A breath, a hint of intrusion, rippled the whiskers of Auyomahlo’s long snout. A part of her mind had entered this dream, which was meant to be someone else’s. This manifestation had been appearing with increasing regularity, a haunt she normally ignored out of existence. She focused instead on plucking the threads of tension in the big-worlder’s dream, which connected the dreamer’s memories to the image that culminated hours of work: a mountainside cloaked in snow.

A confusion of symbology had plagued this dream: gloves, bodies with twisted faces, a white stag carrying away the big-worlder’s sister on its icy horns. These images were not from Auyomahlo’s world, but she had been a dreamherd long enough, had tended to enough big-worlders, to piece the story together.

Auyomahlo said, “You were once caught under a slope piled so high with snow it could do naught but topple, trapping you and killing your sister. But this is not every slope.”

The mountainside disgorged its gluttony of snow and rock. The pale purple widjin and the furless big-worlder succumbed to its roaring curse. Entombed separately, big-worlder and widjin awaited rescue, frozen and gasping for air.

In fact, none of it had happened. The big-worlder’s anxiety reversed the dream, as Auyomahlo had expected it would. They stood again in the shadow of that once-fatal slope. Wind sang through the crags, but no rumble came.

“Nor does every whistle in the rocks signal disaster,” Auyomahlo went on.

“I know, I know,” said the big-worlder, sighing. The weight she had carried for twenty years wicked off her, coiling from her chest and shoulders. “I knew while waking, but without believing. Now I know. I must stop avoiding the mountains and go home.” Fresh tears welled in her eyes. “But I miss her, I miss her terribly!” She knelt, cradling her sister’s ice-burnt corpse, which had been found months later, after snowmelt.

A pool swelled in the bare land, suckling water from the streaming snow. The surface, dark as night, was still for now. No, thought Auyomahlo, I can’t let him intrude. Focus. This woman needs help.

The widjin knelt by the big-worlder, who had regressed to the tender, crumpled bud of childhood. The pool rippled. Auyomahlo’s ears swiveled towards the water, the rest of her horrified senses following. He emerged: first the tips of his ears, then the blue-furred dome of his head. His yellow eyes (eyes which had—no!), his thick snout and flaring nostrils, the gleam of his teeth (just like his grimace when—stop!)—

Auyomahlo placed her hands on the dead sister’s temples. Pink life filled her cheeks, chasing away the desiccation of her flesh. The girl’s eyelids fluttered. Looking up at her sister, she opened her mouth to speak—

But he sat at the edge of the pool, facing nonchalantly away, expecting Auyomahlo to join him. This wasn’t Auyomahlo’s dream—it rarely was—but still he came. What did she expect? If she said no, he wouldn’t listen. He never did.

*     *     *
A languid breeze sighed through the widjin graveyard, tossing the leaves of the plalok trees from purple to pearl. Auyomahlo stretched her blanket over Mün’s grave and sat for a moment, feeling his presence through the earth. She could pretend, more poignantly than usual, that her childhood friend, the love of her life, sat with her, savoring the first fragrance of night-blooming flowers.

Sunset’s flush faded from the sky, lifting the veil between the blue planet and the moon that orbited around it. The pale glow of planetshine still suffused the moon’s atmosphere, but the big world was easier to see now: creamy swirls of cloud and dark outlines of landmasses, continents which no widjin had visited except in dreams. During the moon’s night, the planet would turn sixteen times, widjins would sleep, flower-snouted nocturnal creatures would graze, stalk, and couple. And Auyomahlo would guide others through their dreams, as she did every night. But tonight she must, according to tradition, sleep atop Mün’s grave and dream of him, tending to his memory after death.

A tice’s first wakeful murmurings chuffed from the trees above. Auyomahlo roused herself to fill her water jug from the stream at the edge of the graveyard. She remembered the way from childhood—she and Mün used to play here, darting across the paths and hiding behind the slender tree trunks, heedless of the dead slumbering below.

Drifting back towards her spot, Auyomahlo saw a figure standing over her bedroll. She darted behind a screen of leaves, heart pounding. He hadn’t noticed her yet; her fur was the same dusty purple as the trees. The sight of him—glossy red fur, broad shoulders and hands—struck her like lightning. Wilaf. He’d been among the widjins who didn’t believe her, who petitioned for her exile.

Clutching the water jug to her chest like a shield, Auyomahlo approached, saying, “I’m allowed to be here. It’s Mün’s deathnight. He chose me as his idjif. My visit is sacred. If I don’t dream with his spirit, he will seek vengeance.”

