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bluepenguinstories · 3 years ago

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Remoras Full Chapter XXXIX: Nun the Wiser

Through the still silence and the lack of temperature (despite its location geographically, inside the fog was a feeling of neither warmth nor frozen cold, but just dead air) within the mist-filled landscape I made my way into hell. As if a lighthouse beacon, the orange glow inside of the diner could be seen, even as a faint glimmer from afar. There were strips of lighting, meant as a sort of walkway, but the destination meant more to me than the journey. After all, the journey was a torturous undertaking.

Three knocks: no answer.

Foreboding already. Should I have expected anything less?

When I fled from the convent, I didn’t know what I would expect. All I heard were rumors of a lone restaurant, buried out in the depths of this accursed omen that I could take shelter in. What happened back in that convent that I was forced to flee? Have I committed some horrible crime against the church? Was I excommunicated? Or was it that my former home had been destroyed, forever set ablaze by the darkness in men’s hearts and as such, I could no longer return, as I no longer had a home to return to?

No. I wouldn’t speak a word of it. I’ve made my vows and henceforth, there would be not another word on the subject.

Whether or not my presence was welcome, I pushed open the door with my delicate and frail hands. It crept slow and a credible creaking sound followed. As I awaited the chaos that followed, light leaked through and shone almost as bright as heaven itself (oh, the irony). Once the light faded, lost in the abyss which surrounded me, I was face to face with a crowd of sick and dying alike. Injured and scared, people all huddled together en masse.

However, through all of that, there was an air of perseverance: food was brought to everyone’s table by a young girl with snowy hair. Commotion could be heard in the kitchen from afar, even with all the wails and conversation of the crowded dining hall: sounds of pots and pans clattering and clanging, hisses and searing of oil, meats, and vegetables. Its aroma permeated throughout the air and I allowed myself a sniff.

I walked through the dining area, as if aimless and without a purpose. Of course, I wasn’t without aim, but I had to appear as such until the right person showed up. Seeing as I didn’t know what the right person looked like yet...I may as well have been without aim.

Soon enough through my wander and best attempts not to be swayed by the delicious aromas set at each table, someone took notice of me and sauntered up to me: a tall and radiant black beauty. Her smile beamed with such a brightness that I was sure that through all the darkness in this world, she must have been a source of light.

“Heya. I take it you’ve come seeking shelter?” She squatted down and leaned her face close against mine. As welcoming as she was, I had to back away, for fear of her noticing anything in particular about my face. Let it be known that I was more than a little bit self-conscious. That even with my mouth and the top of my head covered by cloth, that there would be something seen about me that would be deemed revealing.

Once I backed away one step, I gave a single nod in return.

“Well, go ahead and seat yourself wherever you like. There’s not a lot of room, so you might have to huddle up next to someone,” she informed me.

While I appreciated the offer and should have been grateful with just that, I couldn’t bear to just sit tight and wait for a meal. Not only that, but I wasn’t about to remove the cloth from over my mouth. If I were to do that, then others could see my lips. Even something as simple as that…

So I produced a notepad and a pen from one of the pockets of my black habit and wrote down a note, then handed it to her.

“Oh? What’s this?” She scanned her eyes across the paper and had a look of delight on her face. Afterward, however, she scratched the back of her head and gave a sort of confused face of distress.

“Wait right here. I’ll get my husband.”

I nodded, and was once again left alone in the aisle between the despondent people. I took quick glances, little notes of the demographics: all adults, luckily. No child should have to deal with such hellish circumstances. Though...there was the white haired child, delivering plates to tables and asking around. What was her deal, her story? What was it that brought her to such a place?

“Is the menu visible for you?” She asked one of the guests, a flat brown haired young man in a puffy vest and jeans.

“Don’t you mean ‘have you had time to look at the menu’?”

She looked down and smiled, then shook her head.

“Yes, but I imagine it only takes a second to look at something, so long as it is visible to you. Amen.”

Is she supposed to be the waitress here? If so, she doesn’t seem to have this whole ‘hospitality’ thing down. Then again, she is a child, so maybe the others go easy on you.

“Oh, Astraea. I can never be mad at you. You still have much to learn,” he waved the waitress off.

“Yes. I do. So, are you interested in eating food?” She asked, again, her voice remained soft and polite.

Well, she’s got the kind part down. Hopefully all of the refugees are as nice to her as that young man. At the very least, it seems they’re all familiar with her. Damn, though. I was really hoping that I could work as a waitress here.

“Yeah, I think I’d like mashed potatoes with biscuits and gravy,” the young man replied.

“Those are interesting foods to eat. I will let the head chef know,” she informed him.

“Thank you, Astraea.”

“You’re welcome, Olivier.”

She then spun around in place, then ran off.

“Star power!” She cried out in a sugary sweet voice as she ran toward the kitchen.

“Astraea. How many times do I have to tell you not to run in the dining room? You could slip and fall, not to mention drop someone’s order,” scolded an older man who sounded exhausted.

I faced forward to see him: a gaunt looking man with jet unkempt hair which almost covered his eyes, and they would, too, if not for the glasses he wore. His eyes had a dull, hazy look to them and there were bags underneath. Despite such a despairing air about him, his attire was far more dignified and sharp dressed: an ironed-out tuxedo and slacks, with white gloves covering his hands.

