TheAmishPirate

Breathless Dead

Dolce sits in the center. Unmoving, unchanging in softness, fine wool squishing beautifully under pressure, and not once disturbing his steady heartbeat. His arms don’t reach far, his hands have no hope of meeting, but he clings tightly to the stone face of her chest as best as he is able to. Accepting the flood, and not budging an inch. When the waters recede, he will be there, precisely where he was left, no worse for wear. Fine Manor wool is renowned for drying swiftly.

Then, does he speak. A steady, flowing stream speaking to the absence of flood. Here his hands will leave, to pass tissues and treats, to stroke enormous stone fingers and hold them tight. Listen, Alexa. A Captain and a chef may not hold much wisdom, but the words themselves mean less than the value of a warm, steady voice. But because he loves you, they are the best words he can think of. May they give you some comfort too.

“I think…I know a little about Aphrodite’s game. Just the one. I think even if the circumstances change, and the people, and the consequences, it’s always been the same game.”

“He brings the right people people together. Sometimes gods, when he can manage it. And it’s not to build a great romance, like the stories all say. Not for meetings, or quality time, or secret kisses. No. Nothing so peaceful as that. When you meet, all the world will be wrong, and all of the choices bad ones. You will meet in a place without hope of relief or rescue. Any wisdom of merit would tell you that you shouldn’t be meeting here. Not now. Not like this. But you’re here. And you won’t run. You’ll go to them, willingly. Because…”

“She’s your best friend.”

“They’re your wife.”

“…he was your father.”

“So, you’ll go on to the trouble. And Aphrodite will give you no help. He’ll tell you everything you already know; that you can’t turn back. That you can’t possibly win. If he even says anything at all. Why should he? He’s already getting what he wants: You. Throwing yourself against the impossible. For love. Your strength. Your skill. Your wisdom. They don’t not matter. But, to him, they’re just there to serve whatever’s in your heart. To let it express itself, to the full, and grasp at what it really wants.”

“And if you fail…”

“Your blood will spill, for love.”

“You’ll spend all that you are, for love.”

“If you manage to survive it, then, there may not be much left of you. Just the broken bits of your heart, lurching forward, pulling the rest of you along. All you’ve got left. If you couldn’t stop yourself before, what hope do you have after?”

“But maybe you don’t break. Or, you live, and live long enough to get another chance. And the love in your heart is…I don’t know, pure, strong, enough? Enough. It’s enough to defeat the impossible, survive the certain doom, perform a miracle. Not without cost. Not without scars to show for it. Maybe you do break, just a little. But you’re not consumed by love. You’re empowered by it.”

“That kind of love…it doesn’t have to be perfect, I don’t think. Can love ever be perfect? Hrmm. I don’t know about that. But I think, to survive, it’s got to be a love that’s alive. Growing. Or, if not growing, hanging on tight enough to endure the storm, but when the skies clear again, it’ll blossom once more. With you, and whoever’s a part of it all doing their part to tend to it, because you love each other too much to stop. Because you love each other, and you want what’s best for each other, even if it costs you.”

“So. Either way, he’s got you. Love broke you, or it made you into something that could defeat the impossible. Love was the greatest force after all.”

“And the Rift. His greatest challenge yet, I suppose. We’ll be opening ourselves up to him and his game more than we ever have before. Maybe, I don’t think he’d go so far as to make it truly impossible for us to survive. I don’t think he’d be pleased just to declare a god was mightier than some mortals. But the odds will be stacked as high as he can get them. No guarantees for any of us. We might. We might lose quite a bit, no matter if we succeed or fail.”

“But which way we go - and the way you did go; that was you, Alexa. It’s got to be you. It’s one of the things he can’t do; make the choice for you. He wanted a spear. He wanted to use you to hurt us and Zeus and everyone else he could. What he got was Alexa. Strong, brave, beautiful, brighter and more alive than I’ve ever seen you before.”

“Whatever designs he had for you, you chose well, and, I don’t think you’ll go wrong if you keep that love alive.”

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

The color rises in Han’s cheeks. And along with it, the fires of righteous indignation.

“Screw that! I don’t gotta pick either of those!”

And if she had access to both her arms, she’d be crossing them so seriously right now.

“So what if girls’re pretty? Nothing wrong with liking pretty girls! That don’t mean I go around stealing them, huh? What, you think I see a river that looks neat, I set up shop there? Tell everybody it’s mine now? Charge admission?!”

