Inevitable

We’re among the stars, Auxiliary and I.

She’s jumping from star to star and I’m stuck on the moon.

Being with her will bring nothing but impending doom. We’re in love with each other anyway.

Auxiliary has skin that matches midnight and dresses that sing a song of loveliness. She dances in the stars and her hair tangles in the glowing dips on them.

The stars know us. They know us. They know we’re in love. And they’d do anything to keep the two of us apart, which is why we’ll surely be blasted apart one day, through the galaxy, away from each other, away and away and away.

Auxiliary lights up the stars with her energy every night. And after all that’s done she twirls to the moon, to me, and we stare at the lighted up stars that really do hate us.

Doom for us is inevitable, and there’s no doubting that. Auxiliary knows that and I know that and doom is floating around us. It’s an aura, the doom is. An aura of doom.

Auxiliary jumps from star to star, lighting them up one by one. I’m watching her. She has so much energy. I have none.

She lights up the last one, and then flies through the darkness, her whole body glowing and humming with energy that sounds like a million songs. She twirls down to the moon like she does every night and she lets out a breathless, “Hello, Euphonious!” She does a full turn and her white dress twirls as she does so.

She always calls me by that name. She loves her long words. I prefer E. Auxiliary likes the complicated things.

We sit down together on the moon, like usual.

“Our doom is inexorable,” Auxiliary states. Her black hair is everywhere, pooling on the moon like spilled ink on parchment.

I squint my eyes as they catch on an especially bright star (Auxiliary named that one Sempiternal. She says once we’re blasted across the galaxy, we’ll still see that one star. It’ll be sempiternal. So that’s its name.) and then I turn my head to her. “I prefer inevitable.”

“Ineluctable.”

“Inevitable,” I argue back, because it’s what we always do.

“This is why we’re doomed lovers, Euphonious,” she says, because it’s what she always says.

“Call me E.”

“Never,” Auxiliary says, laying back on the rough surface of the moon. She’s looking up at the sky and her lips start moving; naming the stars.

I lay back too. We stare up at the darkness, only illuminated by the stars, our breaths light and sweet.

“We’re not meant to be together,” I say, my voice barely a whisper. Auxiliary’s tracing the patterns of the stars with her finger, one eye closed tight.

“We’ll be blasted through the galaxy,” Auxiliary says, in her normal voice. It never seems to waver. Always happy, always cheerful. “The stars will be frustrated with us.”

I say what I usually do, “Star crossed lovers.”

And she turns her head to me, beaming brighter than Sempiternal or any stars, and says what she usually does, “What a beautiful phrase.”

She gets up, her movements slow. She needs to get back to work; lighting up the sky. I stand up too, to watch her go.

“Goodbye, Euphonious,” she says, giving me a hug. She breaks apart from me first, looks straight into my eyes, and gives me a smile I know all too well: it means I love you and I’m sorry and ineluctable at the same time. I give her my smile back: I love you and I’m sorry and inevitable. “Call me E,” I whisper, and then she turns around, to run off again.

“Doomed, the two of us!” She calls, and she jumps into the darkness. “Inexorable. Ineluctable. Inescapable. Ineludible.” She says it like she always does. Auxiliary has a way with words. She’s something and more.

“Inevitable,” I add, and she smiles and runs off to the stars.