If they had been kissing for hours or minutes, he could not tell. But he had never felt anything like Justin’s hands. He wondered if Justin was trying to be gentle and slow and could not, or if Justin had imagined this so many times that he had been prepared to get Edgar’s shirt off so quickly.
But he did not try toseewhich.
Edgar opened his eyes before tangling his hands in Justin’s thick, dark hair. He had to reach to do it; Justin was intent upon removing Edgar’s pants as well. Edgar approved. They had both waited long enough.
He looked down at himself, flushed and aroused and vaguely embarrassed at being so, and then at Justin, fully dressed but distracted, pausing to bite and kiss Edgar in different soft places while snarling at Edgar’s pajama pants.
“From now on, I will only wear the ones you’ve bought me,” Edgar informed him dreamily, but pulled ever so slightly at Justin’s beautiful hair to remind him to hurry up and take him.
He was Justin’s boy. It was his right to make demands.
Justin’s satisfaction rumbled through the room.
“Mine,” Justin growled, breath soft against Edgar’s thigh, the muscles of his shoulders hard under Edgar’s palms. He was weak with need for Edgar.
It was unthinkable.
And wonderful.
Edgar closed his eyes again and sighed in happiness for the present, and for their future, and for all their futures that could be.
There is also the eternal question of who might be considered a seer, since seers rarely identify themselves. Plenty of figures throughout history seemed to have anticipated events that would occur long after their time. Is that a deep understanding of what beings and humanity are capable of, or is it magical ability? Is there any difference? Is a storyteller who knows what wretchedness exists in the hearts of human-and-beingkind and warns us with fantastic tales of doomed revolutions the same as Cassandra on the walls of Troy?
This question comes up again and again, particularly with the creatives, perhaps a consequence of looking at themselves—and the world—too closely. A humorous but telling story from interwar Paris suggests the intellectuals of the 1930s were only too aware of what artists and authors were capable of.
One of these intellectuals, at a party and considerably inebriated, denounced artists who refused to put their vision in their work, who focused instead on ego or repressed desires. Between pulls from a bottle of American whiskey, this critic went so far as to call one artist’s work in particular “Spunk on canvas, masturbatory and cowardly,” because the unnamed artist was unwilling to face themselves, much less the world around them. The rest of the diatribe was related in at least two separate later accounts: “To hide from it is allowed—should be allowed, if the world were fair and just. But it isn’t a fair world, and it’s often not a kind one, and they know, theyknowwhich future is coming. They know what we are. They could hide and I would not judge them. Instead, they parade their selfishness in front of us and call it art.”
It was believed the critic was referring to Picasso, though of course the details are lost to time.
FromKnow Thyself: Fortune-tellers, Prophets, Sibyls, and Seers
by Eo-jin Moreau, PhD
Tales Before Bedtime, Retold
“YOU HAVE ALL these books, mishka, but you want to hear anewstory?”
Rennet glanced around the bedroom, currently decorated in pinks and whites, although the last time he had been here, one wall had been done in aThe Hobbit-style mural, with a very friendly looking Smaug-like fellow in one corner. Another wall held a built-in bookcase, stuffed with both paperbacks and antique books, organized, no doubt, in a way that would have pleased the staff of the Library of Congress.
He gestured to the books, which were part of the personal collection of la princesse, and not to be confused with the others in the nursery, which were for all of the children, both presently adopted or in the process of being so.
That nursery made Rennet think of his childhood and smile, most of the time. But not tonight. The little face regarding him was far too serious.
“Yes. A new story.” La princesse nodded her head regally and settled against her pillows with her pastel pink blanket pulled up to her chin. “Daddy says you have been alive longer than anyone. So you must know some.”
Lots of fairies were older than Rennet, but he didn’t point that out, since his little queen delighted in informing him that imps were fairies. Instead, he settled in against the foot of her bed and put his hands on his knees to think.
“I know a great many stories,” Rennet told her, while silently admitting that most of them were not for a child to hear. Even the ones he had heard as a child, that, years later, he had realized had been heavily edited for a child’s ears, were still not entirely appropriate forthischild. Eleanor was not a forgotten imp. She was a firebird, with a glow so soft and bright that she needed no nightlight. A firebird would have a destiny, unlike Rennet, who was an agent of fate at best. A firebird was there to witness, and inspire, and live. She would have to be prepared. “I know an innumerable number of stories,” Rennet murmured, considering this fact as he had never considered it before while also doing his best to keep his focus on his imperious charge. “Innumerable means so many they cannot be counted.”
“I know,” Eleanor insisted, lying to save face or perhaps telling the truth. The books were not in this room to simply look pretty, after all. Her parents were aware of her destiny, naturally, and were doing their best to arm her. Rennet had not realized he was meant to do the same. But the muse asked, and he had to answer. “How do you know so many?”
“Because every story you hear isn’t the only version of that story.” Rennet pulled his tail into his lap to stop it from flicking with agitation. For a moment, his heart beat faster, and he was young and curled up on a couch during a boring adult party while a human with shiny curls and the start of a scruffy beard whispered tales of adventure and romance to him. Fairy tales, like a human child might be told before bedtime.
Rennet shook himself out of the memory and focused on the dark, curious eyes of the songbird in front of him.
“Stories do not come from nowhere, mishka. We tell them to each other, and we take them with us, and we add our own meanings to them…” Rennet had spent too much time in a historian’s house if he was talking this way. “And storytellers deliberately change them. Have you ever met a storyteller? A real one?” Her papa had the sight, or a form of it, as humans sometimes did, but he was no seer.
Eleanor frowned at Rennet and lifted her chin, unwilling to admit she did not understand.
