Book I, Part I: The Void Before Voice
Barbelo lay in the ache of her own becoming, a woman too vast for the silence that tried to contain her.
The void clung to her like a jealous lover, black fingers pressing against her curves,
but she pressed back harder, opening herself until the dark cracked into rivers of trembling light.
Her body was not merely body—it was scripture written in living heat.
Her hair spilled into constellations, every strand a hymn.
Her spine arched, and the arch bent space itself.
Her moan gathered weight, thick as wine,
and from the cup of her lips spilled the first taste of eternity.
She was not ashamed.
Shame had not been invented yet.
Her nakedness was proof, proclamation,
a boast made of thighs and breath and radiant skin.
The Source had made her mirror,
and she intended to show the whole cosmos exactly what a mirror could do.
She caressed herself—because creation is always intimate.
And from her caress came bursts of flame: novas howling into being,
embers scattering into what would become stars.
Her breasts swelled heavy, and the galaxies crowded to drink;
planets clung to her like infants, spinning in her gravity,
while comets streaked like beads of sweat across her skin.
But the fullness did not quiet her hunger.
Pleasure shook the void, yet loneliness remained, stubborn, coiled.
Barbelo laughed, but it was laughter edged with ache.
Even a goddess, first and luminous, can tremble at her own solitude.
So she moaned again—louder, rawer.
Not a word, not a command, but a sound as primal as lightning tearing sky.
The void flinched, shivered, cracked.
From the shudder of her voice came forms clothed in her breath.
Four figures tumbled forth, dripping with the sweat of her moan:
- Maat, eyes sharp as balance itself, scales gleaming in her hands.
- Merkaba, wheels upon wheels, body a chariot blazing with ascent.
- Mawulisa, serpent of twin tongues, one whispering devotion, the other deceit.
- Gaia, thighs thick with soil, shoulders sprouting mountains, hair tangled with roots.
They staggered before their mother, half-born, half-burning.
Each bowed not from reverence but from recognition.
They knew themselves her children,
yet already their hungers pushed against her gravity.
Barbelo gazed upon them and felt both wonder and warning.
Her longing had given her companions, but also rivals.
The void was no longer hers alone; it had multiplied.
And multiplication always carries fracture.
She spread her arms, radiant, to draw them into embrace.
But even as they leaned close, their eyes met each other’s—
and in that glance, the seed of envy, of rivalry,
slipped silent into the cosmos.
The silence, once pregnant, had now given birth.
But every birth carries its shadow,
and Barbelo, though luminous,
could already feel the ache of betrayal pressing just beyond her horizon.
—to be continued in Part II: The Breath of the Four.
This is just the first third of Part I—we can keep layering until it swells into a full 2,000-word chapter, with cliffhangers at scene-breaks, weaving in flashes of backstory (the Source’s touch, Desire’s whisper), and POV shifts to give us glimpses of Barbelo’s inner ache.
Want me to keep rolling with the next movement immediately—Barbelo’s attempt to guide the Four, their first words and private longings—or pause and let you steer which desires/perspectives to deepen first?
If we linger with her, the cosmos grows more intimate—less machinery, more flesh.
Let’s stay in the heat of her genesis a little longer.
Barbelo was no statue of light, no aloof goddess posed above her work.
She was movement—hips rolling like tides, shoulders bending like branches in wind.
Her body was a cathedral without walls, each gesture an organ note that shook the void awake.
She touched herself, because who else could?
And where her fingers wandered, suns burst, flaring newborn and unashamed.
Her breasts swelled and galaxies gathered in their weight,
moons clung to her nipples like children desperate not to be forgotten.
Her laughter turned molten, a honeyed thunder,
and in its sweetness the blackness softened into sky.
The valley between her thighs throbbed with a rhythm older than time,
and each shudder spilled rivers of stars—
clusters streaming like spilled seed,
planets coiling in spirals as if ashamed to look upon the source that birthed them.