He approached me, then stopped and pulled out the paper that I handed to the beautiful woman, who, by coincidence, stood beside him.

Ah. So he must be the husband.

“So let me see…” He held up the paper close to his face. “Your name is Sister Cecilia. You’ve taken a vow of silence, and you’re a nun who was exiled from her convent. You came here seeking shelter and would like to help out any way you can. Did I get all that?”

I nodded. There was more that I would like to add, but everything had its place.

“Isn’t she cute, hun? I don’t think we’ve had a nun show up here before,” the wife commented.

Am I some kind of spectacle?

“Trust me, they’re not all that interesting. No offense,” he focused his gaze on me.

“None taken,” I wrote down. He leaned over and peered at what I had written.

“So that’s how you communicate, huh?”

I nodded.

“Well, you should consider making your words bigger. Some of us, myself included, would have a hard time reading anything so small.”

Again, I nodded. It was sound advice, and something which I hadn’t considered.

He drew an exasperated breath, then shook his head.

“Anyway, we’ve no need for sermons. I don’t think prayers will help our situation.”

“She could provide moral support,” the wife suggested, “besides, a few of the folks here are Christian, so she could entertain them.”

‘Entertain’? Is that the right word there?

“Nuns provide more than just prayer,” I scrawled the words down, then added, “it’s customary for a sister to go out and help out in the community.”

He looked around the dining room, then back at me.

“This is a community, yes, but by necessity, not by choice. You may take shelter here, but I have no work for you.”

“Oh, come on, Ray! You know we can use all the help we can get!” Ray’s wife nudged him.

“You can give her a task, then,” he groaned, “but I’m telling you, between you, I, Tigershark, Aurora, and Astraea, we’ve got most things covered. Not to mention whenever Wendy shows up, she takes some of these folks back to their homes. Anyone else would just be overkill.”

I then watched as he walked off toward the back of the diner. His wife, however, remained in front of me.

“Sorry about that, Sister. He used to be a lot more cheerful. Ray Sunshine, they’d call him. ‘Cause that’s his name, but also because he used to be more of a ray of sunshine.”

“I understand his disposition, given what lies outside,” I wrote down, big enough so she could see (heeding Ray’s advice) and held it up to her.

“Yeah...it’s not pleasant. He and I have both gotten our fair share of injuries out there. Of course, we’re used to the environment being extreme, but usually it’s because of blizzards or intense chill. This is different, though. Anyway, not to worry, I’m still Sunny! Nice to meet you!”

She held out her hand and I deliberated on whether or not to shake it. In the end, I extended my hand as well and took hers.

To my knowledge, there’s nothing she can infer about me from my hand.

She squeezed my hand and I squeezed back to meet her grip in turn.

“Oh wow, Sister. You have a firm grip,” Sunny observed.

I nodded. When she let go, I pulled out my pen and my notepad.

“As do you,” I wrote down.

“Ha! I have a feeling you and I will get along just fine, Sister Cecilia. I happen to have a thing for ladies with firm grips.”

I’m confused, but I’m going to assume that was a compliment.

“Thank you. You truly are a light in these dark times,” I wrote down.

“Oh my, you flatter me. If I wasn’t already married, I’d consider going out with you.”

Would you be saying such things if you knew who I was?

It was hard to tell whether or not she was serious, but I took it as a serious statement all the same.

“Need I remind you, I’m a nun,” I wrote down, slow and deliberate, emboldened so that she knew my words were serious. “We’re celibate and have taken a vow not to enter into any relationships, unless it be with God.”

Even then, hard to have a relationship with something that doesn’t exist.

“Aw, I forgot! Guess I’ll just have to admire you in my thoughts.”

I swear. If she ever finds out who I am under this saintly image, she’d change her tune real fast.

“Anyway…” she looked around with a precocious and carefree expression, “I’ve got it! You can be a hostess!”

“What is that?” I tilted my head and wrote down. I knew of a waitress, and a hostess sounded like the same thing. Which, to me, was a little redundant.

“Simple: you’d stand by the door and greet anyone who comes in. Then you’d direct people to their seats and let them know that you’ll bring the waitress to see them. Think you can do that?”

Really? Was that it? It seemed...too simple. Minimal effort. That, and “greeting people”? By holding up signs that said “welcome in”? Well, I couldn’t complain. If that’s what she had in mind, then I’d take whatever position I could get. It’s just…

“I imagine people don’t come by very often,” I wrote down so that I could address a flaw in Sunny’s proposal.

“Yeah, you got me there! Well, members of Aurora’s crew like to come in and out, since we share our food with them, so I’d say that should keep you somewhat busy. But yeah, I see your point. So...hmm...maybe...oh! You could help out Astraea, our waitress? See, she’s pretty friendly, but she can get a little confused at times, and she may need a little extra help as a waitress.”

I pointed my left thumb in the direction of the wandering child waitress.

“Mm-hmm! That’s her!”

Thank goodness. I can finally put my customer service experience to good use.

“I’ll do my best,” I wrote to Sunny.

“I’m sure you’ll do fine, hun!” She held up a thumb and smiled wide. She really was, by all accounts, radiant.

