Transcend

by Natalia Jaster

  The goddess relaxes with each pass of Sorrow’s digits. And this is what it’s like to comfort someone without the magic of an arrow.

  Sorrow feels her eyes shimmering, about to spill. Sucking it up, she peeks at the assembly, checking to make sure no one notices.

  Her gaze stumbles across a pair of attentive, hazel eyes. Envy watches her, watches what she’s doing. He may have seen her on the brink of tears as well.

  Maybe he understands. Maybe he does, because yes, the twinges she’d seen from him while he cut into Wonder hadn’t been from exertion, but from remorse.

  He hates this as much as she does.

  That night, Sorrow sits on the floor of her home, with her back braced against the foot of her bed. It doesn’t seem fair that Wonder should be so utterly wrecked—her mangled hands, her broken soul, her grief over a mortal—and that the Goddess of Sorrow should walk away without a hair out of place.

  Sorrow snatches a razor from the floor next to her, and she presses the blade into the underside of her arm.

  ***

  Envy

  He’s not sure why he goes looking for her. She won’t want to talk to him, and he’s also not sure why the notion causes him to flinch.

  But he does find her, and he does approach her. She sits at the end of the walkway in front of her home on stilts, her legs draped over the edge, her feet making the water quiver.

  To his surprise, she doesn’t object when he settles beside her and dunks his feet into the glossy pool, wetting the hem of his pants. Tonight isn’t a night to squabble. Not after what they just did to Wonder.

  Dragonflies zip across the horizon, streaking the vista with lines of silver.

  Envy deplores the crusts of blood caked into his fingernails. It matches the red of Sorrow’s own digits.

  Why did he come here?

  Although he fancies his house, replete with sumptuous sofas, sewing materials, and barrels containing bolts of cloth, he hadn’t wanted to go there.

  His refuge had presented a second option, with its hollows and candles and waterfall enclave, which he’d discovered on that fateful day Sorrow first spoke to him.

  But oddly, neither had he gone there. No, he has come here.

  Rather than isolation, he prefers to face the memory of Wonder’s screams with the female beside him.

  “Perhaps immortals have no less free will than humans,” he says.

  Sorrow shrugs. “Guess we’ll find out.”

  He nods, but then evicts the quandary from his mind. It’s almost time for the class’s transit into the human realm. They’ll be stationed apart, in different areas of the world, wherever their root emotions are needed—which is to say, everywhere.

  In the near future, Envy shall be targeting mortals plagued by putrid fits of jealousy, the grittiness of competition, and the oily slip of vengeance. Perhaps there will be plenty of individuals to distract him from the things he has seen and done here. Or perhaps not.

  Envy bumps Sorrow’s shoulder with his own. “Will you miss me?”

  She snorts and turns to him, as if he’s an idiot. Nevertheless, his breath stalls before she answers, “Get lost, pretty god.”

  To which his heart clenches in a frightening way.

  ***

  Sorrow

  So he does get lost. As does she.

  Sorrow and Envy leave the Peaks for the mortal realm. She serves as she’s been taught to, striking the endless clusterfuck of humans infested by sadness.

  Years pass. Decades pass.

  More than a century passes.

  They see each other only during trips back home every ten years, for an intermission of rest. Rarely do they speak to one another, other than to exchange unpleasantries. Love, and Anger, and Wonder, and Envy, and Sorrow each have their stories, but none of them seem keen to share as much. Maybe they all have memories they’d like to forget, and an eternity to try.

  Always, they resume their posts in the mortal realm. One year on a minefield, a young soldier writhes in pain and wails for his sister while a tide of blood courses from his stomach. Sorrow can’t be everywhere at once. There are so many bodies, so many mouths roaring amidst the smoke, and entrails, and barbed wire, but her speed can’t oblige.

  Sorrow doesn’t reach the boy in time. When his eyes glaze over, she kneels beside him, hacking up bile and weeping. She longs to pet his head and apologize for not being there to ease his torment. But as an immortal, her invisible hand only swims through his matted, clumped, lice-infested hair. So she pretends, stroking his forehead and choking out that she’s sorry.

