Page 54 of Torn

“I’ll give you a moment.”

“If you wait on the roof—”

“I’ll wait on the roof.”

Anger stalks off. Merry’s wet hand slaps over her mouth. For shame, her rogue tits had been pointing right at him like flashlights.

But that’s not what makes this a fiasco. Rather, it’s that she hadn’t composed herself. Deities are indifferent to nudity, yet she hadn’t behaved like it.

Neither had he, which doesn’t make sense. Anger is a straight arrow, but he doesn’t strike her as a prude, and he’s lived far too long to be a virgin like she is.

The calamity of his fall is obvious. She lays the blame on her excessive reaction and the fact that he could have knocked.

Merry takes a minute to process. By the time she’s dressed in fully-lined organza and marching outside, her pulse has slowed down.

Anger’s pacing in a narrow lane of ferns, his shoulders beating leaves out of the way. The overcast twilight glazes his loose, half-tied hair. He whips toward her before she’s made herself known in the thicket, then he scans her body, making sure she’s covered. A muscle works in his jaw, and his voice has a gritty, waspish texture to it. “I didn’t know where you were. I was looking for you, and—and why the Fates didn’t you lock the bathroom door?”

Merry suddenly feels snide. “For the same reason you’re an idiot. For the same reason I panicked. We weren’t thinking.”

Anger’s face surges toward the skyline. Her overreaction is accounted for, as is his temper, but that doesn’t justify it. This is a nonissue amongst their kind.

He saw her breasts, not her darkest fantasies.

Enlightenment brightens Merry. “Ah. Now I know why we’re cranky and irrational. We haven’t been fed yet.”

Merry scoops Anger’s hand and leads him to her skateboard. On the streets, she coasts while Anger paces beside her. Soon enough, they’re sitting on a courtyard bench while gorging on conjured gelato cones. Oh, the quirks of mortal desserts. They’re such fun to invoke.

She sucks on her gelato, the sweet coat of vanilla seeping into her tongue. Someday, she will try a different flavor. Honestly, she will.

She’s chosen bitter chocolate for Anger, which he’s devouring either because he’s ravenous or in a hurry, his teeth crunching through the sugar funnel.

“Feel better?” she quips once they’re finished. “Because I certainly do. I might even go crazy and have another. What do you suppose gelato on Pluto tastes like? I’m thinking coconut, since Pluto is so far away, like a remote island.”

Sadly, no chuckle. “We have this delicacy on the Peaks, except it’s glassy and tastes of pickles.”

Merry says behind a muffled laugh, “That sounds like punishment.”

At last, Anger smiles. “You’re not missing anything.”

“Maybe, except for the Eros part of me.”

When Anger notices her gazing at his weapons, he asks if she’s ever tried learning archery aside from their practice session on the roof. She has, but unlike other exiles, she was snubbed before forging a bow of her own. That’s why her skateboard became an alternative weapon.

“So if the Goddess of Love is likened to Eros, then who is everyone else?” he asks, his mood visibly improving.

“Sorrow is perhaps Oizys. Envy is certainly Narcissus,” Merry declares to Anger’s bemused expression. “And Wonder? Persephone because she’s adaptable, though that makes her vulnerable to temptation. She seems trapped between two worlds, between the land above and below, like she’s encompassed by grief as well as love.”

Anger contemplates the inky horizon. “Yes, she is.”

If that’s true, it’s appalling. Merry’s soul bleeds for the goddess, because whatever happened to her friend, it might have to do with the scars stamped into Wonder’s hands.

Merry dares Anger to ride on her skateboard. He sizes up the proposition, then steps onto the platform like he did in the carnival, his palm settling on her hips. “You don’t need to be Eros in order to be strong. Just be Merry.”

She swallows. The universe doesn’t seem to agree with him, but relief cascades through her, accompanied by a wan and despondent letdown. Either he thinks Eros is beneath her, and that she can be somebody more, or that she’ll never measure up to a love divinity.

He asks, “And who am I?”

She answers, “That’s up to you, Icarus.”

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