Her fingers skirt the wall before it funnels out wide, damp and dewy, sleek with moss. She breathes in. All she can smell is eel, wondrous, grounding eel. It’s still wet in her pocket.

  She wonders what would happen if it blinked twice and began to wriggle free—would she render it its inevitable death to keep the story true? Or would she release it into some slimy pond where it might grow and grow, and she could ride it into the depths and the ocean and then to, perhaps, sunlight?

  Regardless, the eel doesn't move. Doesn't come alive. Doesn't do much of anything other than stink.

  Light greets her copper iris and floods her tawny soul with warmth as her kingdom draws nearer. She can hear the echoes of soft sound, children arguing behind steel.

  The house has never been so full of people. Of life.

  She quickens her pace to meet them, to share in a warmth she’s only ever devoured from the sidelines. She’s eager to be included, to become one of them. A child. A girl. If just for a fleeting moment before she’s queen again.

  Something she spies in her periphery slows her pace as she draws nearer, though it is not the familiar tailless figure she has come to expect—come to mourn and miss. Stubby was no taller than a Matriarch Gutterling, slinky-like and bold.

  Rivin is much taller than cats, but not Queen’s. Even stood upon a mound of turned-up earth, he’s barely an inch her superior. Right now, he’s more silhouette than boy, draped in darkness the same shade as his hair. His back is turned, but his spine is straight — aware, aware of everything.

  She detours, spins on her heel and jogs towards him. He doesn’t move. Only waits—waits until she’s standing by his side, chin tilted upward and body bent forward to regard him. Her smile stretches out her cheeks as steel grey sinks heavy to take her in.

  His face doesn’t change, but his eyes dart quickly over her form, and his nose twitches once. Twice. He might be holding his breath when he speaks, “Roach…”

  “Riv! Good to see ya!”

  “You’re back.”

  “Whew, what a mind-bender that was!”

  “And you…” His face scrunches up hard and fast. “Stink.”

  “Check it!” Roach reaches into her pocket, blackened fingers struggling to grip the sleek and viscous sleeve of fish before she whips it out triumphantly. Rivin spies the foul creature for all of a blink before it slips straight from her grasp and hurtles high and into darkness. They hear it land heavy and somewhere far in the shadows.

  No one speaks for a long moment. Two sets of eyes staring dumbly into blackness, before Rivin sighs—it’s not a disappointed sigh. It’s breathy with laughter. A sound she’d heard all too commonly today. A sound she may once have overlooked had breath not choked her full of curiosity.

  She leans in again to hear it closer. Fuller.

  The sound cuts off as the boy leans back, brows furrowed and suspicious. “Stay back a few feet; you really do reek.”

  Roach huffs and stands straight, fisting her hands upon her hips and puffing out her chest. “It will help me swim, ya know.”

  “Does the smell repel water?” Rivin quips in return.

  Roach tilts her head. “To be determined. I’ll keep you in the loop.”

  He might laugh again but cuts the sound off short. “You’ve been gone a while. Chip cooked to show our appreciation.” The boy’s face pales. “Good luck.”

  Her heart warms at the idea of a home-cooked meal, and a blush runs across her cheeks. She looks away to hide it and whispers softly, “For me?”

  Rivin nods, “Taste it first; you’ll think we actually hate you.”

  Roach hums before turning back to face him. “Is that why you’re all alone out here? Escaping whatever your friend conjured up in a crockery pot?”

  His lip twitches. “Something like that.”

  The quiet blooms between them again, comfortable, building — Roach smiles a wily smile. “You waitin’ on me?”

  He’s too quick when he answers, “Of course not. Just needed some peace.”

  “Well, here I am,” she winks.

  Rivin turns away. This time, his sigh does sound disappointed. “There it goes,” he murmurs.

  Roach laughs. The sound echoes.

  Rivin looks more relaxed once silence returns. “How’d it go?”

  “It was… intimate.”

  His brows shoot up, curious or alarmed; she’s not sure which. “Intimate?”

  On the mound, covered in the stench and colour of eel that may or may not make her waterproof, the Queen fills the Ghost in on her very strange day.

  Rivin listens patiently, more attentive to her now than those days before the cat; she wonders if guilt lends him her attention but doesn’t mind nor care, not when attention is her goal.

  After she’s done, the boy stands quietly for a moment longer than she’d like, mulling over the words, tasting the experience second-hand.

  Perturbed by the silence, Roach huffs a lock of hair from her face. “Relax, soldier, it’s just a little glimpse of the future.” She smirks and tries to look high, mighty, and confident.

  Rivin tenses his jaw. “To be worshipped?”

  “To be loved,” she corrects.

  He shakes his head. “That’s not what love looks like, Roach.” He seems as though he might turn to depart, perhaps rush off to be brooding and confusing, but he doesn’t. He remains instead, adjusting his body to face her fully.

