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Arthur takes to haunting the shores of Lake Hali – not that he bothers to say as much, not that he bothers to say much of anything, as perpetually clenched as his jaw and as bitten his tongue, teeth working it so hard between them that one can only imagine the claret’s worth of blood pooling behind his lips. Arthur keeps his goings about Carcosa to himself, but this is Hastur’s domain and so he knows regardless. The scent of the lake lingers on Arthur’s skin, lichen and petrichor applied as liberally as perfume, while the mist seeps into his hair and leaves it perpetually damp. Algae clings to his shoes. Red sand cakes under his nails. Arthur is uncaring of this – however, he is careful to wash himself before he must meet with Hastur. As soon as he enters the temple, his path is clear. Predictable. His footsteps take him to the bathing chamber and there he’s fastidious in scrubbing his body clean, taking particular care of his hands before he comes to Hastur’s throne still dripping and dares to slide his shaking appendages beneath Hastur’s tattered robe. Arthur is just as diligent in scrubbing himself raw after the ritual is complete, sometimes trembling in the water, sometimes choking with his effort to hold back his impotent rage.
Hastur observes him at this time and time again. It matters not what direction the fragment passes during any given ritual – always, Arthur scrubs himself with scalding water and the astringent sap collected from the nearby trees which sparks and foams when worked against the flesh. Always, as though the very contact of his bare skin against Hastur’s form is enough to corrupt and yet he worries at the thought of passing his own filth along, transferring grains of sand and slips of algae as easily as he transfers the piece of Hastur he still insists on calling John.
It is so – curious.
Arthur never lingers after the ritual, though it clearly pains him to leave when his body is empty of any company but his own. He stumbles away regardless of his loneliness, breathing heavily, a certain pinch between his brows as he blinks quickly, overwhelmed by the return of his sight. The fingers on both of his hands curl inward and outward, white knuckled before his flesh again floods with color.
“You might stay,” Hastur offers the moment Arthur gathers his bearings and begins to dress – he offers as much once, twice, a dozen times over.
And always, inevitably, Arthur’s face will spasm with some terrible longing before he swallows it down and denies himself.
“Another turn of the moons?” Arthur asks, as though he needs to. As though Hastur has not given his word and has not kept it faithfully.
Hastur answered with words at first. Insulted ones. Now, he only sighs heavily, the sound rattling, and inclines his head.
Arthur still hesitates before leaving, but he leaves nonetheless.
And still, always, the fragment refuses to take the loss with anything resembling silence.
‘I am growing tired of this,’ the fragment – John – complains, the bitterness so thick that Hastur can taste it, acrid and sharp across his tongues.
Hastur doesn’t agree – not in words.
Still.
He understands all the same.
*
It isn’t accurate to say Hastur’s life revolves around Arthur Lester. The statement is too strict, too finite. It dares to define Hastur. To define life. To apply a singularity to the word as though a god might have a life the way a man does with a clear beginning, middle, and end, each portion shorter and more fragile than the last. And what, exactly, does revolution mean? Three red moons revolve around Carcosa and millions of black stars hang in the sky above, but as much as Hastur favors his domain, his ego is not so grand that he can’t understand that Carcosa is of no more import to these celestials than a grain of sand is to the claws that might pinch it between its tips and squeeze so hard that it morphs into a shard of glass. So, Hastur might circle Arthur and he might press above him, but such is only happenstance, their entanglement only a result of proximity. It doesn’t make Arthur important by consequence, no more than Lake Hali is of greater significance because of the moons overhead or an insect is made significant by a great hoof stomping it into the dirt.
Hastur will admit to a fascination –
‘You’re obsessed,’ the fragment dares to spit.
He will admit to a curiosity. He will admit to deriving pleasure from his observations of Arthur Lester. He couldn’t deny the pleasure he finds in the ritual even if he dared.
But then, he’s hardly alone in that.
“Perhaps,” Hastur admits as well in the face of John’s accusation, “but my obsession only exists because of the seed you planted. Your own attachment flourishes with many blossoming vines even now, growing ever more on and on no matter how little it’s watered or how rarely it sees the light of the sun. Had you not clung to him so tightly, dug your thorns into his skin and refused to let go, I would hardly have given your precious Arthur a moment’s notice.“
It riles the fragment. Of course it does. His indignation ripples across Hastur’s mantle like a heavy breeze, the golden tatters shivering in response.
