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Black trees with white skin cater their arms towards my head and deliver me a trudging, ungrateful pace. Feet. Boots. Crunching a walk through snow. A cold present progressing further to a past so warm and worn today. Aimless, warm powder, hownow she feels so funny, her fuzzy dots do congest and spin around the ankles and spiral around the feet. Noisy too, isn't it? A rather loud walk today in the concrete parchment. It could be the scopolamine patch. She's simply running dry. Mind's all on ends.
hodati kroz sneg. tendencija za sažaljenjem.
Hush now, child. We need to see the bartender today.
pitao si za njega pre vremena. nema potrebe za misao.
But, what shall I do with some of those foods and spices? Double the usual order, but I must be triply as creative. And I may as well ask Komaru for some patches while we're at it. And Bailey's. Tender's got Bailey's. We ran out today, didn't we?
Insekten werden uns loben! Encephalitis sei vorsichtig! ne tretiraju ga.
Eh. They eat deadly nightshade. Then, Maru harvests the scopolamine. Gives it to me in exchange for a little something-something. Not a bad trade deal. Some days, a bit more lenient than others. And the walk isn't too bad either. The path is mainly ultisols. Bit of inceptisols and entisols here and there. Being land-locked by alfisols is a nightmare, but here is a safe path. Though, the moonlight shines a little less bright on nutrient-light soils such as these.
miris lavande. to je njeno. cintronela takođe.
Scaly sidewalk floor. Green bushes here and there.
Sticky springs. Snow melting.
Fading away before it even sets.
manje snega. toplije. kameni put se fino oseća na našim cipelama.
It does feel nice. Really, really nice.
. . .
The black skies do sing pretty songs. It's impossible for me to see true sunlight any longer, but I do not mind the abyss stretching out before my retinae. It is a wonderful morning. The stars are illuminated. The sky is so green, I could never wonder how close the sun could be to hide them from me. I know it is closer than even the sun could imagine. Closer than anything.
Brown inn ahead of us. Lowly, decrepit wooden building, well-kept in a disheveled state. Lights on the outskirts that haven't rang golden in a decade or two. Barely even painted the walls. The entrance for the fright beyond the hill, the barrier to my flourishing, drained city. A city I cannot touch. A city of all I've ever resented, and a city of all I've ever dreamed. This is the closest place where I can make landfall. My busyspot rare, little corner shop where Komaru is allowed to be and allows themselves. A corner shop where all the best drinks are served, ready-hot and barely frozen ice and the iccils, those watery snow yaks, can be taken care of without the horrid scent stretching any further than the cliff. I walked here often when I was younger, back in the days when the city was barely breathing and had just dared to become something new. Boadicea, Nfierre, and I, little purveyors of the sky. A different sky, one with more stars than the night, even now.
Course, the bartender had a mother back then who ran things. Her youngest kid took the bar here. The eldest ventured back home. Wonder how he's doing. I should ask. Returned to the city where she was created, or so I heard. Also heard he was a harbor of sorts. Locations of familial gatherings are important for harbors. I can't imagine he could have stayed anywhere near here. I don't believe she was from around here, either. I don't even remember the woman's name who owned this place. Mary? Mediere. Something like that. Something quiet and falling with an 'M.'
mislio sam da je Marsi.
Was it? That was so long ago. Did I name her that? I could have.
Maybe I did. Maybe I did, after all.
. . .
They know it is me when I hook my fingers into the curved handle of the door. They know it is me when I thud against the ground, boots dragging along the '42355' engraved in the pavement, an oppressive slip of the rock painted in their pebble faces. They know my name when dead souls ring it on the lanterns and know more when flickers and beset divisions of their friends travel in geodesic spirals. It is nameless wind that warns them of my mane, the sinister shines that fall upon the floor of boards, and it is creaking of the lightest pressures that brings them face to face with simple lights that make soft noises from something outside. It is all a collection of nature's spirits uneased by the newcomer who has not been new for a many dozen years.
vetar gura unutra. Hast du den starken Wind nicht gespürt, Markgraf?
They haven't expected me for herenow several days. They were given short notice based on the iccils and the grassy patterns of wind. That seems fair warning enough. Fitting, even, that they'd clear the place out.