  She waits for him to continue. He doesn’t.

  “Love. Gratitude. Worship. It’s all the same.” She looks a bite uncertain now, urgent to fix whatever screws come loose in his favour for her. “What’s the big deal?”

  “Tch, of course you would think that.”

  That doesn’t sound like a compliment.

  Her eyes narrow suspiciously, and for a long moment she doesn’t say a word, simply stares hard at his gaunt expression. Rivin darts his gaze away, his staunch performance ebbing into something bordering on uncomfortable — his fingers twitch but never fidget, and she can tell by the way that he tilts up his chin that the boy is beginning to regret his decision not to simply storm off.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The Queen’s face softens at the exact moment that the Ghost’s scrunches up in dismay. “What? Is a wittle baby ghost feeling left out?”

  His eyes snap towards her like bullets, blazing stiff anger cutting clean across her smug grin. “Don’t kid yourself.”

  Her smile doesn’t falter. “C’mon, that’s what this is, isn’t it? Sad I left you to babysit?” She’s chuckling now, holding her belly while Rivin’s face grows hot with mortification, paper-white skin suddenly red to the tips of his ears.

  “That’s not what this is.”

  His tone is crisp, but it’s hard to take seriously now that she knows what he looks like, all rosy and flushed.

  “They’re your kids!”

  Rivin fists his hands into tight balls by his side, gritting his teeth. “I said—”

  Her palm is calloused — warm, still a little slimy from the eel — and it settles over the taut knuckles of his dominant hand. He looks up from glaring to find her grin has melted into a softer smile, her freckled face bordering on sweet as she squeezes him gently. “C’mon then.”

  His eyes narrow, yet despite the unpleasant stench that clings to her, he doesn’t move away, not even to escape the fishy residue she’s sharing with her grasp. His heart stutters in his chest, and he pretends he doesn’t notice it, doesn’t feel it jump right up to his throat. He clears it; he doesn’t trust the organ not to choke down his words before they come out. “What…? Where?”

  She tugs at him. “I’ll make it up to you.”

  Rivin hesitates, “No way, what about—?”

  “C’mon, Ghost.” Her voice is soothing and dear, and her eyes are golden even in the dark, a coin waiting to be flipped.

  Still, he stalls, glancing once at the flickering of lights in the distance where laughter blooms amongst surviving children, but not for long.

  Too quickly, he looks back—back at the freckles and the grin, the smell of the wilds and the dead.

  He’s starting to wonder how far he’ll follow her. How deep. How long. But, as quickly as the thought appears, it’s gone again. He doesn’t care, only shifts their fingers until the digits intertwine, and holds on tightly.

  He nods. Doesn’t argue. Doesn’t pretend.

  She knows him too well.

  “Okay.”

  They walk a fair distance, and Roach is quiet mostly, somewhere between mute and buzzing. She keeps a firm grasp of his hand, looking over her shoulder every so often.

  She's… soft today.

  Rivin tilts his head. “Where are you taking me?”

  “I want you to feel what I felt.” She answers without pause. “But different.”

  Rivin scoffs. “Are you going to sing again?”

  “I'm going to show you what I’m learning.”

  She pauses before a wide wall thick with draping fernery — an opening hidden behind fine feathered leaves of the deepest green shade, each vine spotted and greying.

  “You're worried I'll lose myself.” She continues, but it's not accusatory; her voice is tender. Grateful.

  “You do lose yourself.” Rivin's palms are sweating.

  Why are his palms sweating?

  “I don't have to lose anything. I don't have to let go. You said it yourself.”

  Rivin frowns. “You’ll burn out.”

  “No.” She smiles, peeling back the curtain. “Not if I build it right.”

  Inside, darkness. Complete. But not silence, instead a quiet hum beneath rocky soil, something humming a lullaby in the dirt. The only brightness exists in copper eyes that flash with anticipation. She steps forward; Rivin hangs back, but she grasps his hand and tugs him with her.

  The curtain falls closed, and already the hum grows bolder, a tentative bloom of light brewing beneath their feet. Something waking.

  Roach squeezes his fingers, winks, and drops his hand. She continues forward, stopping only at the centre of a walkway rung by shallow pools. The water ripples, undulates, and chitters and then glows.

  She parts her lips and sings a clear note that rises, rises, rises with the light — fluttering and breathtaking. Her hand on her heart, rubbing clean circles until she puffs deep, guttural breaths. She’s already giddy, already rocking on her feet and eager to share.

  Rivin stares, frozen in place, watching as the lights skitter across walls and a thick, kelpy ceiling. Not lightflies. Fatter and skittish, all together like schools of frightened fish with nowhere to go. They dance like comets inside a galaxy, illuminating a ceiling dense with bug matter, hiding a decadent mural long since lost to time.

