We've known for a long time we cannot kill each other. We need you to live. You? What do you need? What do you want? Do you have plans? Are you a reflection of him? Of me? Of them? Do you feel hunger? Are you one or many? Are you today? How quickly do you change your mind? Do you hurt? Do you feel? Do you control?
Are you human? Are you aware? Make me understand.
“But all this time, I've been chasin' down a lie.
And I know it for what it is,
But it beats the alternatives
So I'll take the lie.” –Radical Face, Ghost Towns
The darkness shivered as though they stood in a storm cloud. Absolute blackness. Lightning clarity. Nothing in between, though it switched between the two with nauseating force. Amberli Rhodes stood so close beside, she could feel the texture of the girl’s coat catching her bracer.
“Survival is the priority. Why are we here?”
“I will die. It may be here,” she acknowledged.
“Then why? We must survive.”
“Slavery now or slavery later. This is the only way to learn. To change it. I wonder what this place is. I wonder how much of it is real. I wonder…”
“Why waste our time with them? Why is his life worth ours?”
This mantra ran like tired fingers through her hair. No need to ask who ‘he’ was. These were not new arguments, but this was the first time they were spoken to her by something else. It wore a rabbit’s face. It disliked when she ignored it in favor of the one she was anchoring.
Sewn patches glimmered as Amberli confronted Brett. But that was wrong. The exchange, though hard to hear over her own persistent thoughts, seemed far too defensive. Not panicked, or uncalm, but... too much--
“Should we fight?!” someone shouted from the other side of their little haven.
Slowly, one by one, affirmations ran across the circle under the void. They had talked a while, and not much had seemed to change. They felt time running beneath the fabrics.
Amidst the din of voices, huddled around the shuddering light, they fought.
“Why is our only connection with corpse?”
If I lose, it takes him. He is his own. These are not yours to control.
The rabbit melted away under one strike, leaving a vertigo not unlike missing a step in a dark. She pivoted, slashed into the person she had murdered not a few months ago. Or something what looked like it. Brett had unfortunate skill.
The flickering blinded, but she could see something else hitting at Rhodes on the other side. Hitting hard. The singer crumpled.
Adrenaline flared. She barreled forward and dug Amberli off the ground before the blood could settle, darting out of the danger… and into the silences beyond the light.
The moment she lowered Rhodes to the leaf-strewn floor, weariness crushed her. It was as if someone had drowned her for days on end. Her breathing picked up a sickly quality. Drawing breath took effort and her muscles shook. Somehow the concentration it took get Rhodes out hurt more than Brett’s punches had, and she distantly noticed the lack of blood or bruise on her. On them.
“Rhodes?” She slipped a hand under the girl’s chin, finding her throat, working her fingers to the familiar groove what should be hammering now… Amberli’s face was a wash of shadows, though the screaming lights played in her hair and across her shiv. Lines of cold ran through the sawbones’ veins. As it settled in her skin, she realized the pressure. She might have guessed from her clenched teeth what the emotion was, but this was not the time.
She was mine, you see, she thought expressionlessly. It’s time to take another step.
Amos Hiddleson giggled shrilly to himself in his Merican-looking glory, moving forward in an amiable shamble across the grass. “I just thought of that joke again.” His sunstroke humor faded at the appearance of the zed, along with a very small bit of his senselessness. Under the brilliantly jewel-toned forest, courtesy of the last hours of day, more than a dozen undead roamed.
They twitched, hiccupped, and muttered.
“Might be animates,” Dross warned. The iron had an air of command about him he never seemed to quite actually use. Probably why it worked so well. Blondeheaded, bright, brutal Alexa began to respond when hissing smoke started sputtering from deeper down in what they called Shambleton.
Why gather the dead through the motions? I wonder why they build buildings. Desperate. Hungry. The other watcher wants to know.
“That’s it! Has to be it!” Amos whooped. She looked at Sparrow and wondered if he was actually here. Stoic, he said nothing. Was he thinking about their excursion tonight? Did he feel like he did not have enough seconds, enough ages for these questions? Did he think about Darwinism now? It needs to evolve fast enough to outpace us. Does it ever worry as they do?
“It’s hostile,” she interjected softly.