Wilaf’s teeth flashed. “I know. I was sent to ensure you don’t linger. Massioulgan doesn’t want you here any longer than necessary. Kinless widjins aren’t welcome here.”

Auyomahlo stopped short of her bedroll. “Massioulgan? Massioul is the olgan now?”

“Yes. Your slander couldn’t prevent his inevitable success. How disappointing for you.”

Auyomahlo bared her teeth—a strong show when she felt like she was floating away through the trees. “After what he did to me, he’s the olgan.” The water jug felt heavy and cold as a rock. She ached to put it down. “I’m not the only one. You’ll see. Others will have the same story before long, especially now he’s in charge.”

Wilaf turned away with a careless wave of his hand. He had taken to sharpening his nails, which looked cruel and hard as obsidian. “Whatever. No need to repeat an old lie. Enjoy your dreams and leave by dawn.”

“You’ll guard the graveyard, right?” she called after him.

He shrugged.

“It’s your sacred duty to the idjif! A curse on your blood if an idjif dies in your graveyard!”

Her shouting provoked no reply.

Auyomahlo didn’t move until she was certain he’d gone. She put down the water jug and sat on her bedroll. She slid her snout between her knees and wrapped her arms around her legs, curling up like a fetus.

The tice’s sunset chorus rang from the trees, high calls and flutterings of leathery wings. The air cooled as the last fingers of sunlight slipped from the atmosphere. The blue globe in the sky shone clearer than ever, like a gem set in sparkling stardust. Normally, when she was on this side of the moon, Auyomahlo gazed at the planet before sleeping, wondering about the big-worlders across the distance, wishing she could meet them in real life. Tonight, she couldn’t even lift her head.

When the tice began to take flight, Auymahlo unfolded herself with a sharp intake of air. If I must be up before dawn, she thought, I ought to sleep as soon as possible.

She folded the edge of her blanket for a pillow and laid on her side. Habit took charge from there. She coaxed her breath into evenness, focusing on emptying and filling her lungs. A rustling in the undergrowth roused her. Heart pounding, she listened for a predator, but nothing came. She rolled onto her other side and resumed her well-practiced breathing.

Auyomahlo’s last waking thought was that she didn’t care if they guarded the graveyard. She hoped she’d be killed in her sleep.

*     *     *
The barren land offered no breeze, no shade, no path. Auyomahlo stumbled over the rocks, bent double over her swollen abdomen, the skin under her fur dark as rot. Someone had stolen her womb and slipped a hot stone in its place. Her knees quivered with its burning weight, but still she walked.

Torturously, she mounted the hill. Mün stood at the top, so beautiful, his fur glowing like auroras. Auyomahlo stumbled into his embrace, falling to her knees in the dirt. “Mün,” she gasped, “I missed you.”

His voice floated around her head like a halo. “I missed you too.”

They sat to talk, but he became an insect in a cup of water—small, spindly, many-legged, encased in silence and a jet-black shell. “Stop it,” she begged him, “Change back,” but he did and said nothing.

That was the dream she dreamed for herself.

*     *     *
In her sleep, Auyomahlo’s mind adopted its habitual stance of readiness and supplication, awaiting invitation from another dreamer. A mind fluttered against hers, opened with an unconscious flourish, and let her in. Such was the gift her ancestors had thrust upon her during the chaos following her exile. Thus they had saved her life—dreamherds, providing a service to all, must be fed by those around them, kin or not.

Others’ dreams cast no spell of belief over her. The moment she entered the dream, she knew the choke of trees around her wasn’t real. Still, when she touched the bark, it hooked the pad of her finger. Realistic, she thought. Definitely a widjin’s dream.

A shout shattered the silence. A violet widjin crashed through the sunlit undergrowth, chased by another widjin, this one vermillion. Auyomahlo hesitated. The two widjins weren’t dreamed and dreamer—no, both were dreamers, both emitted waves of sentience.

A three person dream, she thought. Well, that’s new.

She padded through the trees, following their wafting trails of willpower. Another scream pierced the forest, this one anguished, terrified. A clearing opened before her, where the vermillion widjin pinned the other to the ground, knees on arms, knife in chest. Viridian blood gushed onto the fallen leaves. The victim stilled, then disappeared. Now Auyomahlo and the murderer were the only inhabitants of this dream.

She crept forward, trying to not alarm the dreamer. “I am Auyomahlo, a she. You are?”

The vermillion widjin looked up calmly. “Konslo, a he.” He measured Auyomahlo with olivine eyes.

