My thoughts turned toward the paradisiacal hereafter Sun had spoken of at our dinner together. What was it like? No bandits, no wolves, no blisters, surely. All those I loved around me, instead of buried in the ground, far away. I was grateful to have lived where others had passed, but was not life in the hereafter still life? My spirit would still be thriving. My way would be easier than it was now. Had I perished and passed on, I wouldn’t have felt so . . . lost.
Ristriel lowered his head. “It can be a lonely existence.”
The admission did nothing to bolster me. My existence had already become lonely. How much worse would it get if I lived for centuries yet?
I studied him, noting subtle things about him that were not entirely equine—the curve of his ears, the spark in his eyes, the shape of his hooves. “Ristriel, how old are you?”
His ear twitched. “I am very old.”
“As old as the Sun?”
He snorted. “Not as old as that.”
I hesitated with my next question, but my thoughts were heavy. “Are you . . . lonely?”
He glanced at me, his eyes deep and never ending. They reminded me of the night sky.
He did not answer, and sorrow planted itself in my heart. I took a bite of cheese, then slid the rest into my pocket and stood, needing to guide my mind elsewhere. “If you’re going to hide yourself in the mortal realm, you’ll need to start acting more like a mortal.”
He tilted his head, obviously taken off guard. “Petulant and toilsome?”
I turned to rebuke him, but there was mirth in his expression, and I realized he’d meant to tease. It was the first moment he’d been anything but withdrawn and elusive. I smiled. “Many of us are, yes. But you can’t, oh, run through trees and the like. Not if you don’t want to draw attention.”
He nodded. “Your kind have always been very superstitious.”
“When you are short-lived, it is safer to be.” I raised a finger. “So, lesson number one, be more superstitious.”
He snorted again. “Fear the uncanny and the unexplained without searching for enlightenment.”
“You’re a fast learner.” I peered up and down the river, half expecting a farmer to come by with a pail, or a godling to jump from the water, but saw no signs of intelligent life. “And perhaps don’t call us petulant. You can’t treat mortals like they’re peasants.”
“But you are peasants.”
“I—” I paused. “Not all of us are.”
Touching his muzzle to the ground, Ristriel acquiesced.
“And if you’re hiding, perhaps you should be something smaller. Or more commonplace, like, I don’t know, a goat.”
He tilted his head. “Horses are much more esteemed than goats.”
“They are also more noticeable.”
He pawed the Earth, leaving no print, then changed into a goat, long horns growing from his head. But he still looked like the shadow of a distant galaxy, swirls of dark and violet in his coat. No one would believe he was normal livestock, even if he were solid.
“Can you change your color?”
The goat frowned and shook, fur turning more solidly black, eyes gaining a slightly amber hue, enough that horizontal pupils showed within them.
I leaned in close, mesmerized. “That’s quite the talent.”
“Have you met many shape-changing goats?”
Straightening, I put my hands on my hips. “Not with a sense of humor, no. Though my . . .” What to call Caen, now? “A friend of mine once had a goat that enjoyed head-butting children’s backsides. I suppose that was a little funny.”
He looked himself over. “It will take me three and a quarter times as many steps to travel in this form.”
“Do you grow tired?”
He considered. “In a way.” His fur shifted back to midnight, and his shape melted and grew until it was a hand’s breadth taller than I was, taking on the form of a man. I don’t know why it surprised me—most godlings were human shaped—but perhaps having met him as a horse, it was strange seeing him so much like myself.
Like before, he shuddered, and his colors shifted and muted into less celestial tones. His clothes were still dark with a purple hue, but his skin paled to the same shade as mine. His hair, whisking over his forehead like orchard grass, was the blackest black I’d ever beheld . . . or so I thought until I saw his eyes. They were blacker than the darkest spot of night, yet bright as polished obsidian. They were as black as the Sun was bright.