through my autumn bones

She clacks like a skeleton, jaw dripping in amber as she tries to swipe away the honey bees that hum like harps. Its almost autumn now, so things are dying and hiding in the pockets of jackets, mumbling to themselves as they set their clear-ice wings asleep and forget about the hive. She can see her breath on the air now, when she gasps and heaves her lungs and out unfurls grey-liquid snakes writhing up to the sky.

He is made of dead leaves and gummy worms, she thinks, because when she tastes his skin its sweet but dead and his lips leave cold trails along her ribs. Autumn brings smells and fires, the whole world burns for her when she looks up at the sky. Leaves curl and fold inside themselves, origami animals painted gold for festivals. She imagines a fox with fur made of these ember-leaves dancing through her garden, drinking up the dying fruit and chasing the rabbits back into their warrens. The fox-god, god of autumn, at night he’ll come to her window and peer inside the gloom, a skull-mask clattering between his pointed ears.

“Your lover’s made of twigs and berries, he’s made for this season, you know?” he’ll say.

She clasps her lover’s hand and takes him to the lake where a dog chases the fishes and ducks until its legs are burning. They’ll watch the wind curl the reed between her fingers and they’ll smoke cigarettes until the sun bleeds back into the earth, a great simmering pot of scorching soup on cold autumn days.

She’s dreaming.

“When you wake up,” the fox says, “He’ll leave you.”

They met the way all lovers do, through circumstance.

Dancing, she was dancing with her arms above her head and her heels clicked the floor like horse-shoes and her eyes were closed against the spinning lights. Her blood was like honey, sweet and thick in her veins, too thick to reach her brain, sending her dizzy and fuzzy like radio static. Could’ve been the cheap vodka, she supposed, clutching at the bar and ordering a Black Russian, her heart thumping like war-boots on cracked earth.

He appeared by her side, long and made of bones the way machines are made of cogs, jutting and harsh and mechanical. He looked much older than her, technically too old to even dare to ask her to dance but she didn’t mind. The sight of him reminded her of those tall puppets on strings, the ones that tower above you at festivals and dance like they’re made of river water. She smiled, guilty and flushed, when his fingers curled around her wrist, right above her pulse, snakes tasting vibrations in the dirt.

He opened his mouth and spoke but the words were lost in the heavy thump of electro-base writhing from the speakers. Whatever he said, she nodded like she heard and suddenly she was being dragged back onto the dance floor and into the arms of this man, all points and angles and harsh lines. She could feel the curve of his hip as they swayed.

She didn’t know his name, but followed him back to his hotel across the city, followed his fingers as they brushed over her ribs and belly and cupped the flesh of her thigh.

The ceiling was like a great eye, watching and grinning, lurid and she arched her spine until she folded like tree roots.

In the morning, he brings her breakfast.

Coffee and mango-fruit, she’s squirming between sheets as the juice runs down her fingers and he watches her from across the room, poised like some wild animal, eyes gleaming-black and coal-hot. She drinks and avoids his eyes. She wants to go home.

“What’s your name?” He asks, voice as smooth as candle wax and just as dripping.

“Delilah.” She murmurs, pressing sweet orange-coloured flesh between her lips. “You can call me Lilah if you like, everyone else does.”

He doesn’t say anything, so she goes back to eating. The fruit is sweet behind her teeth, her tongue squeezing it of juice before she chews it up and swallows it away. He’s still watching her, she can see the rise and fall of his chest as he peers below his mop of dirty-brown hair, slow-steady-slow.

“Where are you from? You don’t sound like you’re from here.”

She gulps back sugary spit and smile nervously, her guts shuddering and writhing below her skin, her fingers stained and sticky. Her lungs feel too compressed, to flat, like meat kept in a tin and her heart feels pulpy and messy, covered in half-chewed bubblegum that’s stuck to the chambers and arteries and blocking the blood from flowing to the rest of her body. She feels incomplete, odd under skin, like her muscles are too big and her bones are too small.

“Oh, um, no, I’m from Berlin, originally. I moved here when I was seventeen.”

He nods vaguely and looks away.

“Its nice, your accent. It sounds… nice.”

She smiles but it doesn’t meet her eyes.

“Thank you.”

The air hangs awkward between them, empty and full at the same time, spitting like roasting pig.

She wants to go home.

“I have to go to work.” He says, arching his back and squaring his shoulders, lips twisting along his jaw into a hard grimace, unnatural on his sweet face. She likes the look of him, likes his messy hair and his stubble-chin and his lumber-jack shirt and black jeans and big, calloused hands that she can remember running over her sides and tickling her skin.

