The air around me is sentient, whispering constantly in Romani and the Japanese slang of shops and arcades along the Ginza strip. "Si khohaimo may pachivalo sar o chachim," dark velvet strands of vowel and consonant accuse, tickling my ear like an unrelenting gnat.

I wave my hand distractedly, annoyed. A trick of the light, perhaps, or the tonal impetus of days lost to all the ways my world has ended. Wee, private Ragnaroks crying out in temporal dissonance, betrayed by the forward stumbling of weary feet; a widowed unwillingness to lie down.

"Nogitsune!"

Fox-spirit. Old Man Coyote. Loki. I've been called worse more often than better.

The Oracle at Delphi was out of her nut on wine and ethylene when I showed up curious one late spring evening, and she squawked the answer to my impetuous question for the whole crowd to hear.

"You!" she shrilled at the top her slowly dying lungs. "You are your own worst enemy!"

Plutarch was embarrassed by the show and quickly rushed me off to some debauchery or another where we forgot all about it.

The air though, oppressive, bilious, entirely too talkative, has never forgotten.