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“You changed your hair.”
Lilia gave a bright smile. “Do you like it? I quite enjoy the pink. It makes me feel young again.” He heard a tiny mew and looked under the table. “There we are, Flora!” He knelt on the floor and held out one hand, palm up and relaxed as if offering food. “Come to say hello to our guest?”
The kitten sniffed his hand suspiciously before stepping onto it for an experimental nibble on the cuff of his sleeve. Lilia stood with her carefully cupped in his hands.
“Oh, my. How you’ve grown, little one.” Their guest offered his own white-gloved hand, which Flora inspected and subsequently deemed acceptable real estate. She chewed on his cufflink and purred.
“How about you?”
He answered without looking away from the kitten. “Hm?”
“Did you enjoy having hair of a different color?” Lilia tilted his head. “I rather thought it suited you.”
“It was interesting for a time,” he said, “but I did not notice after a while.”
“You should change it more often. Keep things interesting.” Lilia crossed the kitchen floor in the light-footed, ballet-dancer way of the fae, delicate enough not to bend the kitten-whisker blades of young meadowgrass or press footprints into newfallen snow. Soundless to any human ears, though none were present to prove it. “Do you still take your tea the same?”
He dangled one finger over the kitten for her to paw at with her whisker-thin claws. “Surprise me.”
Lilia blended the leaves and spices with a deft hand as he heated the water. These ingredients made for an earthy, more savory blend than usual, which made him smile as he remembered an argument between the boys about whether something qualified as soup or tea. “I think you will like this one,” he said as he brought the teapot to the table and set it next to their game.
“You have yet to fail me in this regard.” He set the purring kitten on his shoulder and lifted the teacup to his nose for a sample of the aroma. He eyed Lilia curiously, red meeting nearly-red. “This contains mushrooms,” he said.
Lilia beamed. “They were his favorite, were they not?”
“Yes, that is true.” He drank it smoothly. Food and drink treated him rather strangely in his current form - a far cry from when he occupied a more corporeal state. It did not taste of anything, not in the usual way a human or other creature might know the sensation. Instead, it evoked memories, pulled together their many fishing lines and drew them closer. He let his eyes loll closed as they rose up around him, like the crisp, clear water of a mountain stream cascading over his ankles, the brilliant fire of the autumn leaves mingled with evergreen shadows, the dirt and decaying wood and pine and mycelium carried to him by the diaphanous mist of an early-morning rain.
Such peace was normally far from him.
“It is your turn, as well,” Lilia added.
“Mm.” He set the cup aside with the remembrance clinging to his lips. “If I did not know you so well, Lilia, I would think you have altered the signs on these tiles in a moment of my distraction.”
Lilia looked affronted. “I am appalled by such an accusation.” He folded his arms across his chest.
A twitch of the smile that hinted at holding back so much more than teeth and tongue. “Do you deny it?”
“No,” Lilia huffed, “but I am appalled that you would mention it.”
“Worry not. It is a matter of no consequence.” He dispensed with several layers of tiles at once, taking advantage of the rule allowing an additional move once a match was made and stringing together more than a dozen.
Lilia looked perturbed about it, but just as quickly he smiled. “Is there any kind of game you don’t know, Sebastian? Have you ever lost even one match?”
The smile grew wider. “I suppose there might be one out there that has yet to cross my path.” He made certain to leave Lilia with no choice but to keep drawing tiles in the hope of making a match, thus increasing his own lead, “but as for losing…I prefer to keep that tally close to my heart.”
A shadow passed over Lilia’s face and left his eyes darker. “Have you found one?”
And then suddenly it was once upon a time, in a magical land not all that far away, when their gazes met for the first moment.
Lilia’s eyes brimmed with magic and rage. His moss-green armor was damaged, stained black with blood that still glimmered with a trace of life where there was none. His fangs were on full display in a mouth hanging open as he gasped for air. He was kneeling at the side of a dead man, but now, eyes caught in the trap of another’s, he rose to his feet.