The Retrograde chuckled, towering head and shoulders over her frailty. Something is his nature was very much like Templeton’s, but she could not place it. His rotted mouth was bandanna-covered today, clean. The multicolored cloth had many dark tones—much like his actual face.
“Well sure. I’m hostile to people I’m fighting. You are. We all are. But if it wanted us dead, why doesn’t it just keep us? Not let us come back.” Stew spoke with his hands. He had a habit of weaving patterns into the air.
“Either because it wants to learn, or it can’t.” Its limits change. It doesn’t have form. “Can’t stop us from coming back. You think it’s like a child?”
“All it ever feels is people’s rage and pain,” he said, almost defensively. “It’s all it knows. Think of how sad that is. To have all that power, and not even see people except when they’re at their worst.”
Do you pity it?
“Not sure I agree, but your thoughts are interesting.”
“Heh, you mean they’re naïve,” she thought she heard him murmur. It was strange how he acted as if his own views were incorrect. He obviously believed them. They were worth consideration. What would happen if everyone believed as Stew did? Would its nature change? It was not immune to their attitudes, the child of death.
Why would it want to change? Powerful beings have no need to care.
She walked at the back of the group as was her habit, her body remembering before her mind the years of watching the six in scavenging groups. No crickets chirps and no fireflies hummed—there was not even a cicada buzz to greet their march out of the forest and back into life.
Are we insane? it whispered.
“I don’t believe I can be insane,” she murmured back, eyes trailing Rhodes before shifting to the side. Zed had no respect for long trials, and they were not safe yet.
Yes, yes that’s right!
They discussed for a while the things what interested voices which settled in heads, until her steps slowed. She found herself stopped, now very alone on the road.
Please, please don’t go any further. It hurts.
Her steps slowed, and--
“Smiles?” echoed from up the road. “Where’s Smiles?”
Don’t go! My name is Timothy Smalls. I remember now! I existed! Ask Johnny Two-Smiles, anyone, they’ll tell you. Please, you can’t go any further!”
Caught in a strange state of trust, unmotivated, she could only answer honestly.
“Do you want to deliver a message? They’ll be coming back soon. To make sure I’m with them.” No response, though she could hear another shout. From House? “There isn’t a lot of time.” An entirely different voice answered, and she bowed her head politely to the one who, after all, had owned Smalls far before she could ask to make any claim on him. She joined the rest of the group, who told her with some relief to keep up.
“We made it,” Rhodes sighed, staring into the sky which opened up above them.
“Did we really?” she mused softly. “Are we sure this is real?” The sudden dread shimmering to life behind the girl’s eyes made her wish she had kept silence. No need to bother them with the way her thoughts turned. Time past she pulled herself back together, even tired as she was.
There was a chance he was in an upset state, waiting, Templeton. He had mentioned once, how he waited for Deliverance. If this was a pattern, he could be pained by it again. Likelihood high. She would have to find him.
She searched the Tap, in its circus whirl of color and sound, and received a hug that jarred her against the walls of herself and very nearly had both of them bleeding—the sawbones was in no state to be accurate. She set out onto the road, feeling more adrift than she’d care to admit, though not before she asked Two-Smiles a quick clarification. It was difficult, staring at the deserted Kennel, to not curl up against the shadows of the workbench to sleep. So she wandered.
The night was alive with tension. Bad brain, Dead Eyes, rumors—surely one of them had mired him. She realized the keen irony of being concerned about him, but it was appropriate. She had only gone through the Grave; he had had to feel.
The sawbones calmly settled at last by the morgue. Someone had been kind or careless enough to leave a chair glinting amongst the moon shadows. She let her thoughts disperse and fell to existing for a while.
I’ll be here when he returns.
It controls our agony. House, with her colored hair and too-familiar stiffness, stood to her left. Xen, unyielding but sometimes tempted to pretending, held his shield to her right. The light was at the backs, dimming. She drew breath with effort, remembering the thousands of words she had collected on the grave. They had common veins running through them, pumping life into the myth of this place.
“Rhodes. You are not dead.” Her voice is tearing in her own head, too loud against the light-writhing trees. It had to be loud enough to hear, if the body was still out there. If Rhodes had not just become nothing. “We have not left the grave.” Silence answered. She did not waste time with disappointment. Like any procedure, it would take time.
