Soul made of sky by AdmirableMonster  

The guy’s feverish, fading in and out of reality, but Coyote gets his name eventually: Myron.  He’s not a walking ghost, even if that’s what they thought at first.  But he can drink water, when they give it to him, and he keeps it down.  His skin’s red and peeling, but he’s not on fire inside, not like that.  

Coyote gives him water and a little peyote, because he seems like he needs it.  Something about the eyes—like he’s locked himself up behind these walls, and he can’t see beyond ’em.  They figure the peyote might help him unlock himself a little.

Joke’s on them, because it turns out Myron is afraid of open spaces.  And that’s what he sees.  Thing is, Coyote’s good at reading people—a little too good, and yet not quite good enough.  Too good not to know that Myron’s something else, something not-quite-human in a different way from them.  Too good not to know about the closed-up, locked-off.  Not good enough to realize that they’ll just be unlocking him into something else terrifying.

They lug him, trembling and shaking, over onto the cot in the disused back room.  The sun shines down blinding and burning from the single shattered skylight.

“Please,” Myron says hoarsely.  “Don’t leave me.”  Then, an afterthought, “Please—water.”

“I’ve got you,” Coyote says.  Seems strange, they’re just a stray animal shocked into consciousness in the wake of something too big for the world to handle, while Myron’s—well, he’s not human, is he?  Or not human anymore, anyway.  Coyote’s not what they were either, though, so maybe they should stop judging.

They kneel beside him with a mug of water from the broken water main and hold it to his lips while he drinks.  He moans and cries something fierce.  Over and over again he repeats the words God and forgive me.  Once he says, “I’ll fix it—I promise,” and then he’s gone again.

Coyote watches the fears passing in front of his eyes, one by one—open spaces, the god he pretends to turn toward while he flinches away instead, and the desperate feeling of isolation.  Can’t much help with any of those except the last one—Coyote’s never had any truck with real gods, and you can’t get away from open spaces in a desert.  But they can sit beside Myron and hold his hand, stroke his forehead, give him water.  Say, “I’m here.”

It’s longer than it should be before Myron’s eyes clear.  Wasn’t just the peyote, then—it was his body trying to purge something, maybe.

“Think I’m lost,” he says, voice still hoarse.

“You sure are,” Coyote agrees.  “But you ain’t alone.  You know that, right?”

Myron shakes his head.  “I’m dreaming you,” he says.

“Nah.” Coyote laughs.  “The desert’s a place of dreams, for sure, but they ain’t all your dreams.”

“There was a memory,” Myron says stubbornly.

“Probably.”

“And you kissed me.”

“Huh, did I?”

A flush, visible even beneath the mesa-red of the burns, appears on his cheeks.  “I didn’t dream that, did I?”

Coyote gets scared sometimes, too. Not of open spaces, no—they run beneath the whole desert sky, day after day, beneath the Sun or the Moon or just the Stars, with the wind that whispers through the dry hardy tufts of grass for company and nobody else, the whole world beneath and above them, stretched out and welcoming.  Nor of gods, neither—sure, they’ve avoided them, stayed away from the ugly black shadows carving out a space of gods in the middle of the desert, too hot, those shadows, a heat that burns and blisters if touched—but not cause they’re scared, it’s just sense.  Real gods ain’t got time for a person like Coyote.  But Myron’s not the only one who’s scared of loneliness, is he?

They lean in and kiss him on the mouth, squeeze his hand for good measure.  “Not dreamin’ that,” they tell him.

Myron makes a little mewling noise and kisses them back.  A cloud passes over the skylight; the light in the room goes soft and muted, almost a firelight gold.

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