“I’m sorry,” she dips her head, like she had seen her mother doing when she was a child, like a geisha being humble, like a Parisian woman bowing her neck so red-soft lips could meet the side of her jaw. “Am I intruding?”

Work. He must be on a business trip, she thinks, except he is wearing such casual clothes to be a normal business man. She looks around the room to spot a suit but there is none.

“Not at all. Actually…” He looks out of the window awkwardly, his fingers tugging on his shirt-tails like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. “Actually I was hoping you would stay here until I come back. We could… we could go out, when I come back.”

He thinks I’m going to run away, she marvels, and finds her belly growing warm.

“I… if that’s what you want.”

She doesn’t know what to say. Should she stay in this grand hotel room, eating mango fruit and rooting around his things with wriggling-worm fingers, or should she politely decline and go home? Home is safe, home is warm, home does not have eyes like black holes ripping through the haunches of the universe, or sit in such a way that makes her think of cats perching on walls with questioning faces. Home is real and to look at him it is as if he is not.

“It is, very much so,” He nods his head and stands up, all bones and joints and stretched skin. The thought of him, his bruised hips and curved spine, makes her belly turn hot and cloying, angry claws rolling around her guts. Her lips twitch into a smile and he watches her with a bemused, cautious expression.

“Be back soon.” She whispers and there is a glint behind his ever-so-dark pupils that tells her he understands.

“Humans are such simple things,” the Fox says, his tail whirling, lavish and soft, around her bare back and up her spine. “Give them the promise of sex and the world clicks into place.”

“We’re simple,” She repeats, glazed and horribly aware of how alone she is, in the white hotel sheets, crumpled around her hips, with such a burning, deceitful fox dancing around her. “We’re not that simple. After sex comes other things.”

“Oh?”

“I could spend hours telling you.”

About the heart-jolts, the little dances her body did when she was content and charmed and empty and sad. How could she tell an animal about human emotions when the concept tied her brain with threads of confusion anyway? How could she tell this thing, this fox, this spirit, of things too small for gods to care for?

“I’m interested. Teach me.”

Of course, she is dreaming.

“How can I?” She asks him, pulling the fur around her fingers and watching his great amber eyes roll back into his skull. “You’re just a malevolent creature.”

“Teach me.” He hisses and she wakes up.

She reads a strangers journals.

He keeps them all in a brown-papered box with a few photographs of lanterns and fish markets and strangers standing on the beach. There are five volumes, all black and leather-bound and smell crisp and ancient with spices and ink.

He is a strange man, she thinks, her fingers tracing the ink-splatters and odd drawings of creatures dressed in furs that don’t belong to them, their eyes leering and peering like characters in children’s books. They are so odd, some with long bodies that wind around the page and dance across his illegible scrawl, their arms clutching at titles and dates and names that spark nothing inside of her.

He writes like he isn’t a person. He writes like an observer, an atom amongst fleshy eyeballs, a man inside the jungle with apes. He talks of France, of smoking-streets and the pillow-eyed whores and the wine and he talks of Japan and how the monks gave him little red tokens and balls of rice and let him stay the night in their temples. He has been all over the world, sampling every dish of life as if he’s never tasted it before. She looks for any mention of Germany and finds only an entry about the Christmas markets and the smells of crepes and pretzels making the air thick and hot on his tongue.

I miss the carnivals of China, where I could walk without my autumn-coat.

“What?” She whispers, her words floating like streamers with nowhere to land.

She puts the journals back into their box, feeling vaguely guilty for prying, and goes to peer out of the window and down at London’s busy streets. So big a city, winding and curling and falling over itself to move forwards, to steer the ship endlessly out to sea. She can just make out people wriggling on the pavement, walking through throngs of crowds to get to work, home, to the pub, to lunch, to a place where they feel whole again. Never stopping to breathe in the world and smell the soft-tongued whisper of earth under their feet.

She gets hungry and orders pancakes and coffee and eats them on the floor next to the window, watching the tumbling clouds move like great elephants in the sky. Afterwards her fingers are sticky again so she showers and uses his shampoo, burrowing in his clothes to pull out a lovely woollen jumper that smells oddly like her mother’s house. She wears that instead of her own clothes, still stinking of cigarettes and spilt vodka.

Curling back in bed she feels safe and full and thinks herself as a rabbit, curled up in some huge doe’s womb, warm and small and forever safe.

Things I hate about her:

1) She touches all the time.