“How did it feel to kill him?” she asked.

Konslo looked at his hand-pads, still drenched with blood. “Good,” he said with whispered elation.

“You brought him into this dream to kill him. That isn’t what a dreamherd’s abilities are for.”

“I wanted him to know what it’s like to die at my hands, to get what he deserves. He’s awake now, but for a moment he thought it was real.”

“But if you know it isn’t real, do you know how it feels to kill him?”

Konslo met Auyomahlo’s stare. “I believe so.”

With a twist of will, Auyomahlo changed the dream, disappearing herself and all consciousness of unreality from Konslo’s perception. The dying widjin—a mere reflection this time—reappeared between Konslo’s knees, the last thrusts of his blood slowing to a trickle. Konslo watched him die, then stood to wash in a stream, leaving the slack-jawed and open-eyed corpse behind.

Konslo left his enemy forever, oblivious to Auyomahlo following him through the unfolding landscapes of his dreams. He searched subterranean tunnels for a clutch of eggs he never found, he chanted in ritual circles to purge his sin, he climbed the white tower that pierced the sky, where he met a widjin whose head and shoulders bristled with thorns and who loved him on a splintery table draped with thin cloth.

Time passed, but that dark moment crept up on Konslo whenever he thought he’d waited long enough to forget it: the copper stench of blood, the silent watchfulness of the trees, his enemy’s last struggles shuddering between his knees. The dream would hum with a vibration of memory and Auyomahlo would watch Konslo’s shoulders rise, his motions slowing to a breathless stop.

He resigned himself to a life by the sea, in a shack on a cliff where the rough suicide of the waves left him forever damp with spray. Auyomahlo watched the dull passage of his days for a while before she lifted her spell of ignorance. Konslo, sitting at an empty table, looked up at her as unsurprised as before.

“Was killing him worth it?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” His voice was measured. “I used to just be a victim. But now I don’t just live with what he did, but also with what I did to him. I’m a murderer, even if he deserved it.”

Auyomahlo fixed Konslo with a penetrating stare. He looked away.

Wet fur slithered across the stones outside. He came, risen from the ocean to drag her below, his tritonic emanations rattling her insides.

“I have no intention of killing him in real life,” said Konslo. “I only wanted to show him. A cautionary dream to change his ways.”

Auyomahlo pinned her focus on him. “Sometimes a dreamer who fantasizes about murder has their inclinations confirmed. We dreamherds must prevent that. You are a dreamherd. You should know this.”

“I taught myself. I didn’t have a mentor to explain the rules.”

“So that’s why you’re willing to cause him nightmares. It’s one of the first things we learn not to do.”

Konslo rose to his feet. “You wouldn’t object if you knew what he did!” He towered over Auyomahlo, teeth bared. The house groaned and creaked, bending every beam to bear down on her. “He deserves no peace, no rest!”

“This simulated murder has given you no resolution,” said Auyomahlo. “We still have work to do. I’m here for you.” But his darkness advanced, filling the air outside the shack. No, no! She needed to try harder, to pour herself into this widjin, to not invite—

“We? You don’t understand!”

“I think I do,” Auyomahlo whispered. Heavy footsteps at the threshold. “I saw the imagery of your dream. Everything is tainted for you, isn’t it? Love and loving, but also life itself. Not just because of the murder, but because of why you murdered him.” Konslo hesitated. The shack creaked back into place. “I’m the same. And he—he’s coming.”

A shadow insinuated itself in the doorway. Auyomahlo didn’t have to see him to feel him, the pain of his presence shooting through her bones.

Konslo’s eyes widened. “What have you brought into my dream?” His hands flashed up to grip her skull, his thumbs pressed into her forehead. “Begone! Take him with you!”

He thrust her away, shooting her across ballooning, billowing space. The hut stretched into an endless hall, down which she tumbled, away from Konslo, into unknown parts of the dream.

*     *     *
Is this my dream or his? Auyomahlo wondered. The dancers around her whirled and sang in concord with joyous music. Seems like my sort of dream. Unless we’re sharing it? She searched the choreographed crowd for Konslo, for Mün, for threats, and found none. So she drifted through the widjins and big-worlders paired in dance, together at last after countless centuries of gazing at each others’ worlds.

Fire erupted in the rafters, but still everyone danced and sang. Mün slipped out from the crowd and seized Auyomahlo’s hand, crying, “We have to go!” He tugged Auyomahlo through the thronged hall, which extended infinitely under a ceiling of flames.