  The stench of decay is overwhelming, as are the shrieks of artillery and the whistles of explosives. When she’s done sobbing, she remembers that first cut she’d made, when Wonder was punished.

  Grabbing the soldier’s knife—because deities can make contact with inanimate objects of this world—she presses the tip into her arm, just above the first scar.

  When blood bubbles to the surface, she stops crying.

  In fact, she stops for good. Because nothing that happens from here on could ever be worth as many tears as this. Nothing.

  ***

  Envy

  They’re just over two centuries old now.

  In that time, a million things have happened.

  Namely, Love has fallen in love with a mortal named Andrew. The forbidden union has caused a chain reaction of events, setting their world into disarray and pitting the Fate Court against the goddess.

  In the face of that, it brings their class closer together. Questions and doubts about fate versus free will rise to the surface, in addition to their own individual experiences among the humans, which has knocked them all off kilter.

  And so, they band together, defying the laws of their world.

  In the end, Love and Andrew find their happy end, but it makes her an enemy of the Fates. Moreover, Anger is banished by the Court for protecting her secret, for failing to report her forbidden tryst in the first place.

  Later, Wonder, and Sorrow, and Envy attempt to locate their exiled class leader. Frustrated when they cannot find him, Envy thrashes into Sorrow’s sector of the mortal realm, to see if she’s learned anything new.

  He finds her in a marshland bayou, in some type of sanctuary for human dragonflies. And butterflies. And fireflies.

  A raft deck floats in the middle of the bayou, with a hard foundation where people can rest in the sun. But it’s night, and the mortals are sleeping, so it’s solitary but for the strum of crickets, their drone slicing through the air, and the croaks of toads roosting on lily pads.

  Tiny dragonflies flit across the water. Equally tiny butterflies perch on twigs and pump their wings. And even tinier fireflies hover, pulsing like chartreuse torches.

  Sorrow reclines on the deck, barely flinching when Envy appears beside her. Picking her teeth with a length of straw, she drawls, “Not a thing.”

  “How hard have you been looking?” he snaps.

  “In case you haven’t noticed, we still have jobs to do.” She rises on her elbows, which shoves her vest-clad breasts in his periphery and produces a slit in her skirt. “We can’t just abandon our posts unless we’d like to piss off the Court even more…What are you staring at?”

  It’s not the breasts or the column of flesh that catches his attention most of all. No, it’s the bandage spread across the bridge of her nose. “What the Fates is that?”

  Her fingers drift to the strip. “An embellishment.”

  He balks. “You consider that an accessory? That’s your idea of pretty?”

  “Envy, it’s been a long, stressful, debasing few months. Our class is demoted and estranged, Anger is banished, and the rest of us might get shunned, too. We’ll lose our magic if we make one false move, so excuse me if I’m not in the mood to deal with your shallow shit. Go away. Come find me when you’ve made yourself useful and gotten wind of clues about our missing rage god. Oh, and when I say clues, I mean the ones Wonder and I haven’t already dug up
.”

  “I will once you take off that ridiculous adhesive and let me see the rest of your face. Where’s your sense of taste? Beauty? Pleasure?”

  “They’re jammed up your asshole.”

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  Throwing the straw into the water, Sorrow vaults to her feet and gets in his face. “What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with me is you! It’s always been you!”

  Envy feels the quality of his own leer, akin to an acrylic sweater—cheap and unnatural. “My, my. Now we’re getting somewhere. I like seeing that snarky little mouth parted,” he hisses. “I bet every crinkle would rake against my tongue.”

  She fires one final cannonball. One very familiar cannonball.

  Tapping her nose against his, Sorrow warns, “Don’t mess with me, pretty god.”

  Fury thrashes up Envy’s throat and seizes the tips of his fingers. Maybe it’s everything that’s happened since Love’s rebellious romance, since Anger’s exile, since their class’s demotion. Maybe it’s all this fate and free will confusion.

