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  Rascal looks somehow older, as if she can age in a world that has no other qualities from the other world, the world I should not know anything about. As if the eternity in this world is enough to trigger instances from another.

  I remember Isaac’s words, briefly.

  Puzzle piece.

  Every moment, thought, look, is another one.

  Puzzle piece.

  Today is a normal day, by anyone’s standards. They are merely walking. Going into some sort of unknown, in search of only God (or Thomas) knows what, and doing so with the same careful deliberation they have every day. Today, Rascal is leading, and Todd and Glasses follow quietly. They have been switching who leads on Todd’s request, and the only issue they ever seem to have is when it’s Glasses’ turn. She is not a leader, and neither, it seems, is Rascal, but they both attempt to seem to be doing their best to appease a man who has done nothing for them.

  I can never decide whether or not I like Todd in comparison to Isaac. It is easier and more logical to regard them as different souls, for if my brother wishes to play at another part and lose himself, he may as well be that part. At least, they certainly seem to be different people, different souls – even if both of them were always lost.

  It’s while I’m contemplating that, not really paying attention to what my eyes are following, that it happens.

  Glasses begins to fall.

  Rascal turns, late, to see her friend toppling over, and nearly shoves Todd off the staircase herself in order to get to Glasses.

  She falls to her knees, and reaches out to catch someone whose hand she’s held more times than one can count.

  But today, their fingers pass through each other, like neither is substantial, and Glasses falls down to the unknown depths below.

  Hand still outstretched, body craning but somehow also frozen, Rascal watches. She stares, she gapes. Her body is shaking violently, and she begins to scream.

  Todd is just watching her, just as she is just watching her friend, presumably, die. There are only stares and gazes. The silence of the situation is seemingly cacophonous, so much so that it’s hard to think of anything else.

  Rascal is unmoving, bent over herself, for many moments. Then, as if some emotion or thought hit her, she jumps up, begins pacing between two stairs, back and forth, back and forth, sooty fingers grasped and running through short hair.

  “Oh, God. Oh no. No. No. Nononononononono – ”

  “Hey, Rasc.”

  “No, no no, no, no, no, no no no.”

  “Rasc.”

  “No! No no – ”

  “Rascal!” Todd stops her with his hands, holds her steady, and she looks up into those eyes.

  I wonder if he still looks as distant in his gaze in that world. I wonder if she can see through him, like I always could.

  “It’s okay. Yah? S’okay. I’m sorry ‘bout ya friend.”

  For the first time, I watch the freckled girl sink into the arms of her past Moderator. She’s shaking, as if crying silently, and he pats her lightly on the back of a dusted head, in gentle apology.

  He pulls away after only moments of an embrace, a shock even to me. Rascal seems to start at the lack of his presence, of the comfort.

  “Let’s go.”

  He begins to turn, climb the staircase, but Rascal is not ready. I can see it splayed in every language on every corner in every inch of every part of her body. She’s not ready. She needs to sit down, and breathe, and figure out her next moves for herself. The rush that he is pushing on her is too much for one person, who has just lost, presumably, her only, or one of her only, friends in this world.

  “No... Todd, no. I don’t want to.”

  The bottom of her body finds the top of a stair. As if to accentuate her point further, she wraps her arms around herself and stares at his form.

  “Everyone – everyone keeps falling, Todd. Everyone keeps dying.” The turmoil within the shades of green in her eyes is astounding, even for me, one who has dealt with much turmoil in this short amount of time. “I don’t want to fall. I don’t want to watch anyone else fall.”

  But even in her need to be independent and decisive, she reaches out and takes his hand. “Just wait it out with me. Sit here, and – we can figure something out. Okay?”

  It’s just them, now. A group of six, now a group of two. All fallen soldiers in a war that none understand or even know anything about.

  “Just wait it out with me.”