“Oh, n-no, no, of course not.” Lotus’ soothing, innocent voice flows like a neat river, like her soft hand stroking hers. “But, what if that river was the most pretty you’d ever seen? Who could blame you for losing your senses? It happens all the time-”

“I said I’m not picking either and that’s final.” Han huffs. “Nobody back home was pretty enough to make me go N’yari on them. I mean,” and the fires rise a touch higher. “Sure, they weren’t not pretty, I still had eyes y’know. But come on, you think there’s gonna be somebody in some nowhere Highland town who can compete with a demigod?! Give me a break.”

And that ought to clear everything up perfectly. Nice try, life, but you’re gonna have to do better than that to get one over Han of the Highlands.

[The wise and articulate Han of the Highlands enjoys a free XP]

Breathless Dead

Alexa

You don’t get to wonder at his thoughts, or where you stand in them. You have enough on your mind as it is.

His little hands squeeze gently on yours, and he gives you his wool. He dips his head, and presses a cloud into your hand, all soft spirals and silly wisps. You don’t get to wonder if it’s alright to run your fingers through his curls. Back and forth, back and forth, he shakes his head, and if you just want to hold still, that’s fine too. He’ll sneak your hand between wool and hood with the care of a true expert, either way.

He is here. Bring the shadows of your heart into this flickering light. Speak of monsters you haven’t named yet. Bring whatever you may into this place, the spell will not break because he chooses to be here. With you. For you. And should you doubt, then hear the truth in the warmth against your hand and the feather-brush of his presence: I am here. I am here. I am here.

“That may be what he wanted.” He nuzzles a cheek into hands strong enough to move a star. “But I don’t think he got a spear, in the end.”

Spears don’t usually fit in the kitchen, you know. They certainly don’t get to sit at the dinner table; good manners would leave them at the door. Hestia’s skill in sewing is peerless, but it’s very hard to make clothes for someone of those proportions.

But if you think that a four-armed hoodie is beyond her, then underestimate her at your peril.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Han snorts, and the undignified sound turns to a full-bellied chuckle that Lotus can feel thrumming through her. Pei? Jealous of her looks? Throwing herself on the ground in a tantrum because the blacksmith’s daughter - beauty to eclipse the divine - left her in the cold? Stolen, courted, wooed away by the beautiful, the sultry, the oh-so-tempting, pfftt, ha! “Heh. Good one, bud.” She sighs, and smirks, and stares blankly into sparkling pools of purest innocence.

“...wait, gods, are you serious?”

Lotus!

Why, is that a hint of blush on Han’s cheeks?~

You’ve got her right where you want her, you clever, clever demigod you. She can’t begin to guess at the games you’re playing at. Maybe you’ve been the Demigod of Sneaking and Girl Questions this whole time, and you never even knew! Maybe! It could happen!

Don’t let her wriggle free. Tighten your net, and get those dragon secrets!

Breathless Dead

It’s not one of his. The pages aren’t all the same size, or even the same color. Who knows where they may have been plucked from? A few have been dog-eared, and must now be creased beyond repair. And now that he’s holding it, he can’t say that the cover feels all that familiar either. Stiff material. Good for a book well-loved. Or, one that would be well-loved. Or, one that might have to endure a bit of abuse, and come through alright.

Impossible to miss a signature like that, really.

His arms wrap around the precious book, all the way around, hugging her hand to his chest too. It takes a careful wriggle, but he pulls one arm free, and with it, the cookbook. He sets it on the counter, safe from any accidental bumps or spills, and returns to the careful work of holding her. The mighty hand of Alexa turns over, flipped by irresistible nudges, that he might raise it high and gently bonk his forehead against it.

“I wish it could be that simple. But we may not even remember that we’ve forgotten anything at all.” He sighs. “Suppose we lost our ability to write, too. We’d learn again, and our handwriting would change, and our written voice would change, and we’d never recognize a note to ourselves, not in a hundred years. Or suppose we lose all language entirely. We learn from those on the other side of the Rift, but their words have grown differently than ours, and we never are able to figure out what our own letters mean to us again.”

His fingers idly stroke hers, and he needs all of them to do the task properly. Tracing patterns through the worn metal, working out little bits of grit and shooing them away. Sit still, Alexa. He’s working on you. You wouldn’t interrupt a helpful sheep in the middle of his task, would you? Of course not. Sit. Stay. It’s alright.

“It’s in all the stories, right?” A smile, holding up an entire sky of despair. “It never ends well when someone tries to get more clever than the gods. We’d either need a god to take our case themselves, or-”

His brows furrow. His fingers halt, just for a moment.

“...or Aphrodite would have to willingly allow enough of us through to. To. Still be ourselves, afterwards.”

It was his Rift, after all. His work. That no other god could undo or interfere with. Didn’t it stand to reason, then, that he would decide what might stay, and what would be lost in the crossing?

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

King’s crown, what a stupid way to start the day.