  Or maybe it’s just her. Sorrow, with those cuts up her arms, that fake bandage, and all this moodiness, which she stashes behind a mask of cynicism. Maybe it’s Envy’s inability to break through that wall, because she reveals nothing to anyone, shares nothing with no one, cares what no one thinks about her—cares even less what he thinks about her.

  But he wants her to care. He wants her to think about him. Because maybe they’re both wearing masks, and dammit, he wants to rip off hers, among other things. He wants to rip her apart.

  So maybe it’s also her proximity. Maybe he’s losing his mind. Or maybe he lost it ages ago, back when she fisted his shirt and said the same exact thing.

  Also: An ugly god is easy to spot.

  Their gazes lock like horns. They pant into each other’s faces, her eyes chipping away at his restraint.

  The next thing Envy knows, he’s palming her ass and hoisting her against him. Sorrow yips, but he plugs the sound with his mouth, fusing it against her throat.

  The wine-and-fig taste of her sends him into a tailspin. He parts his lips over the pulse point and begins to suck.

  On a shocked moan, she throws her head back and clings to his shoulders. Her body arcs, her nipples shoving through her vest and scraping his shirt. The effect this has on his cock is profound, hardening him to the point where his shaft might tear through his forsaken trousers.

  After all the sex he’s had, Envy hadn’t known it was possible for decadence to feel new. But condemnation, those puckering buds and her disjointed spasms are precious.

  Precious and erotic as fuck. And all his.

  It’s always been you!

  She can’t take that back. He won’t let her.

  Envy flexes his tongue between her clavicles, and with each pull of her skin, he yanks another moan out of her. She thinks he’s worthless? She thinks him unimpressive, shallow, ugly? He’ll show her.

  When he’s done with this goddess, she’ll eat her words.

  In quick succession, he pops the buttons of her vest. Her pale breasts spill out, those nipples perked for his teeth. When he grazes the peaks, she’s an erratic mess of sound, and so is he. His fingers trail down her skirt, vanishing between the threads, then slipping up her thighs to find the soaked cleft of curls.

  With a groan, he murmurs, “You’re wetter than my tongue.”

  “I…” She licks her lips. “I…I hate you.”

  “Are you sure? That’s not what your body’s saying.”

  “My b-body is a heathen, and your h-hand is a bastard.”

  “But how much fun they might have together.” His angry thumb circles the swollen nub. “Would you like me to stop?”

  He will, if she says so. Yet she whines from his touch, her insides coating him even more as he dabs at her. And while her expression is doused in rage, her cheeks drown in pink.

  Between them, a greedy, needy coil of tension springs apart. His pelvis clenches as hard as her incisors. Eyes the color of tears narrow on him, insisting, Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you—

  “Fuck me,” she demands, gripping his collar and jumping on his waist. When her legs strap around his hips, Envy recovers from the jolt and attacks her neck, her tits, her everything with each strong tug of his lips.

  Once she’s thoroughly flushed, they scramble to the ground, the raft’s deck wobbling. Indeed, there’s something desperate and disdainful about this. Envy prides himself on sensual awakening, but Sorrow shows no patience for pacing.

  Their intent is primal, urgent, hectic. The mood seeks release, not communion. Not even foreplay.

  So be it. The agony is stifling and then a relief when Envy frees himself, and Sorrow bends on all fours. In seconds, her skirt flips over her hips, and he’s behind her, balanced on his knees. Her luscious backside spreads as she glowers over her shoulder at him. “Hurry.”

  Envy couldn’t agree more. He thrusts, his hips snapping forward.

  They both cry out. But as he lunges into her, he can’t decide if this is pleasure or pain.

  It’s over swiftly and hardly his proudest moment. They flop onto their backs and gawk at the heavens, their chests pumping. Rumpled and sweaty, they struggle for breath, just as they struggle to look at each other.

  Meanwhile, the stars twist overhead, as if scolding the pair of them.

  There’s a myth amongst their people. They believe the stars will shine their greatest when a deity asks for the truth.

  But a deity will only receive the truth if he or she is ready to hear the answer.