2) She licks her fingers if they’re sticky, like a dog.

3) She smokes too much.

4) She dances all the time, even when there’s no music.

5) She doesn’t like whiskey.

6) She likes romantic comedies. For teenagers.

7) She can’t sing.

8) She’s nosy.

She wakes up because she can feel fingers in her hair.

“Fox?” She croaks and the fingers stop moving completely, scalded and awkward. She sits up and finds him hunched beside her in a crumpled business suit with the smell of forests and cigarette smoke clinging to his skin.

“I’m not-” She smiles and drags him towards her and buries her face into the crook of his neck. “I’m Roe.”

“Mr Roe,” She sighs, and kisses his face all over, tasting air and ash and the cloying, sweet tang of earth.

“Just Roe, please.”

She thinks of how easily it is to fall in love, even with strangers. A look or a kiss or a word here and there, gentle fingers pressing against the fold of your elbow and all of a sudden your guts are jerking and you’re a shambling, melodic wreck.

The fox was right.

Dinner is horrible.

Roe looks pale and crooked under artificial lights and he moves his fork around the plate with bland distaste. She feels awful about suggesting this restaurant, figures she ought to have known that he wasn’t the kind of man to go for English food, especially after his world travels. She wants to ask about them, but then he’ll know she’s been prying. She feels like a little girl instead of twenty five, and here is a man who doesn’t know how to deal with children.

“Why did you call me fox?” He asks, his voice like black oil, dripping.

She clenches her finger around her wine glass and tries to smile it off.

“Oh, its just, silly things. Sometimes I dream about this fox.” He looks eager and of course, she thinks brightly, her smile curling higher, he wants to talk about exciting, odd things, being a man of the world and all. “He, uh, it tells me things and asks me questions.”

“A fox?” His eyebrows shoot up and her heart burns in embarrassment. Maybe he shouldn’t know after all.

“Well, I don’t know.” Delilah laughs awkwardly and looks across the room, the haze of steam and warmth curling around her body like a towering, grey woman is wrapping a blanket around her shoulders and singing softly in her ear. “I told my father about it, he said it might be my subconscious taking form. He said it happens a lot in folk tales and I used to live off them when I was little. Probably left something behind in my mind, you know?”

Roe nods, looking thoughtful as he swirls red wine gracefully between long fingers. He’s so beautiful, she thinks, all elegant and long instead of jerking and odd like her. He has been to so many places, seen so many things, how could she ever entertain him? All she can offer him is her body, a warm creature to sleep next to at night. She looks down at her food and her stomach feels too tight to eat, as if some fat rabbit with long limbs has climbed down her mouth and settled for a sleep in the pit of her belly.

“I met a fox once.”

She glances up at him and feels her stomach clench.

“Oh, an urban fox?” she smiles politely and nibbles on a carrot, unsure of what to do with herself.

“No. A bit brute of a fox, with a long tail that curled around him like a woman’s fur coat. He was born in the bark of a great oak tree in the middle of this dense, humid forest.”

Delilah’s heart sparks and warms as she realises he’s telling her a folk tale, just the same way her father did, with a lowered voice and eyes that light up her soul. She feels her cheeks go warm, kissed by something soft, something that belongs in her childhood, not on a date; that pooling happiness that never goes away, no matter how many times you hiss at it and think of adult things like mortgages and family. “All the animals were gods, so they had to wear masks, to keep the human’s from seeing their faces. You see, humans can’t take such beauty and they go mad. The gods are amused by people, so they wear masks made of bone and leaves and dance and hunt and play chess all day and all night, to entertain the humans as well as themselves.”

“Play chess?” He smiles for the first time in a while and she chews on roasted-potato to hide her grin.

“Oh yes. The bear-god especially likes chess. He once bet his cubs to the tree-gods and the mother was so angry she tore down every tree she could find looking for them. In her haste she tore at an oak tree, so thick that it caught her claws between its bark-fingers, so she had to bite the bark away and lick the tree-glue from her fur before she could get away. In the side of the tree she left a huge hole, oozing with sap and broken wood.”

Delilah grins and takes another sip of wine to wash her food down. Its smooth in her mouth and she can feel her head lolling into her hands, her brain slick with a soup of alcohol, making the tendrils behind her skull buzz and fizz.

“Did she find her cubs?”

“Yeah, she did. But she was cursed by the tree gods for destroying so many trees. They forced her to take off her mask. That’s why people are so scared of bears now, and that’s why they always look so sad. The gods really like people, you see.”