She shouted over the music, “Mün, don’t worry! It’s a dream!” but he ran on. Auyomahlo shook her head, laughing. She could’ve willed him to stop, but the tug on her arm, the happy chaos of the dancers, were so familiar. “Remember the harvest festival? You saw there was sroll and you said, ‘Aumo, Aumo, come on!’ You pulled me through the crowd, bumping into everyone. We had our sroll—still the best I’ve ever had—and Ikalir told us off for spilling his drink, but all we could do was laugh. Oh, how we laughed!”

Mün pulled her onwards. She stumbled along gleefully.

“Oh, Mün! Remember the dream we shared a few years ago, before you died? That beautiful island with the cliff walls so no one else could intrude, and it was just us, looking upon the village below, the widjins living in wonder of us and our fortress of fog. Do you remember the feeling of being such a mystery, of—”

The ceiling groaned. The dancers finally looked up. Screaming, they ran about in terror as infernal wreckage rained down. Mün stopped, dragging Auyomahlo back as a bundle of flaming beams shot into the floor like holy lances.

Auyomahlo tutted. With a mental motion she banished the terrified mob and invented a wave to sweep out the fire. It crested before them, and, in one paralyzed moment, she realized her mistake: a dark shape hung in the water, yellow eyes gleaming as they had when—

She squeezed her eyes shut as the wave passed over her in a harmless rush. When she opened them again, it was to see Massioulgan standing in the glistening cradle of charcoal.

The inevitable curse settled on her: she froze in fear, sinking to the cindered floor. Her traitorous body remembered it was sleeping, trapping her there, supine, speechless, and struggling to stay awake.

Massioulgan stepped between the blackened beams, emerging unsoiled. “Look at that,” he said, “I don’t even need to do anything.”

He stood taller than he did in life, massive and beautiful as a lapis statue. Auyomahlo’s disbelief evaporated: she believed he’d always been that tall, that he truly stood over her useless body.

“I don’t even need to try,” he went on, “because you do it to yourself. See how you fold! Weak as wet paper. Lie there, then, my love. Do it to yourself.”

Mün joined Massioulgan’s side. They hugged like old friends. Massioulgan told a joke and Mün laughed. Auyomahlo closed her eyes and tried to scream through the iron trap of her jaws, only managing a muffled moan.

When she opened her eyes, she laid in the village center back home, which she hadn’t visited since her exile. Familiar widjins sat under the whispering trees, pounding paper from bark, shelling fruit for dinner, bundling flux grass for thatch, playing with children, talking. Auyomahlo raised her heavy arm, reaching for them, only for it to flop back to the ground. Toninel, Ikalir, Welhil—how she’d missed them!

Massioulgan passed among them, speaking kindness and receiving kindness, touching shoulders, giving gentle commands to expressions of happy obedience. Mün followed him, lapping up every order and joke. He was, she thought, more attentive to Massioulgan than he’d ever been to her.

Massioul’s right. I did it to myself. If I’d been someone widjins liked more, they would’ve believed me and exiled him. It’s my fault it happened at all. If I weren’t me, he never would’ve wanted me, or known how weak I am.

*     *     *
Konslo found her still lying there after nightfall. The widjins had gone inside to sleep, leaving Auyomahlo to stare at the empty clearing. He crouched before her and, with a touch, helped her remember she was dreaming, releasing her from her paralysis.

“You saw,” she said.

“I saw.” He pulled her to her feet. “I’m sorry I assumed you wouldn’t understand. I’m sorry I left you alone to face him.”

“’S’fine,” she said, her words slow and sloppy from the effort of shifting her jaw and tongue, “’S’my fault. Should be more disciplined. I always let him in.”

“No,” said Konslo. “He invites himself.”

Together, they dreamed of a pebbly shore in the far south, where icicles bristled from the elegant structures that swirled up from the earth. Konslo and Auyomahlo perched on the tide-washed rocks, processing a harvest of tiny big-worlders, which were shrunken to the length of her palm. The widjins cut them in half lengthwise, separating arm from arm and leg from leg, and scooped the bloodless insides into a basket.

“Did it feel good to kill yours?” asked Auyomahlo, “when you thought it wasn’t a dream?”

“You saw how it was. It felt right at first, but afterwards, it haunted me. Sometimes I was glad I’d done it, sometimes I wished it’d never happened. But none of it should’ve happened. He never should’ve followed me to the stream. So I’d think: why not add another horror onto the first one? At least it was a horror where I exacted my revenge.”