‘You dare to blame me for this?’ he demands as though the both of them can’t taste his shame.
“It isn’t a matter of blame,” Hastur allows. “Only of responsibility. Or have you forgotten already, John? This entire arrangement was your idea.”
*
Hastur is cold to the proposal at first and perhaps that’s his most unforgivable transgression as far as the fragment is concerned. He doesn’t rush to agree. He doesn’t deign to negotiate. He doesn’t trip over himself with eagerness. He scoffs and then he laughs and only as John pesters and argues and begs does the shape of his response shift into more agreeable dimensions.
‘Please,’ John repeats, endlessly, his voice the choking, waterlogged warble of a creature who has long since drowned. ‘I can’t – I can’t just give him up!’
Hastur agrees eventually. He drags it out beforehand, of course. He wouldn’t dare allow the fragment to think he has any power in their situation. No, Hastur waits: long enough for John’s desperation to age, the fruiting body of it growing in depth and flavor, long enough to tenderize his stubborn will so that he might be more malleable in his terms.
That is Hastur’s hope, at least, but still – the tip of this particular point isn’t one John will allow to soften. He remains devoted – pathetically, but no less strongly – to the subject of his human pet. Arthur must be unharmed, the fragment insists. He must be kept safe. He must be happy, but it must be of his own will. Hastur shall not cloud his mind. He shall not twist his memories. He shall not keep Arthur Lester in the stasis of a never-ending dream, no matter how sweet Hastur might make it for him.
‘Arthur values his freedom,’ John stresses, as though Hastur cares what his human values.
And as loath as Hastur is to speak on the creature’s behalf –
“You’re a fool if you believe he’ll thank you for this,” he tells the fragment. “This freedom you’re so ardently begging for – this happiness. How long you’ve spent with the worm and yet you know nothing of his nature. He will never be happy in these circumstances.”
‘He will,’ John insists, but his voice cracks with doubt. ‘He – must. Eventually. If you keep your word –‘
“I always keep my word.”
‘Arthur will be happy, then,’ John says. ‘He’ll learn to be happy.’
And so Hastur agrees: to the proposal and to the conditions the fragment sets down.
He agrees, but only after he attaches a caveat of his own.
“Your honesty,” Hastur drags out the word. “Of course, that is my price. What is it these humans say? If you’re to make your bed, you must lie in it. I would have Arthur Lester know that this is your doing. As you said, he so values his freedom. Certainly he should know the one who so desperately pleaded for his stay in Carcosa was you, his dear friend.”
John hesitates. Of course, he hesitates.
But not for long.
*
Arthur Lester consents to the terms of their agreement – for a certain definition of consent. Hastur has no delusions to his true feelings, how he would prefer to be back on his Earth and attending to whatever meaningless foibles humans so love to devote themselves to. But he doesn’t have to be forced into it. Hastur doesn’t have to trick him. He doesn’t have to drag him kicking and screaming. Arthur turns the knob of the door separating the Dreamlands from Carcosa with his own right hand. He walks through that door. He comes to Hastur of his own volition – unhappily, yes, but on his own two legs.
It’s satisfying enough that Hastur can forgive the fact that the first ritual is a miserable thing. Lacking in the proper theatrics. Lacking in the appropriate atmosphere. Arthur Lester comes to the temple wearing a chip on his shoulder, a hardened expression upon his face, and the same dirty clothing he’d worn throughout his stay in the Dreamlands and when Hastur beckons him to undress, he shuts his eyes and does so in stiff, discordant movements. John is silent in his mind and so silent to Hastur, but Hastur can taste the tension seeping from the fragment regardless of his quiet: a tight, nervy acidity, a crackle of energy in the air around Arthur that only grows when his body is finally bare.
Hastur takes in Arthur’s flesh, the span of skin nearly as gold as Hastur’s mantle with dark hair and pale scars painting it. His pathetic organ is soft between his thighs and how perverse it is that he so exposes it, that human bodies have such indecency as to not protect their most vital parts. The entire form is fragile. Weak. So effortlessly breakable. It seems impossible that this is the creature that has so vexed Hastur, that this thing could not only house a piece of his very soul but sway its loyalty so that the fragment would prefer Arthur to him. It’s ridiculous. Offensive. It makes Hastur long to tear Arthur apart, piece by piece by bloody piece, until he finds John in the viscera left behind so that he might dispose of all this bartering and simply open his maw wide and devour the fragment, swallowing him down to where he belongs.
