No words are spoken. There is no air, after all, in the sovereignty of deep waters, the rivers that run through the dark of the body. No terrestrial sound save for the moaning of the whales, the dreaming heart. Mei Huang scrawls a prayer with her needle, threading a pattern into her inner arm. It doesn’t take long. In the brain-blindness between saccades, something takes form on the mound atop the soldier’s lap, a smell of salt and anise.

“Littlest Sister.”

“L-Lady—” Mei Huang prostrates immediately, improvised kowtow that is barely sufficient for its purpose, but enough, at least, to carve a laugh from the figure. The world inhales and all motion is pinned to its place. The murmurs in the hallways, the susurrus of footsteps, the clamor of a sleepless inn: all stilled save for the clamor of Mei Huang’s heart singing at last at last at last.

“Littlest Sister,” It repeats, fond, extruding cartilage and wet wisps of hair; a figment of womanhood, sinuous, numinous. Teeth manifest in a sickle-grin, too wide, too sharp. No other features follow. There is only maw and skin, joints limned with proboscises, like crane-feathers, the lengths curling to ink: trade-aspect of She Who Waits, she who sits opposite of She Who Hungers, murder-mother and parasite-king, end and evolution. “What have you done?”

“I—” Mei Huang shivers, an infant again, language leached by awe. She Who Waits is more splendid, more terrible than anything imagination could have stitched.

“Such sloppy work.” The deity grazes fingers along the soldier’s mouth, palpating the bloodied fat. Its hand drifts to where skin opens to ribs. The man does not react, not even when She Who Waits laces fingers through his bones. “Littlest Sister, did you call me to save you from yourself?”

“Lady. Please.”

“What will you give me? What can you give me? Your heart is already forfeit and your soul is no good. As for your bones, well, we both know that there is no fortune worth bartering there. What could you possibly offer that I do not already have?”

Mei Huang shudders, all cognizance pared down to instinct and custom, the ritual words like a second heartbeat. To the simple understanding that there is, was, could only ever have been, one option; one future. At last at last at last, her heart repeats its glad hymn.

“My hunger, Lady.”

“And how vast is your hunger? How rich is the wellspring of your desires? What do you want, Littlest Sister?”

“Everything.” Mei Huang wets her mouth, trembling. “Everything, every scrap of knowledge ever spoken, every wet rind of wisdom. I’d suckle the libraries dry, crack the sternum of every scholar that I can glut their experience.”

A lie.

“And how much do you crave it, Littlest Sister? How much do you desire its birth?”

“With all of me.” A truth. “With every thread of vein and skein of sinew.”