We had left at sunrise before—and now, here we were again, when the sun was settin’ low and the sky above was settling in an easy orange, magenta, and there was a breeze to cut the heat a little. Let us breathe. Give us a moment to think.

It felt weird to be standing there outside the sparkling glass wreckage that bordered the World’s Edge. It felt…just, weird to stand there smelling the salt and feeling the thickness of the ocean in the air, and having the tension in our bellies eased by it, the deep, awful squirming sensation that had been fucking with Chico ‘n me for the past season ever since we had bolted from Lee’s grasp, Tembovu’s invitation. We made that choice in that moment. And it turns out we figure we had chosen wrong.

Chico was fucked up about it, too. He didn’t want to want to be here any more than I did, but I can see behind his eyes was a yearning he hated to have, and itch to see the bright-eyed elephant honey that was on his mind more than he’d admit outright. But there was a more to that feeling and I felt it too and I dunno man, neither of us knew how to describe it, but being all by ourselves out there again—like we were used to, the only way either of us knew how to live—felt small, and empty. It wasn’t right anymore. I wasn’t sure why.

We talked it over too, whenever the feeling got too itching for us to ignore. We talked about it even when we weren’t using words, dreaming about it together, sharing our dreams in ways we didn’t talk about but we both knew in the backs of our minds. We made another decision.

Chico sat on my back, heavy and white-maned with his great leather wings draped over both of us. He was subdued in a way I haven’t really seen before, still wrestling with himself even after the decision was made, even now that we were standing outside the goddamned walls for crying out loud. He couldn’t help it. He was born into freedom and that’s not a thing you can just throw away so easy.

But were we really throwing it away though? That was a thought I had, often. There were more and they were deeper and more introspective n’ shit but I’m not ready to throw all of that out into the world yet, so. Just know I was standing in front of the broken, shattered, gorgeous gates and  I bellowed from the bottom of my chest, “TEMBOVU,” and I stood and waited as the breeze blew a little more surely, as the sky eased into a liquid violet that just started thinking about stars.