She doesn’t remember being told a story like this. Perhaps he’s making it up? She wonders idly, stabbing a parsnip with her fork as she watched him continue. “Anyway, in the oak tree she wounded there was a patch of red fur, burning like the forest in autumn. Of course, everyone already knew about the fox gods, they were wicked creatures, always grinning and trying to lure lambs with songs. The other gods hated them. But here was a new fox, fresh from a tree, not born in the spirit houses like the other gods. They thought he must be a very old god, who had fallen asleep and had a tree grow round him. So they woke him up and he said he used to be a human, like you. The other gods laughed and took their masks off and when he didn’t go blind they laughed some more, telling him he must still be waking up.”

“Your brain goes fuzzy.” She puts in, munching on another sweet parsnip.

“Yeah, it does. But he insisted he was once a human, so he went out into the human world, outside of the forest, and that’s where I met him.”

“What did he say?”

“He didn’t say anything. He just ate me.”

She bursts out laughing, clinking china and wine glasses as her knee hits the underside of the table, sending bread-rolls tumbling across their food like frightened rabbits. Roe makes a grab for the wine bottle, smiling softly and watching her through his coal-eyes.

“What a great story. You should write that down for your kids.”

He frowns.

“I don’t have any kids.”

“Oh, I mean, you know. When you have them. My dad told me stories like that, except he got his out of books from the library. Did you make that up?”

His smile gets cattish and he takes a sip of his wine, his lips stained red with it, making him look younger and more devilish.

“I met him, didn’t I? I didn’t make it up.”

“Well, how did you get out of his stomach then?” She smirks, her spine arching forwards.

“He spat me back out. Said I tasted too bland for him. He wasn’t a fan of English food.”

She goes home to her flatmate Owl, singing and flying because that’s what happens when you’re romanced through words. She thinks of his dark eyes and her bones warm up from the marrow, she thinks of his calloused hands and her skin grows tight with goosebumps.

They meet many times again, for coffee, to shop for books, to watch old films at the small cinema tucked behind several fetish shops (he had asked her how she knew of it and she‘d grinned like a wildcat). Sometimes he comes back to her small flat, shared with an owl-eyed girl that spends all her time making masks and costumes for the rich kids on the west side having parties and gallery openings, all wanting to be original and interesting.

She’s happy and the fox doesn’t come into her dreams anymore.

It’s the beginning of autumn and the trees are starting to shed their leaves, shivering as the cold meets their naked branches. For her birthday he buys her a baby rabbit called Bone because its all white with these empty, milky eyes that should see nothing. She asks if he’s blind but Roe just smiles and shakes his head, no. Bone lives in the living room as a house-rabbit and her flatmate falls in love and lets him hop around, lazy and bored, as she makes her masks. Often Delilah comes home to find small paint globs on the floor as Bone bounced away, dipping his toes into art and glue and then running all over the flat.

It doesn’t matter that he’s thirty six. It doesn’t matter that he’s posh and cringes when she swears or make lewd remarks. It doesn’t matter that he looks away when she’s clumsy, his face tight, or that she hates the way he answers her questions (evasive, his eyes always looking up at the sky, as if it‘ll offer her the answers instead.) and the way he turns to stone when she touches him. It doesn’t matter because they are gods and they have to wear bone-masks to keep everyone else away, its just them, in the forest, with no one looking in.

Autumn brings a wind that sets her bones cold and drags a dead-ice finger under her chin, whispering of all the wonderful places in the world.

The fox comes back.

“You’re teaching me a lot.” He says, his grin vicious and stretched across his wet muzzle. His fur isn’t soft anymore, but sticky and slick with sap and when he curls his long tail around her and slides against her ribs and shoulders he leaves a trail of thick-smelling ooze behind. “You’re too complex. Every smile sends you jumping, every fingertip sends you humming. And your organs swell, so good for eating, yes, yes.”

“You’re going to eat me?” She asks, leaning back against the headboard and watching him wind around the room like a bright orange streamer, or a kite with the strings cut away.

“Your blood is too sweet for me. But you’re so young and he is as old as time and others will enjoy the taste, so watch out.”

She doesn’t understand. She’s dreaming.

“He wouldn’t eat me. He loves me.”

The fox curls up her front, his paws resting on her shoulders as he twists his head so one huge, syrupy eye can stare at her, glassy like taxidermy animals, but moving all the same.

“Love is just another type of hunger, my sweet, and he is so ancient and tired he’ll eat you for your energy.”