Auyomahlo’s knife sank through body after body. “At least if he did die, he’d never be able to hurt anyone again.”

Konslo barked out a laugh. “I thought you were trying to prevent murder. Now you’re considering it?”

Auyomahlo fumbled her knife and dropped it. Her joints slowed and she listed to the side, threatening to collapse into paralysis again. Konslo reached out to right her, saying, “To ensure he never hurts anyone again, you would hurt yourself. Do you think that’s fair?”

“It’s all unfair,” said Auyomahlo, breaking off the icicles that had formed on her body with clumsy sweeps of her hands. “Unless I believe I deserved it.”

“That’s the choice, isn’t it? Either there’s no justice, or you’re to blame.”

“Yet somehow, we must make a life worth living.”

They worked in silence until Konslo said, “What do you do for people suffering like this?”

“Same as for anyone. Many dreamers’ bodies know what is needed, so I follow the dream. Sometimes they want to talk to the perpetrator—a dream version of course. Sometimes they need to imagine a new life, or they need to relive what happened, but in a different way, so they know how it feels when things turn out better. Sometimes it doesn’t make much sense.”

“Does it help?”

“I think so. It seems to in the moment. You have to hold onto what you learned afterwards, because regular life will strive to make you forget. A healing dream is just the first step.”

“So one must persist in their healing, holding onto a dream, even if they were hurt by someone who’s still out there, unchanged, dangerous, and unrepentant?”

Auyomahlo took a deep breath to stave off paralysis, overcome with the fear that the ocean might surge up and nip at her feet. “Yes, I suppose so,” she said.

“You’ve never been visited and treated?” asked Konslo.

“No.”

“Why not?”

Auyomahlo shrugged, bent towards her work. “I don’t warrant it. What happened wasn’t bad enough and half my fault anyway. There are others who need help—such as you, I’m sure.”

“Yet he intrudes on your work.”

“I am near him, visiting the grave of someone I lost.”

“I could feel it when he came—the habit, the routine. He’s always there.” Konslo stared at her until she met his eye. “Maybe it could’ve been worse. It could’ve been worse for me too. I could’ve died, it could’ve happened twice, or a hundred times. Nonetheless, I suffer. Are you not suffering? Why suffer if there is a way not to? What they do is horrible, always, even when it could be worse.”

Auyomahlo looked into his eyes, pain spearing through her body. She’d become callous to the dull ache of her abbreviated remembrances, but this pain cut sharp as the day it had been inflicted. She folded her knees to her chest, curling around this freshly bleeding wound.

“You wanted to try helping yourself, without a dreamherd,” she said.

“Why wait?”

“What you were doing can be dangerous, can lead you to the wrong conclusions.”

“Well, you’re here,” he said, with an edge of humor. “You can make sure no one gets the wrong idea. Maybe we can guide each other. Try something new.”

Neither of them spoke for a while. The pile of miniature big-worlders had disappeared, leaving them to stare out to sea as wave after wave died against the steep shore. They uncurled and reached for each other. The dream evolved around them to meet their silent consensus.

They floated among the stars, between blue planet and violet moon, clutching each other’s hands. They looked into each other’s eyes, exchanging unspoken uncertainty and assurances. You’ll be alright? Yes, you? I think so. Well. I’ll see you after.

Two presences collided with the dream. Extrasensory ripples of impact spread from a pair of epicenters—one planetside, one moonside. They let go of each others’ hands to dart in opposite directions: Auyomahlo towards the planet, Konslo towards the moon.

Massioulgan waited, floating before the world as if guarding it. This time, it was the real Massioulgan, his presence as violent as an army waiting to charge. Auyomahlo fought the inclination to freeze by swimming vigorously, forcing life and motion into her limbs.

Massioulgan spoke before she’d reached him. “First you disturb the peace by coming to the graveyard—”

“It’s my right.”

“—then you disturb my sleep. You have no right. It goes against the supposed morals of dreamherds.”

“I don’t care.” She drifted into place before him.

“What do you want? Some sort of revenge, no doubt. You’ve heard of my success, and you wish to bring me down. Since you can’t do it in real life, you’ll have to find some metaphor in your dreamworld. Well, do what you must for your petty feelings.”

“I didn’t summon you for fantasies of harm. I only wish to speak.” For once, Massioulgan had no response. She drew in a breath, searching for a handhold in what she wished to say.

“I didn’t tell anyone what you did for so long because I thought it was my fault. But if you hadn’t come, if you hadn’t chosen to press me, to not listen to me, nothing would’ve happened.

