M0R1BUND

0.

You were always talking about the first hurt.

i.

“This wasn’t here before, right? I’m not losing it?”

Senna crests the banks of the Agua Fria. The mesquites part to reveal the riverbed, a sweeping gully of cobbles and river stones with a tiny stream trickling through them.

Heath follows her eyes until he sees it: An enormous cathedral, plunked square in the muddy river bottom.

“No…” Heath blinks. It’s much too late for this.

“Something wrong?”

Heath gazes on the ruins of the cathedral. His limbs are heavy stones.

“It looks like my old church.”

Senna scrunches her face up, and studies the ruins. They weren’t quarried from the same sunbleached basalt and peachy granite of the dilapidated church—their church. The cathedral’s bricks are cold and finely carved, without any flaws that would suggest a human hand had ever touched them. Stark, uncaring, and out of place, even as they crumble.

“Not really,” Senna decides.

“No, not our church. The one out East.”

“Out East? I thought you grew up here.”

“Yes and no. My family immigrated here when I was a boy. But I moved East for a while to study the Book.”

“You don’t sound happy about that.”

“They weren’t happy years, Senna.”

ii.

“There’s something in there. I think you should see for yourself.”

Heath hesitates at the maw of the cathedral. The two columns flanking him put him in the mind of teeth. He never meant to come back here, but it seems this place has ways of finding him.

He steps inside. Senna’s long shadow does not move.

“Are you coming, Senna?”

“No.”

“No?” He blinks. “Are you alright? We could—”

“For your sake, not mine, old man. Go on.”