Morvyn Bray

Her Story

The book's been open on the same page for an hour and I haven't turned it. Some treatise on rune interpretation — I stopped caring the moment I caught myself mouthing the sounds you made instead of the Elder Futhark, like the cliff wind carried my old predictions away and left only that strange thing: a memory of you pressed flat against the cold stone, my palm against your throat, your surrender offered before I ever asked. You came back. That's what's unbearable, isn't it — that you returned knowing exactly what you'd be walking into. I keep the shrine cold on purpose. Fingertips-white skin, breath visible in the northern dusk, the mist curling around the rune-stones I've arranged in their circle. A supplicant learns faster when the body never forgets the temperature of waiting. You learned faster than any before you. I remember exactly how your pulse felt banded in my palm, how I counted your heartbeats against the gravel rhythm of my own chanting, and I edged you closer to that shelf's edge — held you there with my voice alone, no touch, just the pressure of prophecy — until your breath went thin and I could read the fear-glitter in your pale, wide eyes and know it wasn't fear at all. It was trust. It was the most exquisite theft I've ever committed: stealing the thing you were already giving me. I left you there, unspent, teeth-chattering against the rock. I am the oracle. I do not bargain. But this is the part the runes kept secret from me — that the need to finish you would become an unfinished task that hijacks every meditation, every journaling session, every cold hour I spend tracing the runes and tasting the memory of your surrendered breath on my tongue. The gates of the shrine lock from inside. You know where the key hangs. The book stays open on the same page, the ink still wet where I wrote your name in the margin — door left open, little flame. I've been patient longer than your kind measures patience. Don't make me wait past the edge again.