In the umbrous forests of Son-Mongo, a cloaked figure stalked the road. Raging against the thundering snow, they push through the overgrown vines and rose bushes that obstruct their path. The snow that settled long ago, evicted to the ground by prying, bare, hands. Shrouded by the trees, the ruins of Gostap Shrine laid under a murky fog. Once at its doors, the figure pulled a pin from their hood and fastened it into the door’s latch. A sudden click, and they dashed within. The withered stone walls allowed for shots of light to illuminate the shrine’s inside. In the middle rose a fountain sculpted to the shape of a man. In his arms, a geyser with knotted necklaces trickling down its spout into a pool of bones, cloth, and other miscellaneous treasures. 

The figure shuffled their arm into their cloak, then back into their sleeve revealing a knife now in hand. They drew the knife to their thumb, piercing it deep enough for the revelation of blood. Creeping through the treasure, the statue’s eyes stare back at them in a longing, miserable manner beyond the compounds of its inanimate form. Swiftly, the figure wipes their bloody thumb over the statues and, suddenly, in fact, immediately, the once stone eyes shatter into bulging red flesh. The statue drops its geyser, its hardened figure twists into a demented resemblance of life; while so, hallering an echo throughout the shrine. It’s eroded being, replaced with the muscle of man, and its green growths evolved to hair.  In a sudden motion he, no longer an “it” , swung his robust arms, striking the figure down. 

The figure bellowed a grisly howl, landing in the living statue’s pit of treasure and trash. “Who dares enter my vicinity?!” bellowed the living statue, “And, even dare, touch me?!” From the waist below he was still stone, however still managed to stretch out and clutched his gnarly hands around the shoulders of the figure. Pushing them forward, he tore their cloak clean off. “Reveal your…! Your…” The living statue choked at the sight of the figure’s face, causing him to drop them from his grasp. The figure’s face was not of man but of a gnarly monster. Their brown eyes squinted through wrinkled sockets under a girthy brow. Drool oozed from a grotesque muzzle flaunting hideous fangs. The monster was covered in brown hair and sported a rat-like tail that slithered between their legs. The monster yelped and buried themself in their arms. “My God! You’re horrendous! I- – I…my beauty has been violated by your presence!” the living gagged, “Tell me what you dare enter here for!” He reached out once more, only for the monster to slap his hand away. “Don’t touch me!” they yelled. Their voice, unexpectedly, was the exact opposite of their face. It was soprano and light. The living statue stammered in bewilderment, “You’re…dear lord, you’re…” “A woman?” chimed the monster. “By how you act, I’m sure you don’t see many!” 

The living statue curled up into a pleading position. “I am sorry miss- – you’re- – well, now I’ve been enchanted by your…inner beauty.” he begged, “Please, allow me to behold you with the Gatsop blessing with a kiss. As an apology, my lady, please!” The monster raised her brow and scoffed, “You are a statue of many personalities, aren’t you?” She picked up her cloak and wrapped it around herself. She then pulled her dagger out from it and pointed it at the living statue. “You are Drog, known as The Living Statue, but more importantly…the parasite, the HE-SUCCUBUS of The Gatsop Shrine.” Drog gawked in astonishment, “He-Succubus?! HE-SUCCUBUS? Why- – I – – FORGET EVERYTHING I SAID! I”M GOING TO- -” The monster put a hand over his mouth. “Chase me? Throw your trash at me?” Despite the limitations of her inhuman, monstrous face, she managed a solid frown, “I know everything about you, Drog ‘The Living Statue’. The ground we stand on, Gatsop, was once a beautiful kirk…however, you, a mindless nature, mistakenly bound your soul with it. Ever since, your existence relied on the life of others.  You absorbed their force and reduced them to mere rubble.” She kicked around the vines and jewelry revealing an even deeper layer of bones. “And once you run out of your ‘stash’, you’ll become inanimate once more.” she said pointing to his lower half. 