  Todd is being Isaac. It’s as if he can’t hear her, or see her, or understand any of what she’s attempting to portray to him. He nods, and his smile is slight, but the soft flesh of his hand still releases her, and his body still begins to sway away, to another distance on another stair.

  This is the same person who broke through the barriers of the universe to be with someone who he thought was “the real deal”. To be with Rascal, someone he had professed to loving.

  And now, he turns away. He begins to move. His exit is signified with nothing more than his silence and the creaking of his body moving up the stairs.

  “Todd,” Rascal whispers, syllables breaking at his movements. Even in the muteness of a whisper, the words seem to echo enough for my ears. I watch the pair of them in contained hope and confusion, but my emotions are all wasted. He does not stop, not even for her.

  “TODD!”

  Each of his feet keep finding new stairs, continuing a journey that Rascal does not see the point in, and suddenly, I realize that I, too, have a choice to make.

  I must, too, choose a destiny.

  Do I continue on with this charge, or follow the shadow of my brother?

  I do not have much time to make up my mind, I know, as I see him retreating, and watch Rascal screaming after him – but I can not decide such a momentous thing in such a short amount of time. I must consult Thomas, and myself, but I am unsure if I know where either are.

  I am preparing myself to call out to Thomas, but I interrupt myself with a pip of a surprised shout. My long, silvery hair is being tugged beneath me, and, without the rest of my body’s consent, I fall to the slippery slopes of the staircase that has been holding my form thus far. In something caught between shock and terror, I wrench my body and look behind me at what must have dragged me to the ground.

  It is something I do not think I could have mentally prepared for.

  There, on the staircase, defying me and defying my beliefs, is another person.

  fourteen

  Thomas had told me long, long ago that no one else lived on this staircase, but I am learning to let go of Thomas’ “facts” and substitute them for my own beliefs. Still, the very sight of another being seems to make me start and stare. It is odd, I suppose, to remember that I am here too, and there is a world here, too, after Isaac left. I believe I may have felt isolated, and with the arrival of this being, I am reminded that I am, indeed, not.

  Where did it come from? Why is it here? I stare at the person, letting my eyes trace it up and down many times, unsure if I truly believe it is real.

  The figure towers above me and is dark, the shades of the Ashen Staircase. The gaze within her dark eyes is piercingly angry, and her beaded, short hair is dreaded close to her head. A long white dress encompasses her, with images and shapes engraved on its surface in a paler shade.

  “Hello,” I greet, my voice somewhere within questioning and welcoming.

  My simple word seems to have alerted her of much, so much that she indulges in an eye roll and a sigh that somehow disheartens me. “You’ve gone through a sleep, then? Thank, Thomas.” Completely sarcastically delivered.

  Another strange voice – all “t”s cut short and harshly pronounced, “h”s and “s”s completely gone. I believe I’m spending more time contemplating her appearance and accent than I am her herself.

  I narrow my eyes. My scalp is stinging from her pulling at my hair, I feel the familiar anger in my throat, my chest. I try to swallow it down.

  “Do I know you?”r />
  “Know me?” The laugh is cutting, but still somehow light. “Yes. Can say t’at.”

  “Fine. Why are you here?” I pick myself up from the ground, glance back at my brother and his charge on the viewer behind us, grateful that all my anxiety has always been held deep in me and not in my eyes.

  She seems to see it regardless. “Oh, you worried? About brother?” The stranger gestures to the barrier before looking back at me. “He why I ‘ere.”

  “You’re here because of Isaac?”

  “Obviously.” She’s moving away from me with her arms crossed, as though she feels she has a long expanse she is able to walk, completely relaxed. I pull all my hair from behind me and run my fingers through the roots, staring at her, the slight throbbing in my head subsiding.

  “I understand that we are meant to know one another – but I do not recognize you. I must tend to my charge, and to Isaac – ”

  “You have no charge. T’at Isaac charge. You pick ‘er up.”

  “Yes, I’ve... adopted her, so to speak.” I narrow my eyes. “I do not understand.”

