I was twelve years old when Besovi promised me love (but not too much) in exchange for my left eye.

I asked him what he would do with it, and he said he would like to keep it for his collection. He said he wanted to look at it, and that the eyes from the Outer Reaches, which is where our world is relative to his, always showed him interesting things when he looked through them. That was a lie. He sold it to Baumin Tha, the Tradesman, The Fence, who sold it to a lesser Effulgence in the Kyphrionic Court. I know because when I sleep, I see out of the eye, which she wears around her neck in a golden amulet. After nights that last for days of watching multi-limbed courtiers limned in flames wearing wreathes of starfire and cloth dyed in blood of mortals talk and dance and debate and eat things that are sometimes food and are sometimes alive, I wake up more tired than when I start, with sharp pains in the hole in my head where my eye used to be.

When he promised me love, I thought that he would provide the love I was promised by the God in the Christian Church where my mother used to take me. I thought all gods were required to give the same kind of love to their adherents. That was also a lie.

Besovi got me a hamster instead.

"See? Just a little love," he had said. "Not too much."

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