TheAmishPirate

Breathless Dead

He remembers a body, in good working order. His tentacles struggle to maintain purchase on the heaving deck. He doesn’t remember much between those points. He’s afraid he doesn’t need to.

He loves the memory too much to let the Lethe carry it away. And yet here it is before him. See the cooperation necessary to work tectonic muscles, to set fins against wind, cloud, and water alike to push a universe forward. Then see the miracle happen a hundred times over without fail. Marvel at the shellsmith’s work, no planet was ever so encrusted. The divots and cracks only show how indestructible the whole is. It’s not time yet to hear the clack-clack of claws and beak, sharp enough to split suns and drink their golden cores, and the sound alone may rattle their ship to pieces.

Go ahead then. Kill this dream dead. Split its skull. Empty it of the cosmos until it is nothing but a lonely, haunted husk. Let the communiques cease and the last claws snap. Just that, and the way forward will be clear.

He does not know how to kill this dream any more than he knows how to be whole again, and a mouse presently stands taller than him. He cannot forget to fear any more than he can forget to hunger. He can only feel adrift because he knew his place once.

His breath comes steady, because she taught him to sit with fear. His breath comes steady, and her silhouette vanishes into the distance against the wall of flesh before them.

He remembers a body in good working order.

“The Department of Doubt will be sending scores of supplicants to central. This must be a trap, they will cry. It cannot be what it seems. The first ship we have seen in memory cannot be piloted by fools alone.”

“The Sages of Fear will remember the taste of a thousand legends of a thousand worlds. How often did the brave hero find victory in the moment of their defeat? How often did the jaws of doom reveal the one place their spear could pierce?”

“The Archivists of Reason must be raising an objection, that the inside of our beak is sufficient to crack planets, but no Secretary worth their office would let that motion stand.”

“The beak will not open until the last moment. There will be a swell of water, a wall of water when it opens. Anticipate it! Count on it! Use it!”

His thin quavering voice carries to the knight at the helm, just as it carries to the chef tucked away on the deck, awaiting his moment to leap.

Breathless Dead

Beneath a holy offering to buy them all passage. Beneath a hero’s rallying voice, raised as the second of many. Beneath the knight’s cradle of rope that bears them ever-forward. In the space below, there is neither dry nor quiet. No warning of Poisoidon’s next strike, nor shield from chaos on all sides. But deep below, there is a galley, and a little sheep racing to mix and stir as fast as his legs can carry him. Into his pack goes bottle after bottle, box after box, morsel and drink, treat and offering. And beside him, and behind him, and around him, there is a fellow of water and fear, to hold back the tide while he works.

“I can’t put my finger on why, exactly. But I think…” He thinks and speaks and if he keeps doing both maybe he can keep from shaking himself apart. “I think you know how I could get inside, and who I ought to talk to, and how to let them all know I'm not to be feared.”

Breathless Dead

“Our house,” Vasilia breathes, and the sails flutter. “Was built from the remnants of a starship that had crash-landed ages and ages ago. Took out half a mountain when it landed, and embedded itself deep in the other half. Generations of my family conscripted workers to clear out debris, reinforce the structure, work the plates of metal until they became a firm foundation. In my time? It was fortress and mansion all in one. Our ballroom boasted an unparalleled view of the countryside, with viewports four times my height, and a working artillery battery to boot. We made our own firework shells in the foundries for special occasions.”

The hairbrush runs long, soothing strokes through an ocean of hair, expertly teasing out knots with hardly a tug at Mosaic’s head. She works to the rhythm of a song in her heart; she’s much too busy with her story to hum the tune.

“Your home was at least as grand as mine. Finer, if you’d have asked me. ‘See, these are people,’ I remember thinking, ‘who knew a thing or two about class.’ The outside…the outside was…”

“Well, there’s no use asking me about the outside, is there? Truth be told, I hardly ever saw it. I had a tunnel, specially built, so that we could go back and forth whenever we liked. Oh, what a lifesaver that was when we couldn’t bear the crowds for another second. And when the storms blotted out the sun, and the wind besieged our estates with shrapnel. I’d come over, and we’d hide away in the innermost rooms, in fortresses of blankets and pillows, where no clang of metal could reach us. And we’d dream of days quiet enough that no one would have to hide again.”

