Fur

16 | The Artifacts Preserved

Everything is peaceful here. The woods are silent, the sky is clear, the moon is bright. There's not a soul to stir here save for ours. We are alone here, united here, in this remnant of the violent past which so starkly contrasts the tranquility that blankets it now.

"Let's go inside."

I lead us around to the side of the fortress, to a fissure in one of the standing walls. I make a grand gesture and bow toward the crack.

"Your grand entrance, Your Majesty."

He bares his teeth in a grimace. "I don't know about that one, Leila."

"What?" I ask, going to the crack and sticking my foot through. "We can fit. No problem."

"Can we?"

With a sucked in stomach and strategically angled shoulders, I squeeze my way into the darkness of the decrepit fortress. My eyes take but a second to adjust. The place is bare except for the floor sprinkled with dirt, dead leaves, and crawling vines. Something moves in the shadowy corner. A possum hobbles around, sniffing the time-blackened stones.

"Leila," Zakai's annoyed tone carries through the dark. "Help."

I look back to see him hanging sideways through the wall, the jagged stones of the fissure jutting into his naval like the teeth of a monster making him its victim.

"Told you so," he mumbles as I come to his aid. I ignore his gloating, but only because he gets to at the expense of his own misfortune.

"Here. Give me this. And this." I take his arms and brace them on each of my shoulders. "Deep breath in."

As soon as he inhales, I seize him around the chest and give a great heave, one foot braced and pushing against the wall. When the wall releases him, we both go tumbling to the dusty ground. 

"Ow, shit," he groans sharply.

"Ow? You're saying ow?" I push him off of me where he'd landed with his chest in my face, effectively rolling him onto his back like a sack of sand.

We get up slowly, pebbles and dirt falling off of us as we do. We dust ourselves off, Zakai brushing off my back and I his. After we're clean, I lead him further into the dark, around a leaning pillar and through a sagging archway, to a sloping pile of crushed stones lit by the moonlight shining through the hole in the floor above it. We climb up the pile, take hold of the floor above, and pull ourselves up to the second story where one of the walls are completely gone, giving an open view of the landscape around us.

"Pretty neat, huh?" I like this place. I like that it's hidden and lonely, that I'm the only one that's laid any claim on it, no matter how soft a claim it is. It reminds me of somewhere else.

"It's otherworldly," he says absently, gazing out over the autumnal treetops that go on until a distant hill breaks into the horizon to block what's behind it from view.

I look out over it as well, content in every way I could be. Despite the recent stress, there are so many good things. I have Lattie and Nanni, a family. I have Heisenbühl, a place where I belong despite not. I have my best friend back after five years of living without him after spending every inseparable day and night with him.

I have my best friend back. I have Zakai. I have his scent and his presence and his beautifully, strangely familiar appearance. I have his voice and his signature smile and his irreplaceably cherished memories.

What are the fucking chances of that? his grateful, disbelieving question floats through my head.

I reach for his hand. It bumps into mine halfway between us: he was reaching for me, too.