Nine Moons in a River of Stars: Phase Four (Marrow Book 4) by Xen

Author:Xen [Xen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-03-11T00:00:00+00:00

xii

THE RABBITS WERE ALL ASLEEP.

Some tucked into compact little nautilus knots with their hind legs hugged up close to their noses; some curled into tiny puffballs with heads nestled against haunches; some stretched out on their sides like cats, and still others with their fluffy bodies sprawled out on their backs with their fore and hind paws splayed, their heads tilted back, their little mouths hanging open.

Not so different from a normal reading hour, and as Naoki stroked the silky ears of the little one who had fallen asleep with its head on his knee, he tried and once again failed to make himself see it, accept it, when he didn’t understand how, even if it all had to be connected somehow.

The rabbit in the moon.

He closed the book and propped it against his thigh and settled back to lean his head against Sho’s cocoon, looking out the window at the moon’s heavy golden glow. A little fuller now, and for some reason that left him anxious, shivering, as if the point of some terrible blade had roved over his skin, searching for his soft places.

Was the moon’s light doing this?

Then…what would happen when it was full?

Sho would—no, he wouldn’t have any answers. Sho never really had the answers, but that in itself was an answer, because Sho was the kind of reckless and wild where he didn’t worry about the how and why of things; he just took things as they happened, and found his way through no matter what.

But that, too, was comforting in its own way.

As long as Sho wasn’t worried, there was nothing to be worried about.

Naoki tilted his head back, looking up at the shape of Sho, towering so high and yet still slumped over as if the ceiling just wasn’t tall enough for him. What was happening to his body, inside there? What was he becoming? Was he even still flesh inside, or had he become a kind of protein slurry just like a caterpillar, before rebuilding from nothing to create something entirely new that still, somehow, retained the memories of a body that had completely dissolved?

“You…will still remember, won’t you?” he whispered, so as not to wake the sleeping rabbits.

Then closed his eyes, pain building up inside him until he was just a shell made to hold it.

“You promised,” Naoki said. “I told you not to promise.”

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