  And that immortal will only be ready to hear the answer if he or she is ready to change.

  If that’s happened before, no one has ever heard tell of it. However, stranger things have occurred.

  One of them just did. But as good as it had felt, it also didn’t…feel.

  Perhaps Envy’s not the only one who thought so. Without saying a word, he senses them both agree.

  It won’t happen again.

  ***

  Sorrow

  It happens again.

  And again. And again.

  It happens again shortly after they make their agreement. And it happens again in different locations of the human world, including a place called the Celestial City, a metropolis of twinkling trees, where immortal outcasts reign, and where they find Anger at last.

  And when they reunite with their class leader, they meet the misfit called Merry, to whom Anger loses his heart.

  Not long after, they all reunite with Love and Andrew. Then they band with a psychotic outcast called Malice, to whom Wonder loses her heart— and who happens to be the reincarnation of the mortal boy she was tortured for.

  During all of that, it happens again. Each time, on each surface, Sorrow and Envy position themselves so they don’t have to look at each other. They have long since reached a concession to be lust partners.

  And why not? It doesn’t mean anything and never will.

  No commitment, no affection, no intimacy.

  And never, never, never any kissing.

  18

  Envy

  When the kiss is over, his lips grow stubborn. They’ve got a mind of their own, brushing her mouth, rushing to trace the contours of her, to lay claim and distract her from pulling away.

  Indeed, he’s got greedy lips. And she’s got puffy ones, the arcs glistening and inflated from the debris of these past minutes.

  That’s not the only thing that has increased in size since this uproar began. Envy shifts his hips out of Goddess Range. Any further friction will send him into a tailspin, to which he’ll have no chance of recovering.

  Sorrow’s fingers cling to the back of his neck as her forehead rests against his, their chests pumping for air. Wet strings of hair slump across her flushed cheek. His eyes sweep over her while she focuses on his pecs, as if searching for his pulse.

  Condemnation. That’s an asinine sentiment to cross his mind, though frankly, he’s too dr
unk on her to care.

  But he should care. In short, they need to get away from each other. They have to, or everything good about this moment will burst like a dam and drown the galaxy.

  Won’t it? Won’t they spoil this?

  He doesn’t want to spoil this. Maybe neither does she, because as he maneuvers away, she tightens her grip, demanding his embrace. She hugs him with her entire body, burying her face into his throat, where his Adam’s apple bobs.

  He’s lost, speechless. And not fucking done with her.

  Envy twists his head and catches her lips again, swiping her tongue with his. Sorrow gasps into his mouth. She releases a pleasured sound, the final nail in his coffin. Naked and clinging, they charge at each other for the second time, trading open-mouthed kisses that border on desperation.

  Is this a buffer to avoid speaking? Well, he can’t give two celestial shits. Not with her gorgeous tits sliding over his nipples.

  The kiss combusts. Her lips yield under his, and his mouth tugs on her, needing her attention, craving it.

  On a groan, she peels her lips from his, despite his plaintive whine. In the middle of a lagoon—right, they’re in the lagoon—they collapse into one another. The water shivers. The constellations swirl like pinwheels, like the backdrop to an immortal acid trip. He won’t deny the psychedelic effect she has on him.

  This has to be an alternate reality. The universe is playing a cruel trick on Envy. That’s the only explanation for why Sorrow hasn’t attempted to leave. By the stars, she’s still holding him, holding fast while he grasps the curves of her backside. This makes it difficult to avoid fully rubbing his shaft against her.

  Plastered into yet another hug, she whispers over his shoulder, “Why did you kiss me?”

  Envy tenses, every witty response in the universe vanishing before he can snare one. All that comes out is, “Because.”

  Because I think I’m falling.

  His heart gives a quick squeeze. But if that’s true, he’s going to muck this up, because he doesn’t know how to fall, nor how to break the landing. He’ll plummet, crash, and break his perfect jaw. And he’ll take her with him.

  Isn’t that right? He hopes not.

  For one thing, he’ll no longer be pretty. For another, he’ll lose her.