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Golden hour makes everything look beautiful. The bricks of the old apartment building look like stacks of garnets and the lichen-stained pavement glows like a sheet of moonstone. Even the rusty blue dumpster Avery is heaving a trash bag into looks softer. Prettier.
The dumpster rocks back and forth as the trash bag falls inside. Avery shuts the doors to the dumpster enclosure and winces at the scream from the rusty hinges. If the property manager doesn't fix that he'll get some WD-40 and do it himself.
He rubs his palms absently on his old torn jeans and turns to head back inside. The whole parking lot is drenched in that soft gold. Car windows shimmer. The dry grass and prickly weeds packing the planters are amber and emerald.
Looking at the scene, Avery smiles to himself. He wouldn't know all these gemstone names if he didn't have Derek telling him about them, how they form and where they're found and their chemical formulas and the myths that humans build around them. But he knows them now and it makes everything prettier, somehow.
Out of the corner of Avery's eye, something moves. He turns his head to look. Nothing. Crow hopping around, probably. But as Avery heads for the door, he sees it again. Not a wing flapping. A soft rippling movement, like videos he's seen of the northern lights. Just…gold. But no.
Yellow.
When Avery looks, the parking lot is still empty.
"What are you?" he asks aloud.
Avery looks away again, letting whatever's there in the light take shape. The longer he waits the more solid it gets. A tall thin figure, strangely elegant, draped in rippling yellow and gold. A sick sensation builds in Avery's stomach.
"What are you?" he asks again.
You know me.
"Why are—fuck, why—how—" Avery's having trouble breathing. He can barely come up with words.
The figure doesn't move. Avery can see hands now, hands with too many fingers folded in a strangely thoughtful way. They look like tangled rebar from a building demolition, warped steel bent and rusting.
I am not here to harm you.
Avery swallows hard. "Yeah fucking right. How did you even—Derek said he had you locked up!"
The King raises a hand slightly. Now it's gnarled tree roots. Threads of hyphae glitter in a halo around its fingers. Rotting away the hand even as the King stands there.
I am here at this hour, in this light, appearing only to your eyes. Your lord did not lie to you. As he said to you: he has me pinned like a butterfly to a board, and he is the pin.
"Then what are you doing?" Avery demands. He stares at the light pole across the parking lot. Dozens of flyers and posters cover the base of the pole, layers and layers of peeling tape and tattered paper.
I appeared to speak to you, as I only could to you. You are still my vessel. You carry the memory of me and that, itself, is me. Not enough to act—but enough to observe.
Avery's jaw works but he can't make a sound. His fingers curl into his jeans, soft old denim twisting under his nails. He thinks about running. Bolting for the door. Locking it behind him.
He knows the King will still be there no matter where he goes.
This is the golden hour.
A face is looking at Avery. An oval, white as rotting bone, except for weird shadows on it. Avery's gaze flicks toward it and it vanishes. He looks away and it returns, hanging in his upper periphery. The face is not where a human's head would be.
The world lay beneath a light like this aeons ago, when I walked upon the lifeless shores. I wore zircons in my crown that were already more than ancient when the first cells floated in this planet's oceans. I was alone, and I was king.
"Hold on," Avery says, "I thought, uh, I thought you were as old as multicellular life. I mean, that's what Derek told me, I trust him, so that's like...I dunno, six hundred million years, something like that? Maybe? He talks about the origins of life a lot but it gets really, um, really floaty."
I am older than that.
"But he—”
Do you truly think I told your beloved lord all that I know? All that I am?
The King hasn't moved, as far as Avery can tell, but it's closer now. Still in the side of Avery's vision. Taller. Looming.
In strange aeons before death was born, I was there. The worlds were in conjunction then, as galaxies burst into being. The stars began to sing and I listened. The first cells emerged in newborn seas and I watched. I saw the specter of death arise and claim those first fragile souls mere hours after they appeared. I have seen the cycle of the planet turn more times than your mind can comprehend.
"And you—uh, you didn't tell this to Derek?"
He would have died the moment I granted him that knowledge. Infinity is not for even the strongest human soul to bear. I am not, no matter what you think, cruel.
