Page 23 of Where Light Cannot Follow

"Food, though?" Dante asks in a way that makes it clear he finds such a temptation bizarre and perhaps beneath me. The way he says it makes me feel both ashamed and honored—a complicated mixture of emotions.

"Food is not merely food,” I whisper, fighting myself against looking at the scene. How I wish we could hold this discussion outside this realm. "No temptation is the same for any one person."

"Is that how you can walk with others as their guide and not face temptation?" he asks, his head cocked slightly. "By seeing their thoughts instead of your own?"

"It helps, yes."

He seems to consider this, then looks ahead. "I don't see the door yet, so I suppose we keep walking."

I nod again but do not look up. I fear that I will be lost again if my mind even scrapes against the edges of the domestic feast before me. A feast I am certain I shared with Musa at my side. With him exclaiming over the floral notes of the honey and the perfection of the blistered roasted carrots. The joy in a perfectly ripe fig…

I release a slow breath, trying to ground myself. The loop has already tried to snag me again, and it is a struggle not to think of it.

"Would you tell me of a meal you enjoyed in life?" I ask. Dante looks back at me with a furrowed brow, and though it shames me, I continue, "It has been eons since I have experienced any sensual pleasure. Some are easier for me to avoid." Lust, for one. I have never found much pleasure in carnal love outside of intimacy with someone I cared for deeply. "But some are quite difficult. If you would talk, it would help distract me from the loop."

Dante slows to walk alongside me, almost as if positioning himself to block my view of the oil-fed wicks of the lamps and the laughter of those feasting just beyond. "I'm no poet, Virgil."

"It does not matter. You can simply speak."

"On food?"

"I find things I have never experienced interesting."

Dante's lips thin. He presses his hands behind his back. There is nearly a pained expression on his face. "You now know I starved as a child. I vowed to never be ruled by a desire for food as anything more than basal nourishment again."

A haunted expression has entered his eyes, softening them, making them drift far ahead of us into the nothingness beyond.

"You never had a single meal in your life you truly enjoyed?" I ask.

He sighs. "I suppose I can think of a few."

"Would you describe one?"

The way his body stiffens and tenses, the hesitation, the lack of command in his posture, tells me how much he yields, even considering honoring my request. His jaw tightens, loosens, tightens again. Perhaps studying him wrestling with himself alone will be enough to usher me out of this space.

"I had a bowl of pasta once that was remarkable." He grits this offering between his teeth, like he is giving up legacy and funds to gift it.

"Pasta?" I ask quietly.

"Yes, it's a wheat-based⁠—"

I laugh, unable to help interrupting him. "I do know what pasta is. Even in my mortal walk upon the earth, we had thin sheets of dough formed of flour and water and cooked in boiling water. I am simply curious, what kind of pasta? Where? What made it special?"

Dante's scowl only continues to lift my spirit, and I find myself smiling despite myself.

His strides pick up pace. "The location doesn't matter. It was some foolish little restaurant near a subway stop uptown. I don't even remember which line."

"Yet this meal lingers in your memory for some reason?"

This is working. I have nearly forgotten the clatter and sights just beyond him. I am so enraptured by the way he avoids meeting my eyes, the slightest uptick of the corner of his lip, the way a certain heaviness has quietly left his body.

"It was perhaps influenced by who I shared the meal with," he whispers. I do not press. I can hear the sacredness in his words. That this person was special, and he now carries regrets.

"And you ate pasta there?"

"I certainly didn't choose it. A platter of carbs is neither beneficial for optimal health nor day-to-day function, in my experience. It leaves you sluggish and exhausted. But—" A beat of silence. "The person I ate with ordered for us."

He falls quiet again, and I do not press. There is something sacred here, and I have never been one to trample upon holy ground.