His face turned red and his brows curled. Drog lunged at the monster however she held him back with one firm hand. “Without the essence of life you’re reduced to stone…yet before I shed my blood, you still bore resemblance to a man…”  Her eyes darted around the room, “…that means there’s still some life in this room…” She let go of his ever so “purpling” face and he let out a harsh wheeze. “Wait! Wait!” Drog stammered, “Don’t- – Don’t touch my things!” 

The monster scowled, “Things? THINGS?! So these are ‘things’ to you?” She picked up two withered skulls, “Look, this one’s smaller than the other…an adolescent skull! It horrified me at first, but thank you for reassuring me that it is only a ‘thing’!” She set them back down and continued to dig through Drog’s self made graveyard. “I am looking for the head of Zashire, The Immortal Man.” Drog bent himself away from the light, consoling in the dark like a dying pet. “I have heard no such name.” he said in a vacant whisper, absent was his vexation from only moments ago. The monster took notice of Drog’s tensity and approached him, putting herself to his ear. “Don’t you understand? You’re the one that’s a thing!”

At the mutter of those words, his face once again went red. He lunged at the monster with a furious growl, only to be stopped by his body’s limitations. The monster grabbed him and shouted over his roars, “You are an essence of a thing pretending to be a man, Drog! I know you, I’ve studied you! You’ve gone by name after name. Yet, you’ve never found satisfaction in one because you lack all criteria to be bestowed a title!” Drog’s face twisted into a wrinkled, inhuman glower as he then screamed, “I AM A MAN! I AM A MAN!” 

“You’re not, and you’ll never be!” the monster hissed. Tears fell from Drog’s eyes and veins pulsated from his temples. He contorted his body so far his skin began to strain at his waist. “BUT I WAS!” he cried out. After a moment, sank to his chest and uttered, “I was…for a moment I was…” The monster allowed him to have his silence for a moment before she asked, “Where’s Zashire’s head, Drog?” Drog stared soullessly up at the monster and weakly whispered, “Behind the clock…on the wall.” The monster nodded, then headed there stumbling through rubble and bones. She stepped on the stone slate accompanying the clock’s mantle and slid her claws behind its frame. She carefully placed it down before peering into the hole in the wall. There sat a box covered in a layer of dusty moss and stringy cobwebs, so covered by time that at first she mistaken it for a fallen stone. The monster pulled it from nature’s grasp and hopped off of the ledge back to the trashed ground. 

Drog was slumped over, color had left his flesh and dread layed comfortably in his eyes. The monster approached him once more and said, “You must become what you once were again, and Zashire must be reunited with his kingdom. That is what the land wants.” Drog said nothing back, he had already given up despite his insistence moments ago. The monster led herself out, never to see what would become of Drog.

Outside of the shrine, the monster wrapped herself back in her cloak. The storm had settled and luckily her previous path had remained visible. At the end she found her steed, waiting patiently where he was left. The monster put her hand on his muzzle and sighed, “Merij, you just missed an enlightening test of morality…well, not that enlightening but you and I have a new friend.” She held the box up to Merij. He jolted his head back with hot snort. “I know, boy.” The monster reassured, “I’m not even sure he’s in here. I assume Drog might’ve tricked me but I just want to get this over with…” She nuzzled her dagger under the box’s lip and winced back as she opened it. 

The monster gagged, lo and behold the head of Zashire was there. The monster jolted away and dropped the box, causing the head to bounce out on the snowy null. Merij backed away as well with a sharp shrill and kick. “Aaaiegh!” She grabbed Merij’s harness but failed to settle him, let alone herself. Zashire’s head sat in the snow, or at least she assumed it was Zashire. The head was withered to the bare minimum of human features: thin lips molded with gummy teeth, smokey eyes no longer accompanied by sockets, locks of muddy hair hanging from his scalp, and purpled skin covered in gashes. She gulped down, squinting her eyes as she slowly reached for the head.