In the midst of our conversation, I failed to notice Astraea, the waitress in question herself, approach us.

“Hello, Sunny. Might this be another human that eats?” Astraea asked in a wispy voice.

“Yes, dear. This is Sister Cecilia. She is a nun,” Sunny explained to her.

“A nothing? But how can she be a nothing if she is something?” Astraea tilted her head.

“Not nothing, n-u-n, nun. They’re a type of religious folk.”

“I don’t know what that is. Are nuns human?”

Are nuns...excuse me?

In a fit of confusion, I scribbled down just one word:

“What?”

And held it up, first showing Sunny, then Astraea.

“Those are some interesting symbols,” Astraea pointed to the sheet of paper I held out.

“That’s a word,” Sunny explained, “because she’s taken a vow of silence, she writes down whatever she wants to say and has people read it out.”

“Vow of silence? How did she make a vow if she can’t speak?”

Sunny chuckled.

“I’m pretty sure she can speak. She probably spoke plenty before she took that vow. It’s just after that vow that she stopped speaking. Am I right, Sister Cecilia?”

I nodded.

More or less.

“I see. How interesting. I may have some difficulties holding conversations with her, but I am willing to try. Amen,” Astraea replied to Sunny, then returned to her waitress duties.

“As you can see, she’s a little confused, but she’s got the spirit,” Sunny assured me.

From what little I saw of her, I was inclined to agree. However, what that ‘spirit’ in question was, I had no idea.

Either way, I have a strange feeling around her. Like she knows more than she lets on. Or that she’s not all that she seems. I don’t know where that feeling comes from, yet I am unable to deny it all the same.

“So, before I let you go, Sister, is there anything else I can help you with?” Sunny asked.

I nodded, then jotted down my question:

“Where may I rest?”

Sunny gave a nervous chuckle.

“Anywhere you like. There’s not a lot of space, but anywhere you can find is good enough. Just don’t sleep in one of the restrooms, as I’m sure the others wouldn’t like that too much.”

Nor would I like sleeping in a restroom, either. Although I would like to eat in one of them, that way I have at least the smallest morsel of privacy whilst I eat. Under no circumstances should I let others see my mouth, as it would be far too revealing.

On the subject of privacy, I let my worldly desires get the better of me, as I wrote down a request:

“I would like a room to myself.”

Sunny hung her head low. It still wasn’t the dejected atmosphere which Ray held, but it was all the same, a look of disappointment.

“Sorry, Sister. There’s a lot of people and not a lot of space. I would if I could, but circumstances are dire and resources are already tight.”

Of course. I should have known better than to have made such a request.

“I understand,” I wrote out, “I’ll be fine with any room, then.”

“Hmm...there’s a room in the back. You’d still be sharing it with a couple of other people, but I can roll out a futon bed for you to sleep on, as I’m sure you wouldn’t want to share a bed with two other people.”

Yeah. No. Most definitely I did not want to.

“I can also roll out a sleeping bag, air mattress, take your pick.”

“Futon is fine,” I wrote down.

“Good! It’s in the back, down the hall, to your left when you walk in. Mine and Ray’s room is upstairs. Tigershark and Astraea share a room at the other end of the hall, so if you ever wanna visit them when they’re not busy, feel free.”

If I recall, Ray mentioned Tigershark being the head chef. That was, to say the least, an interesting name. Not to borrow one of Astraea’s words, but it was just the truth.

After Sunny explained all that, she too left and headed toward the back of the restaurant/shelter.

I’ve now been acquainted with almost all the staff here. That just leaves folks like Tigershark, Aurora, and Wendy. But if I had to choose, I’d say that Tigershark is the one I’m most interested in meeting next.

As if a prayer were answered, I heard a yell come from the kitchen. Gruff, yet shrill in its timbre.

“Order up!” Roared the voice of the head chef, and it sounded like the voice of a child.

Wait. You don’t mean…the head chef, too…?

My eyes followed the movements of Astraea as she strolled from one end of the dining area and into the kitchen door. Then, a few seconds later, she walked out with a plate and a glass of water in hand. On the plate was a dish of shrimp risotto and two gyoza rolls.

How...peculiar.

In tandem with the plate and glass being set down at one of the tables, the door to the kitchen burst open and out from it was a muscular young girl with red hair and orange streaks in the style of a pageboy haircut. She wore an apron with what appeared to be denim overalls underneath, and underneath those overalls was a long sleeved blue and gold striped T-shirt. Tight-laced leather boots topped off her attire, and if there were any more details to take note of, I didn’t have much of a chance to observe, as she darted toward me.

“Hello!” She beamed. “Are you new here? My name’s Tigershark!”

I nodded, then wrote down the same thing I wrote for Ray. I handed Tigershark the sheet of paper and her eyes scanned across the page.

“Oh wow! I’ve never met a real life nun before! I think Ray told me about them once.”

Astraea soon joined beside Tigershark.

“Look, Tigershark, isn’t this an interesting human?” Astraea pointed me out.

“Yes, she is! She’s a nun! I’ve heard about them before, but never seen them!”

Astraea looked down and smiled.

