Already, he has taken on more than he ever thought possible.

The burden of responsibility is an amulet heavy on his breast; the taste of adventure, once savory, grows increasingly stale. More than anything he wants to succeed, to bring home what he had promised to return. It’s almost hard to remember that promise now. It seems eons ago (and it likely was – the Holocene epoch a time he is ready to return to) when those two syllables slipped easily from his tongue (wetted from naivety and youth, he realizes now). Okay. How much has he been through since then? How many horrors await the still-baby world he hopes to get back to? Of all of them – the langoliers, the Great Old Ones, even the degraded and manipulated land itself – he has come to fear time the most. He fears it, not because of its strength, of its ability to change everything, but its weakness. Ramiel always saw time as a constant, an immobile string threading from the past into the future. But this journey has proved otherwise. Time is not a steel rod, not linear in its path. It is yarn: easily unspooled and unwoven, altogether fragile and unreliable.

This time in the wormhole, it’s also achingly slow in its progression.

Ramiel feels some level of mistrust as the images glide by the seven of them. Wars that might happen (but could just as easily not, with little effort by a magician), children that grow up strong and powerful (who could instead fall prey to an errant hole in the ground, shattering limbs or necks in equal likelihood), he sees it all and can’t believe any of it. Time is an easy beast with a gluttonous desire for all of its possible outcomes. It craves and consumes the different timelines; it welcomes those who feed it changes. Carnage has changed a lot. The colt only wonders if time is still hungry for it.

He takes comfort in the fact that they are all together again. That’s not right, though, he counts them without needing to, not all of us. We’ve lost some along the way. Lost to space and time? Lost to monsters both real and impossible? He’s not sure and doesn’t want to think of it, anyway. At least those around him now are whole (marked and scarred, perhaps, but blessedly whole). They are against him now, their skin warm and close, grounding him in an otherwise fantastical reality. Gail is with them as they travel, their black light and ticket home. She feels less real to him but no less important – as if she has been gone too long in a time apart to fully integrate again.

The endless cycle repeats when his feet hit the sand yet again. He’s grateful for the soft landing because he is weary to his very bones. Weary, but absolutely ready for whatever comes next. When he sees Carnage, he thinks it’s the end. And where their dark god would normally inspire a trembling fear in one’s gut, the yearling feels only white-hot relief. It soaks his stomach with surety, coats his mesentery with tranquility (this is the end. We are alive and our journey fruitful). He cranes his neck back towards Gail for the reunion which is all too brief. She’s stuck at first, held fast in the creeping wormhole. The holding soon relents but just as soon as she reaches him, as soon as black inevitably meets grey, everything changes. The world drops out from under him. He can feel the sand still (the holy sand, the coarse constant his life has seemingly become anchored to), but he can feel it falling. And he falls with it.

Down.

Down.

End.

Ramiel thinks it is, anyway. He thinks they have surely descended into hell (maybe they have all failed, maybe Carnage has taken them down with him). It’s as black as the stormiest night, as dark as the deepest cave in karst terrain. He realizes it’s because his eyes are closed seconds later, though he doesn’t remember closing them. When he opens them, all the same faces still surround him. It would have been funny in a different time and place (he stops short of wanting to fiddle with time again to relive the moment to make it funny, however) but now he only blinks at his new surroundings. Where are they now?

The beach pulses and rolls behind them, different but still their beach. He can feel the spray on his back but he has eyes only for the creatures ahead. They creep slowly at first, pale imitations of the living. Ramiel senses, rather than knows, that they are dead. Something in their eyes betrays them, some lack of spark and shine. They begin to cluster in, drawn to the heat of the living seven. Most of them are adults who tower over his yearling frame. He feels small until he sees the foals. Many of them are months old, but there are others who are younger still. Days old, hours old children who look forever-lost. It’s the saddest sight he’s ever seen, and he eventually has to look away. Gail says to walk amongst them in order to find help (a way out of this place that already chills him, though he’s one of the warmest there).

As the Finders spread out, the yearling who is black becomes less of both qualities. His coat becomes peppered with grey at the same rate that he rises in height. He doesn’t understand it but welcomes the added inches, at least, and the aging that muscles him. The desolate stretch of sand becomes visible in its entirety from his new height. Every inch of it seems populated with the faded reliefs of the living. Ramiel wonders if they are all gathered in one spot because of the seven (drawn to the breath in their lungs and the pulse in their veins, craving that which they’ve been denied for so long) or if they are actually crowded. He wonders if such a thing matters to the dead, anyway – if they even notice.

“Talulah?” He turns at the name of his mother. He hadn’t known who to seek out and had mostly been too distracted by the machinations of Death’s hand. So of course, the dead would seek him out instead. It’s a mare that does so: grey, hazy, and winged. The lines of her face are rough like sun-bleached bark; the circles under her eyes are deep and hollow half-moons. She is intently focusing on him, but her gaze seems to look through him. It’s unnerving, but he knows her immediately. Adolpha. Grandmother. She looks to his hair then (gold streaks and all that are absent in Talulah’s mane). The shadow passes over her eyes like the sky clearing and she brightens. “No, you must be her son. I don’t think we’ve met.”