“How can you do that?” he asked of the demon with a grip that threatened to shatter the weapon in his hand.
“I'm afraid I do not know what you mean.”
“This is a place of death,” Lilia growled, “a place of great pain and violence. A place of war.”
“I'm well aware of that.” A tongue danced across teeth. “One can smell the blood from the other side of the mountains. I thought it must be an impressive buffet and chose to find out for myself, though I could hardly have predicted what delicacies awaited me.”
The depth of Lilia’s wrath surprised even himself. “Are you unfamiliar with such calamity, hellborn?” It was an absurd thing to ask a demon, and he knew it.
“Not in the least.” Its countenance descended into deeper wickedness. “I stroll the halls of Hell quite frequently.”
“Then how…” Lilia brought his other hand to the weapon that was beginning to crackle with living power. “…how dare you stand there and smile?”
The demon continued to do so, even as liquid green fire poured into the oversized hatchet at the end of Lilia’s arms, as he prepared to wield it again in spite of his bone-deep exhaustion and unfathomable pain.
“Because,” the demon said, bowing to him in some sort of further cruel mockery, “I am delighted to meet you, Lilia Vanrouge.”
Lilia cried out as he hefted the hatchet over his shoulder and swung it into the ground. Thunder cracked the air itself apart as brilliant beryl light split the earth, as it devoured the demon and everything else within a hundred feet of it. Lilia threw an arm across his eyes to keep from blinding himself.
When the searing light subsided, every inch of earth in the impact zone was scorched black. Lilia’s forearms burned, which meant the magic imbued in his armor had worn bare.
The demon, completely unhurt, marveled at the specks of ash dancing in flurries around him.
“Why are you here?” Lilia’s voice grew into a desperate cry. “What do you want from me?”
The demon laughed, and it shook Lilia to his bones. “It is an honor of the highest caliber to meet the Red General himself. To watch him paint the emerald lands jet and crimson with elegant strokes of his brush, why- my associates will find themselves positively burning with envy.”
Lilia dared not cry before a demon. “There are no souls for you here, monster,” he said curtly. “Only death and its trappings.”
The creature appeared to consider his words. “Monster,” it repeated thoughtfully. “Are you familiar with the metaphor of glass houses?”
Lilia went silent.
“Do you deny it?” The demon curled a hand beneath its chin as though it were human.
“No,” Lilia admitted, “but at least I know what I am.”
“As do I.” Its eyes, the red of poppies, crackled with delight as they swept over the surrounding carnage. “Some of these men, so called, are hardly strong enough to carry their own swords.” It lowered its gaze. “Others were fathers. Some grandfathers.” It nudged the nearest with a black-booted toe. “This one has three little ones at home, and another along shortly.”
Lilia dared not cry. “Stop.”
It did not stop. “This one has a birthday next week.” It smiled cruelly. “Fifteen. Such a tender age.”
“I will end you.” Lilia already saw the faces of the dead every time he closed his eyes, through every minute of fitful sleep he managed to wring out of himself. He did not need this.
“Do you know why demons consume souls?” asked the demon.
Lilia’s jaw was clenched too tight for him to answer.
“We can eat all manner of things to sustain ourselves, like any creature,” it explained, “but a soul is unique.” Then, to Lilia’s continued horror, it began to demonstrate. Like playing a delicate instrument, the demon moved its hands gently through the air. Gossamer threads swayed at its fingertips. Silver light glinted from them, enabling Lilia’s eyes to follow the lines to where they gathered at the center of the teenage boy’s chest. “True, it contains the entirety of a person’s life, the accumulated memories and experiences…” It twirled its hands to wind the threads tighter. A pale, ghostly shape emerged over the boy’s heart, like an orb crafted of the thinnest crystal and filled with quicksilver. The demon tugged on it. “…but more importantly, it contains their potential. All the lives they could have lived. The knowledge they never gained, lovers they never had, family, friends, all the other things that make a life worth living.”