“I still don’t know what a nun is,” her assured statement made it seem like she was content not knowing, yet it seemed quite the opposite.

“They’re like how you say amen a lot, but with them, it’s their job!” Tigershark explained, in what may have been the simplest and least accurate of ways.

“Does that mean that they get paid for it?” Astraea put her finger on her chin and wondered.

“No,” I wrote down.

“What does that say?” Astraea looked at the paper.

“It says ‘no’. Like, she doesn’t get paid, I guess?”

I nodded. Correct.

Tigershark held out her hand. Same game as Sunny, I suppose. I took it and shook, and to my surprise, Tigershark’s grip was also very tight.

Then again, much like Sunny, Tigershark has quite muscular arms.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Sister Cecilia!”

When she let go, I wrote down:

“You as well. You’re almost as tall as me.”

It was true; although if I had to guess, she was about 137 centimeters, she was still what I would consider tall for a child, and as for me...let’s just say there was a reason I wore heels. As uncomfortable as they were on my feet, with them on, I was 154 centimeters, and appeared just tall enough that I didn’t have to be so self-conscious about my height.

“Really? Well, Ray says I’m growing fast, and I’m almost 11! I’ll have my 11th birthday in a few weeks, and then in a few months after that, I’ll be 11 for real! I’m just not sure about the exact day!”

That was...confusing. Did she not know her own birthday? In any case, the thing I was most shocked about was the idea that she still had more growing to do. I feared for the day in which she outgrew me. Me, a grown adult woman.

“When it’s Tigershark’s 11th birthday, it will be mine as well,” declared Astraea. “We decided it last year. I will also be 11 because I recently learned that I am not 19 but in fact, Tigershark’s age, due to the fact that some of my years weren’t actually a year long.”

Again: what?

For the remainder of the day, I shadowed Astraea and made sure she did all that was expected of her. I’d often find myself writing down apologies to the guests and asking for their patience, although by the look of things, they were more or less used to her. Not long after, I turned in for the night in the room which Sunny had directed me to.

Inside were two other people, just as I was told there would be: one, a balding man with a tank-top on, an inappropriate attire for the type of environment we were in (or, I would say that, except the fog has negated any sense of ‘cold’ or ‘warm’ altogether) with cuts and bruises all over his arms, chest, and face. He drew labored breaths as he lay on the bed in what looked to be a cold sweat. As red as his cuts were, and as purple as the bruises were, at least it seemed that none of his wounds were open.

He must have only come here recently, I noted.

Knelt down on the floor beside the bed, was a woman, with brunette hair tied in a bun and wearing a thick, brown overcoat. She too had scratches on her face, like claw marks, and her overcoat itself was torn up, almost in tatters. Neither of them looked in great shape, yet the kindest thing I could say was that they would live. They had each other for comfort and that had to count for something. That was more than I could say about myself; what could I offer them? Empty prayers. Such things would have done them no good.

Despite my request for a room, I nevertheless felt like an intruder to those people. They didn’t acknowledge my existence as they were too preoccupied with their own predicament. All the better. Even in a superficial sense, I’d love nothing more than to have been left alone.

So I walked past them and laid myself down on the futon next to the dresser. I curled my legs and removed my high-heeled shoes. I’d be damned if I didn’t have some bruises and calluses from wearing them for so long. Those things were a punishment far greater than any of my sins. Yet wear them, I had to, for the sake of appearance.

Being who I was, I had to throw away any notion of ‘comfort’ for the sake of appearance. There was little comfort in my attire, especially given my blasphemous thoughts. Some folks held faith in a higher power, others were comfortable with having faith in humanity; I had neither. We were all cruel creatures of desire who both suffered and inflicted suffering upon others. We created deities as scapegoats to pawn our problems off on, we –

No, I had to stop before it spiraled further. Such thoughts were a bad habit, and within the pockets of my bad habit were notepads and pens, an endless amount of papers as a means of communication. Beside that was a means of protection, one which I hoped I wouldn’t have to present. At least not yet.

What am I doing, dressing up like some holy woman? How long am I going to keep up this act? I hold nothing sacred, nothing holy. I devote myself to no one and nothing, but act with self-preservation. So when will I present myself as a faithless, faceless mannequin like I really am? Or as a mannequin, am I meant to be dressed up to play a role, put myself on display, and pass by without a second’s thought.

My eyes shut. Soon I was on my back, and although I knew little rest would come, I still tried to bring myself to some semblance of respite.

I had a dream about bells. Church bells or school bells, couldn’t tell. That I had any dream at all was a miracle, as I wasn’t one to remember many of my dreams. That, and sleep seldom came to me. But there I was, sat up on the floor, and the bells still rung in my ear.

“SISTER CECILIA!” Roared the voice of Ray from afar. Such a vocal force vibrated through my skin and past my ribs, reverberated past my heart and out the other end.

Who?

“SISTER CECILIA!” Again, those two words, harsher, more urgent.

Oh, right. That’s me. The bell tolls for me.

I rushed to my feet and held up my veil, making sure that the coif was on tight. The last thing I wanted to happen was for the hood to fall and for the others to see my hair. That would have been too much to handle, especially on the first night of being here.

