He went alone to the glade in the alder wood and sat on one of the decaying stone benches. Suffering doesn’t arise or disappear, but morphs, and here as a child he did battle with its shapes. Why, after all, had he felt an attachment to this place? Because he was born here? The only birth that matters is birth into the world, and the world was no more or less here than anywhere. Soon he would be free of it, like everyone.

Each minute he discovered a tense muscle and laxed it until he was still. Objects ceased to have a right to his attention just for existing. The exhaust from his nostrils vaporized them. Molasses rose from the ground into his feet. He dreamt of all the things that were not his problem, the places he would never see, the people he would never make small talk with, the children he would never rear, the battles he would sleep through and the noble causes that would never ignite his wet conscience. The gods would throw parties, and he would stay home.

He played at moving the muscles in his fingers, but withdrew from flexing them, flirting with exertion only to quash it, letting his limbs rejoice in impotence. The idea of moving became distant, and he was sinking into the stone, shadows of motion peeling off of his body in wasted potentials. Scores of futures projected before him, and something deeper than pleasure attended the thought that none of them would come to pass, that he would sit here and never do, or be, anything or anyone again, that the energy and mechanism of the world would be forever robbed of one of its moving pieces.

His heart stopped. Insects tickled his knees and eyelids. The sun left a comet’s trail as the sky changed color. The gargoyles were arranged on the lip of the fountain before him, each atop a small dais, facing outward, away from the others and the stagnant muck behind them in the pool. His father spoke of sacred things, but the fountain was in disrepair, and no one came to it. The gargoyles seemed relieved that age had worn away the details of their appearance and brought the promise of eventual disintegration. As Didymos hardened, he saw himself perched on the fountain.

Time long past, water would be poured into the dish above, then flow down thirteen miniature aqueducts and on through the holes in the back of their heads, to seep out of their mouths as drool, eroding their chests and mixing behind them to be recycled. They saw only before them, and imagined the water came from them as if from their own power, when it fact it was regurgitated endlessly from conspirators of which they were forever unaware, their blind gazes locked in place. There in the alders they spat in each other’s mouths and absorbed each other’s waste. Now the water was still and opaque, scarcely seen, let alone replaced.

Parrhesia was there on the bench. Her eyes were on him, but the effort of meeting them was too much to bother with, so he curled his mouth flippantly to let her know that if she had any triteness in her, it was time to get rid of it. Let’s see what she comes up with.

“I’m sorry for what happened to your birthright. Soph told me.”

“Okay.”

“I hope you’re not upset with Max, though. He’s your brother, these things are complicated. He must have had his reasons. I mean, I hope you don’t hurt him.”

“Hurt him? Am I even capable of that?” He looked around for sympathy from an absent audience. “Am I some kind of fucking animal? Hurt him!” The heartbeat came back. “Anyway, you can only get hurt by things that are part of you. Max isn’t any part of me. If I had a brother, I wouldn’t be alone, but I am alone, so I must not have a brother, or how is that for Reason?”

She lowered her head and picked at her thumbs. She was upset, but with herself, the only way she knew how.

“I mean, I actually never had a sister. Or, you know, a brother.”

“That’s tragic.”

She was squinting. “Look, I know you weren’t so hot on hearing about this before, but I just thought I should say…” She sighed as if in difficulties and looked away. She held her neck in place for a moment, expecting Didymos to fill the gap she left, but he didn’t feel like it, so she was forced to complete her thought.

“It’s times like these when the call to Him is most powerful. Even if your earthly family fails you, your real family can’t – I mean, we are all part of your family, everyone. You don’t have to be like this, or to be with them. You don’t have to deny His potection, and community.”

Didymos said nothing. She stood up.

“When I felt alone – when I feel alone. I understand how it is for you, I was the same way. I have Soph, but it’s just not the same.”

It was an unfortunate kind of intelligence that made Parrhesia unaccustomed to failure, and so confident in her wits’ ability to puzzle her way out of longings she didn’t know the source of and that she would never satisfy. At this rate, the world would never beat the fool out of her, and she would go on swallowing nonsense without ever vomiting it back up again, which stupid people all find out at some point that they have to do.

“That’s part of worshipping Him. Our mortal fathers, you know, they only reflect His role–”

He pointed. “That’s Him right there.”

