In Xochitl, In Cuicatl
Adonis Borer
Ahuilizatl was young when they heard about Ometeotl for the first time. The god of creation and duality, half-male and half-female in one being. Ometeotl was formed of the flow-energy of teotl, the fabric of the universe, and watched the creation of all other gods. Ahuilizatl had always been fascinated with myth. From the age of five, most waking days were spent working with their mother, learning the ways of a midwife. Their mother prodded and criticized them from morning to evening, and the only relief would be lying in bed at night and imagining the beginning of the world, where the creator of all things did not have to choose between one side or another, because those sides had yet to have been invented. Gods did not have to decide on one thing or another, when they were the deciders of everything. Yet at 18, there was no longer time for Ahuilizatl to fantasize about gods and their stories. The days of sleeping under their mother’s roof were over. The only constant seemed to be the gods, and the gods had brought them Eloxochitl.
Unlike Ahuilizatl, Eloxochitl did not concern herself with gods beyond standard sacrifice. She woke before sunrise with her mother, pulled her own short hair into thick braids that rounded her skull tightly. Her hands moved like her mother’s as she kneaded the powdered corn with water until she created a paste for the tlaxcalli¹ they would have ready for the young children for their light morning meal. She had done this so often that her mind often wandered to other things as her hands twisted in a vague rhythm. She thought about her youth, propping herself up in front of her grandmother and watching her calloused, wrinkled hands do the same motions that she was doing now at 19, dipping her fingers in the bowl of water and letting the liquid drip down off her fingertips into the crushed flakes of dried corn in the molcaxitl ².
Since she was a child, she was taught to be quiet, to care for the children, to cook. As soon as she could balance herself on her two legs, she was handed responsibilities that would follow her for the rest of her life. Eloxochitl knew all of this, and she simply did not mind.
The two had met after Ahuilizatl was removed from their home. Eloxochitl’s hands were the first things that Ahuilizatl really met, when they passed Ahuilizatl a shallow bowl of leftover soup from her dinner. She had spotted them sitting against the town’s temple and immediately ran home to prepare a spare meal. The bowl had warmed Ahuilizatl’s palms as Eloxochitl sat next to them to introduce herself.
In the next few weeks, Ahuilizatl had created something for themselves. Extra supplies from around the village were taken in small increments from everywhere. A few armfuls of straw here, a worn obsidian axe to cut nearby cypress there. It was hardly anything at the time, but it added up. Soon enough, Ahuilizatl had built a small hut. It was embarrassingly primitive; even the smallest homes in the village were more advanced. But it was Ahuilizatl’s own creation, and that was enough. Eloxochitl visited often once the home was built. She carried food supplies under her arms with her bi-weekly, until Ahuilizatl was able to collect things for themselves. She taught them to cook, much in the same way she was taught. The time spent guiding Ahuilizatl’s hands through cutting corn, grinding cacao, pressing corn paste, pulled them closer together.
It was never about what Ahuilizatl was or wasn’t, because that wasn’t the reason for their meeting each other. Eloxochitl didn’t have to be told about what made Ahuilizatl different, nor did she feel as though it was important. Unlike Ahuilizatl’s parents, Eloxochitl was unapologetically understanding, and for that, Ahuilizatl was grateful.
It was during this time that Eloxochitl heard the word patlacheh for the first time. Ahuilizatl introduced her to the idea, that a person born a girl could want to be something other than that. A girl could like other girls, and choose not to be a girl at all, all at once. Eloxochitl did not connect with that term, but she quickly understood that Ahuilizatl told her about that word because they identified with it themself. Without doubt, Ahuilizatl emphasized that the word was dirty. They whispered it even in their own space, as if to speak it fully would cast a bitter cloud over the world itself.
On days when Ahuilizatl was exhausted with people, they laid in gentle languor along the hills bordering the small town in order to connect with the non-human. Ahuilizatl stared at the cloudless sky and felt the ants zigzag and trail their sun-marked skin with their fingers laced behind their head. The silence over the land made Ahuilizatl feel like they could hear the dried corn husks whispering to them. Every second that passed in the day, when Ahuilizatl watched the daylight travel as the god Huitzilopochtli³ pulled the sun to the dismembered Coyolxauhqui⁴, felt like an eternity without Eloxochitl.
