The air in Tír na nÓg hums with a familiar energy, a resonance that vibrates deep within Tak’s bones. It’s been four years since Asherah’s intervention, four years of tentative healing, of learning to breathe again without the crushing weight of grief threatening to suffocate him. Four years of stolen Christmas Eves, each a precious, fragile echo of a life that could have been, a life that, in some impossible way, still is.
His siblings had been… careful. Attentive. Eirikr, ever the stoic observer, had kept a watchful eye, his presence a silent reassurance that Tak wasn’t entirely alone in his unraveling. Even the more boisterous members of his family had tempered their usual exuberance, offering quiet companionship instead of their typical chaotic revelry. They understood, perhaps better than he did himself, the delicate nature of his recovery.
But they had not only watched.
In secret, while Tak wept and wandered and broke apart and stitched himself back together, they scoured the Mortal Realm. Each sibling taking a different path, in a great unspoken quest: to gather everything they could find of Henry. Billy. William H. Bonney. Kid Antrim. All of him.
They visited barns and attics, antique shops and dusty libraries. They traded with cowboys and ranch widows, listened at the edges of saloons, bartered with angels and crossed into dreams. They found his letters, his spurs, his drawings, a knife he gave a girl in Kansas who kept it tucked in a locket until her dying day. They traced his trail in photographs, in bullets, in poems never published. A dozen names. A hundred objects.
And the horses—oh, the horses.
They followed bloodlines, watching the descendants of the two mounts who carried Henry and Tak through desert and dusk. They tracked every foal, every stallion and mare down to the soft-eyed creatures alive today. Twelve in total, gathered in a valley near the cliffs, and when Tak visits, they recognize him. Press their warm foreheads to his chest like they remember.
And while they gathered, they built.
Hand over hand, brick over breath, they raised the house from Tak’s memories. But not just a recreation—a devotion. A labor of love in timber and time. They carved the porch to creak like it did in Silver City. A door with the same stubborn hinge. A bedroom with Henry’s handwriting etched faintly on the wall where he once mapped the stars.
Above it, they added the arboretum—a sanctuary of green and glass. Vines curled across beams, soft moss underfoot, sunlight captured in domes of living crystal. Inside, a library. A hearth. A bed draped in linen and memory. And a bridge—arched and strange—leading upward into the starlight.
A doorway from the house to the sky.
A doorway from remembrance to Heaven.
Today, however, there’s a different kind of anticipation in the air. A hushed excitement that dances around the edges of their usually placid existence. They’ve been secretive, whispering amongst themselves, their eyes darting towards him with a mixture of concern and… something else. Hope, perhaps? It’s a dangerous emotion, one Tak has learned to approach with caution.
“We have a surprise for you, brother,” Cipactli says, her voice uncharacteristically soft. She’s always been the most attuned to his emotions, able to sense his shifts in mood with an almost unnerving accuracy. She takes his hand, her touch warm and grounding. “Something we’ve been working on.”
He allows himself to be led, his bare feet silent on the mossy ground. They walk through sun-dappled groves and across shimmering streams, the landscape of Tír na nÓg shifting and swirling around them like a dream. He trusts them, implicitly. Even after the darkness, after the near-obliteration of his self, he trusts them.
They stop before a structure that seems to have grown organically from the earth itself. It’s a house, but unlike any house he’s ever seen. Each plank telling a silent story of wind and rain.
It’s… familiar. Terribly, achingly familiar. A lump forms in his throat, and he struggles to swallow past it.
“Go on,” Eirikr urges, his voice low. “Open the door.”
Tak hesitates, his hand hovering over the rough-hewn wood of the door. He can feel the memories swirling around him, the echoes of laughter and whispered secrets. He takes a deep breath, steels himself, and pushes the door open.
The interior is bathed in a soft, golden light. Dust motes dance in the air, illuminated by the sun streaming through the windows. The walls are lined with shelves, filled with objects that make his breath catch in his throat. A worn leather-bound journal. A silver pocket watch. A deck of playing cards, missing the Queen of Spades. A half-finished whittling project, a small wooden horse with one leg broken.
Each object is a fragment of a life, a piece of a soul. Each object is a memory made solid.
He recognizes the scent of sage and leather, the faint aroma of gunpowder and woodsmoke. It’s the smell of Silver City, the smell of Henry.
He walks further into the house, his fingers tracing the spines of the books, the smooth surface of the watch. He picks up the wooden horse, turning it over in his hands. He remembers Henry whittling it by the campfire, his brow furrowed in concentration. He remembers the playful scuffle that resulted in the broken leg.
Tears well up in his eyes, blurring his vision. He’s not sure if they’re tears of grief or tears of… something else. Something akin to joy.
“We built it for you, Tak,” my sister Nebet said softly, stepping into the house behind him. “We knew you needed a place to keep him. A place to remember.”
He turns to face her, his heart overflowing. “But… how?”
“We listened to your stories,” Eirikr says, his gaze steady. “We saw the dreams you shared. We built it from your memories, from the fragments of his soul that you carry within you. And it helped that we found Henry's sketches.”
It’s more than just a house. It’s a sanctuary. A shrine. A testament to a love that transcends time and death. It’s a place where he can be with Henry, not just in fleeting moments on Christmas Eve, but always.
He understands now. His siblings weren’t just trying to ease his grief. They were giving him a gift. The gift of remembrance. The gift of love, carried forward.
He closes his eyes, takes another deep breath, and allows himself to feel. To feel the pain, the loss, the longing. But also to feel the love, the connection, the enduring bond that will never be broken.
He is home.
