And Nyx bore Nemesis to afflict men; and Nemesis lay an egg from which hatched two sets of twins: Helen and Clytemnestra; Castor and Polydeukes.

---

Then, silence. Counting breaths. One. Two. Amazed they still fill, amazed they still empty, amazed his blood still flows, amazed his eyes still see, but there is silence, thick and thudding with his heart. I climbed a tree, it tells him; I climbed a tree in the dark, in beat with his heart, in beat with his breath, and the world smells like wood and dirt and blood.

Blood.

He comes to me with blood in his hands, he comes to me with his mouth stuck tight, he comes to me with a spear and I was in the dark.

Blood. Blood. Blood. And through the silence like—No, not like. Like nothing else. Even it is quiet at the sound, even his heart is quiet at the sound, there is nothing like it, nothing; the sound of someone else breathing.

He offers me his life, it whispers to him as he drags his head up, as he scrapes blood and gravel from his face, as he looks at the boy, as he looks at the blood pooled between them, as he looks at the woman, eyes open at the green sky.

Please, why am I not the one dead—

---

He feels like he is made of wires, metal and barbed, that instead of veins and guts he is filled with twists of steel and copper. It explains the taste of his blood; it explains the biting-twisting feeling in his throat and lungs. That's fine, she tells him and her voice is like glass in his brain. Let thy heart be hardened.

She understands it. No one else will.

The moon is getting full and he has to force himself to sleep, legs twitching, springs wound tight, he wants to ask someone about copper but steals sleeping pills from the medicine cupboard instead, eats healthy and swears off meat and sits in the bath until he's freezing cold. Rest, and be clean. He hides salt packets in his pockets and pours it onto his floor; his sneakers crunch as he walks. Purification, like the Shinto priests use. She watches. Offerings to the gods, pleas to my name.

"If I'm going to do this, I'll do it right," he whispers to her, sprung in bed, and he imagines her leaning over him, her robes shining white and her hair long like his mother's; he imagines her smoothing out his fringe and speaks the words aloud, metal slicing his throat. "I'll kill him and then kill myself."

I had two sons and they left me.

Salt to purify, salt to gain favor with the gods, salt to worsen wounds.

Please, let me be the one to kill him—

---

I was getting revenge, and my brother watched my back, he hears, and runs faster: he never talks to him, never hears him, and when he does it's a bad sign. Dark Hour hair is milky and cool, green bleeding into back. Green for sickness, green for health. Green for go. He climbed a tree.

"Shut up!" he roars at him, trips and falls, splashing in a puddle. He is revolted and then afraid, feeling it soak into his pants and seep past his gloves, then he is up again and running. Too late does he realize where he needs to run to; it is in the other direction and when he wipes sweat from his face his gloves paint a deep red streak.

The moon thuds above him, too full, and the Shadows bleed black and burst like overripe tomatoes.

Please, don't let me be too late—

(Ah, he whispers back, but I was too late, too)