And the oceans have begun to dry.
There's a boy still awake in the mountains. He hasn't slept for a hundred years, cheeks the rosy tint of someone so sleepy, so dazed. When he grins it's out of fear, shivering against the cold of molten snow and the frostbitten sun. He's been here awhile now. Perhaps it's time to leave, then?
His fingers are painted. He's no artist asleep in the woods, but a warrior atop the bluffs; it's blood that coats his skin, once warm and now dried over his freckles. He's still awake because the blood isn't his. He's still awake because he found the darkness in the middle of the day, and now the thought of it during the night is too troublesome. One cannot imagine the nightmares before they arrive. And they arrived a long time ago. They arrived at the beginning of time.
And the skies aren't breathing. And the skies are black and blue.
The boy inhales, his chest stretched out like stones becoming gravel. Who was once sandstone in a castle beside roaring waves is now just sediment and sand, weaker and frail, a slim piece of what used to be. Last night, the boy in the cliffs dreamed of skeletons and swords and knights on their horses; he yearned for a battle where he could easily soar, a war that wasn't so unwinnable; he wished for wind on his skin, and he hoped for color in the cities. He admitted to himself that he wants to die. That among all the dead things, it is impossible to stay alive.
The dead things. Children in their Game. A man forged by a blacksmith in the hills. The boy's red hand falls to his side and lands on a stomach—one that isn't rising, and isn't falling. His thumb tugs at a piece of loose clothing until it tears and falls into the dirt. He touches skin. Numbness. The dead things and children in this Game.
He hasn't cried in many years, and the boy isn't crying now. There are lips and fingerprints and collarbones in the snow. There's hunger and there's blood, a wound and a knife. The boy rocks back and forth and moans at the stars in the afternoon, so afraid to be alone, so relieved to be the one who lived, so devastated to be the last one standing. He rarely moves his hand away from the body, stiff and cold and eyes still open. The boy can't close them. Not yet.
There are gods and then there are men. There's silver and then there's gold. The boy awake in the mountains thought he was nothing until the morning his everything died. He used to think about all the universes that he'd been killed long ago, places where the sun is grey and the ground has opened up beneath him. He thinks about the worlds where his breath has stopped, worlds where his picture painted the skyline with an anthem singing his name. A galaxy where his blood waters the dirt. A century he lives unafraid. A lifetime spent with his hand on this boy's chest, and feeling it inhale against his touch.
He stays there, perhaps for hours. Swaying. Letting the air wander over his shoulders as the heat of the late evening turns into night. Perhaps he watches the moon appear (slowly, as if in mourning itself), and perhaps he waits for it to be full. Then, he closes his eyes, opens them again, and removes his hand from the mountains. He shivers, his least favorite thing.
There is love and then there is fear. Both take a heart, entrap the lungs; both make your cheeks flush and foreheads sweat, knees quake and wrists quail. They dig into the teeth and scrape beneath the nails. Burn the skin. Burn everything. But still, there is one and then the other. One that's warmth and another that's frost. One holds, one bites. A love of the mountains carries its peaks into space, but a fear of them buries you in six feet of snow.
The boy in the wind had loved what he'd feared, and feared what he'd loved. He'd breathed to stay calm and yet yearned to feel the other boy's breath on his neck, words like steel overcome by rust. A gaze that had erased every single universe he was dead, if only because he was so alive in this one.
But the dead things. He doesn't love and he doesn't fear anymore. There are parts of him that breathe to stay calm, and parts that yearn to feel lips on his collar. Suddenly, those other universes don't seem so bad. Perhaps they still have their color. There, gods and men still dream about each other and silver and gold still wish for the worth of the other and we'd look into each other's eyes and find something to believe in. Something to love. Something to fear. There is nothing else to do here.
And there's a boy lying dead on the rocks.
Eitan has skin of glass now. To go from life to death is to take the earth and shatter it. Drain its seas and cut the forests and set alight the towns and the cities. To go from strength to weakness, from god to man. Eitan had spent his entire life immortal, and even then did the mountains fall. Immortal things and dead things. Perhaps they've always been the same.
Benny turns to face Eitan, his mouth half-open and chapped. The pain he feels is like sinking, reaching the bottom of the ocean floor and forgetting that it's time to drown. It's a hurt made for seraphim at the end of the world, crafted for the dogs of the underworld; this is not meant for him, a boy in the Game, sitting and breathing and crying because there's nothing else to do. His pain is something that's not really there, a faded scar, a death from a thousand years ago. It's as if he's been mourning since the earth was created, and still the wound is bleeding.
To say goodbye to the gods, and whisper it in the ear of a lover. Benny leans over and rests his nose at the base of Eitan's chin, letting a tear fall and slide down the dead boy's neck. He sniffs and it's muffled against Eitan's skin, so frigid and empty, once a slab of stone sculpted into marble. To abandon the dead things, and kiss what can't kiss you back.
And the ocean has dried. Salt and brine on your cuts.
Benny leaves Eitan in the mountains. They've taken everything from him, and as he walks away he can feel the cracks in his body divulge into craters. His bones don't shake, but they shatter to dust. His skin doesn't peel, nor do his muscles wane, but they turn into ash and flutter into the wind. He watches himself become nothing. In this final universe, the boy who loves his mother loves another boy too, and he's lived long enough to see them both die.
It's then the earth brings him a breath. Perhaps it's the gods forgiving him for staying alive, for beating the Game at every turn. Perhaps it's an apology from the mountains that have fallen, a note for the silver that's no longer there, and the gold that has forgotten to shimmer.
In five minutes, he'll begin to dream again. In five minutes, a piece of lined paper will fly down into his hands and he'll wonder about the pen ink and the crumpled edges. He'll unfold it and shake. He'll see the world ignite. In five minutes, a son will read the last words of his mother, and he'll begin to dream because he'll begin to die. Five minutes from right now, we'll disappear, and no one will miss you.
And the skies are gone. They couldn't be here anymore.
Benny closes his eyes and waits for it to end. He thinks of throats and tongues and arms, the heat and decay of a lover's corpse. He thinks of children and when he was a boy just moments ago, now a man standing under god, hoping there is more after this. He thinks of holidays, morning birds, running and meeting a girl. Of calloused hands and monsters below the bed, bedtime stories and the smell of the afternoon.
He remembers a time when his mother asked him to drown, and he'd said yes. So he did. So he left the mountains and everything else behind, thought of Eitan and of stone, and held his breath. He doesn't read most of the letter—just the last line. Lines shaded by a hand pressing too hard on the paper, splotches of cursive ink and a message one should never have to write. It's okay to die, a mother murmurs to her child, and the child believes in nothing else.
He remembers today, right now, as his mother tells him it's okay to drown. So he does. So he looks back at the mountains, feels Eitan's body against his, and he holds his breath.
And there's a boy lying dead on the rocks.
The sea is dry and the wind is calm. There are no more skyscrapers left standing, nor mountains left in the world. Every color leaves its light behind, and silver stops glowing. We don't care about about gold anymore. I don't love him like I once did.
Benny lays himself down in the snow, and he blinks up at the sun he once thought was dead. Parts of him are okay, others still shivering against the cold, some already frozen and numb. In every other universe, he knows the pain is over. This is the last world and his last breath. This is the farthest he's made it, and that is the one thing the mountains cannot take away from him.
And he reaches the bottom of the ocean. There, he can finally sleep.