“Remember your Queens. You will not let it make the world a monster.” The other watcher was one reflection of them. She had to take up a role as another reflection. Her legs shook with exhaustion, and only the survival rush kept her from collapsing.
And doubt has no place here, does it, Templeton? I cannot inspire the way you do. But...
It might have been hours or minutes. She shouted to her; it was all she could do to one she anchored now. She killed her weariness, her pragmatic judgments. None were useful here. This was up to Rhodes. She remembered the bite behind the girl’s hesitant smile as she stood on their impromptu stage. Smiles knew what was there in the dark, and it struck her that the grave could not hold the singer. Color her a fool.
Still no answer. If only she could remember more of the girl’s script.
“You aren’t giving up yet.” Her voice ripped through the air. “You owe Gray more than that.” Her voice ripped over the din of eight people trying to solve eight different parts of one riddle.
“You don’t care enough to save her,” a darker thing hissed scathingly inside her head. “Go go go! Go out and get her. Why did you leave her? Why not run out there after her, get her? You don’t care. Go on, tell her to sing. Do it. Save her. Get her back.” The force of it shook her, and she imagined in a moment of weakness walking off into the dark, with no will, no need of will.
It’s right. I don’t care enough to draw her out. Can’t feel like they do. Can’t--She straightened painfully, ignoring her thoughts.
Tired, aren’t you? she asked herself. If you can’t, you can’t. Do what has to be done and worry about failure later. I cannot inspire the way Templeton does. But I am much more stubborn.
“Rhodes, if you can hear me! Give any indication! I’ll get you!” she gritted, and realized she sounded furious.
Silence. Then, a high pitched wail at two o’ clock, perhaps seven yards away. It culminated in a pained sob. Her being drew to the sound.
When she walked back to The Kennel, it was as if the ghost town of earlier had never occurred. People swarmed and darted like night birds. Of course, he found her before she found him. He did that.
There was injury there, with him. As they retreated behind the cabin and the glare of the cabin lights, she could hear it bleeding in his voice and dripping from his hands and face. The slump of his frame screamed it. Templeton Barnes did not slump. Except, of course, when he did. The world swirled around them disorienting, only a sign of weariness. Seeing him, though, she felt awake again. He expressed his relief; he had searched for her. She expressed her experiences, as neatly as she could.
"Apparently my mind has problems with you,” she noted clinically. There was an overload of detail to sort through. She gauged his reaction to the statement, and what she saw was not good.
“Well…” He sighed, and his voice was as quiet as hers. That sigh, that tone, was bitter. “I don’t have the strength to argue that...”
This registered as a pattern. She saw him months ago on the bench at sunset, the only one in town who didn’t have blood on his face and remnants of bugs in his head.
“You don’t have to,” she responded calmly. Nor would he ever. “You seem upset.” She watched him helplessly, expressionlessly, as he spoke. Injury spilled forth, wetting the ground and soaking the air. Unable to see what was hurting him, unable to understand, and unused to caring, she tensed.
“I am just very close to being done with humanity tonight,” he said, and she did not think to include herself among that number. Instead, she wondered how he could be done with himself.
You can run as far as you can into those trees, Templeton, and you will not be able to escape your emotions, she thought, and may have said out loud. It was difficult to tell when he did not respond.
Doubt has no place here, hm, Templeton? Give yourself time to heal, and I’ll see you well again when the time comes. You mean something to me.
Smiles could feel a pressure behind her face, seeing him suffer like this. With a faint regret she did not understand, the sawbones snuffed it out. Everything inside her went silent, calm.
I’ll die, running out to her.
“Why not survive? Why risk our lives for this thing?”
If I die, I die. It doesn’t win right now.
The form demanded reasons, raged why?! in a soft cadence Smiles recognized as her own, as she made her feet to move. It had never been her talent, words. Her logic worked outside of them, and now it was cold, frigid cold.
The Final Knight pushed into the dark, and she saw for a moment in perfect clarity his backlit earlobe before casting her eyes out into the withering forest. Shadows had a way of biding their time, but everyone saw them spread. Amberli looked incorrect on the ground, only a gray blur against black, and she helped the girl to her proper height. Four steps to go.