Yet, Hastur has given his word and so he must keep it. Arthur Lester is not to be harmed.
How positively annoying.
“Shall you come to me?” Hastur asks that first time, mocking. “Or shall I come to you?”
But perhaps the fragment is not quite as mad or foolish as Hastur believes. Perhaps Hastur might even understandhis attraction to the human. There is something to be said about bravery, even coming from such a weak thing – or especially coming from one so weak. There is something so – curious, in how Arthur Lester takes a deep, shuddering breath – how he straightens his spine and raises his head. How his jaw tightens when the fragment dares to speak his name –
‘Arthur, I’m –‘
“Don’t,” Arthur snaps.
How – compelling it is how quickly the fragment obeys. Pathetic, yes, but –
That single don’t is the only word Arthur Lester says before he approaches Hastur’s throne. It’s the only language that passes his lips before the ritual is complete. After Arthur is close enough for Hastur’s tendrils to reach out to pull Arthur atop him, arranging his limbs so that he straddles Hastur’s form, after one such tendril wraps around Arthur’s soft organ to coax it to hardness as others writhe up and twist around his body, after he has Arthur squirming, his organ swollen and leaking, and at last the tatters of Hastur’s robe open so that he might pull Arthur closer, closer, until his organ is pressed to a wet, throbbing orifice located in the midst of Hastur’s form –
After, there are no words, no spoken language. Nothing comes from Arthur’s tipped back throat but a shocked moan at the first push of him into Hastur and what follows are only gasps and animal grunts of unwanted pleasure to match the desperate way he ruts inside –
And then, as Arthur spills into Hastur with a last terrible cry, so John spills into him, too.
*
Arthur forces himself away from Hastur, after. His body, sweat slick and covered in markings from the suckers on Hastur’s tendrils. He pulls himself out of Hastur’s orifice, his organ soft once again, dripping now with what of his spend Hastur hasn’t absorbed and Hastur’s own viscous wet. He stumbles away from the throne, nearly tripping over his own feet for how his legs tremble as though he’s but a babe only just walking for the very first time.
Hastur waits until Arthur’s heavy panting turn into a more reasonable breathing pattern, his rapid blinking stops and the pallid shade his face has taken on colors in a bit more. Then, once he believes Arthur might hear what he speaks, he makes his offering: a hot bath, he suggests. A change of clothing, a suite in the temple, a pillow to lay his weary head upon, fresh fruit from the forest and fish from the lake he might sup upon, and wine made from Hastur’s own ichor which Arthur might drink and know something of what it is to feel a god inside of him before the time comes that he will know such a thing with even more intimacy.
“Your stay here needn’t be a torture,” Hastur says with all the kindness he can muster. It’s far more kindness than typical, such is the satisfaction of his soul wrapping around the fragment and securing it where it belongs.
And to all of these offerings, more than Hastur has ever offered anyone, Arthur Lester looks upon Hastur with wide, terrified, and spiteful eyes as though Hastur has spat upon him instead.
“I’ll make do on my own,” Arthur eventually says, voice cracking. So brave. So ungrateful. “When – when will I have John back?”
His voice shrinks as he asks: a childish sort of tenor. So frightened Arthur is by the possibility that he won’t have John back after all, despite how clearly angry Arthur is with him for putting him in such a position in the first place.
It makes the fragment perk up, warm pleasure and even hotter relief coursing from him to mix with his shivering concern. It radiates throughout Hastur’s soul and seeps up further until it tingles its way along the many winding tendrils beneath his robe.
Pathetic, Hastur barely resists the urge to snarl. The both of them.
“When the red moons once again form a V in the sky,” Hastur says, “you may have him.”
Arthur stares upon him for a moment longer, his entire form seemingly on the precipice of some action, but the moment passes and Arthur’s shoulders slump, something defeated in his posture as he forces himself to turn around and walk away. His slow footsteps echo throughout the temple, but even when the sound fades into nothing, still Hastur is aware of Arthur’s movements. Still, he knows how Arthur stops one of his attendants to make an inquiry of where he might go to refresh himself and still he knows that Arthur takes the bath and the clothing after all.
Still, he knows when Arthur leaves the temple.
‘You can’t let him just wander around out there!’ John exclaims, aghast. ‘He isn’t safe on his own!’
