Orion smiled at Jackson as he commented on his playing, crooked, almost a smirk, almost a sneer, irritatingly confidant. Turning lazily he casually kicked a side pocket on his pack, indicating where the other boy could find some pencils and paper.
The would-be troubadour skirted the edge of the conversation as well as the treeline. His playing had not ceased. Song done he let the tune change in tempo exploring the outer Es on his pilfered instrument. He gazed through the trees as he circled, a Morse code flickering in his eyes through the sunlight spears that pierced between tree branches. Voices were arguing back by the shore. His playing became a little sharper, tight plucks, short on the neck, down scale, playing off the anger and intonation of his supernal compatriots, punctuating their self-righteousness syllables with a little sub voce flow.
"-I'd get kiss a magical entity today--."
"-find that guy over there if he was in what everyone else would think was just a tree?"
"I never understood a lot"
"Cause I didn't need a lot, have a lot"
"A basic family recipe from Kanoa for that. I'm just saying-"
"So I never cared a lot"
"-work of a demon from The Far East! And while we're at it-"
"Stumbled through a black hole and ended up in Camelot"
"Where JFK had his head and he never got shot"
"Better police work than apparently all of Oakenheim-"
"It seemed perfect until the day came
Until insane became the norm
God became forlorn"
"mackin' on them right then and there while we were getting answers was the way to go? For fucks sake-"
"It happened overnight as if someone flipped a switch
Flipped the script on this shit"
"homes, maybe don't think as much with your dick next time, y'know?"
Orion drifted further than his feet, further from the group, only absently noting their suitably, sophmoric strategizing. He reached a high spot for the area and planted, looking out over the waving lines of the treetops, cresting in places as the earth beneath broke into cliff facings and treeblight turned bald limbs ashen. Orion considered the messages he so often tried to ignore. Exposing raw nerve to sensation. There was a truth in the patterns of growth and decay. Maybe if he could just see clearer, open his mind wider, the meaning would become clear. Something vast and clothed in secrets brushed against the diaphanous rice-paper walls of this reality.
"Cause even in the shade and it is sunny
Somewhere over the rainbow, walking down this brick road
I stare at walls at night, hoping they do not fall down"
The sun came out from behind some clouds, it's blinding light made Orion's teeth hurt. A sound like a swarm of cicadas just at the edge of hearing emanated from the room of his mouth. Orion coughed, a sharp pain shot through his ankles. Teeth gitted, grinding together in a clenched jaw. Orion squeezed his eyes tight as truth burned through his central nervous system, boring through the nerve roots behind his ocular cavity, drilling glowing, red cavities into his occipital lobe, turning his brain into a bore mine plotted by dice rolls and overseen by Escher.
Something wet and warm dripped onto Orion's bottom lip, he licked and tasted copper. Rubbing a knuckle under his nose it came back with a smear of blood. Orion's vision wavered. He remembered to breath.
Shiffing blood into the back of his throat, Orion spat it back out onto the grass. He composed himself, stepping back out of the sunlit spot in which he stood. The guitar was gently leaning against a tree. When had he put it down?
Taking up the instrument Orion wandered back towards his gaggle, wiping the blood on his face off of the inside of his shirt sleeve. He looked up as something pulled at a primitive part of his intuition to see August slowly peel herself away from Mary, wet with lakewater. Another line of blood dribbled out of Orion's nose. He rubbed it off on his shoulder as he continued playing.
"But Danny is also right. If what you guys are all saying is true, she didn't want to kill the boy, and may have been pushed to desperation by the disappearing animals. Maybe something worse is out there, and she knows what it is?"
"We're all we got, don't let me down"
"-you just kissed a shape shifting spirit creature. That you found after breathing water. We should be cautious, but not hasty. What's it say about us if our immediate reaction is hostility?"
"We're all we got, don't let me down"
"-hey...Who else can say they did what we just did? Well...what you guys all just did."
"We're all we got, don't let me down"
Orion frowned. What they had done. What they would do. Orion hummed thoughtfully to himself. With meandering purpose, Orion walked back towards the shore. Sitting a few feet up from the edge, Orion dropped, unceremoniously to the ground, legs folding in front of him with surprising grace. Placing the guitar on his lap, Orion stopped playing, letting his fingers splay over it's top. He was still and silent. Well, mostly silent, whispering to himself as he waited for the water to breech.
"Don't let me down"
"Don't let me down"
"Don't let me down"