Even dolled up like a priestess, Lotus’ having to sneak out on the road like she’s some kind of criminal. Oh, she’s all smiles, but any minute, she’s gonna remember that breakfast they didn’t have. Don’t you tell her about all the food they got in the packs, you think she forgot? She said it earlier. Listen next time, idiot. Handfuls of bread and fruit are a rotten meal for a damn demigod. Who is, in case you hadn’t noticed, carrying her own umbrella. She should be carrying it, except this thorny arm’s no good, and Lotus’ hugging on the other one, so, she can’t. She can’t, alright?! She can’t do a damn thing about any of it, she just has to keep walking, and try to act like any of this is okay and-!

“Sorry.” The word explodes out of her, like the first rock in a dam breaking.

Lotus blinks up at her. “Han…?”

“I said sorry. My sister’s an idiot, okay?! She’s a nosy, useless ditz who thinks she should’ve been born a Princess and acts like it happened anyway. If I’d have known Sagacious Crane’d be there, I’d have carried you to the next inn myself, and you’d be having an actual morning today.” She snorts. “So there. Sorry.”

A chime. A bell. A clear and perfect note, cutting through the hum of the morning drizzle: “Oh!”

“Oh? Oh…bad? Oh good? Oh, something?”

Lotus says nothing. Lotus props the umbrella on her shoulder, that she could use both hands to squeeze Han’s arm.

“What’s ‘oh’?!”

Breathless Dead

Oh Alexa. Brave, true Alexa. You never had time to beat about the bush, did you? Here he is, hardly willing to let the thing into his sight, and now you’ve gone and named it. Don’t the stories say, be careful, oh so careful with names? For by calling a name…

“Yes. I’m scared too.”

…you bring its owner.

“I don’t want to forget everyone. I don’t want to forget who I am. I don’t…” Ah. But that one’s too horrible to say, isn’t it? That one day, he might wake up, and for the first time in years feel the band of gold squeezing ‘round his finger. He might pick up a spoon, and frown, when his grip presses it uncomfortably against his hand. Perhaps he’d remove it, just for a little while. Would he remember to put it back on again?

No.

Not here. Not even here, shielded by the nicest of company. He can’t name it. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. “Because, we can’t know, right? We don’t know what we’ll lose. Not until we cross, but, then, it’s too late. How are we supposed to remember what we’ve forgotten? What we used to be? We’d be alive, and, ordinarily, I’d think that was cause for hope, but who’s to say we’d ever be able to get any of it back?”

“What if…what if we only remember enough to know that we had something more, once?”

“What if one of us doesn't forget?”

The more he circles the terror, the wider an arc his thoughts must run, and the more foreign the land beneath him. Morbid, horrified curiosity drags him ever onward, holding him by the neck. Step by step by step. All around the great monster at the end of the galaxy.

“I…you, you deserve better than that, Alexa. I don’t know if I’d wish that on anybody. Ever. It’s not. It’s horrible.”

And that’s as far as his hooves will take him. Right up to the border, where he might speak what’s in his heart. But no further. A good sheep minds his friends. A good sheep wouldn’t be so greedy as to speak his own name in a wish.

Breathless Dead

There is a rustling on Hestia’s lap, where her loose, oversized hoodie spills into an ocean of haphazard folds. Nestled deep within, a lion stirs. Its plush, fuzzy mane frames a lump of white wool, and its baggy limbs end in hand-stitched pawprint mittens; currently unoccupied, that he might better handle a spoon. “Yes,” Dolce replies, and the lion’s ears flop to and fro as he nods. “Yes, I heard everything.”

He takes his time, scooping up another bite. The ideal spoonful, with just the right ratios of each topping, and not so much sauce that they’re drowned out, takes a careful, practiced hand. He doesn’t get it on the first try, but you can’t rush these sorts of things. A good meal, you take the time to savor how you like. And he won’t continue, not until he’s remembered the sweetness and crunch anew.

“Do you remember the send-off the Starsong gave us?” Long ago, before they’d taken one step of this journey? “The party lasted three days. All that time, singing without end. We took it up on the ship’s drum, and we carried it with us to the banquet halls, the parks, the contests of strength, and always I could hear somebody, somewhere, singing. A farewell-song, for good friends.”

“We knew that nobody would be coming with us, and they knew we’d be going on alone. Some people said their goodbyes, and never mentioned if they’d ever see us again. Everyone who did bring it up, talked like it was a foregone conclusion. Four…maybe five, I think? Five told us that they’d see us again, alive.”

There’s no room under his hood for a hat. It lies discarded. Across the room. On another island entirely.

“Because that was the worst that could happen. We’d fail, and die, somewhere far, far away, and they’d have to decide when to stop waiting for us. I imagined they’d give us a Starsong burial all the same, to remember us by.”