She wakes up cold with Roe’s arms around her, his fingers looped over her stomach and his face buried in the notch of her spine, breathing deeply.

“You’re not a monster, are you Roe?” She asks.

There’s a silence and he doesn’t wake up.

“I’m not a monster, no. Just a fox.”

He moves hotels to the other side of the city, closer to her flat, in the crooked, darker areas of London where musicians and writers and artists scavenge for money, rats made of music and words and paint. She worries for him, tall and thin and never content with the food in front of him.

The autumn-world gets darker and colder and there are smells on the air that seem to be dragging him away. She catches him staring at the train stations and the winding, thin alleys that lead to deeper bellies of the city, where small treasures are hidden away behind crumbling walls and the people are full of surprises. She knows that look, the look of longing, its what she felt deep in her bones when she was seventeen and desperate, desperate for the glitter-lights of London instead of the gentle lanterns of Berlin. Wander-lust, it sets its claws so deep they are hard to shake away.

“What is it that you do?” She asks, clearing her throat to keep her thoughts away. “You never told me.” They are walking along a grey street, next to a park where the leaves flutter like kestrels as they swoop to catch their mice. The wind is strong and pushes behind them, urging them forwards, butting like moody old goats and she can see his eyes set like hard, cold coal instead of burning.

There’s something wrong.

“You never asked before.” He bites, brow furrowing and lips twisting into a frown, as if the subject of his work leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

“Well?”

“Its not interesting, Delilah. Don’t concern yourself with it.” he walks faster, hands in the pockets of his jacket, his shoulders hunched against her. She’s so sick of his evasiveness and twirling answers, giving her cryptic clues instead and laughing as she dances madly after them, desperate for a tiny speck of knowledge. Anything about him, anything at all, she wants to gobble up all there is to him and feel him settle in her belly, forever.

“Well I was just asking,” She spits, stomping after him. “S’cuse me for just wanting to know the man I shag every other night.”

He twists his hips and storms into the park, leaves whispering and rattling like old women gossiping, twigs snapping and crackling under his heavy boots and her thick heels. Their scarves flutter and coil and she has to jog to catch up with him, her legs trembling like a lamb’s as she clambers over puddles of ice, trying not to fall.

“Why’d you have to be so crude?” He snarls, kicking an old coke bottle out of the way. “You make me sick.”

“I make you sick?” she sneers, “I make you sick because I don’t hide behind these mysterious, pathetic lies and excuses made by some… some tit!”

She’s screaming now, and he jerks around like a puppet. People on walks turn to look at them, hiding their smiles behind gloved hands, always enthralled to see a couple arguing. Like telly with fresh air.

“What?”

“I keep asking you these sodding questions because you don’t tell me anything! I could be fucking a serial killer for all I know, you don’t say anything. You just turn up with stories and small animals and fuck me and leave me!”

“I don’t.” He growls, stalking forwards. All of a sudden Delilah remember how tall he is.

“You do.” She shrieks, pushing his chest so he stumbles backwards. “You do, you do, you do!”

“Don’t be so childish.” His face is clipped like thunder and she’s reminded of paintings she’s seen of Zeus or stern-faced warriors. Red in the cheeks, eyes like volcano mouths, teeth bared like a spitting animal. She thrills at the sight, but she curls her lips and snarls back just as ferociously.

“Oh, shit off. Stop lording your age about, like you’re my dad or summat.”

“Stop acting like a little girl then!”

“Piss off!” She screams and everyone looks away again, awkward. She’s seething, thrumming under her clothes with wild anger, anger she hardly ever feels towards someone like him, someone she’s hopelessly, hopelessly in love with. She wants to smack him, watch him bleed, but he’s too regal, too perfect for fisticuffs, she thinks viciously, far too sophisticated to take up arms against a little girl.

She turns on her heels and ducks her head and her heart is hammering, clamouring about her ribs like a ferret in a rabbit hole. Bloody bastard.

“What’s wrong?” Owl asks blandly as Delilah slams a coffee cup on the side and watches Bone go running into the living room, ears twitching in fright.

“What a cunt.” She spits acidly, her fingers curling like claws, thinking of blood as she rips out his heart and feeds it to the fox (who’s right, again, of course.) “He’s eating me slowly.”

“What? You’re going out with a cannibal?”

“Shut up.” Owl flutters nervously and tweaks her glasses, her fingers coated in paint and ink, looking as if she has just performed surgery on a creature made of wine and berries, her palms catching the drips as they slide down her wrist. “What’re you making?” she asks softly.