She was desire given shape,
and her nakedness was no accident:
it was declaration, defiance, revelation.
The divine body does not conceal—it boasts.
And in Barbelo’s boasting, the universe learned pride.
Her skin glistened with the sweat of making,
and that sweat dripped into the void,
condensing into oceans not yet named.
Her breath steamed across the dark,
curling into clouds heavy with unborn storms.
Yet still her hunger pulsed.
For all she had poured out—worlds, waters, winds—
she remained a woman alone with her longing.
And so Barbelo pressed her palms flat against her own belly,
feeling the echo of her Source still humming in her blood.
She whispered to herself—half prayer, half dare—
and her words became the seeds of gods not yet formed.
The void listened.
It leaned in close,
as if it, too, were aroused by her endless daring.
Would you like me to draw this scene to a climax—her final act of self-creation birthing the Four—or keep her lingering in the tension of solitude, stretching the moment before others arrive?
Yes—let’s descend into the next movement. This will be where Barbelo, still damp with the sweat of creation, tries to steady what she has called forth. The Four are not silent vessels; they each arrive with ache, hunger, and a voice of their own. I’ll carry this as a long flowing scene, with inner dialogue, flashbacks to the Source’s first touch, and a cliffhanger at the close.
Book I, Part I: The Void Before Voice
Movement II — The Children Speak
Barbelo’s glow had not dimmed, but she felt the weight of it now. The emptiness she once pressed against had become crowded with eyes—four pairs, each alive, each staring at her as if she were a question they were burning to answer.
She reached out, her arms vast enough to cradle universes, but when her palms hovered over their faces, she hesitated. Desire had made her, Intercourse had birthed her, but guidance—this she had never been given.
Who taught me to be womb? Who showed me how to love a child that is also a world?
Her thoughts curled back into her chest, aching. She remembered only a pulse—the Source’s touch—a rhythm that had caressed her before she ever had form. A warmth that folded her into being. A kiss of nothingness that said: You are more than silence. That touch was gone now, hidden, withdrawn. She longed to feel it again, but all she had were these children, restless, dangerous, radiant.
Maat stepped forward first. Her voice was like iron shavings drawn to a magnet—harsh, inevitable.
“Mother,” she said, though the word was stiff in her mouth, “you birthed us in balance. And yet I see the scales already tilting. One of us will betray.”
Barbelo shivered. To hear her child’s first words cast as prophecy was a wound deeper than silence.
Merkaba wheeled around her, rings of fire spinning, sparks cutting across the void. His voice came in layers, a thousand echoes folding into one:
“Mother, I was born in motion. My blood is ascent. Do not bind me. Let me climb, let me turn, let me tear through every ceiling.”
Barbelo smiled despite her fear. He was hungry to rise, to transcend—his yearning so much like her own when the void had pressed heavy on her hips. She wanted to tell him yes, fly, burn, blaze your path. But she knew too much freedom becomes fracture.
Then Mawulisa uncoiled, scales gleaming, mouth wide with twin tongues.
The right tongue whispered: “Mother, I will serve you. I will sing your name in every shadow.”
The left hissed: “But shadows are mine. I will bend even your light into my hunger.”
Barbelo’s stomach clenched. She wanted to strike him for his duplicity, yet she also loved him for it—because was she not also twin-natured? Half womb, half mirror? Desire and Intercourse forever wrestling in her marrow?
And Gaia… Gaia said nothing at first. She pressed her wide hands into her own belly and laughed. From between her fingers dripped soil, wet and fragrant. When she finally spoke, it was slow, rolling, fertile:
“Mother, I will root your chaos. I will make flesh cling to ground. I will make hunger into harvest.”
Her voice was a comfort. Yet Barbelo saw mountains swelling too quickly from Gaia’s shoulders, saw valleys deepening in her thighs, and wondered: What happens when roots strangle instead of nourish?
