As Talvi disappeared into the bedroom hidden in the back of the apartment to change, Erik scoured and explored the rest of it. His eyes ran up and down the inside of the messy kitchen cabinets. Open spice packets and cereal boxes filling the inside of the white shelves.

On their small fridge a couple dozen photos were pressed onto the front using small magnets shaped like smiley faces. Erik’s eyes set on one photo in particular. It made his mouth twitch.

It was him. The photo was simple and blurry, a wide shot of Erik as he sat at a small table on the edges of an even smaller middle eastern restaurant. He was smiling up at the camera. Erik squinted the longer he looked at the dated photo with slightly crimped edges.

Erik’s smile was wide, lovely and most alarmingly to him, happy. Like a sunbeam over the shining morning, he looked at the camera, extending warmth like a gentle touch. Opposite to the photo now, Erik’s face was tight as he took in all the details. Now, his dark eyes and bushy eyebrows were downturned with a slight narrowing of his nose.

He could almost see the billowing of the warm air from the kebabs and shawarma bowls. It almost made his stomach rumble as he wished he could remember the taste, the smell, the feeling. Erik was wearing a tight red flannel shirt, one that almost mixed in with the burgundy of the wall colour. Slowly, Erik’s hand pressed against  his shirt, the slight dips and raises of  the white lines across his torso.

Erik wished, if nothing else, that he could at least recognize the face in the mirror. Recognize it as something other than a stranger with similar features.

Continuing out of the kitchen, Erik walked through the apartment. On their creaky wooden floor and with an amble in his step. Erik passed by a framed degree. Talvi Koskinen.

They’d graduated with a degree in journalism. A fact that did not surprise Erik, they had an air of sureness about them, despite the situation. An air of someone who took the facts as they came, not trying to change them to suit themself.

He traced himself into the living room and sat on the couch. The texture was soft and willowy beneath his touch. The living room was quaint and hardly over-decorated. A small flat screen TV balanced on a black tv stand with a couple more books stashed away inside.

Slightly tilting his head Erik began to list them off quietly into the empty room, “An introduction to the Mirasen Pantheon, The Complete History of the Mirasens, The Global Impact of  Polytheism in the Golden Age…” Soon his words turned into mumbles the more he read before the words out loud were gone with them instead floating within the confines of his mind.

Talvi poked their head out again from behind the door which pulled Erik’s attention away from the novels and textbooks, “You’re not coming to bed?” They had changed into soft yellow and blue long pajamas.

He sat still, his ankles and thighs pressed awkwardly together. Hesitancy brimmed in his words, “No, not tired yet.”

He noticed the slight tightening of their eyes, their head titled only half a centimeter to the right as they leaned against the dark oak door frame.  “You sure? You should get some rest at least.”

“Yeah, I'm sure. I’ll come to bed soon though.” His lips pressed together tightly as Erik maintained eye contact.

They nodded statically and disappeared into the tucked away bedroom. Erik could hear their steps and the creak of the bed as it bowed.

Huffing a sigh Erik pressed his temples. Fatigue and weariness was wearing down on his bones. Leaning forward Erik held his head in his hands as the tears began to flow. The world currently felt like he was treading dangerous waters, the waves slamming over his head before pushing further into the depths.

Every moment in the past few hours flashed in his mind; Talvi, Oumar, the museum, the photo. He’d lost it all, there was no going back. The moments brought more cold tears to his eyes, the heaviness bore down on his chest further.

“Think. Think. Think. Just remember something…” He whispered, hoping and pleading for the invocation to work. He tried to trace through his memories, but nothing came and instead Erik sat in the dark. Head in hands.

Erik tried to steady his shaking breaths, tried to make his body become balanced despite feeling like he was freefalling in the raging skies. The wind’s hands dropping him, his body slipping between their metaphorical fingers.

Swiveling his head, Erik’s gaze tracked the doorframe staying on the dark shadows ruminating between it. He stayed there for a while, sitting, waiting for nothing and only letting his chest rise and fell as the puffiness under his eyes began to fold away.

Pressing his head down onto the suede of the couch, Erik looked out of the window hoping the moonlight would lull him to sleep. Soon enough, dotting rain began to patter against the window. Erik tried to keep his mind clear by focusing on the details from the apartment building across the street.

The moon, with its ethereal gradient, painted the dark brick and illuminated each crack and fold. There was something simple about the world opposite to him; the light, the brick wall, the pattering rain draping down the grooves and towards the sickly roads.

The simple city soon enough began to crumble.

Because in one swoop of aurulent and pewter wings, something now of this city stared with beady eyes back at him. Not an animal. Not a man.

Tumbling off the couch Erik almost tripped on the blanket as he scrambled towards the window. Basking in the light a giant twelve foot tall God. Eagle-like wings that extended far beyond the microscopic confines of Erik’s apartment’s window. “Modarr”.

He did not seem to care about the rain, despite how it trickled down his feathers and over his midnight dark skin. Erik’s heart began to hammer alongside his rapid blinking, each time trying to truly cope with what he was seeing. He could barely hear himself mutter “Modarr” again over the thrumming in his ears.

Modarr did not move, instead staying still like a hawk perched in its nest. Erik could barely contain his wide eyes and the tears that came along with them. He’d seen this statue not a day ago, one that curved exactly where Modarr curved. One that had the same slightly protruding jaw that the Modarr who stood in front of him had.

They used to say that the myth surrounding Modarr’s jaw was a result of the goddess Vaheera, the goddess of sun and light who is also his mother, grabbing at his jaw to make him look up at her.

What the hell is happening to me?

Am I seeing myth or reality?