Ahuilizatl briefly glanced over the dip of the hill down at the small village, and they could visualize Eloxochitl helping her mother in her cramped home. Watching over the few clouds dotting the sky, Ahuilizatl imagined Eloxochitl combing out her younger sister’s bunched, curly hair and parting it, twisting the textured strands into tight braids. Her mother would call for her and she would come over instantly, grabbing the ladle to stir the quilatl⁵ so it wouldn’t burn against the fire while her mother hung up more corn and cacao to dry against the hand-formed clay wall.
Most nights, the couple would sneak out of their homes to be together. Ahuilizatl would see Eloxochitl’s mother in her face as they watched her hop around on the thin path to the alcove they often hid in, secluded from the watchful world. There was a fullness to her cheeks that her older brother lacked, a subtle slump forward in her shoulders after years of preparing food and tending to child siblings. Her hair was mostly straight, but still gently wavy from daily braiding and short enough to keep her namesake, the cornflower. When she spent time with Ahuilizatl, the dim residual light from a lantern Ahuilizatl had brought with them would illuminate the side of her face and highlight the angled slope of her nose that she got from her father.
Ahuilizatl often thought about Eloxochitl as the ultimate combination of her parents’ best skills and attributes. She held the prowess and calculation of her father with the continuous comfort and warmth of her mother. Eloxochitl would tell Ahuilizatl that they had to say that because the two loved each other, but she would still hold their cheek in her hand and leave a kiss between their eyebrows as a quiet thank you.
Everything was quiet when in hiding. It was Ahuilizatl who proposed their secrecy first. There was no denying that they felt a certain guilt in their very existence. Eloxochitl’s mother was known in the village for her cooking, her father for his precise hunting. She was born to talented parents, and her association to Ahuilizatl would only dirty her name. Ahuilizatl was patlacheh, something deserving of punishment. Supposedly.
“What troubles you?” Eloxochitl pressed her fingers against Ahuilizatl’s warm scalp, as if she could feel their thoughts throbbing through their flesh. “You are thinking again.” Ahuilizatl was silent, but notably leaned into the touch. Eloxochitl was right, because she always was. Her fingers and hands felt all-knowing, like she could run her palms over Ahuilizatl’s body and feel exactly where they were aching and remedy it instantly.
“What are you thinking, ipo⁶?” She guided her hands through Ahuilizatl’s thick hair, twisting the tightly curled ends between her thumb and index finger. While Ahuilizatl stayed silent, Eloxochitl imagined what they could be thinking without telling her.
“I only wish everything was easier for me.” Ahuilizatl had closed their eyes, breathing out deeply through their nose. Their voice trembled on the words, like they were meeting pushback from something on the way out of their throat and the sentence only barely came tumbling out intact.
“I know. I wish the same. I trust it will happen someday. For both of us.” Eloxochitl’s hands stopped moving at Ahuilizatl’s hair, moving to rest on their shoulders. Her thumbs rubbed soft circles into their shoulder-blades as if to infuse Ahuilizatl’s skin with her positive affirmation. She knew that they were pessimistic, left so many things up to chance and divine intervention that they could just as easily manifest into reality themselves.
“I wish things were different. That we were not constantly in hiding like this.”
“Things can change if we want them to,” Eloxochitl murmured, smoothing a stray strand of hair down over her now-fraying braids. “Don’t you know of any gods that made change in their lives?”
Ahuilizatl sat up and turned to face Eloxochitl’s solemn face. Her fingers idly brushed against the thinner hair on her thighs as Ahuilizatl thought about her question. “You want things to change?” Ahuilizatl thought of gods of change, the way that each god was full of duality. A god born, but representative of death. A goddess of fertility also representative of age and strength.
“I want what you want, ipo. To live is to change, and I will change with you.”
Ahuilizatl held Eloxochitl’s hand, the pad of their thumb following the thin lines that made paths in her palm.
- — -
In the next week, word came to our leader and wise men that a large boat had arrived to Tenochtitlan⁷. The travelers were tall, their skin pale and irritated by the heat of summer. They wore several layers of fabric, scribbled strings of distinctly shaped symbols on scrolls in dark ink, and spoke in a jumbled, smooth tongue. They seemed to want something, waving their slender hands in motions that resembled food, people, something under the ground. They had pointed to the gold in Motecuhzoma Xocoyotl’s⁸ headdress and talked amongst each other in hushed voices, as if we could understand them in the first place.
