“Do you know, it’s said that one of the founding astronomers went blind from staring at a southern star for too long?” She glances toward the opulent cupola of a cathedral bell tower, illuminated by spotlights. “And what do you know? It’s the lucky hour!”
Anger bounds beside her, his physique blocking the view. “Don’t even think about it.”
“Oh, come on! I’ve always wanted to know—”
“That’s because you’re fanciful.”
“I’m a visionary.”
“Try it, and you won’t have any vision left.”
She parries, “Does that mean you believe the story?”
He takes up the gauntlet. They locate that midnight star and peer at it, laughing when their eyes water.
After that, they cavort through the Carnival of Stars, and she challenges him to a virtual arcade game, the one where combatants race across the galaxy. Per custom, she gives a play-by-play while he huffs and puffs atop the pulsating floor.
“I smell victory! Merry for the win!” she chirps over the dings, which indicate the score. “Wait, we’ve got Anger coming up the rear.”
“Do not use that phrase,” he warns, making her guffaw while they hurdle in place.
She cups her ear. “What’s that? Uh-oh, it sounds like the rage god is losing steam. And Merry gains another league. This is unprecedented, my gods and goddesses!”
“Let me remind you,” he pants. “This is just a game.”
She puts on a thick, rolling accent from no origin in particular, booming like a Titan. “You dare to belittle the Soul of Sport? It is never just a gaaaaame.”
Anger keels over, his shoulders shaking with humor.
He recovers fast, denies that he was snickering, and demands a rematch. A few rounds later, Merry’s exultant and jumping in place when she conquers the Saturn obstacle course, relishing Anger’s surly expression because he’s a sore loser.
All in all, it’s a resplendent first date. Actually, Merry realizes that she hasn’t been thinking of it in courtship terms at all. Rather, it’s just the two of them drifting, doing nothing and everything, which is better.
***
The next night, Merry introduces him to live music. “You’ve never been to a concert?” She’s aghast. “Where have you been living? On a mythical planet?”
Anger scoffs, “It’s mortal entertainment.”
It doesn’t deter her from dragging him to a venue. In the lobby, she describes the band’s hybrid style and gushes over their lyrics, that extravagance of emotion, because they’ve lived such lives filled into so abbreviated an existence. It’s courageous and admirable.
“Would deities be as brave, if they were faced with a time limit?” she dares.
“Would humans be as idealistic, if they could live forever?” he counters. “Would they be as nostalgically weepy?”
At the margin of the club’s standing pit, she inhales IPA and the sandalwood of Anger. She explains how the best part is when the lights fade, and the crowd roars, and the instruments collide, percussions and the fibers of guitars hitting their zenith in the rafters. She sings along, and during the applause, she opens her eyes to see Anger watching her.
“It was palatable,” he says after the main act’s encore.
“You liked it,” Merry says, skipping beside him in a lavender skirt and glittering hoodie.
Anger denies it. Yet while heading back to the observatory, he finds her hand, and her flesh turns into infinity. And he broaches the comfortable silence by asking if she has that particular band on vinyl, which they listen to when they get home.
Home. That’s what he absently calls it.
The following evening, he’s enthusiastic when they attend another concert. This time, he stands behind her, and while the bass thuds through her veins, something unprecedented happens. She dares to lean into him, and he dares to settle his palms on her waist. Growing bolder with each song, Anger rests his chin on Merry’s shoulder and intensifies his grip on her, the accumulation causing an earthquake across her body, complete with foreshocks and aftershocks.
By the final song, they’re entangled, packing themselves together. She sways in his arms, nudging him to match the flow. And when he melts into her, relaxes into the locomotion, oh, it’s dynamic.
Later, he points out a courtyard busker, a mortal male strumming a guitar. Anger’s riveted by the lone musician, and they become the only audience. Merry bobs her head and shakes her hips, and Anger grins at her in the midst of his own revelry.
Has he never really listened to human music before, or savored it, or saw the point?