And to this, Hastur scoffs.
“He is as safe in Carcosa as I wish him to be,” Hastur says. “No harm will befall him without my consent.”
‘But –‘
“Were you not the one,” Hastur cuts in, “who so insisted upon his freedom? Shall I have him fetched back and chain him to the foot of our throne instead? Shall I tell him upon whose desire he has been placed in such bondage?”
It shuts the fragment up for a moment.
One blissful moment.
‘I don’t like this,’ John complains.
“I imagine Arthur feels much the same,” Hastur replies, sharp. “Do discuss it with him if he bothers to return for you.”
‘...if?!’
*
The second ritual is a step better than the first.
Arthur comes to him promptly, the very moment the moons form the pattern signaling the end of one cycle and the beginning of another. There are dark circles beneath his eyes and a downturn to his lips, but there is something in his expression at the sight of Hastur besides fear and sick fascination – some antsy, hopeful thing that flashes across.
Arthur agrees with a fast, shaky nod when Hastur asks if he cares to bathe before they commence, but he forgoes the ceremonial golden robe that Hastur has laid out for him and comes to Hastur’s throne bare instead, his form still dripping with water and organ already half hard. His chest rises and falls with even, controlled breaths as he comes to a stop some distance from the throne and forces himself to gaze directly at the pale mask covering what could be Hastur’s face – what could be, but isn’t.
Arthur licks his lips nervously and the fragment shivers with heat, with longing, with desire –
“Will it,” Arthur starts – then stops, swallowing hard before he manages to gather his slipping courage back up before it slips between his fingers entirely. “Will it be the same as last time?”
“Are you so eager to be inside me again?” Hastur asks, as curious as he is mocking.
Arthur’s expression shutters in response, however. How miserable he is. How angry. How embarrassed that the answer is as clear as the stiff thing being his thighs.
“I’m only eager to get this over with,” Arthur replies, voice tight, and it’s true enough, Hastur knows.
Perhaps not the whole truth, but at least the foundation for all the rest.
“How amusing,” Hastur comments before he rises from the throne.
It’s just as amusing how very still Arthur grows at his movement, how his breath hitches when Hastur approaches him. How the fragment practically shudders himself with anticipation when Hastur is close enough to Arthur to reach a single tendril out from beneath his robe and use it to stroke the underside of Arthur’s chin, causing his head to tilt up a degree more.
And those eyes – how wide they are, how frightened. How pleasurable it is to gaze into them and know that Arthur is the one looking back.
‘Please,’ John says, tearing Hastur away from his perusal of the creature. ‘Please – King. I miss him.’
“Are you so sure you want him back?”
The fragment and Arthur both bristle at the same time, but it’s Arthur who beats John to speech.
“We had an agreement,” Arthur spits, reaching a hand up to bat Hastur’s tendril away from him. He glares up at Hastur and his impudence – his rank arrogance and disapproval in the face of something so much greater than himself – is such comedy that Hastur allows his appendage to remain attached to his arm and resists the temptation to tear his eyes out. “John said you could be trusted to keep your end of it.”
“And you believed him so readily.” Hastur laughs. He waits only long enough for the indignation – and the fear – to spasm across Arthur’s face before he goes on. “The stage for the ritual remains unchanged. It’s only the parts we play that will differ. I would hope that even in your minuscule human mind, you’re able to comprehend the difference between what it is to give and to receive.”
It only takes but a moment for Arthur to understand, his expression blanching and his cheeks blossoming with heat. He swallows hard then, audibly, before he takes in a long breath that leaves him as though it’s been torn out.
“Shall I come to you, then?” Arthur asks, a mimicry of Hastur’s own mocking in his hoarse tone. “Or shall you come to me?”
How daring he is.
Hastur thrills at it as much as it enrages him. Had he a mouth, he might even smile.
*
Hastur takes Arthur on the floor, his tendrils expanding and stretching into a writhing nest to better cushion the blow as he uses his power to tip Arthur backward and then – once Arthur sinks into the nest, once Hastur’s tendrils have wrapped around him from throat to ankle and their suckers have begun to work at his skin, exuding a viscous lubricant with every suckle – Hastur lowers himself fully, the yellow of his robe settling over Arthur’s squirming form in the midst of so many wriggling lengths of shadow.
