He cuts the bell. He does it over and over again, cold skin that turns into stone and back into flesh and then into stone again. A torrent of tiny red ants carries itself into the shape of blood, their tiny feet laughing. Muttering. He cuts the bell into her cheek and calls for Coyoxauhqui with the shape of the sound of the hummingbird wings and his hand is never as steady as hers. Never as steady. He wills it but will is not enough. There is too much humming. He concentrates. Scatter the stars hone them with the flake of the obsidian the dark spaces shattered into

He looks up. Feels the scorn of four suns that refuse to set and bleed bleed bleed fire into the sky. Ceaseless fire, endless heat. Eternal evening that knows the temple and cooks its deep bones. Red light falling over all. Hot red raw light making soot-colored shadows across his hands. He thinks past the strangeness and tastes a new flavor, bathwater and sinister perfume

Carl I am in cem-anáhuac yoyótli

He stands. The statue breathes at his feet turns into stone and out of it and into it, flashing back and forth, cut crack cut crack and the blood-ants are spilling out of the bell, running away from the smooth visage, the sleeping profile, tattoos scratched into the luminous skin. The ants are swarming everywhere, thinking about the heat and the smell of blood. He looks down the long flight of stairs to see

Small brown girl. Little shit girl. Little shitty thing leaving her mud-footprints on the face of his hallowed death. The silk gloaming wings veil the face of the sky. He makes his voice the voice of thunder and gnashing rocks and all of his bellowing outrage shivers in the bones, the stones, his fingers, those trees, the obsidian shattered with a life and voice of its own keening

My own my meztli my moon my goddess mine

“WHERE DO YOU COME FROM?”

The sky splits apart and the inky black void rushes in, filling everything, demolishing the world into peace.