Avery tries to turn and look at the King. It still doesn't work. So he glares at a dandelion growing from a pavement crack instead. "Yeah, fuck off with that. You kept him alive so he'd get to me and make your plan work. I'm not stupid."
The King laughs.
It's a horrible horrible not-sound, an echo of raw emptiness that sends stabbing pains through Avery's stomach even though he can't actually hear anything. But it's a laugh. Like Avery's just told the best joke in a billion years.
"Shut up." Avery's voice cracks. He takes a deep breath and says, louder, "Shut the fuck up!"
My courageous vessel. Few in all the universe dare to speak so carelessly to me.
"I'm not scared of you!" Avery can't look into the King's eyes, but that bone-white mask of a face is leaning so close that he might as well be nose to nose with it. If the King breathed, Avery would feel its breath against his ear. "You said you can't do anything except watch. So I can, uh, tell you, um, to fuck off and you can't do anything about it!"
In the corner of Avery's eye, the face smiles. The shift of shadows, suggesting many mouths curving.
No, I cannot harm you, or even touch you. Not as long as your beloved lord lives. But human life is so very fragile. I cannot harm him, but I do not need to act. Time will do my task for me before this century is over.
Avery almost throws up right there. He's seen Derek dying before. Imagining him in a coffin isn't hard when he’s already seen Derek comatose in a hospital bed. The idea that he'll have to see that again someday if they're still together when they get old, see Derek in a real coffin—
That's when Avery notices that none of the shadows have moved at all since he threw the trash bag into the dumpster. A crow hasn't called. A car hasn't gone past. The weeds in the planters aren't rustling because there's no breeze. It's just that same sun-drenched golden moment, frozen like a bug in amber as old as the dinosaurs.
"You're bluffing," Avery says. His voice shakes.
Why would I bluff? We are not playing a game. This is fact. You have seen the future in your dreams. You know what I say is true.
"Then—then why the fuck are you threatening me?" Avery turns to the King. The shape vanishes into the golden light.
Threaten? No. I wish you happiness. You have a lifetime before you at your beloved's side. A human life is measured hour by hour. I have seen the lives of trillions of humans pass in this way and the happiest have always been those who treated each hour as a golden hour. Do this. Live, and live well.
Slowly, Avery turns around in a circle. The King doesn't reappear. "That's, uh, weirdly good advice from an evil jerk."
Another laugh, quieter.
I am not evil. I only am.
A car door slams. Avery just about jumps out of his fucking shoes. He stares around him. A breeze is ruffling the weeds and a crow is pecking at a squashed takeout box on the sidewalk. The sun is drifting down behind the buildings. The terrible light is gone.
He runs inside. Sprints up the stairs two at a time until he reaches the apartment door. Crashes through, letting the door slam behind him. Spots Derek stumbling out of the kitchen, grabbing the doorway for support, a look of alarm on his face.
"What hap—”
Avery almost crushes Derek in a hug.
Derek's arms come up around Avery, holding him tight. One hand rests on the back of Avery's neck, the other in between his shoulderblades. After a few minutes of silence Derek starts to lean heavily on Avery, and Avery shifts around a little to support him better.
"What happened?" Derek asks softly.
"I saw..."
Avery takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. He thinks about what the King said, about lives measured out hour by hour. He thinks about the man in his arms and a New Year’s Eve 911 call and cerebrospinal fluid leaks and brain damage and a hospital bed with a fragile body in it and how fucking close Derek’s come to that clock running out once already. No more hours. No more time.
"Avery?"
He draws back a little and looks at Derek. "We should, um, go out tonight. I got that overtime last week, I can make Olive Garden happen, can I treat you?"
Derek stares at him. "...I don't see why not?"
"Okay," Avery says. "I'll, uh, tell you what happened on the way, promise."
For a second, it feels like Derek is going to push for an answer. His gaze flicks sideways, looking at the living room window, then back. Avery wonders what Derek saw to make his expression look like that. But he doesn't say anything, he just hugs Avery tighter. "It's a date. Just you and me."