Hastur stares into Arthur’s face as one tendril wraps around his hardened organ and begins to stroke it at a quick, merciless pace. He gazes with ever more curiosity when yet another slides its way down Arthur’s organ, past the heavy shapes beneath it and further until the slick tip of it is pressed against Arthur’s hole. It lingers for only seconds before it plunges inside and then –
Oh, the look on his face.
‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ John says, the breathless words drowned out by Arthur’s own shocked moan as he arches his back so violently that Hastur’s tendrils have no choice but to squeeze even tighter lest he dislodge himself from the nest.
Arthur remains immobilized then for Hastur decides he enjoys him this way: surrounded and bound, only able to gasp and groan as one tendril works at his organ and another twists inside of him, both of them moving fast and hard while the rest lazily suck at every available patch of Arthur’s skin. It’s no surprise to Hastur how quickly Arthur spills himself in the face of such stimulation, his seed splashing against the shadowed tendrils which smear it all over his belly, though it seems a surprise to Arthur himself that Hastur doesn’t desist in his manipulations of Arthur’s body at once.
The tendril around Arthur’s organ slows to a crawl, but remains wrapped around the soft, wet length, rhythmically squeezing it, while the tendril in his body grows in form and strength, widening, stretching out, making Arthur whine with discomfort.
‘You’re hurting him,’ John accuses, but he sounds unsure and there’s far more arousal in his tone than there is threat besides.
“I don’t –” Arthur groans, his bleary eyes opening to reveal an attractive sheen of wet and haze about them. “Where’s – where’s John? Why isn’t he – oh, fuck.“
“Surely,” Hastur drawls out, “you’re able to comprehend the difference between one limb and another as well?”
Arthur’s only answer is a choked sound and his eyes snapping shut again when the thick tendril in his ass gives a particularly hard thrust which is followed by another and another until Arthur is mindless, a wet and squirming creature helpless to do anything but take what Hastur deems to give him. His organ is hard again by the time Hastur deems him prepared enough to slide his tendril out and allow his own organ to emerge from its sheath. Hastur regrets, monumentally, that Arthur’s eyes remain closed for this. How he longs to see Arthur’s expression at the sight of him – his thickness with ridges running along its length, slickness dripping from tip to sheath.
Open your eyes, Hastur yearns to demand. Look at what is returning your precious John to you. Do you understand what honor I bestow upon you? Do you think I allow just any filthy worm to slither into me as I have allowed you?
He resists the urge and satisfies himself with simply thrusting his organ into Arthur instead.
Even with his eyes shut, the beauty of Arthur as he takes it – how he moans for it, the desperate thing –
Hastur shudders above him and chases his release.
*
It takes five rituals before Arthur dares to touch Hastur – and immediately rips his hands away as though his fingers have skimmed molten lava rather than the silken fabric of Hastur’s mantle.
It takes twelve rituals before Arthur touches Hastur without hesitation, approaching him and sliding his palms against the front of his robe to better push it aside.
“Harder,” Arthur begs of him on the sixteenth ritual.
“Please,” he gasps on the nineteenth. “Please, god, please.”
How worshipful he begins to sound – and still, he doesn’t stay. Still –
*
It’s only luck that changes the tide. Hastur’s luck, that is – which is perhaps Arthur’s misfortune.
A fourth moon hangs overhead in Carcosa that night, an infrequent visitor which brings with it brutal rains and heavy winds. The torrential sounds are muffled in the temple, yet such volume they have one can only imagine how much worse it is outside the temple walls.
As time passes and neither does the storm cease or Arthur appear, John only frets more and more with worry.
‘What if he doesn’t come?’
Hastur doesn’t hold back his scoff at the notion.
“You have such little faith in him even now,” Hastur replies. “Or is it that your faith in us is so small that you can’t recognize the depths of his devotion no matter that he proves it time and time again? How such foolish delusion could come from myself –“
‘Fuck you!’
“Or perhaps you’re right,” Hastur goes on as though the fragment never spoke. “Perhaps he has grown tired of you. After all, how could he be satisfied with only the chaste touch of his own stolen hand when I have given him such pleasures the likes of which your secondhand limbs cannot possibly achieve?”
‘You –‘ John makes a strange sound, something scalded and scandalized. ‘You know about –‘
“Did you believe what you do with each other when you’re together was a secret from me?” Hastur laughs derisively. “You’re more of a fool than I thought. I know everything, of course. Every sweet word. Every argument. Every touch. How he begged you to be less gentle with him and you thought yourself to be doing him a favor when you refused, yet the pleasure you felt when you gave in – how strong you believed yourself to be with your hand wrapped around his throat as he – ”
‘Stop,’ John snarls. ‘Don’t you dare say another word. Those things are private!’