We motioned outside, pointing them to the vast fields. Our prisoners of war were bent down over growing crops, tugging weeds from the base of young corn stalks and brushing bugs off of the sprouting avocado trees’ wide leaves.
They stared at our calloused hands and order of life and their faces turned shades of pink and red, like they were trying to mimic our hue. Their stature made them look like the ahuehuemeh⁹, thin bodies reaching up to the first heaven to touch Meztli¹⁰ and Tlaloc and scramble their hard work to replace it with their own.
They were confusing, but our philosophers told us that they were a sign from Quetzalcoatl¹¹, that a new age was forming.
The age of the Fifth Sun¹² would bring pale travelers from the direction of dead warriors to save us from ourselves, and they would trade us for our salvation. It was prophesied, and we had to listen, lest we destroy ourselves without the firm guidance of the gods.
- — -
“What if we left here?”
“What?”
Ahuilizatl swatted a small fly off of their outstretched leg. Eloxochitl’s head was resting on one of their thighs, her eyes closed with the intent of sleeping in the nighttime darkness surrounding them.
“Would you join me in leaving the town? We could leave here, travel to Tecuantepec¹³. The Zapotecs¹⁴ do not think of us in the way that Nezahualcoyotl¹⁵ does. I hear they view people like us as integral, as extensions of the gods themselves.”
“Is the Zapotec territory not far? What if we are caught? We are of Mexica¹⁶, would they not view us as the enemy regardless? What is your reasoning for leaving? We have everything here for us.”
Ahuilizatl watched Eloxochitl’s still face turned to their hip. Her eyes were still closed, but Ahuilizatl knew she was not sleeping in the way her eyes still moved under her eyelids. They moved to look up, then to the right, then down, tracing something in her mind that was not visible to her partner.
“I was thinking about what you asked me the other night, about the gods that changed in their lives. Do you know about Coatlicue¹⁷? She was the mother of Huitzilopochtli, god of the sun. She had already had other children, including her only daughter, Coyolxauhqui. When her children learned of her pregnancy with Huitzilopochtli, they planned to kill her. They believed it was blasphemous that she became pregnant out of nothing, when she tucked a ball of energy into her apron when it fell from the sky. Do you know what they did to their own mother, Xochi¹⁸? They planned to kill her, therefore killing the unborn Huitzilopochtli. As they crowded her, glimmering and sharp obsidian in Coyolxauhqui’s hand at her mother’s neck, Huitzilopochtli emerged from Coatlicue’s stomach fully grown, wielding a beam of the sun itself and cutting his older sister to pieces. When Tlaloc blesses us with rains and cutting winds, we offer sacrifices to Coatlicue for her own sacrifice of her body and the birth of Huitzilopochtli.”
Eloxochitl did not respond, but through the story she opened her eyes to watch the fervor that flooded Ahuilizatl’s face as they recounted the myth.
“But how did she change?”
Ahuilizatl looked into her eyes, upside down in relation to their own.
“She still died. Coyolxauhqui succeeded in slitting her mother’s throat and she was fully decapitated by the time Huitzilopochtli defeated his own sister. But Huitzilopochtli is the god of the sun. We sacrifice to him and Coatlicue to ensure that Coyolxauhqui does not succeed in never letting the sun rise. Every time the night ends and the day begins, we celebrate the way a mother and a sibling murdered their flesh and blood, because the rays of light Huitzilopochtli used to dismember his sister continue to shine over us in welcoming warmth as they climb over the horizon.”
“These gods are violent. Where is the peaceful change, ipo? I want to change with you, but I wish to change peacefully.”
“The gods are violent because the world is violent, Xochi.”
“Tell me another.”
“Tlazolteotl¹⁹ is the goddess of lust and filth. Her very name means ‘filth that is sacred.’ She eats excrement and drinks urine. We expel such filth from our bodies, and she eats it in return, purifying it and beginning the cycle of creation over in her stomach. She is the goddess of sex and adultery, but she exists as an extenstion of teotl nonetheless. Even in disgust, there is sacredness.”
Ahuilizatl pulled at tufts of dried grass next to them.
“They view us as tlazolli²⁰, Eloxochitl. But even tlazolli has its place in the cosmos.”