Was she alright? Could she walk? The forms around them started to move at them like determined ghosts. Rhodes’ head inclined. A storm of life rose around the singer and Smiles ignored how it should not be possible. Good. Yes. Let’s go. Three steps.
“Xen, cover us. I’m walking through water right now.” The light, however nauseating, seemed far away, and the others waited there confronting their own ghosts.
Two steps.
If she could just fend the thing off for a second. Did it have two mouths, or was her vision splitting? Three? Four? Somehow, she knew. Xen protected Amberli, as he should. The girl had just fought her way back from the dead, after all. Nothing to do about this.
One step. She met it squarely in the eyes as she failed to block the strike, as it sheared through her arm and did nothing at all, at least as far as blood or broken bone.
The ground managed to punch her with such a force that it was, barely, her last sensation.
Curled under the firm weight of blankets, lost to the world, Smiles’ consciousness sparked at the cracking of the door. If there were any dreams, she couldn’t remember them. Strange—she was a dreamer.
The tan blanket, knitted, had been payment from the Rosalie whose sick son had also taught crochet. The rug, heavy, she had found jammed under a broken down wagon two years ago, only slightly given to rot. The Pureblood one had been just a long stretch of cloth, softer than a cat to the touch. She often wrapped her face in it. The last one, a dingy, noble, thready thing, reminded her of Templeton. Colorful canes striped red and white marched next to patterns of leaves, what one saw during X-Mas. He called it Christmas stubbornly.
The door twisted with its usual protest, and she heard the usual walk. The way he pretended to breathe had a familiar sound. Leaning on her knife arm, she lifted the Pureblood blanket off her head to peer at him, to be sure. He puttered about the home, checking this and putting away that before he rested.
The watcher considered him and thought, maybe, the injury had lessened. The graying bird, so old, so young, slept in the bunk behind where he stood, and she saw no new rips on his person either. They were well, they were safe, until the next flood came.
“Go back to sleep, Frances,” he said softly.
She acceded and closed her eyes, without thought or complaint.
“But everybody’s bones are just holy branches
Cast from trees to cut patterns in the world
And in time we find some shelter,
Spill our leaves, and then sleep in the earth
And when there we’ll belong.” –Radical Face, Holy Branches
What is left when the body is gone?
"Only ourselves."
Are you human? Are you aware? Make me understand.
“But all this time, I've been chasin' down a lie.
And I know it for what it is,
But it beats the alternatives
So I'll take the lie.” –Radical Face, Ghost Towns
The darkness shivered as though they stood in a storm cloud. Absolute blackness. Lightning clarity. Nothing in between, though it switched between the two with nauseating force. Amberli Rhodes stood so close beside, she could feel the texture of the girl’s coat catching her bracer.
“Survival is the priority. Why are we here?”
“I will die. It may be here,” she acknowledged.
“Then why? We must survive.”
“Slavery now or slavery later. This is the only way to learn. To change it. I wonder what this place is. I wonder how much of it is real. I wonder…”
“Why waste our time with them? Why is his life worth ours?”
This mantra ran like tired fingers through her hair. No need to ask who ‘he’ was. These were not new arguments, but this was the first time they were spoken to her by something else. It wore a rabbit’s face. It disliked when she ignored it in favor of the one she was anchoring.
Sewn patches glimmered as Amberli confronted Brett. But that was wrong. The exchange, though hard to hear over her own persistent thoughts, seemed far too defensive. Not panicked, or uncalm, but... too much--
“Should we fight?!” someone shouted from the other side of their little haven.
Slowly, one by one, affirmations ran across the circle under the void. They had talked a while, and not much had seemed to change. They felt time running beneath the fabrics.
Amidst the din of voices, huddled around the shuddering light, they fought.
“Why is our only connection with corpse?”
If I lose, it takes him. He is his own. These are not yours to control.
The rabbit melted away under one strike, leaving a vertigo not unlike missing a step in a dark. She pivoted, slashed into the person she had murdered not a few months ago. Or something what looked like it. Brett had unfortunate skill.
The flickering blinded, but she could see something else hitting at Rhodes on the other side. Hitting hard. The singer crumpled.
Adrenaline flared. She barreled forward and dug Amberli off the ground before the blood could settle, darting out of the danger… and into the silences beyond the light.