“Bear costumes.” She’s made bear costumes a million times before, all different kinds, some like pagan gods, some like artic camouflage, some just like teddy bears, Delilah thinks as she watches her try to manoeuvre a cup out of the cupboard without using her fingers. “Kids today are so boring. What happened to tigers and whales and things?”

“I suppose, what with them all dying everywhere, kids today just don’t want that kind of downer on their party.” She replies blithely.

“Guess so.”

There’s a long pause as the kettle boils and the smell of coffee waves around them like a seagull, cheeky and fluttering and lovely.

“I think me and Roe broke up.” She sighs.

“Oh dear.” Deer, when was the last time Owl made a deer mask? People only want things with fangs these days. People are too wild. “What happened?”

“I called him my dad.”

“During sex?” Owl’s face is the picture of horror as she pauses with a cup clutches tightly between her wrists, her nose wrinkled in disgust. Delilah hides her smile and turns back to the kettle.

“No, you tit, just in an argument.” She moves to put the water in her cup and watches it turn black and putrid with cheap coffee. Disgusting, but its better than nothing. “He was being all enigmatic again.”

“I thought you liked that?” Owl slips her cup under her arm and grins triumphantly as she starts pouring water into it, a job well done for owl-girl and her magic hands, perhaps.

“I do, but after a while it just gets annoying.” She brings her coffee to her lips and winces at the bitter taste, the warmth licking at her face like a friendly dog, welcoming. “I’m a shit girlfriend.”

“Yeah,” Owl sighs, picking her cup up and dumping three spoons of sugar into it, not bothering to stop the inky paint smearing all over the handle and rim. She probably consumes enough of it to be unhealthy, Delilah thinks, but it just makes her twitchy instead of sick. “You want to go dancing?”

Dancing would be nice. To feel the lights warm her head and have strangers clutch her wrist as electro squirts like jets from the speakers, vibrant and colourful and disasters. Dancing would take her mind off of things. Dancing would make it all better.

“Not tonight,” She murmurs, “The wind is too cold.”

Roe comes back.

His eyes are feverish, like the wind has injected his bones with the disease of autumn and its turned him wild and feral like a dog kept out at night. She opens the door to him and there’s a gust of wind, pushing her with pillows of cold, sending him into her with arms gripping her back, pulling her up into him. He’s warm, she thinks, warm all over and she can feel the cold melt from him like snow.

“M’sorry,” She gasps, pressing her face into his chest and breathing in the scent of smoke.

“I feel sick,” He hacks, his lungs wheezing as he half-drags, half-pulls them back into the flat, kicking the door shut with his heavy boot. She presses her fingers to his cheeks and flinches at how cold his skin is.

“What’s wrong?”

“I feel like my bones are hollow. I feel like my lungs are trying to claw out of my chest.”

Owl appears next to them, her eyes wide, fingers splaying on Delilah’s arm.

“Does he want to go to the hospital?” She asks, her small shoulders rolling.

“No. I just need to lie down.” he pushes them aside and stumbles into Delilah’s bedroom, shrugging his coat off and falling back onto her bed with a savage sigh, a sigh made of groaning bears and screaming hawks. She bends to her knees and helps to take his boots off, followed by his jeans. “Keep me warm.”

They curl up in bed together and he shivers violently for ages before she can sooth him to sleep. She sings him folk songs and songs she heard on the radio and her favourite songs of all time and the songs her friend’s band plays. She doesn’t know what else to do, but Owl sings her songs when she’s ill so she hopes it‘ll work just the same.

“How can you eat me? You don’t even eat normal food. That fox is a filthy liar.” She whispers, her fingers crawling through his hair. “No wonder you’re ill, you’re starving yourself to death.”

She blends bananas and apples and milk and makes him a smoothy to give him healthy vitamin c. Flu and colds need vitamin c to help them grow healthy again. He hardly eats a thing, she thinks, no wonder he’s curled up in her bed like that. Owl bends over him as he sleeps, hot with fever and smelling sickly sweet, her nose wrinkled as Delilah makes him carrot and parsnip soup as well, autumn food for autumn illness. Outside the city burns red and gold as the few trees left for show drop the last of their leaves and Halloween creeps up like a demon. Everyone dresses up, knocks on doors and gets so drunk they end up kissing the devil whilst they are a witch.