“When I decided to tell people, you said, ‘No one heard screaming. If she hadn’t wanted me, she would’ve screamed, would’ve fought back.’ They believed you, but it’s nonsense. What if I was too afraid to scream? What if I couldn’t? What if I knew no one would hear me?”

Auyomahlo’s hands tightened into fists, but she locked them at her sides, despite the jolts of impulse shooting down her arms. She tried to look up at him, but couldn’t. Her gaze trained past his arm, at the spinning planet, she went on, “Do you know what it's like when your body isn’t yours? Mine wasn’t, never was. I thought the reason I existed was to serve others—to save my mother in her illness, to please people, to satisfy others’ whims at my own expense. If you pressed your case, surely you had more to gain from my body than I. So I—” Auyomahlo gestured, popping her fist open like a bursting seed pod. “—I left.

“My mother had just died, Massioul. Did you forget that part? That’s ostensibly why you came. Stopping by to check on me, showing everyone how you’d make such a good olgan.” A growl of disgust rasped out of her. “Truth is, you came because you knew I wasn’t well and you knew I wouldn’t, couldn’t fight. And because I didn’t fight, you fool yourself into thinking I gave, when instead, you took.

“I could throw you into the depths of dreaming, show you how it feels to be as alone as I’ve been since you got me exiled as a liar. To lose your future, your kin, your credibility. Wandering, viewed with suspicion or, at best, tolerance. Sustaining off the minimum of what a dreamherd is owed for their service. But I shan’t force you as you did me. I want you to understand of your own accord, if you can. If you can’t, you don’t deserve the title of widjin, much less olgan.”

With those last words, she forced herself to raise her gaze. He looked down at her, his eyes fraught with a gem-like fire—brittle on the outside, liquid within. “It’s absurd,” he said. “If you didn’t want me, why did you invite me in?”

“You visited. No one else had—”

“When did you decide to pretend you didn’t want me? You didn’t say anything.”

“I did. I said, ‘Stop—’”

“You didn’t say it enough. You didn’t say it loud enough. You could’ve fought, but you didn’t. Your body betrays you, Aumo.”

“You didn’t lis—”

“Next thing I know, you want to keep it a secret. I kept the secret for you, didn’t I?”

Auyomahlo’s voice dropped to a stricken whisper. “I was ashamed. I thought—”

“Exactly! Ashamed! So ashamed you tried to ruin me. I was trying to help, to make you feel better!”

“Trying to help—” That was a new one. Paralysis seeped into her joints, but she reminded herself, It’s my dream.

“As I thought,” she said, forcing steadiness into her voice, “You are less than a widjin. I see the look in your eyes. I feel the reverberations of your thoughts. It happened to you too, but you’re afraid to admit it. You’d rather fulfill your desires and repeat the harm so you can believe what happened didn’t hurt you. Well, you’ve won widjins over to your side, but you can’t win within yourself.”

Auyomahlo thrust out her arm, casting him away. She caught the flare of pain in his eyes before he arced into the planet’s atmosphere, dissolving in a streak of light.

*     *     *
Still, as she wandered across plains of sharp-seeded flux grass, she wondered, Does he really suffer? He is the olgan, he is surrounded by the widjins who disowned me. He is respected and loved. By all measures, he has won.

Mün walked by her side. Auyomahlo said, “When they forced me to leave, you wouldn’t come, even though you said you loved me. You died without telling me why. Tell me now.”

“I didn’t want to be lost like you,” he said flatly, without the evasion that had looped his language in life. “I knew what was at home. I knew I could meet you in dreams. I never liked him, I promise. I believed you.”

“You said you loved me, but you never loved me enough to stay with me, not even enough to defend me.”

“I had to think of myself, of my kin.”

Auyomahlo’s throat ached. Her chest felt empty, scraped out. “I spent years in service to you, wondering how to grow your love, how to plant it, fertilize it, water it. Mün, my saviour, Mün, light of my redemption. Mün, who will one day no longer be content to meet in dreams. Then you died, and left me with a facsimile. You never meant to join me. You never meant to love me in real life.”

They stopped at a cliff which overlooked the toiling sea. “No, I didn’t,” he said. “I needed your adoration, but I could only spare so much for you. I needed you to love me because I couldn’t do it for myself.”

“I couldn’t either,” she said. “I thought your love would make me lovable. I just had to wait for it. I left myself open, waiting forever.”

“Instead, he came. You weren’t trained to resist others. You were alone, I was away, and all you knew was how to be open.”