  “T’at not allowed.”

  “Give it a rest, Kinjia.” It’s Thomas that speaks now, voice hardened and somehow more accented in the presence of this stranger. “What would you want? That girl to not have a charge?”

  “It you who give her bad Moderator!” She’s yelling at me, despite the words being obviously directed towards Thomas, and somehow her dark gaze spitting words at me that aren’t meant for me unsettles me. “You don’t know what you doing! I said before – I said you never should – !”

  “Enough.” I’m busy, and this lover’s quarrel, or whatever it is, is distracting me from the matter at hand. Distracting me from the world that has, unfortunately, become life, one that is living and breathing on behind me without my careful gaze. “I have things I must attend to. Reach your point, or reach an exit.”

  The newly named instigator grins. “Still the same old Iv’y.”

  I do not care for her statement because of the amount of time I’m obviously meant to dedicate to decoding it, so I wave her to her point with a fixed glare. She relents, body unfurling slightly, half-relaxing.

  “You brother – he kill my charge.”

  “Glasses?” Even as I speak the nickname, I cannot believe I am allowing myself to do so. Her face shows me I am not the only one surprised.

  “Who?”

  I did not witness my brother killing her – I only took sight of her eventual fall. Is this a crime I want to punish my brother for, a travesty I want to assign to him? Do all the others mean he deserves any others people afford to him?

  I decide to avoid that answer in my words altogether. “Just – I apologize for the death of your charge.” I wonder, to myself, why she is not dying or being reset, why she is spending her time here instead. “But... what is done is done. I cannot do anything reverse it. I cannot even fetch my brother and punish him, if that were your intentions. I do not know – ”

  I mean to finish my statement with why you are here, but I do not get the chance.

  Kinjia points at me, black eyes beginning to narrow, realization that only seems to strengthen and harden her anger appearing. She shifts on her hips, and crosses one arm over herself. I try to keep my expression even in a return. “She do not know?”

  She’s talking to Thomas again, I catch on, because it’s him that answers. “Now is not the time, Kinjia.”

  “Not the time?” I repeat. The nagging in the back of my mind, the urgency to return to my job, is beginning to fade as my curiosity swells.

  “T’en when will be t’e time? When do you decide it is t’e time?”

  “It’s no concern of yours.”

  “Oh? No concern of mine?” I can feel his sigh throughout the bite of her words. “No concern?”

  “Thomas?” Each word I release pries into the bank of knowledge that Thomas has kept so well concealed. “What is she talking about?”

  “Nothing.” His voice is painted many shades of gray and black. “Kinjia, it is time for you to leave. I think you have a choice to make, now.”

  She seems not to hear the voice of Thomas, seems to ignore him as easily as if she has done it thousands of times and will do it millions more. Instead, she fixes her gaze on me – stares me up and down as though it is the first time she’s ever truly seen me.

  “You are loved, white blossom. Loved and blessed by many.”

  “That is enough, Kinjia.”

  “Loved?” I repeat, attempting not to scoff too loudly. It is obvious Thomas has some sort of attachment to me, but this is a world in which love exists in doses. And mine, obviously, is very limited.

  My mind strays back to Isaac, but not for long, because the woman with the heavy gaze and the loaded words drags me back.

  “You are light and pretty and dainty and loved, Ivory!” She is shaking her head, leaning over her own crossed arms, staring at me with startling jealousy – as if there’s anything to be jealous of, in this universe. “T’e world love you! Loved by t’e universe! Forever and completely loved!”

  My face frowns and stiffens. I turn to look back at the barrier. Isaac is long lost to the stairs and the shadows – and Rascal sits there, alone, isolated, in a world where nothing exists but pain and suffering.

  And we, the Moderators, are forced to watch such pain and suffering. That is our job description. To watch and wait for the people who live on the other side to fall to their deaths so we, too, can either join them in a grave or completely forget them.