Owl goes out with a promise to bring back sweets and alcohol and Delilah sits gloomily in the living room watching old zombie films and eating stale popcorn. She wants to go out, feel the thrill of being in disguise at night as the earth decays softly. Owl had made her a brilliant costume too, after she had found little drawings she had done of the gods Roe had told her about. She had sewn and stitched and glued Delilah her very own god-skin and it is perfect and wonderful and now it is left to waste.

She has to look after her sick, moody boyfriend.

Roe pads softly into the room, wrapped up in a blanket with his face all puffy and red and snotty.

“I’m sorry.” He says awkwardly. “You can go out, if you like. I’m better.”

“Shut up, you invalid. Do you want to watch zombies eating people?” She pats the sofa next to her and grins.

“Ok.”

They watch guts and blood fly around the television screen but its boring and soon she ends up straddling his hips and biting his neck like a vampire. “What’re you doing?” He sniffs.

“Turning you into the dead.”

“I don’t want to be a zombie.” She bites and tastes and wonders why his skin always tastes of smoke even though she has to practically ram a cigarette between his lips before he’ll smoke it. Its like he’s always around fires or showers in lava or something. Perhaps he is a demon, she thinks, grinning against him. The wooden taste makes her stomach grow tight though, and she nuzzles him and nips at his collarbone.

The heat between them is electric, a sparking heat like they are breathing embers and dead-leaves and wood rotting at the core. The smell of him, of forests and smoke and the juts of his hips sends her spiralling, makes her stomach clench and her guts jerk against her skin as if they are trying to wriggle free, fleshy snakes with leering eyes. She bites him and her teeth scrape flesh.

“Tough shit, Mr Roe, its Halloween and the dead are calling you home.”

He freezes again and the taste of smoke sends her dizzy and before she knows it she’s on her back and his hands are under her shirt, scratching at her ribs and belly with sharp nails. She gasps and jerks away, her hips clashing with his as he crawls on top of her, eyes burning like hot oil. “What-”

“They’re calling me home, you’re right.”

The expression on his face scares her. Its hungry, but not the type of hunger she usually catches him wearing, the one that hungers for her body, for her skin, for her warmth. This hunger looks as if its after her bones, her flesh, her sweet-honey blood. He looks demonic, feral and barbaric with his poison-eyes and his curled fingers clutching at her hips.

“What is this?” She asks, her heart fluttering wildly behind the cage of her ribs.

“Does that fox ever visit you anymore, Delilah?” His voice is like candle-wax still, only its dripping on her, scorching, branding, and she’s shuddering, unsure. His eyes are so, so…

“No.” She lies.

He stares at her and suddenly, like a shark smashing into the side of a boat, all teeth and angles and flying bone, he’s on her, pressing her into the sofa and curling around her. She imagines blood in milk and lets him overtake her, gobble her up like a hungry wolf, because its what she wants and he’s a tsunami in skin, unstoppable, wild, a creature of fangs and claws.

She doesn’t know anything about him.

“I told you he’d eat you.” Fox purrs, his long tongue licking her belly. “And now look at this.”

“What?” She puts her fingers to his skull and pushes them against his skin, marvelling at how warm he is. Warmer than Roe, warmer than anything she had ever felt before.

“Eating you slowly. He’s a smart one, this creature.”

“He’s a business man. He has to be smart.” His tail folds over her toes and she is snuggled against his chest like she’s his daughter and for a minute she wonders if that’s how he sees her, as a pup, as a kit for him to nuzzle over, but the thought stops when he grins down at her, yellowing teeth glowing like gold. He’s toying with her, she’s just a snared rabbit and he’s enjoying the show. Of course, of course.

“He’s not a business man, my sweet. He’s a nothing.”

“When you wake up, he’ll leave you.”

When she wakes up, he’s gone.

There’s a note on the table, on top of a leather-bound journal she recognises as his. Its his newest one, one she sees him scribbling in at every possible moment, his long fingers tracing ink and blotting out misused words. She’s always been tempted to read that one, to see what he thinks of her, but something stops her, something that tells her it might not be love poetry and folk tales.

I’m not a monster, no. Just a fox.

I’m really sorry, Delilah, but I’m going away.

She reads it over and over and anger snarls in her guts like wolves but when she unlocks her jaw to let them out all that tumbles from her lips is a small sigh. She sort of felt it, under his skin when she set her palm flat, the thrum of other worlds, travelling and seeing and smelling things that weren’t just bland and British. Of course he doesn’t like England the way she does, it isn’t his home, but it isn’t her home either. Berlin is where she was born and London is where she flowered into the person she is. Neither is her home, he is her home, she is her own home.

But she loves London.