- — -
In the next month, Eloxochitl kissed each of her younger siblings on the forehead, whispering into their warm scalps that she was sorry. She picked more dried corn off of her mother’s wall than needed for the morning meal some mornings, wrapping extra tlaxcalli in a shawl and stashing it in her stack of shawls near where she slept. She began to weave a bag for herself during her evenings, sometimes bringing her supplies to spend time with Ahuilizatl at night. It was small, but sizeable enough for the shawl with her tlaxcalli, a few thick woven blankets, and the small bone sculpture her father gifted to her when she was a toddler, fashioned from a leg bone from a jaguar he killed the day that she was born. He saw it as a good omen for her, that Tezcatlipoca²¹ was watching over her. After the redness of her skin from birth faded away, he said that her tone resembled the copalli²² that was burned for Tezcatlipoca daily in the local temples.
Tezcatlipoca was the god of the night, and trekking through the quiet evening with Ahuilizatl reminded Eloxochitl of her birthright.
The two found themselves walking under broad canopies of cypress leaves, covering the bright constellations that followed them on their journey.
“What are you thinking about?” Ahuilizatl’s warm hand rested on her lower back in a gentle reminder that they were still there. It was not lost on them that it was a big shift, that maybe she didn’t think it was the good idea she told Ahuilizatl it once was when the journey still felt like a hypothetical.
“What if this is a mistake?”
“Do you think it is? We do not have to continue if you do not want to.”
“I just worry that we will not make it.”
“Let us rest, just for a few hours tonight. We can talk about this, soothe your mind.” A protruding root of a cypress worked as a place for Ahuilizatl to sit, and Eloxochitl joined them to lean against the trunk, sitting on the ground. Her back leaned against the wide trunk, her head falling to Ahuilizatl’s raised hip as they sat elevated above her. “I think I just need to rest. We have been walking for so long.”
Ahuilizatl nodded and held Eloxochitl’s head close to their hip. They could tell that her eyes were closed, that she was exhausted and doubtful in their physical transition. Ahuilizatl continued to hold her head against their hip as she drifted to sleep, comforted in the warmth of her partner’s body, continuous despite the journey.
- — -
Tecuantepec was quiet upon the couple’s arrival, as if waiting for their reaction to the land they had traveled so far to reach. The air caressed the palm trees, the wide leaves dancing in a mimicry of Eloxochitl’s woven shawl billowing with the coastal winds.
Eloxochitl smiled and turned to Ahuilizatl, her squinted eyes still full of vague admiration. They had made it, and they were free.
Thatched roofs and fire smoke illuminated the distance, and even from far away, they felt a familiar comfort. It looked exactly like the world they had left, and that too brought comfort, that they might in fact be welcomed with open arms, as if they were people that had lived in that village for decades, who had gone on a trek that had finally ended.
Unlike Ahuilizatl, Eloxochitl did not concern herself with gods beyond standard sacrifice. She woke before sunrise with her mother, pulled her own short hair into thick braids that rounded her skull tightly. Her hands moved like her mother’s as she kneaded the powdered corn with water until she created a paste for the tlaxcalli¹ they would have ready for the young children for their light morning meal. She had done this so often that her mind often wandered to other things as her hands twisted in a vague rhythm. She thought about her youth, propping herself up in front of her grandmother and watching her calloused, wrinkled hands do the same motions that she was doing now at 19, dipping her fingers in the bowl of water and letting the liquid drip down off her fingertips into the crushed flakes of dried corn in the molcaxitl ².
Since she was a child, she was taught to be quiet, to care for the children, to cook. As soon as she could balance herself on her two legs, she was handed responsibilities that would follow her for the rest of her life. Eloxochitl knew all of this, and she simply did not mind.
The two had met after Ahuilizatl was removed from their home. Eloxochitl’s hands were the first things that Ahuilizatl really met, when they passed Ahuilizatl a shallow bowl of leftover soup from her dinner. She had spotted them sitting against the town’s temple and immediately ran home to prepare a spare meal. The bowl had warmed Ahuilizatl’s palms as Eloxochitl sat next to them to introduce herself.
