Epigraph
by Miquitzli Tezcatlhuan Citlalin
From the depths of the ocean I feel her pull.
The waves cascading, underneath the moonlight's lull.
Within the dance of obsidian bones.
The marigolds bloom from the mother's throne.
Within her light was my soul reborn.
So dance and laugh to cheer my death, cry if you must, my life to mourn.
Just know that I return to her arms happy and accomplished.
For I can return to the days by the lake, accompanying the old man while he fished.
Drink tequila, sake, mezcal, rum, pulque and beers.
Para arriba, para abajo, para el centro, para dentro.
Cheers.
Without a jolting motion, their descent came to a halt. Instead, it became a glide.
The waters below stretched like an obsidian mirror. Just glancing at them stirred something ancient—an ache, a warmth. Nostalgia not for a life lived, but for a soul's forgotten birthplace. Perhaps from these waters is where their souls had originated, Cenotlatlacatl thought.
T'utu Mitzli shook them from their trance with a low call, wings veering gently toward the surface.
There, at the heart of the lake, a garden bloomed from the mists.
It shimmered like the stars they had just passed through—but these were no stars. These were flowers. Tsïtsïki Iretini, moonflowers of Xarátenga—petals of silver-blue rimmed in violet, weeping bioluminescent light. They moved gently with the rhythm of the water, as if remembering dreams the living had long forgotten.
Cenotlatlacatl had never seen such flowers in all his wanderings—neither in the forests of the old empire nor the deserts he bled across. These flowers sang with silence. These flowers belonged only to her.
They landed softly among the blooms. A melody drifted from the mist—low, slow, mournful. Like a mother crying for a child she could not bury. Like two lovers ripped apart mid-kiss. The sound wound through the petals like wind through bones.
Then—motion.
Butterflies took flight from the blossoms, stirred by the song. Silver, blue, and ghostly white. They danced on the breeze like embers, swirling, gathering, rising into the shape of a woman.
And just as they had formed her—they were gone.
Standing in their place, beneath the moonlight of her realm, was the most beautiful woman either of them had ever seen.
They stood there, slack-jawed and stunned, as if thunderstruck—not by fear, but by something far more dangerous: awe. The kind of awe that empties the lungs and ignites foolish hopes.
The ahuizotl tilted its head, utterly disarmed, its watery eyes wide with unfamiliar softness.
Cenotlatlacatl looked as though he'd forgotten how to breathe. In their pupils, faint reflections shimmered—tiny hearts, pulsing like the stars above.
She laughed.
A sound like silver bells tossed into water, pure and playful and ancient.
Two butterflies, pale as dawnlight, flew over and hovered between the two stunned beings. She raised a single hand, wrist tilted like a dancer's, and with a smile both mischievous and regal, said:
"Fly into their mouths."
The butterflies obeyed.
The ahuizotl snapped at his with childlike excitement, swallowing it whole with a delighted grunt.
Cenotlatlacatl, however, gagged and tried to spit his back out, brushing his tongue with his fingers and muttering curses between retches.
She watched them both, expression unreadable, until a flicker of delight softened her gaze.
"I am Xarátenga," she said at last, voice radiant and round as the moonlight.
"You have been welcomed to my realm, Tsïrunhanti."
At her call, the wind changed.
A hush fell over the lake—not of fear, but of reverence. The waters themselves seemed to bow.
From the misted horizon, something moved with grace and thunder: antlers crowned in shadow, wings outstretched like ink on moonlight. Quetzalmictli emerged, her sacred companion—silver wolf-bodied, feather-tailed, with gills of obsidian and antlers that shimmered like star-prayers. The creature landed beside her, serene and watchful.
She mounted with a single motion, as fluid as smoke.
"Come," she said. "There is much to show you."
The two cursed souls followed—one on foot, awkward and tentative; the other bounding with beastlike joy. They crossed a narrow bridge of stones, some submerged, others glowing faintly beneath the silver light, until they reached the beach upon her garden. Sand like crushed pearl. Air heavy with the scent of Tsïtsïki Iretini.
She dismounted. Quetzalmictli remained behind, ever the sentinel.
Xarátenga turned to face them—not just as a goddess, but as one who understands.
"I know who you are," she began.
"I know what you have done. And what has been done to you."
Her eyes—two moons—rested on Cenotlatlacatl with solemn clarity.
"You were snatched from your trial. Drawn into my waters not by accident, but by mercy.
A mercy I extend... at the cost of ire from the other matrons of death."
She stepped toward the lake, her feet leaving no mark on the sand.
