(This story is also featured in my collection Joyous/Decay . It is a sequel to Chalk , and might make a bit more sense if you’ve read that.)
The teacup trembles for a moment as it tips, your hand shaking beneath the intensity of her gaze, the milky liquid inside pausing at the rim—and then it starts to pour, it spills, a cascade of still-warm tea racing down to stain her patched fabric skin.
The crack in her chest gets larger every day, skin peeling back like mud drying beneath the hot summer sun; she’s splintering, breaking, the damage opening up parts of her you never knew she had—
She doesn’t like when you look inside, when you dangle a webcam down through her cracks, but you can’t help it. Her body is like a cathedral, a sacred grove, a many-chambered fantasy full of strange creatures and beautiful ornaments—
116.678 wakes in the back of a van, hivedreams slowly receding as its lonelyself comes back to the surface. It hurts as it always does, but its two service dolls are fussing around it, and there’s the familiar fullness of fresh tanks slotting into its back, so it’s okay.
It’s fine.
It hurts, but there’s the warm reassurance of hivethoughts lapping at its most distant thoughts, the reassuring hum and flicker all through the wires that grow like lichen across the van’s surface, the feeling of its dolls easing it back into the world.
False-color blood flows in neon spurts, rivulets painting her cheek in a tie-dye tapestry her ruined eyes will never see. She knows her own taste all too well, can’t help but letting her tongue dart out to grab a few more drops, to soak up the vibrance pooling on her lips—
Of course she can’t see you looking, but she notices nevertheless; tilts her face up, gore-filled sockets staring into your too-eager eyes, licks her lips one last time, and—
This last tape is singed, speckled with shinysmooth patches where its plastic has begun to melt. There’s no label, just a few scraps of lingering paper, disconnected letters stripped of all context.
“What is a moth?” a witchling asks; an innocent question, just a glimmer of the voracious hunger that set her along her path.
She does not understand the look on her teacher’s mask, the strange reflection in its mother-of-pearl eyes.
“Find out for yourself,” it finally answers.
She is not yet wise enough to understand what it really means; young and hungry enough to believe in her own immortality with a strength that almost makes it real. And so she does not take her time to prepare: she slips away as soon as she can find a chance to.
“Here, my dear. Take it.”
The glass is heavy in your hand, solid crystal and the flickering liquid within. You’re not shaking, not yet, but it moves as if you are, shuddering against your skin just like you shuddered under her as she prepared you for this.
It takes so long to wring the sin out of someone, especially someone like you; you can’t help but blush as you think about it, eyes downcast and thighs pressed together, but that’s okay. Shame and desire aren’t sins—she wouldn’t lie to you about that.