Our Ashes Will Fly

VI. Again

In Washington, I buy Alistair his first soda.

       It doesn’t go well; he takes one big sip and spits it back out onto the sidewalk. “I felt it in my nose. It hurt.”

            “It’s called carbonation. You won’t explode, don’t worry. I can’t say it’s good for your health, but it won’t hurt you in any immediate ways.”

            He takes another tentative sip, and scrunches up his nose. “No, no, I don’t like it.”

            I swish the drink around in the can, and listen to it sizzle. Leaning over, I rest my head against Alistair’s chest. I want to hear what his heartbeat sounds like.

            It sounds normal. I’m surprised. I was expecting it to sound like the beating of wings, or maybe more like a time bomb. After all, that’s kind of what he is. He’s a clock, counting down the days until he builds the nest.

            (It’s our euphemism now. Building the nest. Passing away. Meeting your maker. Going with the angels. A better place. When Alistair talks about building his nest, it means the exact same thing.)

            I don’t know if that luck or not, deciding when he gets to die He doesn’t have to worry about the unexpected nature of death. Death waits for him, the door open any time he wants to casually step through.

            “Could you do it sooner?” I ask, raising my head from his chest. “If you decided, right now, that you wanted to burn up, could you?”

            “If I wanted to.”

            “But you don’t?”

            Alistair tentatively strokes my hair. “Not right now.”

            “Ever?”

            “Everyone goes someday, don’t they?’

            “But you have five hundred years. Or more. That’s enough time to live and do everything you want to do.”

            “If I was meant to have a happy five hundred years, why didn’t I find you during the first three hundred?”

            He found me. It makes us sound like old lovers, like faded people in a photograph. It makes it sound more dramatic, than him falling out of the tree by the river. If I was religious, superstitious, if I allowed myself to believe in anything except reality, I would say that it was something unearthly that brought me and Alistair together, be it fate or aligned stars, or some greater power moving us around like paper dolls.

            Except Alistair’s right. If this is fate or divine or whatever it may be, why did it take so damn long? I’ve burned myself for two years. I’m scarred past saving. Alistair has lived too many days. We’ve both seen too many things. We both broken, in our own ways. By this point, it might be too late to us to let each other in.