Once I had it all straight and fastened, I darted out the door to the room, down the hall, and into the dining area where I saw Ray and Sunny side by side with the front door swung open. There was a howling, malevolent force outside. Not a gust of wind, but a shriek and a growl, some inhuman and near-inaudible sound. In front of them, between the hinges of the unknown gray outside and the discomforting familiarity inside was a skinny, near-emaciated looking shirtless man. He coughed, gagged, sputtered and blood ran from his mouth. Gashes surrounded his torso and I had a hard time imagining that he would live at all.

“Don’t just stand there! Help us out!” Ray turned to me.

But while I should have helped, something else compelled me to stay where I was. Something, or perhaps, someone else: Astraea.

She stood off to my side, to my right, next to one of the booths. She too stood in place, and had a look of concern about her. But it wasn’t a concern that you or I might have had for someone sick. No, it was a sense of confusion, instead.

“Why are you helping that human up?” Astraea asked, in much the way a child might ask why the sky was blue.

“Because he’s hurt,” Sunny replied.

“Why is he hurt?”

“Because of what’s outside?”

“Why? What’s outside?”

“We don’t know,” it was Ray’s turn to answer.

“Why don’t you know?”

“We just don’t!” He snapped. That did not deter her.

“But why? Why can’t you tell? Why can’t it be bears, wolves, a blizzard? Why is he hurt at all? Why do people get hurt? Why are people hurt when they come here? Why does pain exist? Why –”

She. Just. Kept. Going. On.

I’ve always hated it, that word: Why? It was like when we’re young, that’s all we ask, and we expect an answer, but then when we get an answer, we’re just left with more questions, and no matter how much it’s broken down, there’s always going to be more questions until it all becomes pointless. Doubt is healthy, necessary, even, but do we all have to know the reason for every little thing?

“Astraea, go back to bed, honey,” Sunny urged.

“Why should I? Why can’t I know? Why can’t you know?”

Why won’t it stop? Was my own question. I was ready to put my hands over my ears and cover them up, open my mouth, scream, reveal my voice, have everything come crashing –

“Stop! Just stop!” I wanted so bad to yell that out.

– But I was saved by the cross tone of Ray Sunshine.

“Damn it! Sister Cecilia, are you going to do your job and help us out?!”

That snapped me out of any possible trance I was in and I rushed to their aide. I helped the poor man up and led him to an empty space at one of the booths. He moaned and wheezed and bobbed his head. There was a part of me which didn’t expect him to make it, that he would drop dead, before I even got him to take his seat.

But lo and behold, he did. He looked miserable, in tears, but he too, I would have to hope, would survive.

“I’ll bring you a glass of water. The waitress will be with you shortly,” I wrote down on my notepad and held it up to him. He squinted at it with a blurred vision, then looked up at me and nodded.

I began to walk up to Astraea, but Ray intercepted me.

“I’ll take it from here. You should get some rest,” he placed a hand on her shoulder and instructed.

“Thank you,” she replied. “So I shall. But please ask the man why he was hurt for me,” she requested. Ray glanced back to where I had placed the man, and it was like he was ready to roll his eyes. Instead of that, however, he turned back to Astraea.

“Will do.”

At the same time Astraea walked away, Ray walked past me, in the direction of the new guest.

“He’ll tell me the same thing they’ve all told me. He doesn’t know why he’s hurt any more than I do, but he knows his pain is real,” he muttered to himself, a grim sense of futility in his voice.

“Ray, let me help you,” Sunny pleaded. “I’ll bring the food out.”

“Do as you like,” he gave a dismissive reply.

As for me, I thought that was all I was needed for, that I too would head back into my room. But I kept my word. I walked off into the kitchen and filled up a glass of water. When I returned to the table, I set it down. Ray was still there, and he glanced at me.

“I could have done that myself,” he groaned.

Don’t give me that bullshit, I was ready to snarl, myself, just not out loud.

“But you didn’t have to,” I wrote down instead. Tact. It was as important in that hellscape as it ever was anywhere else.

He could have put up a fuss, but he looked at me for a few seconds longer, first his eyes showed scorn, then they shifted to a reluctant show of surrender. It was that shift which caused him to stand back up and wave his hand up.

“I’m going to make him a warm meal,” he called back to me, “you’re free to go back to bed until the next person arrives, or until morning. Sunny and I can handle this.”

As enticing as the offer of rest was, I followed him into the kitchen and wrote down.

“I can still help,” I showed the words to him.

“Yeah? What can you do?” His cold dismissal returned again. That time, I was stumped. There was no rebuttal I could have, but it felt wrong to just walk away, either.

“Well? Anything?” He pressed on.

I still had no answer and it dug deeper into me.

At last, he let out a sigh.

“Here: get out the eggs, flour, anything else I need, while I cook, OK?” He conceded. As someone who normally didn’t like work, let alone being told what to do, I was somewhat elated that he allowed me to help him in any way at all.

That was but the first night, in early August. Ever since then, there had been little progress in the way of the situation outside, or inside. Ray and Sunny gave the residents what little medical attention they knew to give. Ray was still the same self I witnessed upon my initial entry, but at least as the days passed, he acknowledged my presence. It wasn’t really progress, but it was something. Maybe all that I could hope for.