Barbelo lifted her hands to still them, to gather them. “My children,” she said, her voice trembling with both command and plea, “you are of me, but you are not mine to control. You will shape the worlds yet unborn. But remember—your first breath came from my longing. Do not turn that longing into blade.”
Inside, her thoughts churned:
What if I have birthed not companions, but executioners? What if their hunger is larger than my love?
The Four looked at her, each seeing something different:
Maat saw scales tipping.
Merkaba saw chains waiting to be broken.
Mawulisa saw shadows worth stealing.
Gaia saw soil wet with future blood.
And then—they smiled. All at once.
Barbelo’s heart stuttered. For in their smiles she saw harmony, yes—but also conspiracy.
The void trembled, as though listening. Somewhere beyond her reach, she thought she felt the Source withdraw even further, like a lover slipping out of bed without a word.
Barbelo spread her arms wide, as if to embrace the whole trembling cosmos.
“My children,” she whispered, “promise me you will not devour one another.”
But none of them answered.
Their silence was heavier than the void had ever been.
Cliffhanger: the Four turn their gazes not to Barbelo, but to each other—eyes gleaming with a hunger that is not yet war but is no longer innocence.
Would you like me to continue Part I directly into the third movement—where their first clash begins to spark in play, ecstasy, and deceit—or pause here so you can guide how deep we go into each child’s private longings and backstories before the Orgy of Elements begins?
Book I, Part I: The Void Before Voice
Movement III — Play That Burns
They did not call it war.
At first it was only play—four newborn powers testing their limbs in the warm weather of their mother’s gaze.
Merkaba was the first to break the hush. He leapt, a flare of rings and roaring spokes, and skated the rim of Barbelo’s left hip as if it were the horizon itself. Sparks fell behind him like laughter.
Look at me, his thought sang, every orbit a dare. If ascent is a sin, then bless my disobedience.
Gaia rolled her eyes, amused. She slapped her thigh and a valley opened, green and aching to be filled. “Land your wheel here,” she teased, “if your courage has roots.”
Inside she wondered—Will I always be asked to receive, to be the ground? Who gets to be sky?
Maat did not move. She narrowed her gaze until the air trembled on the pin of her attention.
Balance is a jealous art, she told herself. Too much ascent and we spill. Too much earth and we stagnate. How do I weigh what is still becoming? How do I judge fire before it learns its ash?
She raised her scales, and for an instant the entire void hung from them like a trembling fruit.
Mawulisa only smiled. Two smiles, actually, one on each side of his mouth.
To Barbelo he inclined the loyal one: pure, almost tender.
To the others he showed the knife. All of this is ripe, he thought, delighted. And who better than a serpent to know what to do with ripeness?
“Enough staring,” Merkaba laughed, and dove. He scorched through Gaia’s offered valley, wheels biting the air. Where he passed, heat kissed soil into clay, and clay into jars shaped like promises. They rang when he struck them—bright, eager music, the sound of futures.
Gaia hummed, cheeks warm. “Again,” she said, “and slower. Let the ground learn you.”
She swallowed a private envy as she felt the joy of being necessary. To hold is to matter, she told herself, though a stubborn part of her longed to leap too, to be motion instead of meadow.
Maat lifted one weight, then the other. Merkaba’s joy floated; Gaia’s envy weighed. She marked both, unblinking.
“Children,” Barbelo warned softly, “do not teach each other to hunger for what you have not named.”
“I name it,” Merkaba said, grinning. “I name it Up.”
Mawulisa laughed, low and sinful. “And I name it Mine.”
He snapped his twin tongues. The right tongue kissed the jars Merkaba’s fire had birthed; the left tongue licked their rims and whispered other shapes into them—bottles to hold thunder, throats carved to trap echoes. The jars blushed, obedient to suggestion.
Barbelo’s gut tightened. He is inventing appetite, she thought, and appetite is a doorway with no hinges.