"Ah! Как дела, Anrok Nikolaevna?" calls my favorite bartender, a man in his late-thirties. A thin man, a clean freak with dark brown hair. Well-groomed honey strands and a clean-shaven face, black eyes that gleam with an almost untapped potential for mischief. Even his arms are freshly shaved. There's a nice fabric. . . thing, on the wall behind him, bright orange and doused in black. There seems to be pockets, and there's a metal rod in one of them. I can just make out the 'Petersburg' engraven on the side. In coupled company, a sweatshirt hangs on the hook, brand new, barely worn. A black thing with bleached streaks of gold, a mess of eyes stacked down the back like a totem pole.
The man himself has this sort of happy grin. Mock surprise, even. And, he's still treating me with this uprighteous formality. Progress, however. It was only recently I got him to stop addressing me as 'король-бог.'
"My father was barely russian, Sebas," I spoke clear. Sebas appreciates a bold tone. He has no care for mumbles, and neither do I. "Ark will do just fine."
He admires me. That part is obvious. Obvious by how he stares a little too long, a little too appealed to the authority of me. But, that grin fades almost instantly when Komaru turns from Sebas and over to my standing figure.
"Rivelation 10:7," she remarks. Offhandedly, barely even holding eyes with me, just staring at my chin. I'm sure the peach fuzz reminds her of a millipede.
Code, funnily enough. It means Nfierre is heralding the black-eyed King. The Wheel, as we call her. A sort of doomsday clock. The harbor she was connected to, the miserably-faced Monarch has become more active, to the point of uncertain desperations.
"How bad?"
"Nfierre isn't certain. She said that there's been surges nearing points of total extinction in several flower species."
Komaru sits on the barseat next to me as Sebas busies himself pouring me a shot of Jameson, reupping the thick and slushed green drink Komaru has in front of her, a fruity scent emanating from it. Sebas tosses the drinks down, wipes the counter, and spins his washcloth in his hands, resting both arms upon the cushioned bar before him.
Komaru. buba.
She is an insect wrapped in the shape of a girl, a childlike frame draped in the carapace of something much older and much crueler. Her body is visibly soft, but something beneath the skin twitches, a set of sinew strung too tight, a patch of joints bending the wrong way beneath velveety-smooth flesh. Her hair is spun gold, but brittle at the edges, the sickly orange glow of wings trapped mid-metamorphosis. Two spiraled horns nestle among her locks, a hooded cloak of sorts, the color of bruised amethyst, like eyes pried from something still living with their foggy shine. Behind black Morpheus-like glasses, there's the glisten of token-shaped holes with that same wet violet shade. Dead eyes that give the gaze of a predator that learned how to smile before it learned how to hunt, that looks in all directions and focuses on simply everything. When she smiles, it is always wrong. Cute, but horrifically wrong. Too wide. Too patient. The corners of her mouth tremble with the effort of holding back something black and bubbling. The smile of a thing that only mimics joy because it delights in how it unsettles and how it eats. Her hands rest beneath her chin in mock coquettishness, but the claws press too tight against her cheeks, little purple gloves with what appears to be iridescent wings splitting at the tips, waiting to unfurl. And on wings, she does obtain. Her wings, those huge fabric gaudy butterfly wings stitched in a palette of dyed violets and pale pinks, hang heavy at her back. Sebas made those for her. A stained-glass reliquary for something rotting inside. She looks like she should smell sweet. But if you leaned close, the scent would be more akin to wet earth. Something buried alive, that would be her deoderant. She is a creature who learned to pose before she learned to speak. The way she tilts her head half-syrupy, half-vicious. She doesn't concern herself with human love. She is a scientist, one who wants to see how far you'll debase yourself trying. A false saint. A larva waiting to split the skin.
Nicht seinen Körper. ne ona.
And she knows you'll never walk away first.
Du weißt besser als zu starren, Markgraf.
Schlechte Dinge passieren in den Kammern.
Thank you.
I blink it off, staring at my drink as she speaks.