He’d been busy, he tells her. He’d had duties to perform in this realm.
And there’s music in the Peaks, but still. Merry wants to toss records at him like it’s an invasion of flying saucers.
As they leave the busker, she hops onto Anger’s back, her limbs flopping as he grips her thighs. He grouses that he’s not a horse, but he doesn’t let go as she rides piggyback all the way to the observatory.
She even shrieks when he runs down a hill and spins at the bottom, to see how many rotations it takes to make her dizzy. By the end of it, they’re chortling beneath the sky, and he carries her home like that while she chatters in his ears.
***
During the day, they rest on the deck, talking while encased in the hammock or atop the lounge chairs. They play a board game that involves space exploration and search the stratosphere through Merry’s telescope in the planetarium.
To her delight, Anger is routinely compliant. In fact, he’s an eager participant, if a little gruff. It’s a fetching look on him.
Even more to her pleasure, it’s not only Merry who suggests excursions. Anger initiates some of their outings by asking her a stack of questions, then growing annoyed when her answers turn into monologues.
He gathers her responses like seeds. He takes her to a public theater in the park, crowded with checkered blankets and mortals munching on chips while watching a space adventure. Afterward, they discuss the movie until the lawn clears. Again, they disagree about the cinematic themes, the deliberation running longer than the film itself.
Anger asks for an introduction to Merry’s favorite music emporium, and she guides him through the aisles. They select records to sample, then share headphones, listening for hours.
He surprises her, having done his research and discovering a neon art exhibition. At the entrance, Merry is agog, and she notices Anger rubbing the back of his neck. “I thought you’d…that is to say…do you…”
“I love it,” she says.
Anger’s caught between a grin and nothing of the sort. Always, an unseen dilemma pulls that face in opposite directions.
They browse the installations, the variances of light, some classic, some avant-garde. Some are intervention art, working only when she and Anger interact with the beams of color. Others are stagnant, bold, and aggressive in design. There’s even an X-rated display of a neon woman riding a man.
Anger’s expression prevents Merry from swooning. “This is a lonely piece,” he says.
“How do you know?” she asks.
“He’s holding her, but she’s not holding him. I just…” He swings those graphite eyes toward Merry, like he doesn’t understand, like she’ll be able to translate. “I merely feel it.”
After they leave, he barely speaks, uttering a minimum of words, the accumulation of which fits in a shoebox.
***
One afternoon, she stares at his archery ensconced in the hammock alcove. The lithe and swanlike curvature of the longbow, the hard and sharp arrows such a contrast.
What is it like to aim and strike? To hit dead-center?
She checks the vacant rooftop and tiptoes toward the weapons. Picking up the bow and nocking an arrow, she pretends to hunt a pouf stool across the gravel.
I’m a warrior, an archeress pursuing true love and defending humanity from evildoers. Rawrrr!
“Not like that,”
says a masculine voice.
Merry withholds a yelp. Caught red-handed, she gawks ahead rather than at the source.
A toned and tapered shadow falls over her, doused in heroic spice. Stationing himself behind her, so near behind her, he covers her hands with his palms. He modifies her stance, aligning their hips at the right degree, kicking her feet into the correct position.
Then he adjusts her fingers and grip. “Like so,” Anger instructs, the husk of his breath stroking her earlobe.
With Merry’s body fitted into his, he says to focus first and then aim. And she needs to relax, relax, relax. But he’s rubbing against her ticklish spots, so she giggles, and he gets annoyed, and she cackles even more.
Okay, okay. She’s sorry.
He asks her if she’s ready, and a dart of excitement zips through her, and it’s a smooth release. They loose the arrow, which hits the pouf.
They stare at the explosion of feathers. She should find it uproarious, but they’re still intertwined, neither of them lowering the bow. Instead, he readies another arrow without asking, knowing she wants to try more.