In the next few weeks, Ahuilizatl had created something for themselves. Extra supplies from around the village were taken in small increments from everywhere. A few armfuls of straw here, a worn obsidian axe to cut nearby cypress there. It was hardly anything at the time, but it added up. Soon enough, Ahuilizatl had built a small hut. It was embarrassingly primitive; even the smallest homes in the village were more advanced. But it was Ahuilizatl’s own creation, and that was enough. Eloxochitl visited often once the home was built. She carried food supplies under her arms with her bi-weekly, until Ahuilizatl was able to collect things for themselves. She taught them to cook, much in the same way she was taught. The time spent guiding Ahuilizatl’s hands through cutting corn, grinding cacao, pressing corn paste, pulled them closer together.
It was never about what Ahuilizatl was or wasn’t, because that wasn’t the reason for their meeting each other. Eloxochitl didn’t have to be told about what made Ahuilizatl different, nor did she feel as though it was important. Unlike Ahuilizatl’s parents, Eloxochitl was unapologetically understanding, and for that, Ahuilizatl was grateful.
It was during this time that Eloxochitl heard the word patlacheh for the first time. Ahuilizatl introduced her to the idea, that a person born a girl could want to be something other than that. A girl could like other girls, and choose not to be a girl at all, all at once. Eloxochitl did not connect with that term, but she quickly understood that Ahuilizatl told her about that word because they identified with it themself. Without doubt, Ahuilizatl emphasized that the word was dirty. They whispered it even in their own space, as if to speak it fully would cast a bitter cloud over the world itself.
On days when Ahuilizatl was exhausted with people, they laid in gentle languor along the hills bordering the small town in order to connect with the non-human. Ahuilizatl stared at the cloudless sky and felt the ants zigzag and trail their sun-marked skin with their fingers laced behind their head. The silence over the land made Ahuilizatl feel like they could hear the dried corn husks whispering to them. Every second that passed in the day, when Ahuilizatl watched the daylight travel as the god Huitzilopochtli³ pulled the sun to the dismembered Coyolxauhqui⁴, felt like an eternity without Eloxochitl.
Ahuilizatl briefly glanced over the dip of the hill down at the small village, and they could visualize Eloxochitl helping her mother in her cramped home. Watching over the few clouds dotting the sky, Ahuilizatl imagined Eloxochitl combing out her younger sister’s bunched, curly hair and parting it, twisting the textured strands into tight braids. Her mother would call for her and she would come over instantly, grabbing the ladle to stir the quilatl⁵ so it wouldn’t burn against the fire while her mother hung up more corn and cacao to dry against the hand-formed clay wall.
Most nights, the couple would sneak out of their homes to be together. Ahuilizatl would see Eloxochitl’s mother in her face as they watched her hop around on the thin path to the alcove they often hid in, secluded from the watchful world. There was a fullness to her cheeks that her older brother lacked, a subtle slump forward in her shoulders after years of preparing food and tending to child siblings. Her hair was mostly straight, but still gently wavy from daily braiding and short enough to keep her namesake, the cornflower. When she spent time with Ahuilizatl, the dim residual light from a lantern Ahuilizatl had brought with them would illuminate the side of her face and highlight the angled slope of her nose that she got from her father.
Ahuilizatl often thought about Eloxochitl as the ultimate combination of her parents’ best skills and attributes. She held the prowess and calculation of her father with the continuous comfort and warmth of her mother. Eloxochitl would tell Ahuilizatl that they had to say that because the two loved each other, but she would still hold their cheek in her hand and leave a kiss between their eyebrows as a quiet thank you.
Everything was quiet when in hiding. It was Ahuilizatl who proposed their secrecy first. There was no denying that they felt a certain guilt in their very existence. Eloxochitl’s mother was known in the village for her cooking, her father for his precise hunting. She was born to talented parents, and her association to Ahuilizatl would only dirty her name. Ahuilizatl was patlacheh, something deserving of punishment. Supposedly.
“What troubles you?” Eloxochitl pressed her fingers against Ahuilizatl’s warm scalp, as if she could feel their thoughts throbbing through their flesh. “You are thinking again.” Ahuilizatl was silent, but notably leaned into the touch. Eloxochitl was right, because she always was. Her fingers and hands felt all-knowing, like she could run her palms over Ahuilizatl’s body and feel exactly where they were aching and remedy it instantly.
“What are you thinking, ipo⁶?” She guided her hands through Ahuilizatl’s thick hair, twisting the tightly curled ends between her thumb and index finger. While Ahuilizatl stayed silent, Eloxochitl imagined what they could be thinking without telling her.