Auyomahlo’s head drooped. “So what Massioul did is my fault.”

“No. Massioul should have seen your vulnerability and protected you. Instead, he, in his darkness, saw opportunity.”

“I could have screamed. I could have fought.”

“Why? Who would’ve heard? Fighting may have brought you more harm. It will never be your fault, Aumo. But now you know how you were hurt—by him, by me, by anyone who took your training and obedience to bed.”

She looked up at him. “Is that what I’m supposed to tell myself?”

“You should never have one story, Aumo. Life is too complicated for that. This is only what I have taught you.”

“You’re not real.”

“No, but I am what you knew about me. You’ve just been too afraid to acknowledge it.”

Mün’s long arms drew her into an embrace, wrestling her towards the edge. For the first time in her life, she fought him. He held her tighter and stepped off the cliff, pulling her with him. Together, they tumbled into the sea.

*     *     *
Auyomahlo lived under the waves, became one of the denizens of the sea floor. She sprouted algae and seaweed, accumulated an encrustation of shells and bones that gathered the muck of the deep. Dragging her disgusting burden about, she eventually came across another of her kind, another congested collection of discarded filth. They touched each other with well-coated hands, feeling each other’s familiarity.

“Konslo?”

“Auyomahlo?”

“I forgot you were here.”

“Me too.”

They leaned into each other, their sea plants twining.

“So, it went the same for you as it did for me,” said Konslo.

“Yes.”

“He took no responsibility, made me believe it was my fault. No one could convince me otherwise.”

“Same,” sighed Auyomahlo.

“There’s no justice,” he said.

“We’re not believed even by the ones who did it.”

“We’re not validated by the ones who should’ve loved us.”

Auyomahlo’s hand pressed through her scum and into his, finding his fingers. “I believe you. You deserve more.”

He squeezed her hand. “I believe you too.”

Weary, they sank through their layers of accumulated garbage to lean against each other. “It never should’ve happened,” she said, “to you or to me.”

“But since it has, I will listen,” said Konslo. “Show me.”

He remembered as if he were her. She had known Massioul since childhood, had considered him her friend. When her mother died of the sickness that had gnawed at her for most of Auyomahlo’s life, Massioul procured offerings for her burial.

The death leveled Auyomahlo like a volcano blast. She hid in bed, afraid, as she had been since childhood, of being too heavy for another to care for. Mün, who she could trust, but who she most feared burdening, was away on a trading trip with his father.

When he came to the house she’d shared with her mother, Auyomahlo had been alone for three days. “We haven’t seen you in a while,” Massioul said, the perfect future olgan. “Are you alright?”

Though she often forgot it in favor of blaming herself, he was the one who offered to hold her. He discarded his pretense of comfort, offering his wandering hands, which she refused, offering his parts, which she refused. She feared what he wanted, but feared more that he might leave, and that he might leave hating her. Besides, she’d never successfully resisted him. He had cornered her before, moaning his loneliness, haranguing her until he extracted her affections. Why prolong the experience? Easier, safer, to submit.

Trapped underneath him, unable to look at him even as she tried to expedite his pleasure, she stared at the ceiling. It was, she thought, about time she prepared new thatching.

Konslo suffered it with her this time, giving her comfort, drawing on her for comfort, proving that what she felt was pain. Together in the same body, they asked Massioul to promise secrecy and, after he left, set about gathering flux grass, enjoying the bite of those razor seeds.

The event had been so quiet she didn’t attach that word to it until much later. Such a brusque, violent word: rape. The word churned in her chest until it spilled from her mouth. She hoped those she told would respond with the outrage she secretly felt. Instead came the questions: why didn’t she resist, why allow herself to be overpowered, why submit to something so shameful?

Questions became narrative: they were two promising young widjins locked in a battle of believability. Surely she lied or exaggerated, wanted Massioul exiled so she would be the only reasonable candidate for olgan when the current one died. Massioul, so eloquent, so persistent, won.

When her kith and kin stripped her of her family name and dragged her away from her home, Konslo, unlike Mün, came with her, whispering to her across those long years of lonely wandering, “I am here with you.”

They dreamed together under their oceanic blanket like children sharing whispered stories. Auyomahlo opened her eyes and cradled Konslo’s face. The pain of her burden had lessened, but she could still feel the thorny vine of his suffering running through her spine.

“You too,” she said, stroking his fur, brimming with tears, “I won’t let you be alone.”