Each time someone entered, the bell would ring above the door, and I would assist whatever victim or passerby of the fog happened to cross the threshold into our domain. Some people’s injuries were worse than others. Sometimes, there were few injuries at all, and all I had to do was greet them and point them out to their table. Those were the lucky ones. I too was lucky, as when I first entered, the furthest I felt was an oppressive feeling that I was surrounded and eyes were on me in every direction.

Sometimes people carried with them the mindset of a customer, and not some desperate soul seeking shelter. That despite what horrible ordeals they’ve had to endure, they retained their entitled attitude. Those were the worst. Men, women, whoever. Young and old and anywhere in between. It didn’t matter. They were all a grating nightmare.

“Welcome in,” were the two words I would hold up on a sheet of paper when someone entered.

“Why howdy, ma’am!” Entered a burly middle-aged man in a cowboy hat and ultra thick mustache.

“Allow me to show you to your seat,” I held up the next sheet of paper. It had become a routine, and it was fine enough, I served a purpose, just as I wanted to. But damn, at times it could be boring.

“Why won’t you talk, little lady?” He asked instead. I had the most primal urge to growl, but I suppressed it.

“I’ve taken a vow of silence,” I wrote down.

“Aw, but I’m sure you have a lovely voice. And what’s with that cloth over your mouth? Got a cold or something? How am I going to see your lovely smile?” His voice was condescending, coy and playful. Absolutely disgusting.

I stomped down on his boot, so hard that despite the hardened leather that he wore, he felt every ounce of my disgust.

“Owww!” He wailed, raised his leg and held his foot in his hands, “damn you, little lady.”

Too late. I’m already damned.

“Now. Right this way,” I wrote down and although reluctant, he nodded, tears in his eyes, and followed me. When I found an open seat, toward the back wall of the dining hall, he looked at me with scorn in his eyes. But he was free to feel however he wanted. I was done with him.

I walked over to Astraea, who had just finished setting down a plate at another table. I poked her shoulder, then pointed in the direction of the nosy man with the unbearable mustache.

“Thank you, Sister Cecilia. Amen,” she replied, as she did. Beside her, was a customer, a puffy blonde haired woman with a rosary around her neck.

“Oh, how wonderful! We have two devout Christians!” Proclaimed the lady.

Wrong on both counts.

“I don’t know what that is,” answered Astraea.

“Don’t you believe in God just as well as I do?”

“I don’t know of any gods.”

“But you should! My faith in Him moves mountains.”

“How?”

“Well, it’s just that strong.”

“Interesting. My faith moves my own two feet.”

“So you have faith? But what do you have faith in?”

Astraea smiled. Truth be told, I worried for her. She bore no ill words toward anyone, yet those ultra-religious types were so easy to set off. Like a firecracker.

“I have faith in what interests me, and there are so many interesting things in this world.”

“That’s all well and good, but you should know what it means to pray! I insist we have a prayer circle once we’re not busy.”

“Why?”

“Because! It would be good for you!”

Astraea walked away, not giving her an answer, yet she continued to show off that kind smile of hers.

“Humans are so interesting,” she remarked.

I followed her. What else was I to do?

Yes, when it came to a monotheistic deity, especially of the Christian variety, I had no such beliefs. It was that fact which made my very existence as a nun a farce. Even as far back as when I was young, I didn’t believe in the existence of some higher power. Despite my pessimism and bitter attitude, it had nothing to do with “if a benevolent God exists, why is there still suffering in the world?” Because as far as I could tell, suffering would find a way regardless of how all-powerful something was.

No, it just had to do with the fact that it made no sense to me. To put such a thing in such a high regard when at best, a celestial entity like that would look at us humans with indifference. After all, did we ponder the daily lives of bacteria? Wonder about the complexity in such small organisms? Even if we did, we didn’t shed tears over them, and our concern only extended to how much it affected us. So why put so much stock, so much worship, into something that even if it existed, didn’t care about us one iota?

Not only that, but why “He”? Why not “She”? Why “heavenly father”? Hell, why any gender at all? If those beings were such all-powerful entities, why would they need to be identified with a man, a woman, anything? Weren’t they above that?

There were so many imperfections which denoted a human, not a divine, origin. For all that talk of a creator, such a thing was at its core, a creation. At least I could have some respect for the religions with many deities. They didn’t hide or deny the human elements of their gods.

Of course, there was but one more aspect: proof. There was none one way or another. For all we knew, there could and there couldn’t be something out there, far off in the cosmos. But we had no way to tell, so why put stock into something which may not even be there at all? It just didn’t make sense, and I didn’t have the patience like Astraea to ask an endless barrage of “why?” Or “how?” As it stood, if there was some celestial being among us, how would such a thing present itself? What pronouns would they prefer?

“She’s such a wonderful girl, isn’t she?” One guest remarked about Astraea.

I shrugged my shoulders. Her words and actions often left me in confusion. Maybe that in itself was “wonderful”, just a different connotation of the word.

When all of the food was served, Tigershark ran out from the kitchen.

“Another meal was a success!” She stretched out her arm and held up her thumb.

“Good job, Tigershark,” Astraea gave Tigershark a pat upon her head.

