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And perhaps it was even simpler than that I needed to eat and drink and pass waste now That meant I could starve and thirst, and that ans were actually necessary If I darow back

What would be theway to commit suicide?

Because I did not want to die an old ht If I had to die, I would die as myself -- as Sieh, the Trickster, if not the child I had blazed bright inin death, too?

Before I reachedinteresting by then

On that heartening note, I finally slept

I stoing?ht="0e upon the wonder that was Sky-in-Shadow and the looreen of the World Tree

"Hello, Brother"

I turned, blinking, though I was not really surprised When the first rew the first brains that did more than pump hearts and think of meat,interstices of their sleeping thoughts He had been a wanderer before that, my closest playmate, wild and free like me But sad, somehow Empty Until the dreams ofat last the sorrow heof his nature

"So this is the proof of it," I said I had pockets for the her pitched; I was a boy again In drea towarda path of flowers that stirred without wind For a moment his truest shape flickered before s through the distorting lenses of lientle featureless curve of his face Then he filled in with detail and colors, though not those of alike mortals if he could help it So he had chosen skin like fine fabric, unbleached da raised patterns, with hair like the darkest of red wine frozen in midsplash His irises were the banded a, like the eyes of a serpent

"The proof of what?" he asked, stopping before , as if it had been only a day since we’d seen each other and not an aeon

"My mortality," I said "I wouldn’t have seen you otherwise" I smiled, but I kneould hear the truth in otten over it; I was a big boy But I would not pretend it hadn’t happened

Nsana let out a little sigh and walked past e of a cliff "Gods can dream, too, Sieh You could have found round with a foot

"I know" He put his hands on his hips, his expression frankly adazed over the dreamscape I’d created This one was not ods’ realm had been "A sha It’s a dream"

"Of course you do It coestured expansively around us, and the dreae of his hands --"is you Even the fact that you let , because you certainly never allowed it before" He lowered his ar the years you spent as an Arahed, tired, even asleep "I don’t want to think right now, Nsa Please"

"You never want to think, you silly ave?sighedboy" Nsana ca me close I put up a token resistance, but he kneas token, and after a hed and let my head rest on his chest Then it was not his chest -- it was his shoulder -- because suddenly I was taller than him and not a child any sigh and cupped my face in his hands so that he could kiss me He did not share himself with me that way because there was no point; I already stood encompassed within him, and he within me But I did remember other kisses, and other existences, when innocence and dreaht ould spend the rest of eternity together

The dreahed, the fabric patterns of his face shifting into new lines They hinted at words, but

"You’re not a child anyrow up now"