“Or, we’d fight!”

A delighted laugh bubbles up out of her.

“Come, come, darling, of course I don’t mean seriously. But even so, what storm could compete with us when we got into it? Gods, don’t tell anyone, you’ll spoil my carefully crafted mystique-” Secret Technique: Audible Wink! “But really, it’s not like I was born a master of the glaive. Sparring with you, it was either become a genius or learn to love the taste of dirt, and my palate was much too refined for the latter.”

Now claws join brush. To feel out her work. To tease out those last, stubborn tangles. To drape her hair lovingly across her shoulders.

“I think…that tripped you up, in the Olympics. There must have been a rule against using claws or jaws or the like. Only weapons you can carry, nothing that came attached to you. There must have been. How else did I ever keep ahead of you in the medal count?”

A whisper, too soft for sails, and just loud enough for one.

“Or were you happy to lose, if it was me?”

The waves lap at the sides of their boat, filling the silence between them. Her hands move to shoulders, and rub gently. An apology, in motion. “I know. I know you don’t remember, dear. You don’t have to say a word.” She squeezes, in time to her aching heart. “Just bear with the odd, silly dream of mine, and I’ll tell stories enough for the both of us. Where we were, what we did, and how we made it out, you and I.”

“And how you made out with - oops! Silly me, I meant made it out with a shining, beautiful treasure.” Secret Technique: Laugh of Ultimate Superiority! Oh ho ho ho! “So. Shall it be braids? A ponytail? Would you like her to be struck dumb, or to add a few stanzas to her song? Your hair is a gift, darling, and I have ideas…”

Breathless Dead

He remembers the perfect arc of her neck, her arched back, her tail trailing behind her like a comet. He remembers her willing herself to soar ever-higher when she ought to have fallen. He remembers an outline against the void, wreathed in kaleidoscopic glory.

He remembers looking up, and seeing stars.

“Mmhmm…” And this little cloud tinges sunset red. “If it were anything but love, how did we get this far?”

Breathless Dead

You wear it well. Stupid, silly sheep. He knew there was wrong in it as soon as he said it. What was all that about watching and observing, hrmm? If he was going to go and plant his hoof squarely in his mouth mere moments later? Nerves were no excuse for being hasty.

Still. He did mean it. For someone wearing the tattered remains of a dream, he looked…comfortable, as he was. Accustomed to his scars, like an old, familiar coat. Perhaps that made it at least a little okay.

As they walk, he offers up a story of his own, so the craftsman’s past might have some company. “Once, when I was very, very little, I dreamed I might join the clouds as they drifted across the sky. They looked so much like me, and wouldn’t it have been something to fly through the air with them? To hop along their puffy white hills, go tumbling into pillowy fields, explore that brand new world that was always in sight and just out of reach?”

“I didn’t try again, after jumping out a second story window. But, later, much later, I was allowed to fly in a shuttle, and they let me sit by the viewport as we entered the atmosphere. For the first time, I saw the clouds from above. What was a thick blanket of solid white below was rolling hills, crested with wispy peaks. We cut an arc around a mountain of stormclouds, and they were real. You look at them from the ground, and it may as well be a painted dome above your head. But up there? The clouds near you move fast, the clouds far away move slow, and it’s a real place you can fly around in. If they’d forgotten to land, I could have sat watching forever.”

Through the patchwork forest, through the criss-crossing branches and leaves of every shape, bright splashes of color peek down at the pair walking hand in hand. Whether it is cloud, star, or something else entirely, who can say?

“It’s not quite the same thing, but, there is something special about the sky, isn’t there? About upward and above?”

