Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, Guadalupe coming from wadi al-lupus, a chimera of Arabic and Latin meaning the valley of the wolf, our lady of the valley of the wolf.

Here she comes, with her corona pulsing gold and mulberry in turns, a winking dark star. Moises lies slack on the silica floor, his pupils blown out like the finger holes of a bowling ball

Everything is so horizontal. The horizon. The stunted trees. The air itself, which settles in layers above him like the haloclines of underwater caves, as sinister as they are beautiful. He is sure that if he stands up now he will be disobeying a natural order. If he stands up now he will not only die, but he will also take the rest of the world with him.

So he remains still, barely breathing, every muscle rigid, convinced he is keeping at bay total Armageddon.

He knows that demons are drawn towards the extremes—either the damned, or divine. They suffer no illusions; they recognize the savior and alight upon him like flies, even in the desert they can find him, where everything smells like glass and the black of night is total.

No entiendo...

Moisés, this great big manchild, starts to weep.

He forgets about the horizontal world, now sitting and collapsed into himself with his paws over his face.

In between ragged breaths: por que estás aquí?

Cielos, qué he hecho?

This last question, an incomprehensible whimper, every syllable thick with snot.

Out of the corner of his eye, Moisés expects the worst.

He is calmer now, if only because he has accepted what fate has wrought for him. If he is to be possessed, let it happen. His body is useless and damaged, a golem without a shem which crumbles into the dust of its origins.

So when it touches him with its nose (he is surprised that it is cold and wet, like his), he does not pull away.

And when it offers its name, he only stares. Is this a test? Where is the outer darkness, the gnashing of teeth?

He has stopped crying but he still shakes. He twitches and hiccups and licks the snot off of his nose.

Ulf-win, he repeats, not daring to meet its eyes.

What would el jefe do?

The odds are that he would laugh—yes, he can hear it now, that feline, guttering laugh—because nothing can hurt him, because he is the steward of his world, because he has mastered his body. And he laughs easily. And Moisés longs for that sound. He can envision the fold of fat on the back of the jaguar's neck which flattens when he turns, over his shoulder, to look at you. The brilliantine shine of his hair.

Moisés, he responds, calmer still. It keeps smiling at him, each one of its teeth as small as his toenails.

No hablo tu lengua.

Wulfwynn's valiant attempts at communication couldn't have found a more illiterate recipient. The pointing is bewildering, and so are the inquisitive noises. To him it is the same as the chattering of gorriónes—an esoteric language a phylum's distance apart.

He wishes that it would touch him again with its nose, which is so much like his despite everything.

Quién te hizo eso, Ulf-win? Y por qué?

Then he reaches out towards her nose, eyes half-shut in consternation.

She does not move away when he goes to touch her nose with his calloused palm. This strikes him as hard as a physical blow. No one tolerated being touched by him. Sometimes they let it be known that they thought him a leper. He lived with the tenuous awareness of being an aberrant thing, a soiled vector of degeneration, illness, and decline—but she only smiled at him, staring, each eye blue with reflected sky.

Yes, her nose is cold and wet—he had not imagined it. The nostrils flare softly against his calloused palm; they are so small he wonders how she can even breathe with them. And then the confirmation is over. He wipes his hand on the side of his neck.

Volition coalesces within the turgid channels of his brain. He stands up, looming over her now. It all sickens him. Why should he be treated with anything but disgust? Why shouldn't she flinch at his touch? Didn't she know? Didn't she see him?

When he lunges forward with a scream, rage is writ plainly across his face in all the languages of Earth, and more besides.