  Roach reaches out her arms to embrace the insects — bows, dances. The world glitters around her, and their fright looks an awful lot like magic being summoned from the tips of her fingers, like a universe turning overhead.

  He doesn't remember reaching back, but her hand finds his wrist, and as she spins, the boy is pulled into her atmosphere, at first with all the hesitance he can still muster while she’s shining. It’s not a lot.

  She turns slowly, arms wide, lips curled. At the centre of a night sky turning.

  How can one person find so many pockets? How can one girl discover so much beauty?

  By looking, she’d say if he asked her.

  His heart hurts. His eyes are misty. He doesn’t dance; more like orbits her as the insects swarm in beautiful patterns, pulsing with chittering echoes. He’s frightened to come any closer, to embrace the world with such welcoming arms, his heart still wounded, still learning to pump through new scars.

  But, again, she’s offering the world. A new one where girls dance and boys don’t just watch. Don’t just dream.

  He wants to dance.

  God, he wants to dance.

  With her?

  She’s looking at him closely with those big soft eyes, and the backdrop is white near blinding; flurries of scurrying insects are all chiming this silly kind of praise. Her hand—still outstretched, still offered. Her feet haven’t stopped moving. Her braid is something else entirely, stroking the air like a brush—painting. She’s painting again.

  “I’ve got you.”

  He wants to dance.

  The song is filling up his head, cottoning his thoughts.

  Is it okay to dance?

  “It’s just you and me.”

  Her voice overcomes everything, echoes over the natural chorus. He’s still hesitant. Still scared. Scared of what? Being what he is? Being fourteen.

  Her hand waves a tide of fluttered glows, like water splashing over stones; their little bodies rattle and beam. He’s breathless. The only things still working are his heart — his heart and his legs. He moves closer; of course he does.

  He wonders if he’ll ever get used to the pressure of her hand inside his own.

  It runs the length of his arms, cups his cheeks, and flickers away again — so swift he can still feel the buzz left behind on his skin. She spins, back to back now, her braid whipping against his shoulder.

  He doesn't try to keep up so much as keep his eyes on her. She holds him still, grasps his arm from behind and uses it to summon a wave of starlight. Together, they control the world. Together, the galaxy bends to their fingertips.

  There's something clogging up his chest.

  Tears?

  His other arm does the same, guided by calloused touch. He's a marionette on her strings, but he doesn't mind because the world—the world is so beautiful and blinding, and he's moving it around; he's magic, he's magic, he's really—

  She's in front of him again.

  The stars are in her eyes.

  She still stinks of eel.

  Their hands are intertwined — palm to palm.

  He's never seen that expression on her face before. Soft, so soft.

  Closer. Closer. She's coming closer.

  Beneath the smell of fish: flowers — the same kind twined into bits of her hair.

  Dirt. Salt.

  Girl.

  He's never been kissed before.

  He's seen it plenty.

  Saw it through the cracks of a cupboard in the whorehouse: his mother greeting a man through the door.

  Don't come in.

  Please don't come in.

  I don't want to hide.

  Mama, I don't like it when you let them in.

  She's so close now, a breath between them. Her hands are shaking.

  Has she ever been kissed before?

  Cold. The cold is sinking in.

  Does she know what it leads to?

  His palms are so wet now.

  Does she know what boys do to girls?

  Don't let them in. Mama, please.

  The buzzing is hurting his head, filling it up with something painful and sharp.

  What men… do to women?

  A pang in his chest steals the air from his lungs.

  He'd brushed her hair for hours.

  Until it fell out in clumps.

  He leans in. Their noses brush.

  And then—Rivin slips.

  His boot catches the slick edge of the path, and he tumbles, graceless, off the side and into the pond. Bugs scatter and burst into new formations. Disrupted and chaotic.

  Roach stills, hands still hovering midair, fingers still latched onto nothing, before her arms drop to her side and she bursts into unrestrained laughter—snorting, even—as she peers over at him.

  “You—” She begins before the sound dies in her throat.

  Rivin isn't laughing.

  His mouth is set tight. Eyes dark. Hands still trembling just slightly where they’d reached for her too fast.

  She frowns. “Rivin?”

  He pushes himself up, wincing, shaking the wet from his arms.

  “I’m fine.”

  She offers a hand. “Are you sure? That was—”

  “I said I’m fine.” He takes it, lets her help him up, but quickly wrenches away once he's standing.

  The silence afterwards is felt too sharply, like a knife under ribs.

  The queen shifts from one foot to the other.

  The bugs are starting to settle. Some are turning out their light.

  He won't meet her eyes.

  For the first time that night, Roach’s smile falters.

  “Alright,” she says quietly. “Just a fall.”

  But she knows better.

  Knows the truth.

  Because Rivin hadn’t fallen.

  Rivin had jumped.