He can’t believe his good fortune in meeting this woman who departed from them all too soon. If he couldn’t meet her in Beqanna proper, this is a close consolation. “I’m Ramiel. Mother told me all about you.” The now-grown-boy smiles and draws closer to his maternal grandmother. In his eagerness, he forgets himself. He forgets that the dead don’t just live differently than them, they don’t live at all. Reminding ghosts that they have moved on – that they no longer have a place among the living – is his first mistake. “When you died, mother – Talulah – had to raise herself. She missed you all the time and she never stopped looking for Erros.” She flashes then, flips a switch. Her eyes become ragged and frantic all at once, but that’s not what startles him the most. Adolpha’s skin tears itself in long shreds, accordioning down her sides. Cuts like claw marks appear all over her; her legs and neck sport cavernous gashes. She breathes heavily, and when she does, blood leaks from the wounds (but, curiously, never reaches the ground). The wolves that had killed her living body seem like invisible attackers now, but Ramiel realizes it’s all in her mind. “I’M NOT DEAD!”

He steps backwards quickly, his mouth agape just as another ghost figure appears. This one he doesn’t know, not at first. The chestnut stallion stands alongside Adolpha, running his muzzle down her neck gently. Her tattered wings that were limp begin to stir at his touch. She calms but looks defeated, neither placated nor the sturdy warrior-lady Ramiel had come to know from his mother’s stories. “Not dead. Not dead,” she mutters under her breath. It’s a pathetic hope made worse by her open belief in it. Deep down, Ramiel doesn’t think she believes it, however. He thinks that’s the problem, the divide between her wants and knowledge; he feels incredibly worthless for taking his own life for granted. The grisly wounds begin to heal rapidly as the stallion consoles her. Finally, he looks up at the once-boy.

“Sorry you had to see that, she still has trouble accepting it sometimes. Don’t you recognize your grandpa Erros?” He looks at the distinct cloven hooves, the warm, amber eyes and he does. A family reunion of the deceased in the midst of a time-traveling rescue mission – sure, why wouldn’t he recognize him? Adolpha shudders beside Erros but gradually lifts her head, looking better every second (although it’s hard to believe the dead can look better, Ramiel muses). He nods in affirmation before glancing back towards the others. “Look, I don’t think I have a lot of time. It’s wonderful to meet you – both, but I need your help getting back.” Back home. Back to life.

Erros makes to move but checks on Adolpha first, his gaze one of immense concern but also recognition – as if soothing the mare has become a predictable pattern with predictable steps to follow to correct the situation. It’s a touching gesture in such a harrowing realm, though one they hardly have time for. When they move it seems as if they are going to leave her behind, but true to her stubborn nature, the woman follows doggedly behind. Erros leads and Ramiel follows without question. Before, he had questioned plenty. He had wondered about the metal armor, worried about the langoliers and the future, if returning to the past was the right course for Gail or any of them. Here, though, is family. Unstable and squeezed by loyalty as his grandmother and grandfather are (respectively), he cannot fathom a betrayal by them. Or maybe he wants them to be the light at the end of the tunnel; maybe he’s tired of the darkness he has lived through and wants to see a way out.

They are running now, two ghosts and one prematurely-aging yearling. The other ghosts sometimes brush against him and they feel like mercury against his skin, gliding and almost friction-less. He shudders each time it happens. At last, the trio reaches towering bluffs (bluffs that rise up into nothingness and front the water, the site of deaths both premeditated and accidental). “This part rises up into Beqanna, I think.” Erros looks up at the blankness, seeing something that Ramiel tries to but cannot. The chestnut’s eyes grow playful then. “I’ve never tried this, not in here. It’s either going to work or result in a horrible death for all of us.” He grins, “well, one of us.” The long-dead man turns toward the sheer rock face and opens his mouth. Small jets of fire shoot out, ricocheting off the wall at first (Adolpha flares her wings across Ramiel to protect him from stray sparks, the fire reflecting brightly in her eyes. She looks determined, more like the ancestor he knows of). Then, just when the greyed boy thinks the plan a failure, the façade crumbles. A singed hole opens up, though it’s clear it won’t last. “OVER HERE!” Ramiel yells for his companions before turning back to his grandparents. Adolpha is quiet, reflective – silent iron. He touches her and moves on to Erros. The stallion struggles to maintain the gateway. Sweat beads on his brow and slicks his coat, but he smiles at the boy. “We are so proud of you and grateful to meet you, however briefly. Now go, while you still can!” The heat flushes Ramiel’s face, burning off unshed tears that threaten to fall. He doesn’t want to leave them here to the crowd, the sand, the monotony of the afterlife. He wants them home, where they belong. Once again, he thinks of time and how he fears it most of all. He fears that it can do this, can break apart families and not be stopped – its power inevitable and indefinable. “Thank you both so very much. I don’t know – “, he’s shoved forcefully into the gateway by Adolpha. She calls out, her voice steely and sad, “tell Talulah we –“, but is cut off.

Once again, perhaps for the final time, all is dark.

r a m i e l

what a day to begin again