The blade of Lilia’s hatchet sliced neatly through the space between the demon and its meal. It should have severed the threads. But instead, the soul passed right through everything, through his weapon and his hands, and straight into the demon’s claws.
“A noble attempt,” the demon smiled, “but alas, such a weapon has no effect on me, as you’ve gathered.” Then it opened its mouth, jaws stretching impossibly wide, and devoured the soul.
Lilia leaned on his weapon for support. Long black-and-red ribbons of hair spilled over his shoulders and swayed in the faint breeze washing over the battlefield. That attack was stupid - he was no Reaper - and now he was needlessly weaker for it. But he had to try.
“They are already dead,” he whispered mournfully, “and you would rob them of eternal rest, of dignity. All they have left. You are unimaginably cruel.”
The demon swallowed audibly. “They are already dead,” it repeated. “What use do they have for it now? If I don’t consume it, another demon will.” Another twisted smile. “Waste not.”
Lilia’s downcast eyes took in the state of his blade. A massive magestone, dark with accumulated runoff from his repeated spellcasting. It hardly had one more swing left in it, let alone a full-scale attack. “You are right,” he conceded quietly. “I cannot stop you, or your kind, from gorging on mortal souls.” He pulled himself up and looked at the demon. A creature of liquid shadow poured into this deadly shape, this cruel, honed blade forged from darkness and quenched in immortal blood. This thing smiling cheerfully at him after eating the life of a young boy who never had a chance.
“But perhaps…”
The demon’s expression turned inquisitive.
“…perhaps I can slow you down.”
Lightning-quick, Lilia shot his hand out toward the demon’s chest and dug his nails in as deep as they could go. The creature went rigid in his grasp, then tried to squirm free when he began summoning his magic, but Lilia held it fast.
“I lay a curse upon you, hellborn. For every soul you have consumed, you shall be bound to the life of another. You shall experience all those things which you have stolen, and you shall be powerless to escape your shackles. Upon your keeper’s death, the cycle shall begin again.”
Magenta light burst from beneath Lilia’s hand and captured the demon in a tangle of thorns. Its shriek pierced his ears, but he did not let go.
“May you learn the value of a life that is not yours to take.”
Sebastian’s smile had lightened considerably over the years. “I think, perhaps, I have,” he answered. “Though I still intend to win.”
Lilia brightened, all traces of the darkness fizzling out. “It is more about the fun than the winning.”
Sebastian tilted his head. “Are the two not interchangeable?”
“Oh, goodness.” Lilia giggled. “You still have so much more to learn.”
Sebastian did win, though. He always won.
“I think our little friend here is hungry,” he said as he gathered Flora into his hand and stood. “I shall return presently.”
Lilia set about shuffling the tiles in case he would like to play another round, but before he could finish, there was a knock at the front door. Disjointed. Loud. Lilia hurried to answer it. He knew that knock.
“Oh, Floyd,” he said sadly, “there, there, young one, come here…”
Floyd wiped his nose with a torn-up sleeve and collapsed on Lilia’s tiny frame, the rest of his body sprawled on the front steps.
Lilia was stronger than he looked, but his arms simply weren’t long enough to pick Floyd up and set him back on his feet. “It’s alright,” he cooed as Floyd sobbed violently against him. “Come in and rest for a while.”
Still, he had to wait until Floyd was able to stand, which took a minute or two.
“Here,” Lilia said gently. “Sit.” Floyd gave up on the proffered chair and sank to the floor, where he lay on his side and bawled.
“Th- th-th-thought- y-you s-”
“Shh, don’t try to talk yet,” Lilia said. “It will pass. It will pass.”
It did pass, after several minutes, and only after Gus, the massive, fluffy orange tabby, came over and started making biscuits on his midsection. The hem of his shirt was pulled up a bit, and he laughed suddenly when Gus’s hair tickled his stomach, then cut himself off just as fast.