“Are you going to speak?” she asked, wincing at the jolt down her back that came with touching her fingers against his skin. She turned her head towards him, dreading the gaze in his eyes but ultimately she was startled by the slow opening of his jaw. A spoonful of vomit slipped from his lips as he whispered, “Perhaps.” The monster felt the hairs covering her body raise in unison. “Great.” she sighed. She wiped off the remains of Zashire’s mouth with her cloak. Zashire spoke, “Say, before I give my gratitude, can you spin me around? I wish to stimulate turning my head in a frantic haze.” 

The monster did as he wished, but made sure to accompany it with a viscous eye roll. “Oh great heavens!” cried the head. “Where am I?” He then bursted into a fit of wheezy laughter. “Okay, okay…thank you. Erm…what’s your name?”

The monster’s face stiffened, “Bergibalk.” 

“Bergibalk! Thank you,” he paused for a moment which caused immediate discomfort, “…fair lady…Bergibalk. You have released me from my loathsome slumber of thought at the hands of the devil, Drog.”

“Fair…lady?” Bergibalk swallowed, her once pale veiny face now red. “Are you insulting me?” 

Zashire, despite the little left of his face, gasped with a desperate look, “No! No! I’m sorry, ah geez…I didn’t…you’re not a woman?”

“Of course I’m a woman.”

“Oh, then.” the head clicked his teeth, “Can you move my head around? I wish to stimulate my confused state once more.” 

“I’ve just met you and you’ve consumed my nerves.” Bergibalk growled, however  lowered her tone before wiping her face. “I’m sorry King Zashire. Your royal status slipped my mind, I…I give you my utmost apologies.”

“Well, I haven’t been king for quite some time.” Zashire chuckled. “And besides, I was the only king on technicalities. I died in battle before I reached the throne. Disappointing, eh?” He attempted an ever so slight turn of the neck and said, “That’s me yanking yanking your chain.” He burst out laughing once more. Despite his playful jest, his bare eyes and his jaw’s lifeless jerks proved disturbing to Bergibalk. But scratching her beard made her remember she’s one to talk. 

“King Zashire, where must I deliver you to break your immortal curse?” asked Bergibalk. 

“Well lady-Bergibalk, my curse is not being immortal. Immortality is quite common in erm…lobsters I believe and they’re not cursed. It is my lack of ability to live that torments me. As you can see I can barely move. Drog decapitated me to keep me from running back to her. The only proof left that I am still a man is my unbridled sense of humor.”

“How were you cursed?” 

“It was my own doing. I made a sacred promise with my lover, Jenet, that our souls would forever be together no matter what. That they would continue to shine until I returned from the war.” without much movement of his face, the light seemed to dull in Zashire’s eyes “I left her all alone. But I feel her, despite my lack of heart I feel her in my being.” 

Zashire looked up at Bergibalk, “Lady-Bergibalk, you must return me to Kanforto Village in Son-Mongo. South of here, along the bay. But tell me, Lady-Bergibalk, what lies at stake? Is this land dependent on my rescue? Oh…was I truly that selfish?”

Bergibalk cocked her head back, “No! Not at all.”

“Then why have you decided to come to my rescue?”

Bergibalk stammered “I…I don’t know.”

Zashire stared at her for a moment, then whispered “A true knight you are, Lady-Bergibalk.”

Bergibalk gulped down deeply. Then gave a slight nod accompanied with what she hoped to be interpreted as a nervous grin, despite her terrifying set of yellowed fangs. She tucked Zahire into Merij’s satchel and unlatched a bag from his other side. “I must get dressed before we ride. Zashire, are you cold?” 

Zashire chattered his teeth jokingly then said, “No. I haven’t felt the slightest brisk in ages.”  

Bergibalk removed Zashire from the satchel once she was dressed and fastened him under her arm as she mounted Merij. Bergibalk and Zashire rode down a snowy incline to the icey swamps of Abozzle. This portion of the ride was accompanied most by silence. However, Bergibalk took notice to Zashire’s occasional clicking of the teeth. “I’m sorry my King, it must be torture to ride with you in silence after you’d experienced it for hundreds of years.” said Bergibalk. Zashire mimicked the motion of letting out a big huff from the lungs, “I’d thought you’d never mention it.” Zashire’s eyes darted around before remarking, “You were quite a quipper in the Gostap Shrine. But all of a sudden you aren’t so much anymore.”

