They sat in silence for a while, Vince looking down towards the river, Mallian staring up at the sky. It was what the Kin did most days and nights. He had not been able to move since those first few moments in the Fold, when he’d tried casting the glamour that would take the fairy under his control, and she had turned it around and pinned him to the ground. Vince was responsible for that. He had stolen away one of the relics that Gregor, the old relic hunter, had taken half a lifetime to find, and which Mallian had needed for the spell to work.

The Nephilim didn’t seem to blame Vince for what he had done. After the Fold closed, it had taken Vince a long time to approach the prone figure, and many days more until they had exchanged their first words. Vince took some comfort from their strained, strange conversations. He suspected that Mallian did too, though he would never admit it.

Lately, Vince had started to wonder how long their talks might continue.

Mallian could not move. His arms and legs were pressed down into the ground. At several places along each splayed arm and leg his patterned, leathery skin was compressed as if by an invisible binding. Vince had watched him attempting to move from a distance, and sometimes when they were talking or simply sharing company the Nephilim writhed and twisted against his unseen, unknowable constraints.

Over time, he was starting to wither away.

“I’ve got some berries for you,” Vince said.

“Oh, wonderful. More berries. Can’t you get me a rabbit?”

“None in the snares today.”

“None that you’re telling me about.”

Vince stood and leaned over Mallian, dropping berries into his open mouth from high up. He never went too close. He didn’t like the look of those teeth. Mallian always wanted meat, and Vince didn’t for a second believe that he would not rip his arm off and chew flesh from bone, given the opportunity.

Mallian munched and swallowed. A quick glance at Vince as he did so was his only sign of gratitude.

“Never thought I’d become vegetarian.”

“Lots has changed,” Vince said.

“And yet everything remains the same.”

Vince frowned and moved away to sit down. It wasn’t the first time Mallian had made such a comment, and it troubled Vince. Perhaps it was the nature of the Fold, but he sometimes had a disquieting sense that time was motionless here, not moving on. The Kin lived, moved, ate, slept, and were hunted and feasted upon by Grace. Trees and grasses grew, small mammals, birds and insects lived and died. The river flowed, entering and leaving the Fold in ways he did not understand. Yet there was a stillness to the land. A stagnation, like a held breath or the space between heartbeats.

“I see her, sometimes...” he said, trailing off.

“I see her too.”