“Where’s Flora?” Floyd asked hoarsely.
“Getting a snack. She will be back shortly.”
“Oh.”
Floyd’s visits had become a regular occurrence that grew out of a desperate need. It was not so often anymore that the grief crushed him so thoroughly, but Lilia was glad to be there when it did.
“Found this,” Floyd said miserably. He had been clutching something so tightly that Lilia hadn’t even seen it in his over-large hands. He held it out to show Lilia as if handling a baby bird. It was a slightly crumpled, slightly tear-stained birthday card.
“Is this from Jade?”
Floyd nodded and shifted so he could sit up with Gus lounging comfortably across his lap. “It was in the closet. On my side, on the top shelf, where all my shoes are, cause he knows I would never let anybody else touch that stuff.” He sniffled.
Lilia gingerly took the card and opened it.
Floyd,
You are the best brother anyone could have. Every day, I grow even happier that I chose you. You will have so many years of joy ahead. I wish I could be there for all of them.
Jade
“This was very sweet of him,” Lilia said softly.
Floyd looked at the enormous cat stretched across his lap. Gus loved scritches from anyone, but especially from Floyd. “He knew,” Floyd mumbled. “He knew he was gonna die.” He briefly chomped down on his bottom lip to fight back another onslaught of crying. “But how could he know, Lils? There’s no way he could’ve known.”
“There we are, my darling,” came the voice from down the hall. “Salmon, bluefin tuna, and sardine, poached in a delicate bonito broth and finished with a light drizzle of cod liver oil.” Flora wolfed it down loud enough to be heard from any corner of the house.
Floyd went still.
His reddened eyes locked on to the source of the voice. “Who’s that?”
Lilia could only offer a tiny smile. “A friend of mine,” he answered.
Floyd picked up Gus, who curled around his folded arms, and stood.
The man coming towards them was tall, taller even than Floyd, with soft, dark hair and a cheerful smile directed at the tiny kitten on his shoulder. He turned his gaze on Floyd, red meeting red-rimmed, and his smile dissipated.
“Why, hello there,” he said with poorly-masked unease. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”
Floyd clung to Gus like the cat was his life preserver.
“Floyd,” Lilia said, “this is my friend Sebastian.”
Floyd just kept staring, searching the depths of his eyes, studying the lines of his face. Sebastian stood patiently. Floyd inhaled to speak, opened his mouth, closed it, repeated the whole series a couple of times, then finally gave up and buried his face into the cat’s fur. “Hi,” he said weakly.
Lilia looked between them expectantly, but Floyd turned his back and vanished into the game room. The door closed behind him.
Lilia let go of a held breath. “This has been immeasurably difficult for him.”
Sebastian found himself doing the same thing - trying to speak but failing to find the words. It was a completely foreign experience.
“I know.”
Lilia looked just as shocked as the demon did. “You do?”
Sebastian frowned. “Yes, I think so. This is grief.”
Lilia blinked up at him. “Well,” he said, “perhaps you have learned something after all.” He looked back at the door and sighed heavily when he heard Floyd’s crying start up again. “Shall I explain this to him?”
Sebastian thought about it, then shook his head. “No,” he decided. “I shall.”
Lilia hesitated, but then he bowed out of the way.
Sebastian cleared his throat and knocked on the door. A muffled noise answered him. He took it as an invitation to enter.
Floyd had curled into a tight ball around the giant orca plushie he kept at Lilia’s house. His body quaked with every jagged sob, and even though he must have heard Sebastian enter, he fully ignored the demon’s presence. Sebastian debated his options and finally decided to awkwardly fold himself into a seated position on the floor. He could not think of anything to say.
“Why’re you here?” Floyd asked with a tremble.
Sebastian had to admit that he did not know the answer. “It seemed like the correct thing to do.”
Floyd scoffed, then started coughing so hard he had to sit up. “That’s such a-” But he broke off before he could finish it.
“What?” asked Sebastian.