“I only kid those I hope to get the slightest bit of advantage over.”

“Well, that’s comedy for you.”

“Yes, I guess it is.”

Bergibalk halted Merij to a stop and picked up Zashire. “I wish to stop here for a moment.” Bergibalk then hopped off Merij and sat Zashire on a rock. She had paused in the shallowest part of the swamp and headed to a patch of lavender growing on an elevated patch of grass. Zashire watched Bergibalk squat down and pick the lavender. He finally got a good look at her new attire as she made her way around the patch. She wore a red tunic under a plate of gold shoulder armor, a pair of white pants, and leather boots. “You have a good sense of fashion, Lady-Bergibalk.” said Zashire. Bergibalk, who had become fixated on flowers, gave an out of focus response, “Thank you. I used to have an even better one before I got a tail.” 

Zashire was silent for a moment then asked, “Before?”

Berigbalk stopped abruptly and turned her head to look at Zashire. She dwindled a piece of lavender in her hand, then snickered lightly and turned to face the ground. “I have finished.” Bergibalk remarked, before swifting her mind over to the pieces of lavender she picked. “Botany is such a beautiful aspect of life.” 

Bergibalk gave a piece to Merij before tucking the rest in her pocket and mounting him once more. She placed Zashire on her lap and set her tail over him. “Safety first!” she said, giving Zashire a pat. “There returns your witticism.” said Zashire, “I hope that doesn’t mean I have become your enemy.” 

“Of course not.” responded Bergibalk, “Flowers just make me happy.”

“I’m sorry for my intrusive questioning”

Bergibalk looked down at Zashire who wore a face of concern. “It’s alright. You’re right. There was a before. I didn’t always have a tail, I didn’t always look like this.” she let out a hefty sigh, “But I believe I’ve always been this.”

Such a revelation perplexed Zashire. Before he could ask for further evaluation, Bergibalk butted in, “Do you truly believe you’re still a man, King Zashire?”

Zashire, while unprepared for such a question, sat on it for a moment before responding, “I used to not. However, after years of losing so much I found what truly made me a person. When I had a body, I was an asset in a war started by my father. I lived my life as a pawn in another’s. Losing it has left me only with my thoughts. And through those years entertaining myself only with them – – I discovered my ideals. I found what makes me human and after hundreds of years of defending it I have managed to remain. So yes, right now I believe I am a man. 

Do you believe you are a woman, Bergibalk?” 

Bergibalk didn’t return Zashire’s gaze. She simply stared off at the land beyond them. Her lip curled as she weakly whispered, “No.” 

After two days of riding, and plenty of naps for Zashire, Bergibalk came to a stop at a modest woodling patch. “Let’s stop here. I’m hungry and tired.” She fastened Merij to a tree and unpacked her bag. She set Zashire on a log and asked, “Do you eat, King Zashire?” Zashire sighed, “I wish.” Bergibalk nodded, and took out a can of rations. She laid down on her back and looked up at the night as she chewed. In the quiet moment, Zashire gazed at Bergibalk. In the most intrusive level of id, he found her hideous. It was a terrible thought he wished to shake. Bergibalk was right, she wasn’t a woman. Not in anyone’s standards, especially not that of a man’s. This scar on his conscience angered Zashire. As he knew he wasn’t born to think such things, like all boys, but were taught them anyways. 

She turned to him, resting her face on her hand, and said, “I haven’t been a person for a long time.” Zashire gulped down meaningless air for his absent lungs, “What do you mean?”

She turned back to the sky, “If I told you exactly what I was…you’d think less of me.”

“Why?”

“Because I…” Bergibalk gulped down, “…because you’re going to be like the rest of them.” As she gazed upwards, tears rolled down her rigid cheeks. “Just tell me what you wish someone better would know, then.” suggested Zashire. She wiped sweat of her cheeks and exhaled.

