Eirikr, ever watchful, ever burdened by a silent promise to care for the reckless heart of his friend, arrived just as Tak began to destroy himself.
He found Tak high upon the Cliff of Stars in Tir na nÓg, a place where the veil between worlds thinned to gossamer, where the cosmos whispered secrets to those who dared to listen.
But this time, there were no whispers. Only silence. And a wind that didn’t stir the leaves, but howled through the heart.
Tak was not unraveling—he was tearing.
He had drawn the fire into himself, a divine suicide, willing his eternal body into cinder. Not a punishment, not a curse—his choice. Grief as sacrifice. Love as combustion. He was turning himself inside out, atom by sacred atom, as if removing himself from the universe would balance the scales. As if, by ceasing to exist, Henry might be spared after all.
Every breath he exhaled turned to frost. Flames licked through his form—felt but unseen—flickering in and out of reality. His being splintered, fragmented, collapsing under the weight of love denied and hope unspent.
Eirikr didn’t hesitate. He ran into the fire. The divine heat seared his skin, his palms blistering the instant they touched the edges of Tak’s shattering soul—but he didn’t stop. He grabbed hold. Blood slicked his grip. Still he held on.
“Come back,” he whispered. “You don’t get to leave us. You don’t get to leave me.”
Tak didn’t answer. Couldn’t. His eyes were wide with nothing. With Henry’s absence. With the sound of his own heart breaking across universes.
The world shuddered.
And then—
She came.
Asherah.
Not with robes of glory or trumpets of heaven, but barefoot on the wind, eyes thunderous, mouth set in a line sharper than judgment.
She did not walk. She arrived. Like dawn. Like inevitability.
She saw Tak, destroying himself, and Eirikr, burning to save him, and her fury cracked the air. The kind of fury that isn’t rage, but righteousness.
She looked up—past clouds, past stars, past the layers of worlds—and called his name:
“YAHWEH.” “HUSBAND!”
And the sky answered.
The starlight around her bent, parting like curtains before a throne. In that divine space, a voice came—not loud, but absolute.
“He was tested. He failed.”
Asherah stepped forward, her body glowing with a light that felt like a mother’s grief sharpened to a blade.
“He failed nothing. He told no one. He broke no law.”
“He wanted to.”
“And so what if he did? Thought is not sin. Doubt is not crime. You do not measure your creations by how well they strangle their hearts.”
“He was tempted.”
“He loved,” she said, stepping further into the divine light, unafraid. “He loved fully. He loved selflessly. He left the boy to protect him. He walked away from joy. From truth. From everything.”
Yahweh did not respond.
Asherah softened—not in power, but in tone. “If love is not allowed to speak… then what hope does anything in creation have? Chaos wins when love is not enough.”
Still, silence.
Asherah knelt, head bowed. “Then let me show you what love does.” She moved to Tak—not with pity, but purpose. “He has lived through fire. Let him live through this.” Her hands glowed as she knelt beside him. “Love is not silence. It is the choice to stay.” And the light between her palms burned bright as stars.
She reached out—both hands this time—and pressed her palms to his chest.
“Breathe,” she whispered.
And he did.
With Asherah's touch, the dissolution ceased. The threads of his being, scattered and frayed, began to coalesce, drawn back together by the force of her compassion. He was still broken, still wounded, but he was no longer alone. He was rescued, not from death, but from the oblivion he had sought.
Eirikr, tears tracking through soot and blood, collapsed beside them, cradling Tak’s head like a child. “You’re not allowed to leave,” he muttered, over and over. “You’re not allowed.”
Asherah leaned down and whispered into Tak’s ear. He didn’t hear the words—but he felt the universe shift. A mercy had been granted.
And then, she was gone. Not vanished, but ascended, rising towards the celestial tapestry where Yahweh resided. A plea was to be made, a divine intervention sought. I, a godling, incapable of direct interference in mortal affairs, was now the subject of a negotiation between the heavens and the earth.
Time ceased to exist. I was suspended in a state of breathless anticipation, caught between the agony of loss and the faintest glimmer of hope. The sanctuary, usually a haven of peace, felt like a cage, its walls closing in on my restless spirit.
Finally, the answer came. Not in a booming declaration, but in a whisper that resonated through the very fabric of my being. A single night. A chance to reunite with Henry, to hold him once more, to whisper the words left unspoken, to bask in the warmth of his smile.
"One Night"
And on that night, a door of starlight shimmered into existence within the sanctuary, a celestial threshold between Tir na nÓg and a realm beyond mortal comprehension. From the other side, he came—
Henry. Billy. Radiant. Real.
He didn’t walk—he ran into me, arms around my neck, laughter breaking against my chest like a tide. I crumpled around him like paper to flame.
We didn’t speak at first. We just held. Breathing each other in. I pressed my face into his neck and found it still smelled like sun and sweat and summer. His hands tangled in my hair and I realized I’d been shaking since before he arrived.
Then he pulled back and cupped my face. “Hey,” he said, like no time had passed. Like we were waking up in a tent, or riding along some dusty ridge.
“Hey,” I choked out, and kissed him.
We sat in the garden where nothing ever dies. He leaned back on his elbows and told me what the sky looked like when he passed. How quiet it was. How he thought of me. I listened to every syllable like it was a hymn.
“You’re always worried this is the last time,” Henry said once, cupping my face. “But I’m here now. So let’s make it firsts, not lasts.”
We danced. No music, no steps. Just movement. Just two bodies orbiting each other in borrowed eternity.
And when we lay down together, it wasn’t lust. It wasn’t even longing. It was remembrance. It was two pieces of a whole, trying to memorize the edges again. His breath on my shoulder, his fingers at my spine, my hand over his heart.
I whispered everything I’d never said. And he let me.
And as the stars began to draw him back—one atom at a time—I held him tighter, until I couldn’t anymore.
He kissed my palm.
“I’ll see you again,” he said.
And as he faded, I heard it—not from him, not from me, but from everything.
“One night… always.”
