Eyes slowly fluttered open, vision slightly obscured. The skull was still on her head. Patience panicked and sat up. She was in her bed. She distinctly remembered being in the kitchen. Taking deep breaths, she attempted to remove the skull once more. Tendrils shot around her arms just as before. It had not been a dream.

“This isn’t happening!” she cried, her face twisting in distress.

“What do you think you’re doing? Take me off and I’m an inanimate object once more!” The voice rammed through her head.

“Oh really? Sounds like a good idea!” shouted Patience. She rushed at the skull again, this time stopped by fully formed arms. At the end of the arms were large hands. At the end of the hands were sharp claws. The girl whimpered. She was nowhere near strong enough to wrestle free from this thing’s grasp.

“We are tethered now,” the thing chortled darkly.

Defeated, tears began to well in the girl’s eyes. She flung herself back into the comfort of her bed.

“This isn’t happening …”

“Oh but it is! And I have fortune to thank!” sang the skull.

“How did I get back into my room?” Patience asked, voice wavering.

“I carried you. No good resting on the kitchen floor,” replied the creature. This time its voice flowed more mildly around her. He seemed to have been shouting before.

“You carried me?”

“I caught you as you fell off the chair in the kitchen. I then brought you here.”

Patience felt her stomach drop. She sat up in her bed, prompted by some ancient instinct triggered by the presence of unknowable danger. She gripped her chest and felt the furious drumming of her heart. A skull that talked was unsettling enough, and one that sprouted tentacles was quite jarring. However, this skull was shaping into something greater, something more disconcerting, threatening.

The girl took a few deep breaths and balled her fists. One always approached wild animals with caution. She would have to do the same. The advantage she had in this case was this thing could be spoken to; she could learn from it. Without many other options, Patience decided to establish a rapport with this creature.

“How did you carry me?” she asked.

“I formed a body.”

“Like how you formed those coils around my arms?”

“Yes.”

Patience balked. She had seen a witch shape-shift once at an exhibition, but this thing now surrounding her was something else entirely. The witch had shifted into an owl, it was quite wondrous but she had seen an owl before. This creature could form into things she had never laid eyes upon or knew existed.

“How is your body like this?” Genuine curiosity bubbled now.

“See that fly over there?” Anax forced Patience’s head to focus on the insect cleaning itself on the windowsill. “What do you suppose is inside it? Bone? Like you? No.”

Anax formed a fist in a blink and smashed the fly. The girl stared wide-eyed.

“Nothing but liquid and guts. You see its skeleton is on the outside. This is the way my kind are.”

“So this mist around me, that you use to form a body, is your insides?”

“Yes. But unlike insects we can harden and reform it at will—well, once our external bodies are destroyed.”

“What happened to yours?”

“Something awful. My body was shattered. So my insides sucked themselves up into my skull, which was luckily still intact, and I waited.”

“And you needed a living being to reform again?”

“Only a living thing can spark our second life. We need to share the fire of life from our donor to exist in this state.”

Patience breathed a slight sigh of relief. If he needed her to survive, it was unlikely there would be immediate danger to her health. Her father had taught her about a number of parasites: some lived peacefully with their hosts, others ravaged the host’s bodies, and yet others did both at different stages in their life cycle. She wondered which of these categories the skull fit, yet she feared to learn the answer.

“Wh-what kind of creature are you?”

“I am unsure if your people have a name for my kind. The ones from my home region certainly, but you …”

“How are you speaking my language anyway?” her voice cracked.

“Simple, with the connection to you—I’m sure you felt it when I established it, I absorb many things you know, including the tongue you speak in. I don’t know everything, but a good chunk of it.”

Patience flushed. She did not want this creature rummaging around her mind. “I don’t need a skull going through my skull.”

“I have a name. I have an identity,” he said raising his voice. The back of Patience’s neck tingled.

“Sorry I wasn’t really paying attention when I had a disembodied voice yelling around my head!” barked Patience. Without warning, the mist spread over the girl’s body and pushed her into the bed with the weight of two adults. She felt the air pressed out of her lungs, her eyes bulging.

“It’s Anax,” The voice ground into Patience’s temples.

“All right, Anax!” wheezed the girl. Lifting off her body, the vapor condensed into two arms and gently rested around Patience’s torso, almost in an embrace. Anymore outbursts and the girl felt like she would die from a heart attack. She would be of no use to Anax then. The girl hoped he had enough foresight to avoid that at least.

“I won’t harm you. Not much. Not intentionally. So long as I am conscious, I will keep you well,” said the skull. An uneasy peace fell over the two souls. Anax may have been pleased but all this commotion began to aggravate the girl’s scalp. Familiar stings ran across the uneven surface and a dull pain started to well. Patience hissed through her teeth.

“Hm? I’m certain I did not press that hard on you to cause pain.”

“No. It’s my burn. It hurts at times.”

“Allow me.” A gentle touch of mist began caressing the scars. Flowing between grooves and bumps, it spread its cool vapor. Patience was shocked how tenderly he moved, and even more surprised that it actually soothed her aching. The rest of his body billowed around her, spilling over the bed like a rolling fog, the edge lapping the air as flames would. His arms remained wrapped around her waist. The girl settled on focusing her breathing, giving herself to the odd but serene sensations.

“Feel better?” asked Anax.

“Shouldn’t you know? You’re in my head,” Patience snarked.

“Not completely. I don’t have access to everything. Consider it a grace! Most my kind completely take over their life-donors, erasing their sense of self.”