“I only wish everything was easier for me.” Ahuilizatl had closed their eyes, breathing out deeply through their nose. Their voice trembled on the words, like they were meeting pushback from something on the way out of their throat and the sentence only barely came tumbling out intact.
“I know. I wish the same. I trust it will happen someday. For both of us.” Eloxochitl’s hands stopped moving at Ahuilizatl’s hair, moving to rest on their shoulders. Her thumbs rubbed soft circles into their shoulder-blades as if to infuse Ahuilizatl’s skin with her positive affirmation. She knew that they were pessimistic, left so many things up to chance and divine intervention that they could just as easily manifest into reality themselves.
“I wish things were different. That we were not constantly in hiding like this.”
“Things can change if we want them to,” Eloxochitl murmured, smoothing a stray strand of hair down over her now-fraying braids. “Don’t you know of any gods that made change in their lives?”
Ahuilizatl sat up and turned to face Eloxochitl’s solemn face. Her fingers idly brushed against the thinner hair on her thighs as Ahuilizatl thought about her question. “You want things to change?” Ahuilizatl thought of gods of change, the way that each god was full of duality. A god born, but representative of death. A goddess of fertility also representative of age and strength.
“I want what you want, ipo. To live is to change, and I will change with you.”
Ahuilizatl held Eloxochitl’s hand, the pad of their thumb following the thin lines that made paths in her palm.
- — -
In the next week, word came to our leader and wise men that a large boat had arrived to Tenochtitlan⁷. The travelers were tall, their skin pale and irritated by the heat of summer. They wore several layers of fabric, scribbled strings of distinctly shaped symbols on scrolls in dark ink, and spoke in a jumbled, smooth tongue. They seemed to want something, waving their slender hands in motions that resembled food, people, something under the ground. They had pointed to the gold in Motecuhzoma Xocoyotl’s⁸ headdress and talked amongst each other in hushed voices, as if we could understand them in the first place.
We motioned outside, pointing them to the vast fields. Our prisoners of war were bent down over growing crops, tugging weeds from the base of young corn stalks and brushing bugs off of the sprouting avocado trees’ wide leaves.
They stared at our calloused hands and order of life and their faces turned shades of pink and red, like they were trying to mimic our hue. Their stature made them look like the ahuehuemeh⁹, thin bodies reaching up to the first heaven to touch Meztli¹⁰ and Tlaloc and scramble their hard work to replace it with their own.
They were confusing, but our philosophers told us that they were a sign from Quetzalcoatl¹¹, that a new age was forming.
The age of the Fifth Sun¹² would bring pale travelers from the direction of dead warriors to save us from ourselves, and they would trade us for our salvation. It was prophesied, and we had to listen, lest we destroy ourselves without the firm guidance of the gods.
- — -
“What if we left here?”
“What?”
Ahuilizatl swatted a small fly off of their outstretched leg. Eloxochitl’s head was resting on one of their thighs, her eyes closed with the intent of sleeping in the nighttime darkness surrounding them.
“Would you join me in leaving the town? We could leave here, travel to Tecuantepec¹³. The Zapotecs¹⁴ do not think of us in the way that Nezahualcoyotl¹⁵ does. I hear they view people like us as integral, as extensions of the gods themselves.”
“Is the Zapotec territory not far? What if we are caught? We are of Mexica¹⁶, would they not view us as the enemy regardless? What is your reasoning for leaving? We have everything here for us.”
Ahuilizatl watched Eloxochitl’s still face turned to their hip. Her eyes were still closed, but Ahuilizatl knew she was not sleeping in the way her eyes still moved under her eyelids. They moved to look up, then to the right, then down, tracing something in her mind that was not visible to her partner.
“I was thinking about what you asked me the other night, about the gods that changed in their lives. Do you know about Coatlicue¹⁷? She was the mother of Huitzilopochtli, god of the sun. She had already had other children, including her only daughter, Coyolxauhqui. When her children learned of her pregnancy with Huitzilopochtli, they planned to kill her. They believed it was blasphemous that she became pregnant out of nothing, when she tucked a ball of energy into her apron when it fell from the sky. Do you know what they did to their own mother, Xochi¹⁸? They planned to kill her, therefore killing the unborn Huitzilopochtli. As they crowded her, glimmering and sharp obsidian in Coyolxauhqui’s hand at her mother’s neck, Huitzilopochtli emerged from Coatlicue’s stomach fully grown, wielding a beam of the sun itself and cutting his older sister to pieces. When Tlaloc blesses us with rains and cutting winds, we offer sacrifices to Coatlicue for her own sacrifice of her body and the birth of Huitzilopochtli.”
