Lyric wishes they were alone so he could take off all his clothes and let Maimeri see that, too. He wasn’t lying: It is so easy to give these things to Little Rabbit, and Lyric doesn’t know why.
“You aren’t like my mother or the other one, Never, and you aren’t like Turo,” Maimeri says. “You’re like me, but not quite, either. Not a chimera, but there are no humans exactly like you.”
Lyric looks down at their hands. He wants to say there are no humans exactly like anyone else, but that isn’t what Maimeri means and this isn’t a philosophy lesson. The truth is the miran are designed to be the same, their inner design balanced and their outer design nearly impossible to corrupt. At least, that is what Lyric was taught to believe about Aharté and her holy people.
And of course, the miran haven’t been created yet, here. Maybe they’ll be Maimeri’s children, not Aharté’s.
Maimeri says, like az can read minds, “Sah’set told me Aharté is an old goddess of the Sarian and Bes peoples.”
Lyric nods almost absent-mindedly.
“Lyric Aharté, are you a god?”
“Little Rabbit,” he says, laughing breathlessly. “No.”
“My mother made me because he wants to be embodied. Did you know that? He spent years and many lives to make me. The Moon-Eater wants to be more like you, more like me. Who is to say a goddess did not want the same and succeed?”
The passion in Maimeri’s eyes seems alive, like az’s decided this thing and it lit ahz up. Lyric shakes his head slowly, concerned, but at the same time pained to know that, as a god, he can make Maimerido what he wants. Instead of answering directly, Lyric says, “When we can move about the valley again, help me make an anchor necklace for the whole thing. It will draw the already balanced forces into perfect Silence, and you’ll feel it. You’ll understand.”
“Fine,” Maimeri agrees immediately. Then az kisses Lyric, grasping his face and pouring ahzself into Lyric, fingers warm as always. Lyric welcomes the kiss, opens his mouth and returns it, careful to only lean in, not disrupt the sleeping chimeras all around him. Maimeri’s tongue is soft, ahz teeth forceful, ahz grip insistent, and Lyric wants to push back, to bite back, but it’s too easy—all of this, too easy, and Lyric stops suddenly, a sick knot in his throat. He pushes Maimeri away, swallowing, eyes tightly closed.
