The Spear Cuts Through Water

by Simon Jimenez

They were words that even Djove could not refuse to hear, for they went right past his damaged ears and into the very temple of his thoughts.

I would’ve liked them to give back my certainty.

Sounds like a Taylor Swift lyric

And I welcomed my death.

Wait this isn't the creature from before right?

until a man of Fortune’s Promise walked up to them and dropped his hammer on a quaking man’s head. Bits of skull exploded.

The trinket seller watched it all from the jail of his fingers, as a child he did not know huddled at his side. His entire body tremored, and all of his stubborn history fell off his shaking shoulders as he became acquainted with the parchment-thin divide between breath and stillness. It was then, upon the basest moment of my fear, that I saw the two warriors, running toward the fray. And with widened eyes I watched them approach the great wall of the Divine City and witnessed them perform their second miracle.

“Keema,” he said. “Of—” He stopped. This part, it was not his story. “I worked for her,” he said. “At Tiger Gate.”

Small she was, and gray of hair, but I’ve never minded the grays; they did nothing but make me look more distinguished.

“Jun,” he said, as if to show his friend something funny and strange.

What Keema and Jun saw as they looked into the full-moon eyes of the creature was no less than the history of its creation. Listen well to this tale.

“He was taken with the warrior,” your lola says. “His warm touch. His face—the light coming in through the canvas flap made him seem born of a golden river.”

So he slaughtered them first.”

I stopped walking and said "oh. YEAH."

And he would’ve killed Jun, too, but he knew that Keema liked Jun—He

He knew this, and stewed over it as he watched the two of them duel throughout the week, seething with jealousy.”

and the Terror did not understand what he had done wrong.

“You are strong and you are beautiful and it is your turn to deny THEM!” Madly, she shouted, “Go into Joyrock! A woman trespasses in your lair!

A woman

prized by these fucking fools! Kill the woman and make bit...

“I would’ve won,” Keema said. “If we had ever had a proper duel. Fully rested. I would’ve won.” Jun smiled. “Fuck off,” he said, which, to Keema’s ears, had the same melody as I love you.

for he saw in Jun’s face the face of his brother, who soaked in all of their father’s love, and he saw the face of his rival, who basked in all of Keema’s love, and the face of the bastard who snuck away all of his mother’s love—in

in whose body his mother dwelt in that very moment, affording him Her power.

“A duel.” He coughed pathetically. There was blood on his lip, his chin. “I”—blood swallowed—“I challenge you to a duel.”

And I asked him if he would dance with me.

The body holds the body. The arms hold the spear. And the spear cuts through water.

Holy FUCK that was so well played

The both of them were seized with a sudden fear of the end. A bodily reaction to the walls of water barreling toward them, ready to crush them. Jun ran up to Keema and held him, and Keema cradled the back of Jun’s head with his hand, feeling the sharp stubble of his shaved head.

great ecstatic thrashing, convulsing without breath, and his mind went warm and dull as he wondered if this was what it was like, to be held, and how sorry he was that this was how he found out, and how glad he was that it was over.

As did the boy with the cleft lip, who sat on a ledge in a small village in the palm of the Spires, where he was taken in by those who cared, along with the other lost children of the land—his tongue held out beneath the cloudburst sky.

this is indeed a love story. Down to the blade-dented bone.

and sound to you like rain.

MMM? No, right? Hamahuma?

“The Peacock is fine,” she said with reservation. “I’ve already spoken with him.”

Oh thank god

“Maybe you are just here.”

The world was quiet.

Keema stepped toward Jun,

and Jun received that touch as he would the water from a waterfall, with eyes closed and face upturned. “You feel like the sun,” Jun said. Their hands discovering on each other the scars of war like canyons and mountains, the rough terrain of battle and all the years of blood they had bathed in now slowly washed away in one of the few rains they had ever experienced in their lives. They drank deep this kiss.

“No,” Jun said firmly. “They have already seen my life. They have seen my most shameful moments.” The pained look in his eyes quickly faded as he gazed into Keema’s. “Why would I deny them one of my most beautiful?”

What the fuck that was so beautiful immediate tears in my eys m jaw droppd this is so well deserved whavdjwnatwtf