All the Names They Used for God

by Anjali Sachdeva

While Effie absorbed everything he told her and filed it away as neatly as she did the papers on his desk, Freyn seemed to have no memory; or rather, what memory he had was an overgrown jungle in which Hindu temples and Arthurian chalices and even the beloved Ancient Peoples of the Southern Americas were similarly lost among the luxuriant creepers of his far-flung learning.

she has a faint scent about her like crushed granite and ice.

They are just so many stories patched together, so many forgotten days encased in bone and meat.

Her words shift within her like nervous birds. They long to go winging, and one loud noise will send the whole flock exploding outward, past the paltry gate of her tongue, into the world from whence they cannot be reclaimed.