we were made out of lightning; any

[Cordis]

She grew up alone, save for Him. And they never spoke, not in any real conversation. He would tell her stories, sometimes, when He would return smelling of acrid smoke and charred meat. He rarely hurt her when He told those stories, how He’d burned their cities down, sown their earth with salt. In those times he preferred to press against her as if they were lovers sharing secrets, which was somehow worse than the pain, this macabre intimacy. After the stories were done, the wicked tales told, He would begin to hurt her and whatever ways He had envisioned while away, and she would always be grateful. She almost laughs despite it all, the hint of mirth in her lips. She envies the boy for his innocence, for thinking she spoke of something that could be beaten. (She does not know He has released her daughter, that she walks, smiling, His brand on her neck. That, unlike Cordis, she cherishes the mark and the warmth of it.) “No,” she says, “even if He could be fought, I don’t know how to locate her.” (She ran from the place, once, but all she remembers is a blur of cracked earth, a pile of bones.) “She was the first child I loved,” she says. She still isn’t making sense. She’s speaking with whole histories behind her, worlds Gaza knows nothing of, just as she knows nothing of his. But she cannot help it. The words tumble on her tongue and spill out, as desperate and lost as she is. c o r d i s she said it was a mistake to let them burn her at the stake and she learned a lesson back there in the flames