“What?”

“That one with his palm up. To your right, one more over. Yeah, that one. He used to be holding an hourglass.”

She ran her thumb across the gargoyle’s face.

“He used to have…features, too.”

“This is Logos? You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. See, that’s a beard, and the thing He’s standing on is a sundial. You see it?”

She looked back, her eyes a little wide because she’d been condescended to. “What I mean is, why isn’t He in the middle?”

“What? Why would He be?”

“He’s the demiurge. That’s his proper place. He’s never – or He shouldn’t be anyway – depicted equally among the other archons. He’s always to be in the middle, how can you not know this?”

“Yeah, but that was made before.”

“What was?”

“The fountain. They made it before He was the demiurge.”

“What the hell are you talking about? That doesn’t even make any sense.”

“Okay, apparently this upsets you. Then let’s stop talking about it.”

She realized she’d held eye contact for too long, twitched, looked down, and turned around. “You know, technically – I mean, according to the laws, this shouldn’t even be here. You’re not even supposed to technically make a thing like this, by all rights it could be torn down, I think it could be fairly seen as blasphemous.”

“Parrhesia, it’s a fucking fountain. Would you give it a rest? Come on, sit down.”

She was still looking at it. “How old exactly do you think this is?”

“I don’t know. They used to maintain it better, a long time ago, or that’s what they say anyway.”

“When I learned about your people’s beliefs, I expected something, I don’t know what. But this is ridiculous. I mean, look at this, they look like beasts or something. It’s disturbing.”

“It’s supposed to be like that, that’s the point. They’re hideous, so their statues are hideous. They took what they wanted, and then said it was theirs all along.” Mid-speech he had an upwelling, his heart beat a little faster, and in the moment he pressed on with a twinge of guilty pleasure at a small blasphemy. “And it’s bad enough without you singing their praises for it.”

She laughed falsely. “You are something else, you know that? I think all of your bitterness, and I do mean all of it, not just this, is just from bad thinking. If you thought straight, you’d know that something you created couldn’t possibly belong to someone else beforehand.”

“No, goddamnit, what I’m saying is – look, they weren’t that way all along, I mean, all of the archons used to be human, do you understand? Sure, they made the world and so were always archons, but that’s only because they made it that way in retrospect, they invented the history of the world once they became archons, do you see what I mean?” He flushed: it sounded incredible.

Parrhesia eased, satisfied she’d destroyed whatever threat she perceived. “Okay, whatever you say.”

“I’m just saying what I learned as a child.” He deflated. Some indignation stayed in his voice, as if defending something, but as soon as the words were out, the very idea of disputing the issue, or any issue, suddenly was of no interest. Parrhesia was of no interest. She had just said the last thing he would ever be interested in hearing.

Parrhesia sat down, and after some silence started talking again. He fixated on the gargoyle nearest to him. It was difficult to look away from it: it was under some optical spell, and wherever he moved his eyes, he saw it from the same angle. It spun around without moving. The gargoyle is moving me, it commands my eyes. The exercise was a strain, and the pain at the edge of his right eye returned. He closed his eyelids for several seconds and opened them again, with faith that he could reset himself, but still looking away didn’t work, and it was impossible to describe how it didn’t.

He got up and circled round it. The statue persisted – His mask followed him, and the amused upward curve of the eye slits shone with the foliage passing behind them. He had a real name, but Didymos was at the edge of memory: to his family, He had always been the Idiot. He’d never paid the gargoyle any mind before, but it now struck him as a geometric marvel, and he was momentarily annoyed he couldn’t see through the trick. The conceit only broke when he came to the statue’s backside, wherefrom it was apparent, in tune with the stories, that He had no face behind the mask, which was propped up by a pole that rose from somewhere beneath His robes.

Didymos imagined what duties that the Idiot carried out for the demiurge, spinning and smiling. It was rumored that one of his silent consorts appeared before the panicked and alone, to watch them kill themselves. The water passed through nothing on its way to the mask’s mouth. Parrehsia was still talking. “Fuck, what is it?”

“I said, will you come with us to the ruin? I’d feel better with you there.”

“I bet you would.”

“So will you come or not?”

“Okay.”