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By the third sunrise, every lie Elder Arnold Cunningham has ever told begins to hatch—and some of them hatch *inside* Kevin.
They split the air with a wet seam, stories peeling open like fruit left too long in the sun. A hobbit claws its way out of a cooking pot, slick with broth and hunger. Lieutenant Uhura sings until the sky fractures into colored glass that cuts when it falls. Yoda nests in the dust, patient as rot, whispering doctrine that rearranges the bones. And Darth Vader arrives in a fever of heat, each breath a machine that keeps something dead alive.
Kevin tries to hold the line. He does. He presses his palms over his ears when the stories start to *coo*.
“You are not scripture,” he says, and hates the way his voice breaks around it.
Because they are already inside him.
Something small and blind curls beneath his ribs, gnawing delicately, as if making space. It purrs when Arnold gets too close. It hurts—God, it hurts—but it is the first thing Kevin has ever carried that feels like it chose him back.
Arnold doesn’t notice at first. Or maybe he does, and he is afraid to name it. He moves through the village haloed in his own inventions, ink under his nails, eyes bright with the terrible tenderness of a creator who cannot stop creating. When the warlord comes, it is not men he meets but a congregation of teeth and laughter and impossible witnesses; cruelty cannot survive being made ridiculous, and it flees, humiliated, shedding its own myth as it goes.
That night, Kevin is shaking.
The stories won’t let him go still. They rustle in the dark, crawl over his skin, mouth at his throat like half-remembered prayers. The thing in his chest has grown bold enough to press outward; he can feel its shape now, something soft and many-limbed, something that tightens whenever Arnold speaks.
“This is wrong,” Kevin whispers, though it comes out like begging. “This is—this is chaos.”
Arnold turns toward him, slow, like approaching something feral. “Kevin,” he says, and there is blood on his sleeve—not his own, not quite—and something unbearably gentle in his voice. “Hey. Look at me.”
Kevin does. He always does.
Arnold opens his hands.
There is a story there—newborn, trembling, its body a patchwork of everything Kevin once believed and everything Arnold refused to stop inventing. It breathes. It *needs*. It is so small Kevin could crush it, if he wanted to.
“Help me choose,” Arnold says, and it is not a joke, not a deflection, not a lie. It is a plea. “Please.”
The thing under Kevin’s ribs twists, hungry.
He thinks of Orlando, of certainty, of a God who never answered except in echoes. He thinks of Arnold—impossible, blasphemous Arnold—who answered anyway.
Kevin reaches out with shaking hands. The creature in Arnold’s palms chirrs, recognizing him.
“Okay,” Kevin says, voice raw. “Okay. But we do it together.”
Arnold exhales like he’s been drowning.
Kevin presses his forehead to Arnold’s, their breaths tangling, shared, and feeds the newborn story the last clean, shining certainty he has left.
It eats.
It grows.
So do they.