Eloxochitl did not respond, but through the story she opened her eyes to watch the fervor that flooded Ahuilizatl’s face as they recounted the myth.
“But how did she change?”
Ahuilizatl looked into her eyes, upside down in relation to their own.
“She still died. Coyolxauhqui succeeded in slitting her mother’s throat and she was fully decapitated by the time Huitzilopochtli defeated his own sister. But Huitzilopochtli is the god of the sun. We sacrifice to him and Coatlicue to ensure that Coyolxauhqui does not succeed in never letting the sun rise. Every time the night ends and the day begins, we celebrate the way a mother and a sibling murdered their flesh and blood, because the rays of light Huitzilopochtli used to dismember his sister continue to shine over us in welcoming warmth as they climb over the horizon.”
“These gods are violent. Where is the peaceful change, ipo? I want to change with you, but I wish to change peacefully.”
“The gods are violent because the world is violent, Xochi.”
“Tell me another.”
“Tlazolteotl¹⁹ is the goddess of lust and filth. Her very name means ‘filth that is sacred.’ She eats excrement and drinks urine. We expel such filth from our bodies, and she eats it in return, purifying it and beginning the cycle of creation over in her stomach. She is the goddess of sex and adultery, but she exists as an extenstion of teotl nonetheless. Even in disgust, there is sacredness.”
Ahuilizatl pulled at tufts of dried grass next to them.
“They view us as tlazolli²⁰, Eloxochitl. But even tlazolli has its place in the cosmos.”
- — -
In the next month, Eloxochitl kissed each of her younger siblings on the forehead, whispering into their warm scalps that she was sorry. She picked more dried corn off of her mother’s wall than needed for the morning meal some mornings, wrapping extra tlaxcalli in a shawl and stashing it in her stack of shawls near where she slept. She began to weave a bag for herself during her evenings, sometimes bringing her supplies to spend time with Ahuilizatl at night. It was small, but sizeable enough for the shawl with her tlaxcalli, a few thick woven blankets, and the small bone sculpture her father gifted to her when she was a toddler, fashioned from a leg bone from a jaguar he killed the day that she was born. He saw it as a good omen for her, that Tezcatlipoca²¹ was watching over her. After the redness of her skin from birth faded away, he said that her tone resembled the copalli²² that was burned for Tezcatlipoca daily in the local temples.
Tezcatlipoca was the god of the night, and trekking through the quiet evening with Ahuilizatl reminded Eloxochitl of her birthright.
The two found themselves walking under broad canopies of cypress leaves, covering the bright constellations that followed them on their journey.
“What are you thinking about?” Ahuilizatl’s warm hand rested on her lower back in a gentle reminder that they were still there. It was not lost on them that it was a big shift, that maybe she didn’t think it was the good idea she told Ahuilizatl it once was when the journey still felt like a hypothetical.
“What if this is a mistake?”
“Do you think it is? We do not have to continue if you do not want to.”
“I just worry that we will not make it.”
“Let us rest, just for a few hours tonight. We can talk about this, soothe your mind.” A protruding root of a cypress worked as a place for Ahuilizatl to sit, and Eloxochitl joined them to lean against the trunk, sitting on the ground. Her back leaned against the wide trunk, her head falling to Ahuilizatl’s raised hip as they sat elevated above her. “I think I just need to rest. We have been walking for so long.”
Ahuilizatl nodded and held Eloxochitl’s head close to their hip. They could tell that her eyes were closed, that she was exhausted and doubtful in their physical transition. Ahuilizatl continued to hold her head against their hip as she drifted to sleep, comforted in the warmth of her partner’s body, continuous despite the journey.
- — -
Tecuantepec was quiet upon the couple’s arrival, as if waiting for their reaction to the land they had traveled so far to reach. The air caressed the palm trees, the wide leaves dancing in a mimicry of Eloxochitl’s woven shawl billowing with the coastal winds.
Eloxochitl smiled and turned to Ahuilizatl, her squinted eyes still full of vague admiration. They had made it, and they were free.
