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Shadows released from Reaper’s palms, soft and sweeping like the swirl that now moved within me on their shaft, only these curled around my nipples and dove for the pearl between my legs, twirling and coaxing more and more pleasure until I was crying out, legs quivering. Reaper’s arms wrapped around my torso helping steady me as I braced myself on the tree trunk.

“Gods, you are incredible,” Reaper praised.

Feeling bold, I wrapped my tail around them, tugging their body closer, their thrusts hitting deeper, becoming frantic when my feathers reached around and flicked at their sensitive bud. Guttural moans, whimpers, and gritted words of encouragement filled the air, a rhythmic harmony of ecstasy.

Our bodies moved through the night, instruments building out a tune never known before, one of tenderness and longing, one of wholeness and relief.

It was a song I never wanted to end. Even as orange peeled up the midnight sky, the day rising before our sweat-slicked bodies, there was nothing else I wanted more than to feel this every day for millennia.

Reaper slid out from me, the emptiness jarring, then they spun me to face them, the corner of their lip curling. Theirattention dropped to the glistening shadow between us. “Lick it clean and then you’ll be next.”

I sank to my knees, scraping against the roots of my fig tree, taking it deep into my mouth, sucking down the ecstasy like I was parched for it.

I was.

Tongue lapping up every drop, Reaper waved away the shadows and I ran my nose along their seam, inhaling the scent of us together. I drew my gaze up to Reaper. “May I?”

“That’s my Songbird,” Reaper said, the rest a rasp as my tongue tasted and devoured every drop of pleasure clinging to their sensitive flesh. “Using that voice of yours that I love.”

When every drop had been savored and Reaper had stopped shaking against my face, they lifted me up onto the lowest branch of my fig tree, my hands gripping around the scratchy bark, so grateful to have it back as I’d always known it. As it truly belonged.

“Wrap those legs around my shoulders, Songbird,” Reaper instructed, standing on the ribboned roots below.

We worked together, me gripping the bark and looping one leg then the other until Reaper’s dark irises flared, stars gazing at my throbbing center. Tongue flat, they licked up my thigh before whispering. “I’ve waited forever to savor you.”

And savor me, they did.

thirteen

. . .

Within the next moon cycle,the rest of Reaper’s restless souls were soothed. The pain was unbearable leading up to the last day, shoulders taught with exertion until I realized why.

Two thick buds protruded from my back. Reaper massaged them daily, watching as bones began to sprout from them.

With all the scythes working together to get everyone settled in, every day brought an influx of joy, of contentment with more and more splendors finding their compara.

While my canthymn may not have gotten them here, it was the song that remained closest to my soul. It had brought me Reaper after all.

Rap, rap, rap.

Rap, rap, rap.

Their steady beat sustained me before and it would sustain me for millennia to come. Each morning I awoke in my fig tree, savoring the scrape of bark against my limbs. Sometimes Reaper climbed up and slept with me there, other times they coaxed me to long nights in bed.

Day after day, we began to build a life together. Reaper taught me how to cook, and we travelled to distant lands,helping grieving souls find solace in the afterlife. Our nights were spent with the other splendors and their scythes—our family finally reunited.

With so many splendors here, I learned so much about our people. My mother and elder sisters told me their stories and the myths of our ancestors. As they did, they primped at my bones, until feathers began to bud from their marrow. One plume after another joined them, until a full turning had passed.

I stood on our balcony, staring out at Occasus below me, my kin looking on as my compara held me close before releasing me into the wind.

Finally where I belong.

coda

. . .

Reaper