Floyd rubbed his face with his sleeve. “That…it…it’s just a very Jade thing to say.” He hugged the orca much more tightly than he could hug Gus. “Who are you?”
Sebastian toyed with the edge of the orca’s tail. “What sort of answer would you like?”
Floyd sniffled. “You don’t even look like him,” he mumbled. “Not a lot.”
Sebastian said nothing. Floyd kept going.
“You’re not supposed to be taller than me, you jerk.” Floyd’s nails were acting more like claws. “And your eyes aren’t right. And your hair’s all wrong. And your voice. And your face.” He shook with something barely contained. Not anger, but perhaps not anything else, either.
Sebastian was not meeting his eyes. “I suppose.”
“But- you still look like him.” Floyd tossed the orca aside and finally found his rage. “Why? Why do you look like my brother?”
Sebastian wondered why he had not been able to keep eye contact with Floyd, but looking at him now solved that puzzle. All at once, his chest ached tremendously with something hot and sharp, like Lilia’s nails cutting deep into the space where a heart might have been, an agony he had seen and caused but never felt.
Floyd was waiting on an answer.
“Well, I…” Sebastian’s hand clutched at his own chest as if it might stop the pain. It did not. “…I suppose I am, in a way.”
Floyd’s expression turned from suspicion to disgust. “What does that even mean?”
Sebastian hadn’t exactly worked out an explanation for this in advance. “I have experienced a number of lifetimes,” he said. “Jade’s was merely the most recent.”
Floyd scowled. “What, you, like, possessed him or something? Are you a demon?”
This abrupt conclusion took him by further surprise. “Well, actually.”
Floyd looked wary but did not press him.
Sebastian cleared his throat. “Is there anything else you would like to know?”
“Yeah.” Floyd retreated into himself a little, still skeptical. “Was Jade even real?”
He blinked. “Of course he was.”
“But you took over his life.”
Sebastian winced, then wondered why he had done that. He was no longer contained in a mortal form. Why was he still experiencing the same effects? “Not so,” he managed to say. “I was more of a…reluctant passenger.”
Floyd went for the orca again and sighed into its polyester fluff. Gus reappeared, investigated Sebastian’s foot, then decided Floyd was superior and rubbed against his leg. “Jade wasn’t huge on cats,” Floyd said. “He liked mushrooms. Everything was friggin’ mushrooms.”
Sebastian chuckled. “Yes, I remember.”
Floyd cocked an eyebrow. “‘Remember?’” he asked. “You haven’t- I mean, he hasn’t been…gone…for that long.”
“Of course.” Sebastian could not quite explain the feeling of it all. Memories from a thousand years ago tangled with moments barely a few weeks old. He had gathered from experience that humans gradually forgot their early memories as they aged, to varying degrees, but it did not work that way for him. He remembered everything at once. As if it happened yesterday.
He smelled sugar. Floyd had unwrapped a piece of bubblegum and wrapped his tongue around it.
“That will rot your teeth,” he remarked.
Both of them stilled. It was not Sebastian’s voice that had spoken, but, subtly different, Jade’s.
Floyd recovered first. “Yeah, you told me.” He offered a piece. “You don’t like it, but you get mad when I don’t share, so.”
Sebastian was moderately certain that had only been true at a much younger age. He took the piece of gum and tasted it. Chalky and sweet, and already melting into an unpleasant texture.
“I don’t know how you can still eat these things, Floyd,” he said as the sugar triggered another memory, another moment plucked out of time.
“That’s caaaause…?” Floyd chewed open-mouthed at him with a mischievous grin.
“…because I am no fun,” Sebastian - Jade - quietly finished for him.
Floyd’s giggle made the candy taste even sweeter.
“I guess you’re not so bad.” Floyd tucked the gum into a far corner of his mouth for later. Jade had taught him that, so he would not have to spit it out during class and get in trouble. “I still don’t…get it,” he admitted. “How did you know he w- you were…dying?”