Thatched roofs and fire smoke illuminated the distance, and even from far away, they felt a familiar comfort. It looked exactly like the world they had left, and that too brought comfort, that they might in fact be welcomed with open arms, as if they were people that had lived in that village for decades, who had gone on a trek that had finally ended.
Footnotes:
1 A tortilla-like food item, made of corn.
2 A molcajete, or a stone mortar and pestle, primarily used to grind down dried food.
3 The Aztec god of the sun, war, and sacrifice. He is sometimes seen as the sun itself.
4 A smaller Aztec goddess of the moon. She is Huitzilopochtli’s older sister, and she was killed by Huitzilopochtli for trying to kill their mother, Coatlicue.
5 A corn-based vegetable soup.
6 The Nahuatl word for partner, used here as a pet name.
7 The capital city of the Aztec empire.
8 The Nahuatl name for Montezuma II, in order to distinguish him from his father, Montezuma I.
9 The Nahuatl name for Mexican Cypress trees.
10 The main Aztec goddess of the moon and the greater constellations.
11 The Aztec god of fertility, also seen as a creator in some nations.
12 Pre-Hispanic Aztec eras were described in numbered Suns, and were made up of a certain amount of years, months, and days. The Fifth Sun Age had started just before the Spanish arrived, and each Sun held prophecies that were to happen.
13 A coastal area on the southeast shore of Mexico.
14 The pre-colonial inhabitants of Tecuantepec and the surrounding areas. Notably, some Zapotecs do understand and celebrate the expression of a third gender, and other queer people.
15 The leader of the pre-Hispanic Texcoco region. He was notoriously hard on queer people under his rule.
16 Another name for the Aztec people, and where the name of the country was formed.
17 A main Aztec goddess of fertility, and mother to Huitzilopochtli, Coyolxauhqui, and 400 other main and smaller gods.
18 Ahuilizatl’s nickname for Eloxochitl. Also a shortened form of the Nahuatl word for flower, xochitl.
19 An Aztec goddess of filth and grime, as well as female sexuality and adultery.
20 Filth or grime, or anything unclean.
21 The Aztec god of darkness and night, often represented by a jaguar.
22 The Nahuatl word for hardened amber from the Mexican copal tree that was burned for incense during offerings to the gods.
1 A tortilla-like food item, made of corn.
2 A molcajete, or a stone mortar and pestle, primarily used to grind down dried food.
3 The Aztec god of the sun, war, and sacrifice. He is sometimes seen as the sun itself.
4 A smaller Aztec goddess of the moon. She is Huitzilopochtli’s older sister, and she was killed by Huitzilopochtli for trying to kill their mother, Coatlicue.
5 A corn-based vegetable soup.
6 The Nahuatl word for partner, used here as a pet name.
7 The capital city of the Aztec empire.
8 The Nahuatl name for Montezuma II, in order to distinguish him from his father, Montezuma I.
9 The Nahuatl name for Mexican Cypress trees.
10 The main Aztec goddess of the moon and the greater constellations.
11 The Aztec god of fertility, also seen as a creator in some nations.
12 Pre-Hispanic Aztec eras were described in numbered Suns, and were made up of a certain amount of years, months, and days. The Fifth Sun Age had started just before the Spanish arrived, and each Sun held prophecies that were to happen.
13 A coastal area on the southeast shore of Mexico.
14 The pre-colonial inhabitants of Tecuantepec and the surrounding areas. Notably, some Zapotecs do understand and celebrate the expression of a third gender, and other queer people.
15 The leader of the pre-Hispanic Texcoco region. He was notoriously hard on queer people under his rule.
16 Another name for the Aztec people, and where the name of the country was formed.
17 A main Aztec goddess of fertility, and mother to Huitzilopochtli, Coyolxauhqui, and 400 other main and smaller gods.
18 Ahuilizatl’s nickname for Eloxochitl. Also a shortened form of the Nahuatl word for flower, xochitl.
19 An Aztec goddess of filth and grime, as well as female sexuality and adultery.
20 Filth or grime, or anything unclean.
21 The Aztec god of darkness and night, often represented by a jaguar.
22 The Nahuatl word for hardened amber from the Mexican copal tree that was burned for incense during offerings to the gods.
Adonis Borer is an undergraduate Psychology student studying at the University of La Verne in Southern California. They are passionate about writing fiction reflective of their own personal identities, including Mexican identity, queerness, and disability.