Things soon went south: a few tables down, someone began to gag, then throw up. All three of us ran toward their table. It was a young woman, thin and shaking in her seat.

“Oh no! I swear, I cooked it all well!” Tigershark pouted, then reached over and wiped the woman’s mouth.

“What did she just do?” Astraea asked.

“She threw up,” Tigershark informed her.

Have you never seen someone throw up before?

“Sorry,” uttered the woman’s aching voice, “I think I was just so hungry I ate it too fast and...urp.”

“So you throw up when you eat too fast?” Astraea wondered.

“Kinda. Lots of things can do it. You can eat too much, or eat something that doesn’t taste good, or sometimes tummy’s just mean,” Tigershark elaborated.

“I see. Excuse me, then,” Astraea stated, looked down and smiled, then walked toward one of the restrooms.

Don’t tell me…

I followed her. It could have been nothing, but...who was I kidding? Was it ever ‘nothing’ with that child?

She left the door to the single stall restroom open and I saw her in front of the toilet’s seat, retching, and soon black bile emitted from out of her mouth. It looked unreal, and among the stream of vomit, there was blood and what looked like discarded chunks of flesh. It made me want to retch, at the very least look away, but something compelled me not to. Toward the very end, I even thought I saw small limbs, like arms and legs, and even branches off of trees billowing out. I blinked, and she was done.

“Are you OK?” I wrote down. She looked over to me and wiped her mouth.

“Sorry you saw that,” Astraea answered instead with a strained moan. She wiped her mouth, and I walked over to her, then saw that there were no such grotesque things like I had imagined. I was more baffled that for a moment, I even considered such imagery. She flushed the toilet, then walked past me and splashed some water on her face in the sink. After, she washed her hands and while ignoring what I wrote down, turned to me.

“That was most unpleasant. Yes. Why do people eat if that can happen? I do wonder,” she mused to herself, then walked past me.

For what it was worth, her face looked spotless and after that whole ordeal was done, she seemed fine. Like it was just an afterthought.

“Astraea! Are you okay?” Tigershark ran up to her as we exited the restroom.

“Yes, my friend. I must have just gone so long eating and not disposing of the food that I had too much within me.”

“Make sure you pee and poop sometimes!” Tigershark urged.

“I will take care to do so, thank you.”

Just a few hours later, the five of us gathered for a “prayer circle” – Ray, Sunny, Tigershark, Astraea, and I. None of us wanted to be there. Well, maybe Sunny did, mostly just for fun. Tigershark and Astraea did, as well, but more out of a sense of curiosity. So I guess that just left Ray and I.

“I really don’t think this is necessary,” Ray scoffed at the idea when the woman presented it.

“Aw, please, Ray, won’t you indulge me?”

“This could be fun,” Sunny added, “and if nothing else, it’ll give us both a break from all the hardship.”

Ray let out a dejected sigh.

“Fine. Let’s get this over with.”

We all sat in the circle, and by coincidence, I sat beside Astraea.

Good. There’s just too many things about her that don’t add up. Maybe while everyone is distracted in prayer, I can find out the answer for myself.

“Oh, heavenly father, thank you for this meal –” The woman began, and everyone closed their eyes. I opened them soon after, though, and scribbled down a few words on a torn scrap of paper.

“What are you, really?” I passed the paper to her. She opened her eyes and noticed it, then replied:

“I don’t know how to read. Amen.”

“Amen,” everyone else echoed soon after. If not for the group prayer ending, I would have thought that Astraea had everyone in a trance.

“Thank you-know-what that’s over,” Ray exclaimed, then got up out of his seat.

“What were you two talking about?” Tigershark turned to Astraea and I.

“She wrote something for me, but I don’t know how to read,” Astraea explained.

This is embarrassing, I couldn’t help but think to myself.

Tigershark took the scrap of paper.

“Oh, she was asking you what you are,” Tigershark explained.

“Twinkle, twinkle little star...I am a waitress,” Astraea answered.

“There you have it, Sister Cecilia,” Tigershark turned to me, then back to Astraea. “By the way, would you like me to teach you how to read?”

“Yes please. Amen.”

I shook my head. I learned nothing, save for the fact that Astraea couldn’t read. But was that even the truth, or was that just something she told me? Oh, I didn’t know what I was going on about anymore. It was useless to wonder about things which held no purpose.

When we all dispersed, I was ready to resume my duties as a hostess, but Tigershark came up to me and jumped up and down.

“Yes?” I wrote down before turning around.

“My birthday’s coming up! Well, it won’t be my actual birthday, but I’ll be celebrating it in a few days, because that’s when I celebrated it last year. Ray said that we can’t do much because of the thing outside, but he’ll still make me a cake and sing to me. Will you be there too?”

I didn’t see much of a choice in the matter. Where else would I go?

“Yes,” I jotted down my simple answer.

“Thank you! I know it’s in your name, but I want you to know that I like you like an actual sister!”

It was strange, but I found it a sweet gesture, nonetheless.

“I like you too :)” I wrote down.

While in reality, I wasn’t a fan of children by any stretch, I felt it necessary to show kindness to them above all. Especially in this context, where outside of the domain of the diner was too dangerous. I didn’t feel this was any place for a child, and I would stand by that, but since she was already there, much like Ray must have felt, I needed to make sure she felt as happy as if there were no problems outside.