“We are one and he is ours!” Hastur snaps. “There is no privacy between us. There is no memory of yours that doesn’t belong just as much to me.”
John says nothing in response, but he seethes, his offense a hot, throbbing ache beneath Hastur’s mantle the likes of which makes Hastur nearly eager to be rid of him for a time longer.
Hastur’s mood is poor when Arthur arrives during a brief lull in the storm. Still, it’s ravaging enough outside that Arthur is soaking wet with rain and panting from exertion when he steps into the throne room and the sight of him does nothing to cool Hastur’s emotions besides.
“Bare yourself,” he demands, “and come to me.”
Something ripples across Arthur’s expression – offense of his own, trepidation – but desire overpowers all of it.
Arthur strips himself with haste. He approaches the throne without hesitation. He’s already hard when Hastur’s tendrils drag him into his lap and his own organ is barely out of the sheath when Hastur surges it forward and buries himself in Arthur up to the hilt. He allows Arthur to feel the initial burst of pain – just enough to make him wince and cry out, his fingers clawing at Hastur’s robe – before Hastur feeds his power into Arthur, using it to heal the damage and soothe the hurt. A tendril wrapping around Arthur’s organ settles the rest, stroking him off in time with the same rough thrusts of Hastur into him, and it takes no time at all before Arthur is moaning – begging –
‘You’re a fucking bastard,’ John says, but there’s no hiding that his pleasure is just as ardent – his desperation just as strong –
Hastur quickens the pace of his thrusts out of pure spite, using his tendrils to move Arthur over his organ and using yet more to suckle his skin, twist his nipples, plunge between his lips and fuck down into his throat until he chokes –
“I could so easily rip your heart out like this,” Hastur says, directing it just as much to John as it is to Arthur. “I could tear it from beneath your ribs and pull it out so that your tongue will taste it as it leaves your body.”
Arthur gags around the tendril in his mouth at Hastur’s words – and then he tightens around Hastur’s organ as he reaches climax, spilling white all over the front of Hastur’s robes, his moan long and muffled until Hastur pulls the tendril out from his throat. It leaves with a slick sound, but doesn’t get far before Arthur’s head is dipping back toward it, his mouth open, tongue reaching for the tendril –
He catches it and the first suckle of his mouth is all Hastur needs before he releases, too, shuddering as he fills Arthur and John passes back into him along with so much seed.
And still, afterwards – pleasantly spent with Arthur a boneless, panting thing upon him – desire prickles at Hastur’s form. The rain beats down outside the temple and the winds roar and he stays exactly where he is: buried in Arthur, tendrils holding his body captive against Hastur’s own.
“You will stay,” Hastur declares, more softly than he would usually make demands. Soft enough that it has Arthur’s eyes blinking open and John gazing at Hastur through them. “The lake isn’t safe while the storm is raging and you are of no use to me if you drown.”
Arthur’s lips twist and a small huff escapes his mouth.
“You say the most romantic things,” Arthur replies, but it isn’t a refusal. He squirms a little against Hastur which only prompts Hastur’s tendrils to tighten – and Arthur moans at that, shivering. “What are you doing? It’s done, isn’t it?”
“I would have you again.”
Arthur hesitates. “But John – you only just returned him to me.“
And that isn’t a refusal either.
“You will keep him,” Hastur assures and dares to bring a tendril up to brush against Arthur’s face, across his lips, along the soft skin beneath his eyes. “Until the next cycle, as agreed. I would have you for the sake of pleasure alone.”
“I –“
“Aren’t you curious?” Hastur coaxes. “How it feels to have us both inside of you at once? Do you not long to hear his voice as I take you? Does he not dream of sinking his hand into my orifice and repaying my treatment of you in kind?”
Arthur whimpers and squirms against Hastur. He hesitates only a moment longer –
“I’m leaving,” he finally says, his voice shaking. He swallows hard and adds, “When the storm is over. I’m leaving then."
“Of course,” Hastur agrees.
And it’s so easy to agree, knowing just how long the fourth moon will linger in the sky above Carcosa and just how long the storm will last.
Hastur knows – as does John, but neither of them say a word.