Someone You Can Build a Nest In

by John Wiswell

But humans never stood up for the right thing. They stood around feeling uncomfortable, and later pretended that feeling uncomfortable meant they were virtuous.

Had she ever worn a human while she ate them?

This revelry was a kind of fear, for hatred was the fear people let themselves enjoy.

They shrieked in what Shesheshen assumed was another of the consensual oral horrors that humans called music.

Weaknesses were a human invention. They called it your weakness if they fantasized about murdering you with it.

Homily explained, “When I grew up, I always thought witches would wear things like this. But none of the witches I’ve met wore hats. It was a little disappointing.”

The amount of social cues she had to care about bewildered her. Talking was awful when you weren’t threatening people.

Homily fished out one of Shesheshen’s hands, lacing their fingers together delicately until they were a wickerwork of flesh. Shesheshen wondered if wicker chairs felt this happy about interlacing.

Romance was awful. She couldn’t even do something as simple as murdering rude people anymore.

Homily had another way of sidestepping humanity’s penchant for complaining: enjoying herself. People could simply choose not to hate things. Shesheshen wasn’t used to them making that choice. Adjusting to it would take work.

Shesheshen sat beside her on the bed, not talking, puzzling over what she was allowed to say. With the little tact she possessed, she determined this was the wrong time to offer to eat someone.

She was going to eat her mother-in-law for the common good.

One could only pretend to love in language. True love was a woman sinking up to her elbows in her viscera, delicately removing hooks from her rigid tissues.

“Angry about you defiling the corpse of the sister that I . . . that I murdered?” Homily raked her fingers across her scalp so hard one nail snapped off and clung to a nest of curls. She clutched that fingertip into a fist. “No. I guess I’m not allowed to be angry about that.”

“No young woman of means has gone through her entire life without at least once surveying her opportunities and wishing for a dragon instead.”

“I do not know what you call it. The thing that is not flesh or bone or organs. In the panic, I needed to make sure the greater thing was safe. The demonic laughs you make at things that are not jokes. The way you ask to touch me without words. The pleasure I get from riding next to you. The talking that I mind less than talking to others. The willingness to be harmed myself before letting you be harmed. You feeding me soup by the spoonful because I cannot raise a hand. What do you call that thing that I had to save? I had to save it. I had to save us. You are my safety.”

Time was the sort of thing you had to care about when you belonged to more than yourself.

“I love you,” said Homily, backing out through the door with a hand over her heart. They were the right words. They wouldn’t have been if Shesheshen had said them, and they were right, all the same and instantly, because Homily had said them. Anything she said was the right thing.

“Every day was a brutal mystery, which we got through together. We learned about each other. The trick was realizing we both wanted the same thing. The thing that was worth going through all this for. That’s what brought us together.”