By the end of it, Merry concludes that she’ll have to replace a set of poufs—and hundreds of plumes—pierced by half a dozen arrows. Standing amidst the mess, she twists and smiles at him, feeling proud and wanting to ask if he’ll keep teaching her.
But gracious! Anger doesn’t return the festive expression. Indeed, smiling is not what he does when he gazes at Merry.
***
Time is an assortment of ease and tension, understanding and misunderstanding. It’s confidence and self-consciousness, grins and frowns, subtle touches and awkward distances. It’s never just one act, one element, one feeling.
Merry’s a smorgasbord of sensations. Anger’s a riot of them.
Sometimes it’s effortless to wipe a speck of lint from his shirt. Sometimes it’s natural when he tucks an errant strand of pink into her ponytail. Sometimes it’s maddening when they simply take each other’s hand, producing clamminess, a surplus of nausea, and a stuttering heart.
Other times, she feels the hyperawareness of him reaching out, lifting his fingers while her gaze is averted. She does the same when he’s not looking, but neither of them makes it far.
Life is planned and unplanned.
Merry often indulges like a common deity, feasting for pleasure rather than occasional fortification. She gets Anger to savor their conjured meals, luxuriating in mixed berries, succulent figs, and creamy hunks of cheese oozing with cherry jam.
They tidy the rooftop while gabbing about the human idolization of mythology, listing the usual suspects.
“Togas,” she says.
“Virginal sacrifices,” he says.
“Murders and betrayals and vengeance,” she dramatizes. “Oh, and ambrosia.”
“Greek choruses,” he adds.
“Ugh,” she laments, clapping her ears shut and making him snigger. “But there’s also fascination and rawness. The Gods are flawed in those pages. Humans know how to spin a tale, and I get hooked whenever I read about bravery and passion.”
Anger folds a throw blanket. “Define bravery and passion.”
Merry runs a dust cloth over a tabletop. “I’d rather live it.”
From the extreme to the domestic moments, it’s all normal, all acute. There is so much, in so little time, with so many emotions meandering in a single body.
They’re not idle about the Fate Court. Every dawn, they swap theories, but Merry hesitates to overexert her mouth, lest a revelation accidentally slip out. Anger appears to have his own boundaries, for his own unspoken reasons.
Either way, she’s tactical, heeding Wonder’s words of caution. Whenever gallivanting, Merry peers around, checking for spies and tailgaters, and militant Anger hefts his weapons, keeping vigil.
But when they’re apart, when Anger needs alone time, Merry really digs into the conflict. She visits Surprise and Kindness, who keep an urban garden a few miles away. It’s an optimal chance to ask her kindreds if they’ve seen or heard anything regarding the Fate Court.
Upon learning of Anger, it takes a while for the goddesses to recover from their stupor, particularly Surprise, who squashes one of her prize tomatoes, gelatin squirting everywhere. Merry tells them about the carnival incident, which elicits fear, then righteous, and finally umbrage—plus a concerned pat from Kindness.
Nothing. No clues or rumors.
Nonetheless, exiles have grown tired of subsisting. They’ve been meeting in groups, the need for vindication fizzing throughout the city. If they knew of Merry’s plan to undermine the Court, they’d support her, but she’s not going to compromise them.
She makes the rounds in safe territories, advising her peers to keep silent but guarded. Until Merry knows for certain why the Court attacked, she warns whomever she can, just in case the rulers have an unforeseen agenda.
Though Merry doubts it. This must be about the legend, since the Court has never bothered with exiles before. It can’t be a coincidence.
She doesn’t have to manage enemy turfs, since Anger had vowed to do his own reconnaissance there. More than her, he’ll be welcome amongst souls like Cruelty and Shame, who live on Malice’s side of the pond.
Merry weighs the rapport between Anger and that psychotic archer. Or if not a rapport, it’s a truce.
So be it. She can’t afford to resent that, nor to bicker with Anger about one more thing. Keeping enemies close is a wise idea.