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Send her to fight all the N’yari in a night, bare-handed. Put the flood-waters before her and ask her to hold them back. Bind her in dresses of delicate flowerpetals and play a reel for her to dance. But do not ask her to hold herself up any longer. She isn’t strong enough. The reed-thin demigod bears a dragon to the ground, presses her back against the silken sheets. Now, there can be no running. Not until the miracle is complete.

She burns. She shivers. Her roaring heart fills her ears. Lotus hums softly at each kiss. She is crushed beneath the curves of her body. She grips her hand like it is made of glass. Her shoulder ices over into blessed numbness. Wet, warm, tender brushes at her skin. Beg this could last forever. Touch her neck again and she will burst. She cannot breath. She pants for air.

Done. Undone.

For the price of surrender, a broken tool transforms into something lovely. Something…someone a goddess (demigod, whatever!!!) would look at and smile. Someone she loves to be here with. Whose arms she nestles into like a bed no matter how gross, how muddied, how rough they are. This is the place divine wishes to rest, peaceful and pretty, in her dress so beautiful and her cheeks so red and her lips pressed snug against her palm…

Her breath catches. Fire erupts.

This is it. She has to say it. She has to say it. Right. Now. No waiting. She promised her, and now she has to say it. Just like this: Bud, she promised she’d see you safe, and she’d take you to every place on your list, and anywhere else you forgot to put on your list because you’re too silly to have remembered it all. She promised, and that promise still stands, got it? She’s gave you her word, and she’s damn well gonna keep it, do you hear her?! That’s a fact, it’ll always be a fact, so she should just say so already! Say it! Right now! No more stalling! She’s Han of the Highlands, she promised you the world, little bud, and nothing you say or do is ever gonna change that!

“L-Lotus…”

Han pulls her up to sit comfortably on her lap. Listen up. This is important. Look at her. Don’t flinch away, even when she cups your cheeks in her hands. Don’t listen to the furnace-blast of her breath, hoarse and hungry. You have to hear this next part. You have to know you can refuse her. Whatever else happens, you have to know that. No fear, only honesty. She can’t bear an answer that’s not from your heart. Not when your bodyguard (your knight, your dragon, whatever the hells she is!!) holds so much power over you.

“..................................can I kiss you?”

You’re free to break her heart. It’s okay.

Lotus’ cheeks blossom in red and pink. Her lips part. She prays in a breathy whisper. ”Please!”

And there is no time left for words.

Han pulls Lotus of Tranquil Waters atop her. And slows. The instant. Before. They touch. And she smothers. Her lips. With hers. She holds. Her face. Still. Steady. Inescapable. She is. Not done. Not done with one. She kisses her mouth. Again. And again. Bit. By. Bit. Carefully, carefully. She must. Taste. Every bit of them. She. Must. Know. If they are all. Soft. The same way. Or. Sweeter. Here, or there. Will she. Make that noise. Every time her tongue. Finds her skin? She must. Know. Fire grows. When it is. Fed.

Gently as butterfly breezes, Han devours her.

And when at last they part, it is only to lean her weary head against hers, forehead to forehead, and all the air tastes of flowers. And all her thoughts are music. And song tumbles whisper-soft from her lips, so quiet that Lotus will hear it long before she herself does.

"What life of striving would I endure
For the blessing of beholding you
What suffering more would I gladly bear
For the promise of your touch…"

Breathless Dead

Ah. So it’s not just his nightmare after all.

“...and look at you now.” An amalgam of metal and matter, a testament to his vision. “I don’t think a sheep like me is suited for metal, but you, you wear it well. You always have.”

No. That’s not right. At once, his own voice rings wrong, and so it must to the craftsman too. Some tragedies are so vast, it takes a lifetime to journey to the bright side of them. What good does it do to pretend otherwise? To pretend neither of them see what’s happened here?

“...you don’t even recall what you asked of her, do you?” He smiles, pained. “Even at your most inspired, I just can’t picture you doing something so thoughtless as to make an offering without a wish on your tongue.”

An offering of the heart laid before a goddess he revered, and not even his request remains. The heroes of myth and history did not suffer as they did so that they could feign ignorance now.