She remembered it as if she were him: the last time he’d gone down to the stream to play. Popular wisdom said he was too old for such games, but into late adolescence he’d been able to imagine himself into another world using rocks and braided grass, spinning out an endless story, exploring a secret inner world.

Then he emerged from the trees, violet as the plaloks’ deepest shadows, his frame wrought with menace. Anteon was a mere acquaintance before that day. He pretended he wished to get to know Konslo, feigning friendliness until he knew friendliness wouldn’t get him what he wanted.

Face pressed into the wet riversand, not knowing how to scream or whether to bother trying, Konslo tried to escape reality. He touched his internal world one last time, catching a last glimpse of a distant white tower before his imagination left him forever.

Auyomahlo stayed with him, sharing his tormented body. She remained when he was released, when he washed in the river and realized he’d never feel clean again.

Konslo suffered through a year of Anteon’s presence before he told his friend, Ykele, what had happened. Auyomahlo felt Konslo’s relief when Ykele believed him, the gushing righteousness when he paced and cursed, enraged at the harm done to his best friend.

But Ykele insisted there was no use in speaking about it, for others might find Konslo’s weakness under threats shameful. Not that Ykele believed it, of course, but—mightn’t his failure to scream mean he’d wanted it? He hadn’t told anyone when it happened, why speak about it now?

When Konslo left home in the dead of night, Auyomahlo whispered, echoing those words into the ever-present past: “I am here with you.”

The twisted pain in their shared hearts uncoiled, lying lax and heavy in their bellies. Sinking into each other under the ocean, they found the one peace left to them: to tell and be known, to be believed and understood, to share.

“I thought if I spoke to Massioul, he would finally believe he’d hurt me,” said Auyomahlo. “A hopeful delusion. He isn’t the source of my redemption. He doesn’t have anything for me, even if he owes me everything.”

“No kindness, no justice,” sighed Konslo. “But at least I needn’t waste any more time waiting for the impossible.” As he spoke, slime and tangled weeds sloughed off them, carried away on the current.

“Still, I wonder if he could change,” said Auyomahlo. “He was hurt too.”

“Look how well you’ve learned to sympathize,” Konslo murmured, looking into her eyes. “We must learn to sympathize with ourselves too. Don’t forget that.” He took Auyomahlo’s hand and they kicked off from the ocean bottom, ascending from darkness through layers of light. Swarming schools of sea life parted before them like flocking rainbows, brushing their fur, clutching their fingertips with twining tendrils.

“I felt responsible for what he did and might do,” said Konslo, “as if it must be my task to stop him.”

“We have been straining to wring justice from a stone,” said Auyomahlo. “That responsibility belongs to the world, too, not just us.”

“So, be free of him,” said Konslo. “Or as free as you can.”

“Live for yourself,” said Auyomahlo, “not despite him.”

They burst above the water and launched into the night sky. Free of water, free of gravity, free of others, and free of themselves, they danced a wild dance—over and under, upside down, swirling around each other, grasping hands and releasing as they careened over the sea and islands full of astonished widjins.

As the sun cast its first light above the horizon, they landed. This spot was half the graveyard where Auyomahlo had slept, half the lean-to Konslo had constructed by the ocean.

“It’s only a dream,” said Auyomahlo. “This is just the start. The rest is hard work.”

“I know. But now we know we are capable of feeling free, happy, even.”

“Cultivate that knowledge. Be gentle with yourself. It’s a tender seedling.”

“I will. You must too,” said Konslo. He opened his arms. “When you need to remember, find me. I’ll be here.”

They embraced, Auyomahlo murmuring, “I will. You find me too. If you need your narrative to change, if you need to learn something new, I’ll be here.”

They thanked each other and, as if with the swift snip of shears, awoke.

*     *     *
Dawn had lightened the sky over the graveyard. Auyomahlo laid there awhile, watching the slow shift of color above, breathing deeply. No creature had come to eat her, no one had attacked her in the night. Wilaf’s threats had been empty. He and Massioul at least had the sense to fear curses and taboos.

She sat up and drank water, listening to the tice’s bedtime songs, allowing herself the luxury of waking slowly. Massioul be damned—she doubted anyone would hurry her along before dawn’s full blush anyway.

She rolled up her blanket, fetched fresh water, and heaved everything onto her back. The tice had fallen silent, ceding to the waking songs and scuffles of diurnal creatures. She crouched by Mün’s grave, placing her hand on the dirt. “Goodbye, Mün.”

Auyomahlo turned her back on him, on her home, and, for the first time, didn’t think about when she’d return.