  That doesn’t sound like love.

  That doesn’t feel like love.

  “I don’t know what world you’re talking about,” I breathe, finally, not looking at her, “but I do not think this world loves any.”

  “Yeah.” Her laugh is resentful, and she pulls back from me, turns away from the barrier and stares down into the endlessness of the side of an invisible staircase. “T’ere is no love in t’is world. Except for t’e ones t’at made it.”

  Her sentence registers late in my mind, and I spin around to question her on it.

  But when I do, she has already disappeared into nothingness.

  fifteen

  Today is the day.

  The day I have been waiting for since my awakening in this cycle.

  The day my charge joins this world.

  These past few weeks have mostly been waiting, on my part. Anxiously posing questions to a silent overlord, who bats them away with nothing more than a probable blink.

  He will not speak more on Kinjia, or the words he said in reply to her.

  He will not offer comfort or knowledge on where Todd’s gone, what’s become of him.

  He will not tell me how long I’ve been calling my twin brother by the name he plucked out of the air.

  Much like Todd, I must, too, surmise answers from something as nothing and vast as the very oxygen that surrounds us. For the most part, I ignore my biting questions and presume, at some point, they’ll be answered.

  It’s for no other reason than the original one of me dragging Isaac out of the barrier.

  Because I have no other choice.

  Today, however, is a new day. Is the new day. As I stare at Rascal, the friend I am going to leave behind, I express my worry to the one who has not been great about responding in complete sentences – or, just, in a few words at all.

  “What if something happens to her while I’m gone?”

  “It won’t.”

  “How long will it take to bring my new charge to her? What if they do not even meet?”

  “They will.”

  “Can you see into the future, then? If you know nothing will happen to her, and that they’ll meet – you must be able to know what’s going to happen to them in the end, too. And perhaps, to me?”

  Silence.

  I’m used to it, though. It’s the speaking that surprises me.

  As I rise from the spot that Rascal and I have not moved from since the exit o
f Todd, I brush myself off and choose a sentence, one that I presume may be a little rude, but go with anyway. It cannot hurt things, after all.

  “If you really wish for me to take a fancy to you, you’re going to have to actually communicate with me.”

  Not even that seems to stir him from his stupor. The appearance of Kinjia seems to have, somehow, shaken him deeply.

  I do not question him on it, because I know he will not answer.

  My charge is supposed to appear down some. Not too far, I’m lead to believe. My steps are quite like they always are – light and dancing, easy and balanced. I walk on the edge I cannot see, only feel, many times, swirling down each decline. I pay no mind to the uneasiness I feel emanating from Thomas, one who refuses to voice his emotions. Why should I be required to comment on what he feels?

  And, finally, I stop. But I do not stop because Thomas has told me to, or because I know this is where my charge is.

  I stop because I see a figure through the barrier.

  Hunched over itself on a black staircase – small, slight, shivering.

  “Thomas, what is that?”

  When his voice returns, for once, it is warm, nearly comforting.

  “Your charge, Ives.”

  I allow myself a laugh – a short hiss of a chuckle that falls from my lips and dies as it hits the air. “My charge? I didn’t – I did not watch it being created, or...”

  “This is what you are supposed to see. Sit with him, Ives.”

  I do not begrudge him the length of my name as I find a seat beneath my fingers and put myself upon it. Once again, my hand comes to toy with my lip as my eye gazes at the figure.

  Dark skin and hair, darker than Glasses’ but not as dark as Kinjia’s. Sepia, nearly.

  Hair shifted messily over the head and face.

  Small, long, lean figure, contrasting with the natural curve of Rascal’s body.

  A young boy, it’s obvious. Shirtless, with nothing but a pair of denim jeans.

  Denim...

  “What is with all the white and denim everywhere?”

  “You like white and denim,” he answers, quietly.

  “What do my preferences have to do with what other strangers wear?” I combat.