They were sitting close to each other, heads together as if in scheme. He had suddenly wished that she had been with him at their house. He could imagine her as a little girl, eyes wild and hair untamed, running on her small but sturdy feet, climbing trees and earning scrapes, picking fruit from the highest branch.

Love is weakness, Icarus, the man had said, grim, 'It is Man’s deadliest weapon, greater than the sword and mightier than the axe—because it can destroy you with a single breath.

The labyrinth was dirty, constricting. The smell of wet and rotted vines littered the air, making his tentative hands twitch and curlwith desperation. How he wished to be free again! To feel the glaciers melt into springs and witness the stars turn themselvesover and over again under his fingertips.

From stars, he was born, and to stars, he shall return.

But the seraphs that watched from above knew the tale: Gods and mortals may change their skies, but not their souls, who rush across the sea.

Words died in his throat, and new ones ignited.

No.” The word burned in his mouth and sizzled on his tongue. “A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand.” His last words were with finality, his eyes no longer sparked. “I think, I too have knownautumn too long.

He painted until his cursive brushes were only whispers of rawness on the thin ivory. Only the walls and the ravens that watchedknew the boy with the paint-stained palms weaved his art onto his sketchpad on the park bench at lunchtimes, and only the treeswhispered it like a prayer.

The thought would not leave him. How God, if there were such a dictator, could allow the cruel to inherit the earth and poison the cups of the innocents, was lost on him.

And like a rushing tide against his skin, Kieran felt the full weight of the very heavens press against his shoulders; and Kieran marvelled at the whole unfairness of it all.