Perhaps if one of those heroes were here, they’d have words of wisdom for times like this. Or they’d slay the foul monster blocking their way, something so terrible that neither of them can even see its true form. But no, it’s just the two of them. Craftsman and Chef. What can he do? Well, not much. Only a little thing. A small thing. Horribly unsuitable as any kind of solution or answer.

He holds onto the craftsman’s bandaged hand with his own. At the first sign of discomfort, he will withdraw without a fuss. Until that time, he will stand by his side, and he will ask him, “What was your vision, the one of metal and matter? Do you remember?” And he’ll listen to every word, even as he takes the first step forward. If this be a cautionary tale, then the craftsman will not have to walk it alone. He can offer this little comfort to one laid terribly low.

If the Lady of Summer finds offense in this, then. Well. Then he’ll find a suitable offering to stay her wrath.

Breathless Dead

The quiet of the streets coils around his spine. The creak of doors on hinges. The tap, tap, tap of their steps on the course, black ground. Their words, swallowed up in the void without a hint of an echo. They ought to be louder. They ought to be quieter. How he wishes for another voice to come and break this spell.

”Is that so? Forgive me, there’s not much call for high theory in…” The word flits on the tip of his tongue, unsure of its shape. Piracy? Cruiser maintenance? “...the kitchens, yes. Plenty of time to think. Little time for practice.”

The person he walks beside wears a face he knows. He speaks with the right voice. He recites his arguments with a practiced step, lingers over well-worn favorites with tender affection.

Every word is unfamiliar.

”Where did you study this…Art, friend? Just the other day, yes, you were telling me about, what was it, the difference between…turning on and stoking an Engine?” Maybe drawing an analogy to his ovens? It must have been about an oven. What had he been cooking? His eyes shine with the simple curiosity of a novice. “You know so much, it must have been a school like no other.”

Breathless Dead

Did you know? Not one of these houses contains a gene-loom. Not one of these houses contains anything that could, on a good day, resemble a gene-loom in potentia. But they could. That’s the trick with houses, and walls; you can put things in them, and you won’t know what’s inside until you look.

Dolce stands outside each house. He does not open the door; they are all locked, and the craftsman’s hands are clever to their work. He stands. And he waits. He casts his eyes to the earth. He does not think about what will be in this house. And when the craftsman emerges again, he falls in beside him without so much as a how-do-you-do.

On the forty-seventh house, the craftsman nicks his hand on a splinter. Dolce binds the shallow cut with soft, careful fingers, and at last he speaks. His tone is soft as his wool. And nothing like the acid in his stomach.

“She would see no love in this. There would be no love worth seeing there. When you make something, sir, something that’s important to you, it’s your hands that make it. Would it be the same if you gave someone else the plans? Let them do it all for you? Could they love it like you do?”

And what abuse would you heap upon them when they inevitably fell short? When their hearts found songs of their own? This, he does not say. It is not necessary to say. The point stands just fine without it.

“I’ve spent much of my life in the kitchens, but in all my time, every true love I’ve seen has needed tending to. The tending was the love.” He pulls the bandage tight, but not too tight. He brushes it clean of dirt and debris. He pats it, gently. “Not some busywork to give to someone else.”

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

The stories lied to her.

When the Sapphire Mother takes the stage, she doesn’t walk. She has people to do that for her. She lounges on a seat of brilliant blue lotus petals, borne by priestesses in their finest silks. She does not command them to stop, and set her down. She does not demand they bring cups of the finest wine, and raise them to her lips whenever she desires drink. She does not snap her fingers for someone to take the coat from her shoulders. All this is done for her, freely, as an act of worship. In deference and demonstration to her power.

Bull. Shit.

The priestesses could drop her any time they wanted. Or throw the wine in her face. Or make her stand there awkwardly with her coat on like a big dumb idiot while everyone points and laughs. Power?! There’s not a damn thing powerful about, about priestess on their knees, begging to serve you. Screw that, there’s nobody who’s got more power than them. There’s nobody that could drive a dagger through your heart easier. If the Sapphire Mother’s so powerful, why doesn’t she just float in herself, huh?! Pour her own damn wine! Gah!

