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Miriam Elmahdy’s Guide to Staying the Fuck Alive: (1) Bend the rules—but don’t break them. (2) Stick to the truth. (3) Avoid notice. (4) Listen to your instincts. (5) Be brave.
A monster of a man sits on his blood-red steed, a massive sword strapped to his back. There are gold rings in his dark hair and kohl thickly lines his eyes. His cheekbones are high and the scowl he wears makes him look absolutely petrifying.
“You’re wrong if you think that angers me.” His smile is menacing. “Everything you are has been made for me.”
“I saw you, and for the first time, I wanted.” His words pucker my flesh. “And so, I took.”
“I am yours and you are mine, Miriam—” I quake at those words. “—but I am not like you, and you should never forget that.”
His eyes are like honey when he says, “Stay with me, Miriam.” His hand flexes against my side. “Sleep in my tent. Make your weapons. Argue with me.”
“Do you want to know a truth, Miriam? Humans make proclamations like that all the time. But their oaths are brittle and break with age. I’m not afraid of yours, but you should be afraid of mine for I will tell you this: you are my wife, you will surrender to me, and you will be mine in every sense of the word before I’ve destroyed the last of this world.”
“My brothers and I can all do the opposite of our powers—Pestilence can spread sickness and cure it. Famine can destroy crops and grow them. Death can give and take life at will.” War pauses. “I can injure … and I can heal.”
“I don’t want to be awake when you’re asleep. Talking with you reminds me of how lonely it is to exist.”
Loss is a wound that never heals. Never never never. It scabs over, and for a time you can almost forget it’s there, but then something—a smell, a sound, a memory—will split that wound right open, and you’ll be reminded again that you’re not whole. That you’ll never fully be whole again.
He strokes my hair. “For millennia I’ve craved this.” Human connection, he means. “For millennia it’s been just out of my reach.”