"When Tlāloc cursed you, and when the ahuizotl was born from your defilement of the cenote, your soul was torn—fragmented.
Part of you became this creature beside you.
Part of you still bleeds through time.
And the rest... scattered into the cycles of death, rebirth, and memory."
She raised a hand toward the moonlit water, and it shimmered, showing flickers—a child's laugh, a hand reaching through reeds, blood spilled onto a stone, a song never finished.
"My offering to you is this:
Enter Tsïrunhanti and become what you truly are—pure soul fragments.
You will await the return of your other selves, piece by piece, as they come to me through the cycles."
She paused. Even the mist grew still.
"You may be whole again... someday.
But only if you choose to shed what remains of your defiance, your violence, your sorrow."
Then—softly, so softly, she asked:
"What will you do, Cenotlatlacatl?"
"And you…"—her gaze turned to the ahuizotl, who tilted his head in curiosity
"What will you choose, little one born from a stolen fate?
You, who have no name yet… but carry the shape of one."
They refused without hesitation.
No words, no deliberation. Just a shared stillness between them—an instinctual recoil.
Cenotlatlacatl's gills flared, not in fear, but defiance.
The ahuizotl's tail lashed once behind him, a silent answer.
They could not let go. Not yet.
Not of the rage that burned in their bones.
Not of the grief, or the curse.
Not of Tlāloc, or of the gods who watched in silence.
Not even of each other.
Xarátenga's expression fell like dusk—graceful, soft, but steeped in disappointment. Her face, once radiant, dimmed for a moment as though the moon herself had turned away.
But she did not scold them. She only nodded, the understanding of countless centuries passing through her.
"Then you are not ready," she whispered. "And that is a truth I must honor."
She turned toward the lake once more, her voice a ripple across the stillness.
"Before you go… grant me a whim."
They waited.
"Drink from the waters of Tsïrunhanti," she said. "Not as an offering. As a gift.
Let memory touch your tongue."
They exchanged a glance—Cenotlatlacatl with suspicion, the ahuizotl with curiosity—and stepped forward.
The shoreline welcomed them like a mother's hum. They waded in, feet sinking into soft sand, the moonflowers parting gently.
They cupped their hands and drank.
The water was cool and light—sweet, not like fruit or wine, but like the taste of something remembered: the first song of a lullaby, the scent of clay from childhood, the warmth of a vanished fire.
And then—
It came.
Not a vision, but an immersion. Their eyes did not close. The world did.
A village. Night.
Fire. Screams.
The dull thud of feet on wet soil.
The glint of obsidian blades under torchlight.
Women running with children in their arms.
An old man shouting warnings, his words cut short by a sharpened club.
Cenotlatlacatl saw it all from within the flames—
But not as a raider.
Not as a savior.
Not yet.
Like specters, they drifted through the unfolding horror—untouched, unseen, yet unable to look away. The lake did not grant illusions; it granted truth.
The village burned with the same light that once lit their own ends.
They watched as warriors—some boys not yet hardened by war—were slain or bound with ropes of maguey fiber. Mothers clutched their children, only to have them torn from their arms by raiders masked in bone and paint.
Cenotlatlacatl felt his fists tighten, the water steaming around his knuckles.
Was this how it began for me?
Was this my village once? My mother among them?
The grief was not his memory—but the pain was real.
Beside him, the ahuizotl said nothing. He didn't growl. He didn't flinch. His eyes, wide and glassy, shimmered not with apathy, but with reverence—as if honoring the passing of each soul with his stillness.
The vision shifted. Like a wind stirring smoke, it carried them toward the chief's tent.
They passed through the canvas like mist.
Inside, the scene was smaller—quieter—but far more cruel. A single woman knelt by a clay hearth, her pregnant belly full, hands tied before her. Her eyes shone with fear, but her lips moved in prayer even before the raiders entered.
Three of them. Obsidian blades. Paint of gods on their faces.
She didn't beg.
She only watched them. And when they came forward, she spoke no curse, only a blessing over her unborn child.
They cut her open. Not with frenzy, but with ritual precision.
To which god the blood was offered… was unknown. The glyphs drawn on the canvas were scratched in haste, mismatched—a pantheon scrambled. It felt more like desperation than devotion.
As she bled, her breaths slowed—but still, she prayed.
"Xarátenga," she whispered.
"Moonmother.
If you live in the lake, or the stars, or the silence between dreams…
Take him. Take my child. Give him a name. Give him peace.
Please… let him be more than this."
The vision wavered—like the lake mourning with ripples.