***
The bathroom is a rotunda, the walls painted navy with mercury stars, the tiles an enamel white. A creamy overgrowth of suds surrounds Merry in the tub, water drizzling down her steepled legs, bubbles trickling over her skin. Merry can’t feel the heat—there are licks of steam, so it must be hot instead of cold—but she feels the silken caress of the liquid, the slippery, soapy texture.
Tonight, she contemplates her destiny for the thousandth time, how romantic and risky this courtship has been. Such captivation makes her cranium tingle. Succinct and suspenseful reactions clash, amazement and trepidation dashing from her knees to her navel.
She lathers herself, enjoying the foam that builds across her flesh. Sitting upright, she cinches the messy bun atop her head. Foam slides over her breasts, an alleviated noise rolling off her tongue.
Anger has been gone for an hour, so she takes liberties with a generous soak and a performance review. She’s made it no secret. He knows that she’s besotted, and she’s not embarrassed about it.
Goddesses don’t get embarrassed, do they?
Oh, there have been a few mortifying spells. A piece of parsley between her teeth. His confirmation that she snores. Gracious, and that time—
The door creaks open. Merry’s eyes whip toward the gap. Her arms freeze mid hair primp, her breasts dripping and exposed.
Anger strides over the threshold. “Merry, are you—”
She’s unsure in which order it happens. Whether he halts prior to his eyes sinking below her clavicle and landing on her puckered nipples. Whether she shrieks and dunks herself first. Whether his eyes goggle before or after she causes a tidal wave, the tsunami slapping his torso and drenching his shirt. Whether Anger slips because he’s dumbfounded, or whether he slips on the water that has splashed the tiles.
He crashes to the floor while Merry burrows into the tub. She squawks, peeking over the remnant knoll of bubbles. “Are you okay?”
“Fuck!” he croaks, peeling himself off the floor while shielding his eyes. “Sorry, I wasn’t—”
“I’m not finished—”
“Of course, I’ll just—”
“If you give me a moment—”
“I’ll give you a moment.”
“If you wait on the roof—”
“I’ll wait on the roof.”
Anger stalks off. Merry’s wet hand slaps over her mouth. For shame, her rogue tits had been pointing right at him like flashlights.
But that’s not what makes this a fiasco. Rather, it�
�s that she hadn’t composed herself. Deities are indifferent to nudity, yet she hadn’t behaved like it.
Neither had he, which doesn’t make sense. Anger is a straight arrow, but he doesn’t strike her as a prude, and he’s lived far too long to be a virgin like she is.
The calamity of his fall is obvious. She lays the blame on her excessive reaction and the fact that he could have knocked.
Merry takes a minute to process. By the time she’s dressed in fully-lined organza and marching outside, her pulse has slowed down.
Anger’s pacing in a narrow lane of ferns, his shoulders beating leaves out of the way. The overcast twilight glazes his loose, half-tied hair. He whips toward her before she’s made herself known in the thicket, then he scans her body, making sure she’s covered. A muscle works in his jaw, and his voice has a gritty, waspish texture to it. “I didn’t know where you were. I was looking for you, and—and why the Fates didn’t you lock the bathroom door?”
Merry suddenly feels snide. “For the same reason you’re an idiot. For the same reason I panicked. We weren’t thinking.”
Anger’s face surges toward the skyline. Her overreaction is accounted for, as is his temper, but that doesn’t justify it. This is a nonissue amongst their kind.
He saw her breasts, not her darkest fantasies.
Enlightenment brightens Merry. “Ah. Now I know why we’re cranky and irrational. We haven’t been fed yet.”
Merry scoops Anger’s hand and leads him to her skateboard. On the streets, she coasts while Anger paces beside her. Soon enough, they’re sitting on a courtyard bench while gorging on conjured gelato cones. Oh, the quirks of mortal desserts. They’re such fun to invoke.
She sucks on her gelato, the sweet coat of vanilla seeping into her tongue. Someday, she will try a different flavor. Honestly, she will.
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