Patience gulped, “Y-you can do that to m-me?”

“It’s more difficult with beings as highly intelligent as humans, but yes. It can and has been done before,” he explained nonchalantly.

“But you’re not—”

“I’ve no interest in a total takeover. Humans are quite interesting. I need a teacher,” Anax stated in the same tone as one does when giving a disinterested excuse.

Patience’s heart rate slowed to its normal speed at last. She would be safe for now. The girl lied motionless, letting her body sink into the quilt.

“Thanks. I do feel better,” Patience whimpered. The morning had lapsed into midday. She figured this predicament was a valid excuse not to get any work done today.

“Can I go to the kitchen to brew some fresh tea? I have a special mix that helps my pain too,” the girl asked quietly.

“Very well,” said Anax withdrawing his arms. They lost their shape and melted into the frothing mist. Patience rose from her bed, Anax falling behind her like some mystical cape. On her way to the kitchen, she noticed a small, white, glowing orb the size of a marble float around over her right eye. It was not in her vision but seemed to be centered in the skull’s eye socket. She wondered if this was the essence of Anax’s eye, however that worked. However he worked. Patience was still baffled by his physiology, but then again science only explained so much of the world; and with its own systems, magic usually explained the remainder.

“You have a large collection of animals and skeletons.”

Patience stopped at the archway to the parlor and gazed at the various mounted birds and small mammals adorning its shelves, standing guard over the dainty sofa and armchair resting in front of the fireplace. A few mounted skeletons stalked among them.

“My father was a taxidermist. Hunters everywhere gave him their trophies to immortalize.” She smiled fondly. “He sought to capture the essence of life. But I think there is beauty in death. I liked mounting the skeletons, so delicate, all underneath skin and muscle …”

Patience sighed at the wooden box and shavings scattered over the kitchen floor. Ignoring the mess for now, she went over to the barrel in the corner and filled a kettle with water. The barrel was getting low. It would need a refill soon with trips to the water pump outside. That could wait another day. Patience lit the stove once again. She took out a tin from a cupboard and sprinkled a pinch of its contents into a cup.

“Would you display my body if given the chance?” asked Anax. Patience startled. She did not expect such a question from him, at least based on what little she learned of him these past few hours.

“Well—I suppose it would be an interesting opportunity. But estimating your size, I don’t think I could display you in here, at a museum maybe,” she sputtered.

“Patience … that is your name?” asked Anax, moving to an entirely new topic. Patience glanced to her side and saw that he held Unger’s letter in a clawed hand. Surprise almost grappled her mind but she concluded it was their link that granted him literacy.

“Yes.”

“What kind of name is that? Patience? It’s a word in your language.”

“You see, my parents had wanted children for a very long time. It wasn’t until the night my father rescued me as a baby from a fire that their wish finally came true. On his way home from an engagement in the city, he passed by a burning farmhouse. I was lucky, they said. It seemed someone rolled me out of the blazing building onto the lawn. Only my scalp couldn’t escape a small piece of fiery debris that landed near me. The authorities presumed my birth family died in that fire—nothing was left but ash—and there were no county records of who lived there, so they let my father keep me.”

“Quite a story.”

“Finally blessed with a child, my parents named me after their number one virtue.”

It may have been the dull pain swaying her rationale, but for now they were inseparable so she might as well get to know a bit about this creature on a personal level. He did help her feel better after all.

“How did you get your name then? Does ‘Anax’ mean anything?”

“My father named me. It’s from an ancient tongue. It means ‘leader’.”

“Were you meant to lead?”

“He only hoped. It’s tradition my people name their young qualities they wish them to develop.”

“That’s quite a lot to live up to.”

Anax remained silent. Patience wondered if she should have retracted her last statement. Then she thought whether she should care about this thing’s feelings at all. So long as he was not angry, so long as he was not yelling in her head. The fervent bubbling of boiling water called her attention.

Patience took the kettle off the stove and filled her cup. She brought the tea to her nose, inhaling the steam and its woody aroma. Making her way to the parlor, Patience nodded her head in the direction of the little side table between the sofa and armchair.

“There’s a photograph of my parents and me when I was a toddler.”

Anax extended a couple of tendrils and gingerly picked up the carved frame sitting between a book and an empty candy dish on the walnut surface. He brought it in front of their eyes. It had been a while since the girl looked at this photo. Two austere faces peered up at them. On the left was Patience’s father, hair a shade lighter than his bushy eyebrows and receding from his wrinkled brow. A mustache held fast to his lip, refusing to wane with age. On the right was Patience’s mother, tidy curls pinned to the side of her head, the neatest she had ever seen it. Her mouth flanked by deep lines was set far back in her face. Between them rested a round, wide-eyed child glancing off to the side. The deformed skin of her scar was painfully apparent even in this sepia image.

“They seem a fine couple,” said Anax. “They have passed on?”

“Yes.”

Anax slowly returned the photograph to the side table, setting it down with the care of watchmaker. Patience gave a crooked smile even though she was sure he could not view it. She appreciated how he took her answers as a matter of fact without further prodding. The girl flashed the photo one final look before she nestled into the sofa and pulled a throw around herself. Lifting the cup under the skull to her mouth, she realized how fortunate it was that Anax’s bottom jaw was unfused. She could still eat and drink with relative ease at least. Thus the girl sat in the center of an audience of long passed beasts, wearing the skull of a creature with a second lease on life, reflecting upon her current circumstances.