Let her care for you.

The barge didn’t count. Emli was. Different. If she wanted to eat some breakfast in the morning, what was so bad about somebody bringing it to her room before she woke up? Saved her a damn walk. And, if she wanted to sulk walk around the gardens, then of course she wanted directions. Stupid barge, with too many stupid decks to keep track of. Emli was smart, and, professional, and good at a job she, loved, and, she’d do all that whether you asked her or not, and you could always just, leave, or do something else if you wanted. It’s. It’s different, when, she’s on her knees, in that dress, with those eyes staring up at her, so she can see the flickering lanterns reflected in them, and, and, asking. With. Her mouth. Open. To…

(Her burning heart is doused in river and rain. All available fuel burns to hold her shoulder together. Lotus’ hands are so, so light. And soft. All she does is stand here. Lotus strokes her arm tenderly. She will not stop. She could stand here, and do nothing, and she wouldn’t stop pouring this little, tender comfort on her. If she tugged, she could pull Han to her knees. If she laughed, she could shatter her. If she smiled, she could pull her heart out of her chest, and she would never get it back.)

Let her care for you.

Something between a growl and a groan nestles in her throat, and refuses to come out, or make up its mind which it would be when it did. It is the stupidest noise she has ever made, until she opens her mouth to speak. “Alright. Just. Don’t freak out. It looks worse than it is.” She sits? She kneels? No, she sits. No, she leans casually against the side of the bed. No, the bed’s the wrong height and she’s the filthiest thing in the room she sits. No, kneels. Crouches? She crouches. She crouches very close to sitting, but she could stand up anytime she wanted to, so there. “Damn floor….” she mutters.

She rolls up her sleeve to her shoulder. And keeps pulling it back.

Her shoulder is mottled with deep purple splotches. Something may have snapped inside. Maybe several somethings. She holds herself stiffly. She can’t see where the bruises stretch onto her back. She can feel where they darken her collarbone. Perilously close to her neck. Her throat.

(She fought the Dominion spy? In this condition?)

“I wasn’t gonna leave it like this or anything.” So, you can’t scold her now. She didn’t do anything wrong. “I was gonna heal it on my own, when I got my wind back.” Her wells of Essence were dry, is all. Dry enough that she couldn’t flood her body with life and energy. All she’d have to do is sit here, and bite her tongue for however many hours it took to build her reserves back. Then she could spend them. Then she could lie limp and exhausted, and wait, and wait, until she could stand again. Her little bud would never have known. She couldn’t have known. Not on the walk. Not in the fight. Not a minute ago.

Lotus would’ve offered to heal it on the spot. Because she’s kind to everybody. Because she’s got a heart big enough for the whole world. Because it’d break that heart of hers to know somebody was hurt, and she could do something to make them feel better. Even if she had to kiss their neck. Their throat. Anywhere, anyplace, even where only lovers and slaves go. And Han knew that. And if she let anything slip, it’d be just the same as…it’d be just like tricking her. Into kissing her, again. When she’s just kind to everybody. Even beasts.

But it’s different, when she’s asking. If she’s offered, already.

Let her care for you.

Han’s free hand finds Lotus’. And clumsily squeezes. Because she needs to hold something, or else the rush of blood and terror in her head will sweep her away. Do not let go. Do not let her go, Lotus of Tranquil Waters.

“You should. Be thorough.” Oh gods oh heavens what is she saying what is happening what is any of this. “I don’t know how any of this magic crap works, okay?! So. I. Want you, to.” Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?! “Take your time. And. Don’t miss any spots.” She looks her in the eye. She has to look her in the eyes. Oh gods she’s looking her in the eyes. “That’s what I want.” And Lotus is looking right back and she’s leaning now her chest is pressing soft into her arm and

oh.

(Her lips are warmer than she remembers…)