"Her Black Dahlias are wilting. The cosmos and pansies were all wiped out the first time around, but their seeds all germinated without water and without sun. Nfierre said somehow, they all started growing and strangled eachother. She doesn't know how. She also stated that entire patches of calla lilies are pulsating, to the point where they bloom to three times their size, and die within the day from drowning in nutrients. On top of that, an entire patch of Queen of the Night Tulips have turned white," Komaru explains, her hands inching forward and back with an unnatural shift of the bones. I always noticed that while her tone is entirely the same word to word, her voice is high-pitched and emotive, as if she removed the emotion from her voice long after she mastered her patterns of speech. "Nfierre has many different ecosystems on her plots, and they're suffering as a result. The fields are overflooded with irradiated material, and have reacted in a disturbing number of ways. I wasn't there the first time around, but I know the great loss of insects was rather. . . drastic. I can't do anything about this, unfortunately."
Sie ist noch am Leben da drinnen, glaube ich.
Das sind nicht seine Worte.
We clink glasses and drink.
"I'll handle it. I was going to ask her to meet up here sometime this week. New piece I picked up that I want her to appraise."
"She's already on her way. Boat arrives tonight."
The shock is dull, and it wears on me. I turn away and gulp down the amber. I wasn't actually planning on inviting her. It's been over twenty years since I saw Nfierre. To reunite like this. . . I dunno.
izgleda da je renovirao ovde.
So it seems.
There's a lot of new stuff here.
Lots of posters up now. One of them, girl stands in the foreground. Can't be more than eight, nine years old. Round face. Wide eyes. That kind of cartoonish cheer stamped onto her features like someone forgot to give her the capacity for fear. She's dressed like she's on her way to some storybook adventure: bright yellow coat, blue capelet, a hat much too big for her head. A little mascot heroine spit-polished for mass appeal. The light hits her like a spotlight, sharp and stagey, cutting her out of the gloom, but she don't cast any shadow. Behind her, a smear of indigo and ultraviolet, stretched long and hungry. It doesn't have a body. Doesn't even have a face, just two perfect, hateful little pinpricks of light where its eyes should be. Somethin' that learned how to imitate a man by studying the gaps where men ain't. I like this sort of stuff. I was an English major at my old hometown, after all. Other posters here, I've seen before, at least once or twice.
A graph of the stars Typhon and Echidna next to it.
Another poster on a guy with a chainsaw on his head.
Rest of the room however, is reorganzied, polished, new furniture being added everytime. There's even a window to a butterfly garden. I know it's a project they've been working on for a while. There's milkweed in there, fascinatingly enough. I wonder if that means they're planning to get monarchs. There's also quite a hell of an ant population. They're crawling on the damn window. This place better be properly sealed.
oni su nemoćni pred bubom.
I know, I know.
Is that a turtle in there?
"Yellow spotted river turtle. Your child put them on the endangered list, so we're trying to save them."
I turned to Komaru. There was something distasteful on my tongue when she said that. Again, I dunno why. My mind was all fuzzy, but her voice felt a bit garbled.
"You're cool with that?"
"The butterflies get to drink the tears. Turtles get their eyes cleaned," they sipped, taking a pause. "I don't mind the turtles."
War das er oder sie?
Nice view regardless. Turtles are pretty alright. I lift my drink, taking note of the new coaster. Eastern text. Eh, some English. 'Ragnarok,' on the bottom, etched in the wood. I suppose it's some band or show. Hard to keep up with kids these days. Especially Sebas. He's into all the new stuff today, keeps collecting action figures and shot glasses. He might smile if I ask him.
"Any new shot glasses imported?" I asked, knowing full well what the answer would be.
"Funny you should mention," he winks, turning around with an exaggerated flourish and grabbing three shot glasses, filling them with three different liquids. Jameson for me, some sort of black juice for Komaru, and what looks like pure water for himself.
Komaru gets a glass with this cartoony blue-haired man, labeled, 'Aki.' I get one with a crazy-eyed red-haired chick labeled, 'Makima.' Sebas gets one with some blonde hunk, "Denji."
We clink together and drink.
I swallow mine with relish. Komaru has this weird puckered-face after sipping their drink, some shock that don't quite reach the eyes. Sebas chokes and gets a glass of actual water after his shot. For a bartender, I know he hates alcohol. Funny man. "What do you have in supplies for me?" I ask, placing my elbows on the counter.
"Anything the Godking desires," he laughs. Sebas pours me another drink and spins it, sliding it down the bar towards me. Sometime soon, I should bring up that an entire culture has died. Ronin has finally passed away, leaving nothing but buildings, some murals and ghosts. I spin the shotglass in my hands.
"Desidero omnia," I manage, and it is an empty, empty ask.
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