Seventeen weeks have passed since Sister and I have seen the sun.

Our room underground has a chair. A bed. No windows.

We make a map while we wait. 

We flip cans of house paint, continents puddling in pastels and primaries on the floor. Borders are notched. Faultlines are hammered. The moon is a naked bulb in orbit. Everest is a wooden highback with a sheet draped over its uprights. 

Sister becomes coastline-carver. Constellation-arranger.

I am the match lighting the wick of Hades.

Together we are minor gods, stringing tinsel highways between cities of fingernail clippings and penny nails and broken glass. Cappadocia is Sister’s lost tooth. Cincinnati is a June bug. Malcesine is a raisin and Guadalajara is glitter glue. We call a cobweb Quelimane. A drain in the floor is Grindelwald. A shiny nickel is Guangzhou. 

Tigris and Euphrates run in ribbons of dental floss and sweater yarn, a peach pit at their confluence.

“Tell me about this one.” Sister points.

“In this city, shadows feel like velvet.”

“And in this one?”

“It rains diamonds.”

“Here?”

“Sugar got stirred into the ocean instead of salt.”

“Over here?”

“If you lived in this city, you would look up and birds would be flying through blood. If you cut your skin, sky would come out.”

A trap snaps and we name it Eden.

A pipe in the ceiling drips and floods Sinai.

We are the overlords. Orchardists. Emperors of everything. Babel topplers. Atlantis sinkers. Aurora weavers. Glacier salters. Ozone eaters.

We stir black holes with our fingers. Stack skyscrapers ten soup-tins high. Adhesive gems pasted to walls are coral atolls rising from a seabed. I am West, back pressed into a corner, unhinging my jaw to swallow the sun. Sister is East, vomiting the color of canned apricots into the washbasin in the morning.

“Okay. I’m ready to go outside,” Sister decides. “You be the god. And I’ll be the jesus you shrink down little and send to earth.”

“We can’t go outside yet.”

“When, then?”

“Not until it’s safe.”

“What if it’s never safe again?”

Sister and I drink lakes and plug volcanoes. We wedge canals wider, raze toilet brush forests, cry and kick the breezeblocks.

“In this city, there is an eighth color after violet,” I whisper, after we’ve collapsed exhausted on our blankets to sleep. “You can catch it in a bottle and drink it.”

Our moon is turned off, but I can feel Sister’s yawn and smile. “Tell me another one.”

“In this city, all the good people glow in the dark.”

“Another.”

“That city over there. That’s where the earth’s mouth is. When she opens it to talk, everyone thinks her throat is a wishing well.”

“What would you wish for?”

“No one can make wishes anymore. She’s filled to the teeth with coins.”

A long time passes before Sister speaks. “What if nothing’s left? When we finally go outside?”

“We’ll be left,” I promise. “We’re good at making things out of nothing.”