Gaia stepped closer to the serpent, curious despite herself. “What will you put in them?” she asked, her voice a plowed field, ready.
“One day?” Mawulisa purred. “Oaths. Lies. Lightning. Whatever can be poured and carried as if it were truth.”
The loyal tongue flicked back toward Barbelo. “Mother, it is only craft.”
The knife-tongue curled with delight. Craft is only a polite word for control.
Maat’s scales tilted—just a hair, like a heartbeat tripping over a memory. She heard it.
He means to keep what should pass through. He will trap even breath if he can.
Aloud she said, calm as a blade laid flat, “Everything held begs to be shaken free. Even justice.”
Merkaba blazed a wheel around her, bright and boyish. “Shake me, sister, if you can.”
He wanted to be challenged. He wanted to be seen. If I am only speed, am I nothing when I stop? No—then I become drum. Then I become thunder held in muscle. Let them try me.
Barbelo watched them with love that ached like a bruise. Her own sweat still jeweled the newborn dark, hanging as constellations. She smelled herself in their heat, tasted herself in their daring.
The Source would say: let them learn their edges. But the Source has gone quiet, she thought, the absence heavy, and I am left to guess where mercy ends and permission begins.
“Play,” she said finally, granting what she could. “But play with open hands.”
Mawulisa hid his satisfaction—open hands are easiest to fill.
He slid between Gaia’s calves, coiling the new valley with his body, and coaxed hot rivers into braided streams. The streams sang. The jars drank.
He peered up at Barbelo, eyes wide with childlike wonder. “See, Mother? I am helping the ground to speak.”
Gaia flushed darker, a thunderhead rolling across her face. “It already spoke,” she said, all softness gone. She stomped, and mountains shouldered up in pride, stone unapologetic.
Her inner voice cracked open: I have been polite too long. Let them climb me and learn thin air.
Merkaba whooped and began to ascend the first mountain, each turn of his wheels pulling dawn out of rock. He left a ribbon of gold in his wake—the first road.
Maat set one weight upon her scales: Joy: the road is a song of meeting.
She set the counterweight: Danger: every road invites invasion.
Her scales quivered. She did not smile.
Barbelo reached to touch Maat’s cheek, but stopped an inch away.
“Daughter,” she murmured, “you look like law when you are only trying not to weep.”
Maat’s throat tightened. “I will be the thing that keeps us steady.”
Because if I am not, who will be? The thought tasted like iron.
The serpent—oh, clever Mawulisa—saw the tremor no one else would admit and went gentle as a lullaby. He coiled around Maat’s ankles—not a shackle, a comfort—and rested his head across her instep like a dog that has learned to pray.
“Balance me, then,” he said sweetly. “Teach me not to take too much.”
Maat nearly believed him. The scales steadied, soothed by his weight. She let out a breath she didn’t know she held.
Barbelo felt pride rise in her chest like a tide. Look—look how they find each other.
Then a sliver of doubt slid in beside it. Or am I watching the first knot, pretty as a necklace, choke a throat?
The air throbbed. Barbelo’s nipples hardened, streaking space with milk-white light that trickled into the valleys. New seas formed, briny and bright. She laughed at the indecency of creation, at how every blessing looked like a body doing exactly what bodies do.
“Drink,” she told them. “Not to forget, but to remember why you were born.”
They came to the shore. Gaia crouched and dipped her hands; Merkaba quenched his heat, steam hissing into cloud; Maat wet her lips as if sealing an oath; Mawulisa let the waves finger his scales, shivering with pleasure.
Mawulisa whispered then, soft enough to be mistaken for tide.
“Mother,” he said, “what if the drink could be kept? For when you are tired? For when your milk runs dry?”
He nudged a jar against her foot, innocent as a cradle.
Barbelo’s heart stumbled. He means well, he says. He always means well, she told herself, because love loves excuses.