The moment she lowered Rhodes to the leaf-strewn floor, weariness crushed her. It was as if someone had drowned her for days on end. Her breathing picked up a sickly quality. Drawing breath took effort and her muscles shook. Somehow the concentration it took get Rhodes out hurt more than Brett’s punches had, and she distantly noticed the lack of blood or bruise on her. On them.
“Rhodes?” She slipped a hand under the girl’s chin, finding her throat, working her fingers to the familiar groove what should be hammering now… Amberli’s face was a wash of shadows, though the screaming lights played in her hair and across her shiv. Lines of cold ran through the sawbones’ veins. As it settled in her skin, she realized the pressure. She might have guessed from her clenched teeth what the emotion was, but this was not the time.
She was mine, you see, she thought expressionlessly. It’s time to take another step.
Amos Hiddleson giggled shrilly to himself in his Merican-looking glory, moving forward in an amiable shamble across the grass. “I just thought of that joke again.” His sunstroke humor faded at the appearance of the zed, along with a very small bit of his senselessness. Under the brilliantly jewel-toned forest, courtesy of the last hours of day, more than a dozen undead roamed.
They twitched, hiccupped, and muttered.
“Might be animates,” Dross warned. The iron had an air of command about him he never seemed to quite actually use. Probably why it worked so well. Blondeheaded, bright, brutal Alexa began to respond when hissing smoke started sputtering from deeper down in what they called Shambleton.
Why gather the dead through the motions? I wonder why they build buildings. Desperate. Hungry. The other watcher wants to know.
“That’s it! Has to be it!” Amos whooped. She looked at Sparrow and wondered if he was actually here. Stoic, he said nothing. Was he thinking about their excursion tonight? Did he feel like he did not have enough seconds, enough ages for these questions? Did he think about Darwinism now? It needs to evolve fast enough to outpace us. Does it ever worry as they do?
“It’s hostile,” she interjected softly.
The Retrograde chuckled, towering head and shoulders over her frailty. Something is his nature was very much like Templeton’s, but she could not place it. His rotted mouth was bandanna-covered today, clean. The multicolored cloth had many dark tones—much like his actual face.
“Well sure. I’m hostile to people I’m fighting. You are. We all are. But if it wanted us dead, why doesn’t it just keep us? Not let us come back.” Stew spoke with his hands. He had a habit of weaving patterns into the air.
“Either because it wants to learn, or it can’t.” Its limits change. It doesn’t have form. “Can’t stop us from coming back. You think it’s like a child?”
“All it ever feels is people’s rage and pain,” he said, almost defensively. “It’s all it knows. Think of how sad that is. To have all that power, and not even see people except when they’re at their worst.”
Do you pity it?
“Not sure I agree, but your thoughts are interesting.”
“Heh, you mean they’re naïve,” she thought she heard him murmur. It was strange how he acted as if his own views were incorrect. He obviously believed them. They were worth consideration. What would happen if everyone believed as Stew did? Would its nature change? It was not immune to their attitudes, the child of death.
Why would it want to change? Powerful beings have no need to care.
She walked at the back of the group as was her habit, her body remembering before her mind the years of watching the six in scavenging groups. No crickets chirps and no fireflies hummed—there was not even a cicada buzz to greet their march out of the forest and back into life.
Are we insane? it whispered.
“I don’t believe I can be insane,” she murmured back, eyes trailing Rhodes before shifting to the side. Zed had no respect for long trials, and they were not safe yet.
Yes, yes that’s right!
They discussed for a while the things what interested voices which settled in heads, until her steps slowed. She found herself stopped, now very alone on the road.
Please, please don’t go any further. It hurts.
Her steps slowed, and--
“Smiles?” echoed from up the road. “Where’s Smiles?”
Don’t go! My name is Timothy Smalls. I remember now! I existed! Ask Johnny Two-Smiles, anyone, they’ll tell you. Please, you can’t go any further!”
Caught in a strange state of trust, unmotivated, she could only answer honestly.
“Do you want to deliver a message? They’ll be coming back soon. To make sure I’m with them.” No response, though she could hear another shout. From House? “There isn’t a lot of time.” An entirely different voice answered, and she bowed her head politely to the one who, after all, had owned Smalls far before she could ask to make any claim on him. She joined the rest of the group, who told her with some relief to keep up.