People who travel and know that there is a world beyond their feet never let go of that twisting, desperate rope that drags them ever forwards. They can never settle, they’re like migrating birds, always moving because to stop is to die.

She was killing him by making him stay. He was eating her slowly in the hope to live long enough to satisfy her. The fox is right, again.

“Fuck,” She breathes, moving forwards to pick up his journal.

Its full of pictures, little biro drawings of creatures she recognises as the gods in his stories. There is papa-bear gambling away his children in a game of chess, and mama-bear tearing away the trees to look for her babies. There’s the fox asleep in the tree, forever sleeping, slick and wet with sap and dew, like a baby slipping free of the womb. She smiles when she finds another picture, one of him being swallowed by a huge, grinning fox. Her heart stutters at how familiar it is, like he has reached in her skull with his long fingers and picked out her dreams like slithers of meat.

There’s drawings of her too. Asleep and naked, when she didn’t know he was watching. Awake, some taken from pictures they had taken together on Owl’s battered old camera. Some of them are crap, she giggles, tears welling, like little stick-people holding hands or kissing or running through the park and watching dogs swim in the waters and scare away the ducks.

The entries hurt the most, because he left them behind and now all he has of her is memories and they are never strong.

I met a girl yesterday with hair like autumn, eyes that smile constantly and fingers that are desperate for skin. She likes folk stories and dreams about foxes and wears my jumpers without asking, despite not knowing me.

She’s beautiful.

Some are not so nice, but there is no hatred behind them.

Owl comes home and sits next to her, frowning.

“Where’s Roe?” She asks, picking up the note and dropping it back onto the coffee table softly. “Oh.”

“He’s gone back to China, I think. He doesn’t have to wear his autumn coat there.”

“Are you ok?”

She nods but she’s crying all the same.

Its Christmas and she sips hot chocolate in a huge mug, her hands pink with the warmth seeping from it. The street below her is wet and dripping at the edges, like a painting stood up before it has the chance to dry. Everything smudges into itself, merges colour and light in blobs, like she’s been crying and can’t see through the tears.

“So fox, where are you tonight?”

There’s no answer, but he never visits her outside of her dreams. “Mr Roe? Do you two travel together this time of year? Maybe you’re both at the Christmas markets, eating crepes and honey and visiting my old home?”

Silence is loud and she can hear the street groaning under cars, ice cracking and people laughing down below, slopping beer over one another, grinning and warm in the bars and pubs. “You can have each other.” She says softly. “You’re both too wild for me.” Too full of fangs

She closes the window and goes to sit back inside. Owl is wearing a reindeer mask and is grinning at the television, hands curled around her mug. The whole flat smells of Christmas, warm and wonderful, hot chocolate and dust and turkey and chocolate cake. It’s A Wonderful Life is on telly, as is tradition.

She sits down and they huddle under the quilt, the cold biting at their heels.

“I wouldn’t leave you.” Fox smiles. “You’re so sweet and young.”

“Merry Christmas.” She murmurs, ignoring him. They’re sat on her roof but the cold doesn’t touch them, not like the moon, the moon is right next to them, grinning wide and motherly, a swollen belly blushing grey. The ancient street lamp, follow it and eventually you’ll get home. She wonders if Roe looks at it as a mother, the way she does, in his far-off countries.

“You shouldn’t miss him. He’s eating mango.”

She laughs and cries at the same time.

“I don’t miss him. He was never warm enough, not for autumn.”

“Not like me.”

“I suppose not.” She wraps his tail around her arms, like the women in olden times did, to show the world their status, because death equals worth in those days. His fur is warm and smells of autumn, of dead leaves and smoke and she smiles into it, strands tickling her cheeks and eyelids like soft-feather kisses.

“I have to go too. Autumn is my home, I’ve already overstayed my welcome.”

“I figured. You and him are the same thing, aren’t you?”

“In a way.” Fox hisses, rolling under her legs and back over her shoulders. “I’ll come visit again. I learnt a lot.”

“I’ll see you in a year then.” she kisses him between his shoulder blades and wakes up.

FIN.

a.n:

i hope this makes sense to you. i wanted to make a folk-tale type of thing but it went wrong and a bit odd. oh well. what's better than autumn and new romance and lots of coffee in the big city? nothing, of course. i wrote this listening to beirut a lot, who are brilliant, you should go find them if you haven't heard them. i wrote this when my toes were cold and i missed london, so it might be a bit nostalgic, i don't know. i hope you like it, because i like you. i miss germany too. i miss a lot of places. cheer me up with kind words? x