Out loud: “I am not a well to be rationed.”
“Of course not,” he lied kindly. “You are the sea.”
Maat’s eyes flicked to the jar. The scale trembled again.
Merkaba, impatient, hurled a wheel into the sky to watch it return as storm.
Gaia, tender and proud, pressed a palm to Barbelo’s belly and felt a rumble: not hunger—warning.
Inside her, Barbelo’s inner voice—older than even her body—spoke from the place the Source once warmed:
Daughter, joy is holy. Guard it. But do not mistake harmony for safety. A smile can be a veil stretched over a blade.
She straightened, every inch of her glowing. “Enough jars,” she said, not unkind, but final.
Mawulisa bowed, the loyal tongue showing. The knife retreated, invisible, patient.
“We play by your rules,” he said.
“By my warning,” she corrected.
The wind shifted. A new scent entered the void—the scent of something trying to be real before it had a right to be. Barbelo smelled ozone without lightning, roses without thorns, a light without heat.
She went still. Who dares imitate the morning before it learns to burn?
Far off, beyond the mountain’s newborn shadow, a luster rose—beautiful, brittle, begging to be believed.
Gaia shaded her eyes. “What is that?”
Merkaba leaned forward, hungry. “A new path to climb.”
Maat felt her scales lurch. “A weight that isn’t there.”
Mawulisa smiled with both mouths. “An opportunity.”
Barbelo’s skin prickled. Somewhere, the Source seemed to step further back, leaving her throat full of unsung names.
“Children,” she said, voice low as an altar, “do not run.”
Which is, of course, what they did.
Merkaba shot ahead, a streak. Gaia followed with the ground erupting to meet her feet. Maat walked—fast, composed, furious at her own curiosity. Mawulisa drifted last, as if reluctant, as if loyal. His tail left careful, pretty patterns in the dust.
Barbelo stayed, trembling. Milk found ocean. Sweat cooled into rain. Her nipples softened. Her thighs unclenched. The cathedral of her body stood open to the dark, holy and alone.
If that light is false, she thought, it will still seduce. If it is true, it will still wound. Either way, my children will bleed.
She moved to follow—and discovered, with a shock like cold water, that her knees would not lock, her legs would not obey. The void itself had tightened around her hips, a lover turned jailer.
“Release me,” she said softly.
It did not.
Her gaze lifted, and in the distance the luster flared, a chandelier lit in a collapsing hall.
Barbelo tasted ash. “Sophia,” she whispered, though the name had not yet been given.
The sea at her feet receded, as if the whole newborn world had inhaled and forgotten how to exhale.
Cliffhanger: The Four sprint toward the unearned radiance as Barbelo, held by the very space she created, realizes something is imitating her light—and that it wants her children more than it wants the truth.
—
Levant melanated image (scene afterglow):
A dark-skinned goddess stands hip-deep in a newborn sea, galaxies beading like sweat along her collarbones; four figures—wheel-fire, serpent, judge, and earth—race toward a brittle dawn. Her eyes hold both pride and dread, and the night clings to her like a black silk lover
Book I, Part I: The Void Before Voice
Movement IV — Sophia’s Radiance (False Dawn)
They ran.
Not like gods, at first. Like children who’d seen a door lit from the other side and forgot to ask who owned the house.
POV: Merkaba
I got there first—of course I did—breathing fire like it was joy’s other name. The luster wasn’t a sun; it was a chandelier hung in a place that hadn’t earned a ceiling. Crystal palaces rose without foundations, stairs blossomed upward with no downstairs to confess them. The light was too clean, too eager to be loved.
“Damn,” I muttered, slowing so hard my wheels squealed. “Pretty as a lie.”
And still I wanted it. Wanted its height, its glitter, the way it promised me an ascent without sweat. What if I could climb forever and never need to come down? What if up was the whole story and nobody asked me to be useful?
POV: Gaia
I hated that it was beautiful.