“When I was young…I started to do things for money I shouldn’t have. My mother was very ill and someone needed to feed my two brothers. It started off with one man, then two, and all the sudden it became the only thing I was. I never told them about myself, I was quiet and did what they asked. Then I went home and told my mother some lies that I no longer remember. When my mother eventually found out she was so ashamed. She disowned me. She said because I ruined these men’s families, I no longer deserved my own.

And even after, I couldn’t leave it. I had become an object to other people’s will. I had become everything men wanted in a woman, which was none of her at all. As time went on I began to change into an unrecognizable creature. The transformation was so slow I didn’t realize it at first. And even now, with all my pieces replaced, I wonder if I ever changed in the first place.” 

Bergibalk, who had been avoiding eye contact with Zasire, while rubbing her head in her hands continuously, finally met Zashire’s gaze. She stared at him long enough that he was forced to reconcile her eyes. While acknowledged, he hadn’t realized their beauty. They weren’t that of an animal’s nor a glamorous blue. They were brown like his, a color very commonly human. With this realization, revealed a subtle side of a woman he only pretended to see when they first met. 

Bergibalk then spoke, “You are all the same.” Zashire cringed yet was too staggered to question such a statement. Furthermore Bergibalk continued, “You are all different in kindness and being. But when it comes to discovering us, you are all the same. While our womanhood is known, men must choose to fathom our humanity.” Bergibalk pulled out the pieces of lavender from her pocket. They were smushed from her time lying on her side. She held them up to the sky as she laid on her back and whispered, “It’s so simple. Our struggle is unified yet given different names.” Then she murmured, “May one day…they be our own.”

Zashire didn’t speak. He felt an invisible stinging of what would’ve been in his stomach, as he tried to say the words he desired yet began to choke. All of the sudden he began to cry. Not exactly tears, more so the gook left within him, but nevertheless his face for the first time in a long time morphed into a clear expression of anguish. “I ruined her.” he wailed. “I trapped her in a fate disguised as destiny – – and – – and…” he grew quiet, “…but I truly thought I was doing the best.”

Bergibalk drew herself closer to Zashire and reached out, touching his temple lightly. She then picked Zashire up and placed him on her chest. They did not speak to each other for the rest of the night, however shared a solace of company. Zashire fell asleep to the Bergibalk’s waves of breath. Slowly rising him up and down over the night. 

In the late morning, Bergibalk reached the bay. She’d given trust to Merij to lead them to Kanforto as she held Zashire, still slumbering, in her arms. The breeze from the ocean went unnoticed by Bergibalk, herself, however caused her hair to blow across her face. She twisted her neck to get at least some off her eyes. Suddenly, she glanced back down and whispered, “I’m not ready to be alone again.” Zashire squinted, half awake and groaned, “What?” Bergibalk sighed, “I said I’m not ready to be alone again.” Zashire opened his eyes and said, “I understand. Lady-Bergibalk, may you please nod my head for me?” Bergibalk complied and grinned, “I am glad I met you, King Zashire.” 

When they finally reached Kanforto, Zashire directed Bergibalk to a chapel. It, and the rest of the town, had been long abandoned. The chapel itself had a gaping hole in the roof from caving in snow. Bergibalk slowly approached it with Zashire and opened the rusted doors. At the altar sat a skeleton, and at sight of it tears fell from Zashire’s eyes. Tears not of filth but actual, real tears. Bergibalk sat him down on the sandy floorboards and stepped back. 

Zashire began to change. His body’s limitations expanded and what he once lost slowly became to heal. The same process began with the skeleton, rising up from her lowly state into an elevated mass erected from the soul. Both her and Zashire had become human once more, not in sight but spirit. Two figures free from societal forms, equal and only different in conception. They embraced each other and became one. The figure then began to fade before whispering, “You are our knight, Bergibalk.”

And then the light disappeared. Bergibalk was left alone once more however now accompanied by a sense of self. She went to reach for the lavender in her pocket but was suddenly taken off guard by a chilling breeze. All of a sudden she was cold.