He doesn’t have a hand free to man the spoon anymore. He needs them both, to hug his little bowl close. To feel it press into his chest as it rises, and falls, in deep breaths. Deep breaths. Deep breaths.

“I might see them again. Years later, after we’ve made our wishes, and changed the galaxy, and beaten every odd that ever existed, and. And I wouldn’t know a thing about them. Or, the Starsong, or goodbyes, or, anything. We might not.” His voice crumbles to dust. “We might not even get along well enough to try again.”

In the heat of the kitchens, in the lap of the goddess of the hearth, wrapped snug thrice over, Dolce shivers.

”...gods above and below.”

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

“Well it’s not sneaking out if you use the front door.” Han snorts. She’s still perched on a messy nest of disturbed sheets and blankets. Legs crossed. Arms crossed. Delivering a fierce scowl to an empty corner of the room. “I’m not having Sagacious Crane babysit us all the way to the end of our damn patience, and I know she’d get up at the crack of dawn just to catch us trying to bail on her. By the time she thinks to check the window, we’ll be long gone.”

(Lotus must not be used to rising so early. She performed a truly spectacular yawn when she finally woke. With her bodyguard’s hand still hugged tight against her face. Han’s palm replays the sensation, over and over again, no matter how hard she tightens her fist. Wicked. Greedy. Creep.)

“Get yourself ready to hike. No time for breakfast. Eat on the road if you’re hungry; we got plenty from the barge. Gods willing, we get a sister-free inn tonight.”

She is a statue. A fearsome, carved guardian, shield for a fumbling priestess. No matter the squeaks, the pat-pat-pat of soft footsteps, the grunts of tying bags shut, she is unmoved. No spirit of mischief or misfortune will pass her brooding gaze without challenge. Without coming to terrible harm.

“...bud, tap me on the shoulder or something when you’re decent. Veiled. Decently veiled. Wh-whatever.”

*****************************************

Then, they were ready.

Lotus stood in her priestess’ silks, save for the band of jagged Dominion red hiding her face. (Didn’t she have another veil?) No pack weighed upon her shoulders for the march ahead; Han was handling it. Their food, spare clothes, the dozens of odds and ends that make a journey a little more bearable, all slung alongside her wrapped patta. If it weighed her down, she wouldn’t say.

The window stood open, curtains thrown back and double shutters flung wide. Through the light drizzle, off in the distance, the clouds were just beginning to warm with the colors of sunrise. No rope hung from the sill for the drop below; Han would handle it.

“You ready?”

Lotus nodded. Prim, proper, and clueless.

“Alright.”

Quick as a snake, she dipped low, and scooped Lotus up into a princess carry as if she weighed less than her silks. One arm hooked under her legs, the other cradling the small of her back. Both squeezing her tight against her chest, for the second time this morning.

One step back. Three steps running. Then sail through the air. That’s how it went, right? That sounded right. She must’ve done that before, once. Or twice. It was. So hard. To concentrate. When her whole head was suddenly stuffed with flowers…

[Defy Disaster: Risking her own safety to get Lotus and their things down in one piece: 4 + 2 + 1 = 7]

Breathless Dead

The world is still quiet here.

There are three place settings prepared. One, occupied and attended by an entranced mouse. The other, set a companionable distance down the counter. A bowl of dolce de leche, a sampling of every topping on offer, a crepe, fresh from the pan, and a glass of milk to wash it all down. A comforting meal, for a goddess of hearth and home, in offering for this moment of peace.

The last sits before him, untouched. He’d served Jil first, and Hestia second (she wasn’t fussy about such things, not when there were hungry bellies to fill), and when the gods had finished speaking he’d found he’d filled his bowl much too high. He thinks to scrape some back into the pot, and he doesn’t know if he means a spoonful or a bowlful. But that’d be rude, right? A horrible bit of table manners, and besides; it just didn’t feel right. A terrible betrayal, to cook all this, and not even take a single bite. No chef who did the job properly would neglect the sacred rite of the One Taste.

And so, Alexa, as you walk in, Dolce dips his spoon into a heaping bowl of sweet dessert, sprinkled with chocolate and crunchy wafers, and takes a big bite. And, wouldn’t you know it? He rather likes the idea of another taste. And another after that. And maybe a few more once he’s finished those off. But not before he sets aside his spoon, scoops you a bowl, and pushes it across the counter.

“Here; there’s plenty to go around.”

And maybe you’ve got your appetite back, Alexa, just like he found his. Or maybe you’re happy to nurse that bowl in peace. Whatever you like, there is a seat for you too. The world is still quiet here. What one god weaves, no other god may unmake.