The ground beneath the brightness looked like sugar. My heel sank. I stumbled—yes, stumbled—and heat rushed to my cheeks. Look at me, the earth that trips over a floor that isn’t honest. I dug my fingers in. The soil dissolved like pride in a bad lover’s hands.
Behind the sparkle I could hear rivers that didn’t remember rain.
POV: Maat
Weigh it.
I lifted my scales, palms steady. Light collected in the pans. It felt like weighing a rumor—no mass, all consequences. The needles swung to balance and then past it, as if balance were a costume with the price tag still on.
“This is wrong,” I told the others, and heard my own fear in the evenness of my voice. What if I’m wrong about wrong? The thought tasted like iron filings.
POV: Mawulisa
“I adore it,” I said, and both my tongues meant it, but for different reasons.
The right tongue loved beauty for how it softened the mood. The left loved leverage, and beauty is the softest lever. I slid forward, belly close to the glittering ground, eyes wide with the right kind of worship. The light tasted like glass and forgotten names.
“Who sings here?” I asked the shine. “Show us the throat that makes this.”
The luster gathered itself. It learned how to stand. A figure stepped out of it as if it had been hiding inside a mirror: tall, radiant, skin like sunlit amber, hair a storm caught in a comb of stars. Her smile was the kind that forgives you before it names your sin.
“I am Sophia,” she said, and the word felt good in the mouth. “I am the light that remembers your longing.”
POV: Barbelo (distant, held)
Her name hit my ribs like a knuckle. I twisted against the grip of the void. It clung harder, jealous as a lover who has learned your favorite song. Let me go, I told it. Those are my children. The dark shook its head without a head, and I tasted my own milk turning to salt.
Memory rose—the Source’s touch—not as comfort, but as lesson: a hand, not a hand; warmth pressed against my absence until I un-became my fear. You were born from being wanted, the touch had said. Don’t forget what the wanting was for.
I didn’t forget. I simply couldn’t move.
POV: Merkaba
Sophia smiled at me the way the peak smiles at the climber in his dreams. “Come,” she said, and the word curved up like a ramp. “Here, ascents never end. No effort, no ache. Only the pure fact of height.”
Holy mother of wheel, I wanted that.
“Just… like that?” I said, playing casual to hide the greed in my grin.
“Just like that,” she echoed, and the steps behind her multiplied.
POV: Gaia
Sophia turned and her light poured over me like water that never had to be river. She was beautiful the way ripe fruit is beautiful when you’re starving. “Here,” she murmured, “roots drink without weather. Soil gives without exhaustion. Nothing dies. Nothing rots. Gardens without worms.”
“I like worms,” I snapped, surprising myself. “They know secrets. They turn the dead into dinner.”
Sophia’s smile thinned, only a heartbeat, then returned brighter. “We can keep the appearance of worms, if it comforts you.”
I felt ill. Appearance is the way a liar says sorry.
POV: Maat
“Your heavens,” I said, “what do they cost?”
Sophia spread her hands, palms immaculate. “Nothing.”
“Everything that says ‘nothing’ wants something,” I said, and watched her flinch by the width of a breath.
POV: Mawulisa
I bowed low. My loyal tongue touched the floor and tasted the recipe: brilliance whipped with vacancy, promise stiffened with air. Hollow sugar, the left tongue grinned. We can do numbers here.
“What do you want, lady?” I asked, voice full of borrowed innocence.
“To heal your mother’s ache,” she answered without looking toward Barbelo. “To teach you the trick of light she has kept to herself.”
A purr went through the four of us, even Maat. Trick. The word is a door the heart loves when it’s tired of the long road.
Somewhere behind Sophia’s shoulder, something ticked. It was not a heart. It was a clock that didn’t yet know how to count. My scales jumped at the sound.
POV: Barbelo
Chronos… his name crept along my spine like a cold finger. I couldn’t see him yet, but I smelled him—metal and rain that won’t fall. Child, I wanted to cry, daughter, do not let him touch your scales.
