23 — Something EphemeralShe wouldn’t stop smiling.

  It was only my second time out in public with Ephe, though by now we had spent a considerable amount of time together. At that moment we were having drinks; I swung for fancy cocktails. I had made extra commission on the sale of a dress recently, tailored and everything, so I was able to treat my date to a little night out.

  “What?” I asked, as if I couldn’t read her mind.

  “Just you,” she replied.

  I felt so warm inside, looking at her. “You look so happy, there. Is it because—”

  “I’m happy because you’re happy, silly goof,” she quipped back.

  The cantina we were meeting in was crowded — it was popur — but our table felt like its own little world. I slid my hand across the surface to her and she met it with hers, cing our fingers together. My cheeks went red. This felt so natural…

  Ephe was stunning. Slender, petite, with the kind of face that had half the other customers around her stealing gnces; heart shaped, full lips and big eyes. Her light brown hair was cut skin-short, and it somehow made her look even more devastatingly feminine. She wore big hoops in her ears and a golden septum ring. The colr of her bck dress was wide, shoulders and sharp colr bones all out in the open. I felt dizzy looking at her.

  “What’s in this? It’s good,” she asked, sipping her cocktail daintily, like she expected at any moment to make a mess and was desperate not to. She looked like a princess.“Uh, strawberry syrup and vermouth, I suppose?” I had ordered the same drink. When they had arrived we both immediately ate the strawberries that were skewered on toothpicks across the tops of the gsses.

  “This pce is nice,” she said, after leaning back and taking another look around. There was a band pying nearby, which was a little loud, but it kept the spirit feeling very lively.

  (They were good, but not in an, any second now they’ll be discovered and go on a world tour, kind of way. They were good for a band that pyed popur songs everyone already knew in bars, which was still really good.)

  She looked back at me, eyes curious. “You used to come here with Johnathan?”

  I nodded. “Back when he knew me as Daelus, yes.”

  “You don’t do anything straight, do you?” she giggled.

  I balked. “I was never attracted to Johnathan. It’s not my fault he thought that old–me looked like a snack.” That made her ugh.

  I could feel her stroking my palm with a finger, and her eyes on me, slowly tracing out my details, as if committing them to memory. I wasn’t sure why she looked at me like that. She was the one who deserved to be looked at that way.

  Someone moving behind her bumped her chair. It was not on purpose, but it was the third time it had happened in the st hour.“Let’s finish up and go?” she said suddenly. “It’s cute here, but it’s really busy. I’m not enjoying having so many people that I don’t know so close to me.”

  “Ah, sorry—” I started.

  “What for?” she asked, seeming to be genuinely confused.

  “Nothing,” I stammered. “Just I chose this pce and—”

  “And I love it, but sometimes we need things we love in small doses. Unlike you. I need a big dose of you. And soon.”

  “I uhh,” I stared at her wide eyed. She had been growing more pyful and spontaneous every time we were together. I was consistently surprised by how often she caught me off guard. I didn’t take her proposition for granted though. “I’ll distill myself into an injectable form,” I quickly joked back.

  “Yes, perfect,” she said snappily. “I’ll inject you straight into my veins. Into anywhere you want, really. Or you can let me pick,” she said, eyes filled with mirth.

  We finished our drinks, I paid the bill, and we went back home – to my pce.

  We lounged by the window with the view. The stars were a bit visible here, but it was hard to make them out with the way the city glowed. Turning out all of the lights in the apartment helped. We were quiet. Nothing needed to be said.

  I had work in the morning, but I didn't care. Ephe had nowhere in particur to be. We were going to enjoy the moment.

  “I’ve been wondering what this was,” she said all of a sudden. It was a notebook — a leather-bound journal to be exact. I had been thumbing through it again and had left it out. I probably had before, which is why it stood out to her.

  “It's the transtion from the artifact I was working on with Daelus the night he died and I became me,” I replied. It was a summary of a story I had already told her, so I didn't bebor the details.

  “What's it say?” she asked, flipping through it. It was just a few pages of writing. The rest was bnk.

  “It's just a story. I never figured out what it really meant — why it was significant.” The artifact we recovered it from was a sort of tablet. One side was gray and gss smooth. Lettering was on it, but there was no indentation and no sign that the writing was made in ink. It was just a different color than the rest of the material. Was a contraption of sorts but didn't seem to run on electricity.

  “Read it to me?” she said, ying her head in my p and looking up at me.

  I ughed. “Very well, princess.” I turned on a nearby mp, and bent the cover of the journal around behind it so I could read while stroking her hair.

  Today I couldn’t focus on anything.

  Time and again I felt it called to me. I felt it in the way my skin ached. I saw it when I read the folds on the back of my hand. I heard it the way others said my name differently than they said the names of my brothers. I smelled it in the shapes that would sometimes be there in the dark.

  I was never alone, but when asked who it was I was always with, I said no one. I was asked that again today.

  I knew that my mother had been like me, too. She understood but kept herself from me. I asked again today, and she said I needed to find my own way. If she interfered she'd just make another of herself again.

  I want to go in again, back there. No one knew where I went when I told them about that pce. I wasn't sure if they didn't care or just didn't worry about me. I was always fine. Everyone knew I was always fine.

  “She reminds me of you,” Ephe said, curled up, listening.

  “She?” I asked. I paused, looking over at her. The story continued on from there, but rather than keep reading I let Ephe think and reply in her own time.

  “The girl who wrote that. The way her mother was afraid to interfere tells me it's a girl.”

  I ran a finger along her hairline absently while my mind sank back in time. I thought of my own parents, and my sisters. My mother, who saw me as a son, never recused herself from any aspect of my life. Meanwhile my sisters could do no wrong and could live as they passed.

  My mother had been an absolute devotee to the Benefactors. She had sculpted me in her own image, obsessively. Everything she had done, everything she had been, had been aimed at the singur goal of seeing me become a delegate — something she had never been able to achieve, herself.

  All I had wanted to do was make her proud. Maybe if she had been proud she'd have shown me the love I had seen other parents giving their…

  Still, it was no excuse. I couldn't bme her. They had been my choices, not hers.

  “Yes, I suppose that makes sense.” I was gd she didn't see things the way I did. It meant she hadn't gone through what I had — that she didn’t have the memories that I did. She was safe from that kind of thing.

  Still, her perspective on how a mother would behave to a daughter was fascinating. I wondered where she had gotten the idea. I wanted to talk about that with her when I was more awake.

  My own takeaway was that the person in the tale had the entourage ability. I didn’t mention that to Ephe, though. I had never said the words delegate or entourage to her. I wanted to spare her from that world.

  The thought did stir something in me, since the Benefactors weren’t mentioned in the tablet’s text. I wondered if there was a time, long ago — could it have developed naturally back then? Was there a time when it was more than a gift bestowed upon delegate by—

  “It sounded like she really was lonely, and really wasn't fine.” Her statement derailed my train of thought. Her eyes looking up at me from my p were so bright, but also suddenly so sad.

  “It is a very lonely feeling story,” I whispered to her, leaning down and kissing her forehead, trying to pull myself out of the dark well I was digging for my heart. She couldn't seem to tell that I was drowning.

  “A true one, though.” she offered with determination. “I believe it's a true story. Or it's told in a fictional way about true things.”

  “How are you so clever?” I whispered, leaning close, kissing her slow and soft.

  I didn't do any more reading that night.