Sebastian did not want to finish the gum, but he did not want to upset Floyd any further by disposing of it, so he quietly vaporized it. “I gained a sense of it over time,” he said. “The way a soul feels when it approaches its end.” He placed a hand over his chest, where Jade’s heart had been. “It does not seem to make a difference whether the cause is internal or external. And I could not explain the sensation if I tried.”
Floyd was absentmindedly cleaning between his teeth with his tongue. “Thanks for the card.”
Sebastian nodded. “It may seem strange, Floyd, but I meant every word.” A tightness grew in his chest. “You…more than anyone else…made it a life worth living.” One that had tasted all the sweeter.
Floyd lunged in a way that made Sebastian want to roll out of the way and throw him into the wall, but he relaxed when he realized it was just a hug. A signature, full-strength Floyd squeeze. “I knew it was you,” he mumbled. “I’d know you anywhere, you big, stupid jerk.”
Sebastian laughed and tousled his hair because he hated it.
“Ugh, yes, definitely you.” Floyd shoved him off and hurriedly fixed it.
A curious feeling had settled in the hollow of his chest. Something warm, lightweight. Fragile. Something that felt a little like a soul.
Sebastian sat with Lilia on the roof of his house. The sun was, at last, setting on this very peculiar day.
“Is there a particular reason we are up here?”
Lilia nodded and grinned. “It’s the best place to watch for bats.”
A pair of them appeared as if summoned, fluttering erratically against the watercolor sky.
“Do you ever think about that day, Lilia?”
Lilia’s eyes darted around in search of more bats. “From time to time,” he said, “when I realize I have not heard from you in a while.” He took a deep inhale of the fading autumn air. “At first I did not expect to hear from you ever again. Imagine my surprise.”
Sebastian could smell winter’s distant bite as well. “For once, I can say that I can imagine it.”
Lilia chuckled and then sighed. “I suppose you have once again evened the count.”
“It would appear that way, yes.” He watched as more bats took flight for the evening.
“And?”
Sebastian looked down at him. “And what?”
“What do you think about it?” Lilia’s eyes had changed over the years. Once a deep, bloody scarlet, they had ripened to dragonfruit pink. Softer and sweeter.
“This one seems different, somehow.” He pulled his knees up to his chest. “I think…that I enjoyed having a brother very much.”
“You have had siblings before. And children,” Lilia reminded him. “What makes Floyd so different?”
What doesn’t, Sebastian wanted to say. “Have I explained the taste of a soul before?”
Lilia’s face immediately soured. “Yes, Sebastian,” he said flatly. “On day one.”
“Ah.” He cleared his throat. “What I mean to say is that each one is different. Some brightly acidic, some old and bitter, others gently mellow.” Most recently, it was the taste of brine that lingered on his palate, but he did not share that information. “Prior to the day you cursed me, I had thought there was nothing finer.”
Lilia crossed his arms. “This had best end on a positive note if you know what is good for you, young man.”
He found it harder to speak, as though something was lodged in his trachea, and tried to clear his throat again. “What I did not know was how it pales in comparison to life.”
Lilia’s face relaxed.
“All of the things that mortal creatures feel…joy, sadness, anger, fear. Grief. Pain. I did not know how…how strong these feelings could be,” said Sebastian as the steady timbre of his voice abandoned him. “The limits to which they can be driven. Empathy, compassion, even love - have only been mere words to me, empty and meaningless. Pathetic.” He shut his eyes and found them burning.
Lilia patted his shoulder. “Life is all that and more, my friend.” His weathered gaze followed a wayward bat that had taken particular interest in his fig tree. “Is that, perhaps, why you have not asked me to lift the curse? To spare you from the heartbreak of yet another mortal life?”
Sebastian placed one hand into his pocket, intending to retrieve a handkerchief, and instead found a piece of super-ultra-sour candy that Floyd had snuck in there behind his back. “I’m afraid so,” he said. “Unfortunately, it seems I have developed a taste for it.”