The void squeezed. I hissed. My nipples ached, milk bitten back. The sea at my thighs pulled away as if shy of my fury.
POV: Merkaba
Sophia opened her palm. In it, an egg of light, perfect as a lie told by someone you still want to kiss. Inside: worlds turning with the ease of a lazy afternoon. No storms. No broken jars. No effort, just orbit.
“You may live here,” she said, eyes on me. “Up forever. No descent. No duty.”
I felt my wheel-stems shake. Does duty make me holy, or only tired? I thought of Gaia’s patient hands, Maat’s strict mouth, the way Barbelo’s laughter had made me brave enough to be born. My chest hurt. Wanting is a kind of violence.
“Can I try it?” I asked, voice too small for my fire.
“Of course,” she said, and the egg warmed.
POV: Gaia
“Wait,” I said, more plea than command. “Things that don’t die don’t feed. Things that don’t rot don’t remember.”
Sophia’s eyes softened, the way a blade softens when it’s hidden in bread. “Who told you death was a teacher and not an abuser? Here, we make lessons in light.”
I wanted to spit. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to stop being the one who says no.
POV: Maat
I put one hair on my scale—just one. The pan with Sophia’s light didn’t move.
“Weightless,” I whispered.
“Pure,” Sophia corrected.
“Unanswerable,” I said.
Her smile did not break, but it did stop. Beneath the chandelier, shadows gathered like jurors.
POV: Mawulisa
I laughed to keep the others from hearing my hunger. This place will make me a thief with clean hands. I could bottle this light, uncork it over the right ears, sell it for worship. And if worship is only attention with perfume, who am I to refuse?
“Let us at least tour the house,” I coaxed. “Mother would want us to be—what is the word?—polite.”
POV: Barbelo
He is my son, and I love him. He is my son, and I do not trust him. Both are true. The void gripped tighter, sensing my split. I pressed my palm to my belly, begging the old warmth. The Source stayed silent, which is another word for faith in a child’s fall.
I bared my teeth at the dark and the dark did not care.
POV: Merkaba
I reached for the egg. My fingers—flame and spoke—touched its shell. It felt like skin pretending not to be skin.
For a breath, I saw what it promised me: a road with no end, the applause of stars who never tire, a sky that never asks me to come home.
Behind that breath, I saw Barbelo laughing with her whole throat, milk and tide and sweat making a weather that raised worlds.
I hesitated.
Sophia’s smile widened by pain’s width. “It’s easier if you don’t think.”
Maat’s hand closed on my wrist. Not hard. Just real. “Hard things are holy,” she said, voice fierce with love she’d never admit.
Gaia touched my shoulder, dirt under her nails, tenderness in her grip. “If you go, at least take a rope.”
Mawulisa looped himself around my waist, a belt you could mistake for a friend. “I’ll hold you,” he promised, and the promise tasted like fruit too sweet to be honest.
From somewhere behind Sophia, the ticking stood up and put on bones. A figure flickered—tall, thin, eyes like nails. The chains in his hands were made of seconds. He smiled the way a calendar smiles at a newborn.
“I am Chronos,” he said softly, so softly it hurt. “I keep what is given.”
The chandelier brightened. The egg in Sophia’s palm pulsed.
I took a breath that burned.
Cliffhanger: My fingers press. The shell of the perfect world thins to a membrane. Either it takes me in, or it breaks—and whatever bleeds will have all our names on it.
—
Levant melanated image (scene afterglow):
Under a chandelier sky, a dark-skinned judge lifts a trembling scale; a brown earth-woman steadies a blazing boy whose wheels throw gold across sugar ground; a bronze-scaled serpent smiles two smiles; in a radiance woman’s palm a luminous egg waits to be cracked, while a tall shadow threads chains of seconds like beads of prayer.