The venom washed out the past and future. When drowned in it, the mind was always only in the present, a single point of now always shifting with no history and no destination. It was an extraordinarily peaceful state. In Oleander’s current moment of past made present he was sitting in his Mother’s bedroom. The edges and details were blurry as they always were. The titles of books on the shelf appeared in symbols that only approximated writing, the curtains were indecisive about the exact shade of red they should be, and the medicines on the side table blinked out of existence if one did not pay close attention to them. But some things were always in crisp focus. His mother never faded, all her features preserved perfectly in memetic amber. She reclined in bed as Oleander sat beside her and brushed his hair as he paged through the picture book splayed out in his lap. It was supposed to be full of illustrations of the Evergrowth and its fearsome creatures, but every page had been colonized by butterflies.

“Such soft and lovely locks,” his mother cooed as she brushed in long strokes from his scalp to lower back. It was perfectly neat and did not need the brushing, but they both enjoyed the act. It was their special pastime together, just the two of them.

“I’m jealous, Oleander. Maybe I should steal them for myself!” She buried her fingers in and tickled his neck.

He fell into her in a fit of giggles, “No mama! It’s mine!” He laughed, and she wrapped her arms around his chest and drew him yet closer. This part was always the same. The slow pulse of her heartbeat, the herbal scent of her breath, the small cough she suppressed as she laughed.

Oleander did not entirely understand the joke because his mother’s hair, besides several stripes of grey, was exactly the same as his own. He was the only son to inherit her silky black locks, a fact of which he was exceedingly prideful.

“You have paint on your hands again,” She said, and the colorful blotches appeared on his fingers when he looked, “what have you been making for me?”

“It’s a surprise!” He said, annoyed that he’d forgotten to wash away the evidence. It was always a surprise and it was always a painting but every time she threw her hands to her sallow cheeks and gasped with delight and proclaimed his talent. “You’ll be painting palace murals one day!” She would say.

He buried himself into her bosom, closed his eyes and let her yarrow and clove scent wash over him.
“I love you, Oleander.” She said.

“I love you, Mama.” He said back. But when he opened his eyes rows of jagged stalactites had replaced the teeth of her smile.

A stony blue-grey spread out from her face, dispelling his mother and the palace. A breath of damp air, real air, returned Oleander to the linear world of past, present, and future. A child no longer, he lay naked in a bed at the bottom of a cavernous ravine. All around him was dark stone tinged blue from the luminous wings of the butterflies that carpeted the spiny walls and floor. He sat up and was reminded of the cumbersome burden of his middle, his swollen womb. It had not been this large when he’d last awoken. Another birth would soon come.

Oleander shivered in the empty silence as the last of the venom drained from his head. A sound like the rustle of dry leaves came from somewhere deeper in the earth. He was coming. Somehow he always knew when Oleander had awoken. The former prince braced himself for whatever form would emerge from the depths this time.

Several papery limbs curled around stalagmites, followed by several more and then yet more. The ocher-tinted form of a centipede emerged from the dark, its enormous segmented body coiling around Oleander’s nest. He raised a hollow face of mandibles and tiny eyes illuminated with the same eerie blue of the butterflies to the boy, swaying gently in the gentle air current that flowed through the ravine. Oleander’s keeper was not a centipede, he merely inhabited the memory of one. This was a shell, a discarded molt, being animated by a new owner. Thanatos, his keeper, had many bodies of this kind. He turned away as the arthropod’s head drew closer, antennae dancing on the taut skin of his belly. The disturbing effect of him had dulled over the years but never fully vanished.

“Awake again? I think you might be building up a resistance. I’ll increase the dosage this time.” Came a voice from no mouth. Butterflies dropped from the ceiling and fluttered towards him, their wings flashing cerulean magic.

“Wait. Not yet. I want… to talk.” He said. The centipede molt had no expression, or at least not one he could read, but the Butterflies hovered in place, waiting.

“What troubles you, Oleander?” Came the voice with no mouth. It spoke his name sweetly, but such a different sweetness from that of his mother. His coils contracted closer, encircling the boy in needle-tipped legs.

“Just, let me think for a moment.” He said. He was still shaking off the venom’s haze. The weight of fifteen years of passed time settled on his sober mind. There was so much to worry over in these brief waking moments. The fate of the kingdom and most especially his brothers. Fifteen years of time quickly turned to fifteen years of guilt, an unbearable burden.

“Its hard for you,” hissed his keeper, “its better to sleep. Let me soothe you, my precious.” The butterflies drew near.  

“No! My brothers. I want to know they’re alright.”

“How am I to know that? Perhaps if you bring them to me-“

“Don’t get greedy.” Oleander snapped, unsure exactly which set of eyes to glare into.

“Of course." His voice betrayed a trace of dissapointment, "But you are not thinking of leaving me, are you? Remember our deal.”

“A runaway child stranded underground is in no fair bargaining position.”

“Must we go through this again? I care for you, Oleander.”

“You use me. You only care that I’m a compliant little bitch, a drugged up breeder.”

“You are letting your emotions get out of hand. Wouldn’t you rather be happy?” Thanatos's voice was calm, cool, and venomous. The butterflies flitted inches from his skin.

“I said wait! Just…just let me think.”

“Thinking only pains you, return to sleep.”

“I just want to know they’re okay. That’s all. I want to know they’re alright before I go back under. If there’s any way I can do that-”

Thanatos synched his coils around Oleander now, wrapping him in the dried dead flesh of a lesser being. It was a frail body, but he did not rely a body to convey his power. He imposed his fallen divinity through the air around him, the light of his eyes, the magic in his touch, the legends told of him. Though Oleander, being human, would not have heard the latter. The boy carried a piece of divinity within him, but that did not equate them. Thanatos made sure this was understood.

“You ran away, remember? You abandoned your brothers. They might be dead, or worse. Now you suddenly want to return to them? After fifteen years?” He hissed directly into the boy’s head.

“Stop it!” He cried.

“I only speak the truth. You ran away, seeking comfort. I can provide you comfort. You don’t want to feel the guilt anymore, do you? The shame? You can see your brothers in your sleep…”

Oleander choked back sobs. He’d become more and more insistent between sleeps lately. But Thanatos knew how to make the release of sleep irresistible.

Thoroughly undone, Oleander tried to change the subject. He pushed the molt away, “Why do you show up in these things? They creep me out. Haven’t I made enough bodies for you?”

“You have made me many, for which I am appreciative, and you will make still many more.” He tasted the life and the power swelling in the boy’s womb on his antennae, “And I will use them when the time comes, don’t fret.”

“Use them for what?” A question he had asked many times and for which he knew he would not receive an answer.

“Time will tell, Oleander. Do not concern yourself with the affairs of Gods. Concern yourself with your poor abandoned brothers.”

His pale lips twisted at so many unpleasant emotions, fifteen year’s worth surging up from the cavernous depths of his heart. He sank into the bed, defeated.

“I have the remedy for that, you know.” Thanatos whispered as his butterflies descended, dusting their venom over his body, into his lungs. Oleander did not resist. Perhaps in another few moons he would have the chance to try again, but now he let the magic take him. He returned to happier times.

Thanatos watched him slumber, his beady paper eyes transfixed by his precious ticket out of this prison. His precious little Goddess boy, instrument of his greatest ambitions. Then after a time, he receded into the darkness.