Bindbole and Yggdrasil

I could smell her wet, musky scent in the back of my throat as she aimed the pistol between my legs. Her luxurious wild beauty made my bleeding guts ache even more as the moon reflected off the gun’s high-polish finish.

Yet, sap that I am, I still wanted to hold her in my arms, even through the shocking realization that she’d just told me she truly despised me before she’d shot me in the belly.

I was fading and couldn’t understand why this had happened. There was no life flashing before my eyes. There was just: Why? How did I get everything so wrong?

Time slowed down. And on the tail end of my great confusion was a little tug, a little pull in another direction. A distracting feeling that became clearer and closer and realer as the rest of my awareness dimmed and drew towards a close.

I remembered us before. Not this life before, but in a different times and places where we were soldiers feasting on stew and fish sauce and householders growing rice in Asia. Slaves and slaveholders, lovers and rivals. Our lifetimes blended together from the same swirl.

And as I saw her squeezing the trigger again, I said, “I’ll be the one holding the weapon next lifetime. Bet on it.”