“We made it,” Rhodes sighed, staring into the sky which opened up above them.
“Did we really?” she mused softly. “Are we sure this is real?” The sudden dread shimmering to life behind the girl’s eyes made her wish she had kept silence. No need to bother them with the way her thoughts turned. Time past she pulled herself back together, even tired as she was.
There was a chance he was in an upset state, waiting, Templeton. He had mentioned once, how he waited for Deliverance. If this was a pattern, he could be pained by it again. Likelihood high. She would have to find him.
She searched the Tap, in its circus whirl of color and sound, and received a hug that jarred her against the walls of herself and very nearly had both of them bleeding—the sawbones was in no state to be accurate. She set out onto the road, feeling more adrift than she’d care to admit, though not before she asked Two-Smiles a quick clarification. It was difficult, staring at the deserted Kennel, to not curl up against the shadows of the workbench to sleep. So she wandered.
The night was alive with tension. Bad brain, Dead Eyes, rumors—surely one of them had mired him. She realized the keen irony of being concerned about him, but it was appropriate. She had only gone through the Grave; he had had to feel.
The sawbones calmly settled at last by the morgue. Someone had been kind or careless enough to leave a chair glinting amongst the moon shadows. She let her thoughts disperse and fell to existing for a while.
I’ll be here when he returns.
It controls our agony. House, with her colored hair and too-familiar stiffness, stood to her left. Xen, unyielding but sometimes tempted to pretending, held his shield to her right. The light was at the backs, dimming. She drew breath with effort, remembering the thousands of words she had collected on the grave. They had common veins running through them, pumping life into the myth of this place.
“Rhodes. You are not dead.” Her voice is tearing in her own head, too loud against the light-writhing trees. It had to be loud enough to hear, if the body was still out there. If Rhodes had not just become nothing. “We have not left the grave.” Silence answered. She did not waste time with disappointment. Like any procedure, it would take time.
“Remember your Queens. You will not let it make the world a monster.” The other watcher was one reflection of them. She had to take up a role as another reflection. Her legs shook with exhaustion, and only the survival rush kept her from collapsing.
And doubt has no place here, does it, Templeton? I cannot inspire the way you do. But...
It might have been hours or minutes. She shouted to her; it was all she could do to one she anchored now. She killed her weariness, her pragmatic judgments. None were useful here. This was up to Rhodes. She remembered the bite behind the girl’s hesitant smile as she stood on their impromptu stage. Smiles knew what was there in the dark, and it struck her that the grave could not hold the singer. Color her a fool.
Still no answer. If only she could remember more of the girl’s script.
“You aren’t giving up yet.” Her voice ripped through the air. “You owe Gray more than that.” Her voice ripped over the din of eight people trying to solve eight different parts of one riddle.
“You don’t care enough to save her,” a darker thing hissed scathingly inside her head. “Go go go! Go out and get her. Why did you leave her? Why not run out there after her, get her? You don’t care. Go on, tell her to sing. Do it. Save her. Get her back.” The force of it shook her, and she imagined in a moment of weakness walking off into the dark, with no will, no need of will.
It’s right. I don’t care enough to draw her out. Can’t feel like they do. Can’t--She straightened painfully, ignoring her thoughts.
Tired, aren’t you? she asked herself. If you can’t, you can’t. Do what has to be done and worry about failure later. I cannot inspire the way Templeton does. But I am much more stubborn.
“Rhodes, if you can hear me! Give any indication! I’ll get you!” she gritted, and realized she sounded furious.
Silence. Then, a high pitched wail at two o’ clock, perhaps seven yards away. It culminated in a pained sob. Her being drew to the sound.
When she walked back to The Kennel, it was as if the ghost town of earlier had never occurred. People swarmed and darted like night birds. Of course, he found her before she found him. He did that.
There was injury there, with him. As they retreated behind the cabin and the glare of the cabin lights, she could hear it bleeding in his voice and dripping from his hands and face. The slump of his frame screamed it. Templeton Barnes did not slump. Except, of course, when he did. The world swirled around them disorienting, only a sign of weariness. Seeing him, though, she felt awake again. He expressed his relief; he had searched for her. She expressed her experiences, as neatly as she could.
"Apparently my mind has problems with you,” she noted clinically. There was an overload of detail to sort through. She gauged his reaction to the statement, and what she saw was not good.
“Well…” He sighed, and his voice was as quiet as hers. That sigh, that tone, was bitter. “I don’t have the strength to argue that...”
This registered as a pattern. She saw him months ago on the bench at sunset, the only one in town who didn’t have blood on his face and remnants of bugs in his head.
“You don’t have to,” she responded calmly. Nor would he ever. “You seem upset.” She watched him helplessly, expressionlessly, as he spoke. Injury spilled forth, wetting the ground and soaking the air. Unable to see what was hurting him, unable to understand, and unused to caring, she tensed.
“I am just very close to being done with humanity tonight,” he said, and she did not think to include herself among that number. Instead, she wondered how he could be done with himself.
You can run as far as you can into those trees, Templeton, and you will not be able to escape your emotions, she thought, and may have said out loud. It was difficult to tell when he did not respond.
Doubt has no place here, hm, Templeton? Give yourself time to heal, and I’ll see you well again when the time comes. You mean something to me.
Smiles could feel a pressure behind her face, seeing him suffer like this. With a faint regret she did not understand, the sawbones snuffed it out. Everything inside her went silent, calm.
I’ll die, running out to her.
“Why not survive? Why risk our lives for this thing?”
If I die, I die. It doesn’t win right now.
The form demanded reasons, raged why?! in a soft cadence Smiles recognized as her own, as she made her feet to move. It had never been her talent, words. Her logic worked outside of them, and now it was cold, frigid cold.
The Final Knight pushed into the dark, and she saw for a moment in perfect clarity his backlit earlobe before casting her eyes out into the withering forest. Shadows had a way of biding their time, but everyone saw them spread. Amberli looked incorrect on the ground, only a gray blur against black, and she helped the girl to her proper height. Four steps to go.
Was she alright? Could she walk? The forms around them started to move at them like determined ghosts. Rhodes’ head inclined. A storm of life rose around the singer and Smiles ignored how it should not be possible. Good. Yes. Let’s go. Three steps.
“Xen, cover us. I’m walking through water right now.” The light, however nauseating, seemed far away, and the others waited there confronting their own ghosts.
Two steps.
If she could just fend the thing off for a second. Did it have two mouths, or was her vision splitting? Three? Four? Somehow, she knew. Xen protected Amberli, as he should. The girl had just fought her way back from the dead, after all. Nothing to do about this.
One step. She met it squarely in the eyes as she failed to block the strike, as it sheared through her arm and did nothing at all, at least as far as blood or broken bone.
The ground managed to punch her with such a force that it was, barely, her last sensation.
Curled under the firm weight of blankets, lost to the world, Smiles’ consciousness sparked at the cracking of the door. If there were any dreams, she couldn’t remember them. Strange—she was a dreamer.
The tan blanket, knitted, had been payment from the Rosalie whose sick son had also taught crochet. The rug, heavy, she had found jammed under a broken down wagon two years ago, only slightly given to rot. The Pureblood one had been just a long stretch of cloth, softer than a cat to the touch. She often wrapped her face in it. The last one, a dingy, noble, thready thing, reminded her of Templeton. Colorful canes striped red and white marched next to patterns of leaves, what one saw during X-Mas. He called it Christmas stubbornly.
The door twisted with its usual protest, and she heard the usual walk. The way he pretended to breathe had a familiar sound. Leaning on her knife arm, she lifted the Pureblood blanket off her head to peer at him, to be sure. He puttered about the home, checking this and putting away that before he rested.
The watcher considered him and thought, maybe, the injury had lessened. The graying bird, so old, so young, slept in the bunk behind where he stood, and she saw no new rips on his person either. They were well, they were safe, until the next flood came.
“Go back to sleep, Frances,” he said softly.
She acceded and closed her eyes, without thought or complaint.
“But everybody’s bones are just holy branches
Cast from trees to cut patterns in the world
And in time we find some shelter,
Spill our leaves, and then sleep in the earth
And when there we’ll belong.” –Radical Face, Holy Branches
What is left when the body is gone?
"Only ourselves."