“I’m so glad! I had another sister named Demetria, but she’s not here anymore. I really miss her. Her birthday is a few days after mine and I wish she were here so I could tell her happy birthday.”

That struck me somehow. I didn’t know who such a person was, but she must have been important to Tigershark in some capacity.

“I see. I’m sure she misses you too,” I wrote my reply, unsure if that was actually the truth. There was no real way to tell, as I didn’t know who she was.

“Thanks. She used to live in the room you sleep in now, back before all these people were here. I liked to tease her and prank her, but I can’t do that anymore since she’s not here.”

Ha. I couldn’t imagine anyone missing being pranked, but I could tell her feelings about her supposed sister was still genuine.

“I hope you can see her again someday,” I wrote down before going on my way.

“I hope so too! I’m sure you’d like her if you met her as well!”

Would I? I had no idea. I didn’t care for most people as it was, so I didn’t see what would have made her any more special. Still, again, it was a nice thought.

I did wonder, though. What she must have been like, what life in general must have been like before the disaster that the fog brought with it.

Days later, Tigershark’s birthday came around. The unfortunate thing was that true to her word, little was done for her. There was a cake, there was some singing. Ray gave a sweater to Tigershark that he had knitted, and Sunny gave her an old pair of boxing gloves. She was happy with both gifts.

“Sorry I don’t have anything for your birthday this year,” Astraea told Tigershark.

“That’s okay! You just being here is fine with me! Besides, you let me play your video games, and that’s fun!”

Oh yeah. I forgot about that detail. Sometimes those two, when they weren’t busy with their restaurant duties, would sit in the back of the diner out in the hallway and play on Astraea’s Nintendo Switch.

“You can play video games with me and tell me what each word says on the screen! That way I can learn to read!” Astraea presented the game and console to Tigershark one day when I just happened to be in the same vicinity as them.

“What’s this? ‘Fire Emblem: Three Houses’, it says,” Tigershark read off the cartridge.

“Is that what it says? I always just thought it was called video games,” Astraea remarked.

The two sat together and didn’t pay me any mind.

“Look! It’s Sothis!” Astraea would point out. “She’s my favorite!”

It wasn’t long until each of them were pointing to each character.

“Ray looks like an older Lindhardt!” Tigershark exclaimed.

“Yes, but where are his glasses?” Astraea pointed out.

“Catherine looks like Sunny!”

“Yes, but her skin is too light to be Sunny,” Astraea corrected.

“Shamir looks kinda like Remora!”

Someone else I didn’t know, I see. Maybe she too was once a resident of the diner.

“Shamir’s skin is too light as well.”

Does it have to be a perfect 1:1 comparison? I couldn’t help but ask myself.

“Flayn reminds me of Demetria!” Both of them cried out, and that got me to look their way.

What?

“She’s short, has green hair, and likes fish. It’s perfect!” Tigershark sounded so excited, like she reached a breakthrough.

“Yes. Flayn is the perfect Demetria.”

Such nonsense, I shook my head.

“Who would be like Sister Cecilia?” Tigershark then wondered.

“Hmm...maybe Mercedes?” Astraea pondered. “She’s blonde and likes church stuff.”

“Oh, oh! I can see that!” Tigershark beamed.

Fuck it. I’ll bite.

“May I see the characters?” I wrote down and showed them.

“I’m still not very good at reading,” Astraea tilted her head and muttered. “What does it say, Tigershark?”

“She wants to see the characters in the game! Can we show her?”

“Yes. I shall allow it,” Astraea smiled, then handed the console to me.

I scrolled through each character in the menu.

There’s one called Lady Rhea. Somehow that name stands out to me. But it says she’s the head of the church, and I never really got along well with heads of churches.

I scrolled through some more. There was one character, Bernadetta.

Heh. Bernadetta. I can relate to her vibes. I too would like nothing more than to be left alone.

At last, I stopped at one character: Marianne. She was a demure looking young woman with short, blue hair.

For some reason I feel like she resonates with me, but I don’t know why. Wait. Why am I comparing myself to someone with short, blue hair?

I shook my head. Those little observations weren’t really much. I didn’t even really know the game that well. I handed the console back to them and wrote down:

“You’re right. Mercedes fits me most.”

They both grinned, as if I told them that they won a contest. Ah, well. Best to let those two think that, anyway.

After that exchange, I left the two alone. Still, it was nice to think that even from something as simple as that, Tigershark could be happy.

On a slow period, a little over a week after Tigershark’s birthday, I found Ray at his desk in the back of the diner. It was the perfect opportunity to ask him something which had been gnawing at the back of my mind. That, and we never really got to have much of a discussion together.

I sat down at a chair beside his desk and that was when he turned to me.

“Sister Cecilia. What can I do for you?” He asked, sounding bored.

“I was wondering about who used to live in the room I’m in,” I wrote down and showed it to him.

“You mean the guy and the girl?” He asked in return, referring to the ones I shared the room with.

I shook my head.

“No. Before the fog.”

He nodded his head slow.

“I see. Why do you want to know?”

“Just curious,” I wrote, “I heard Tigershark talking about her before.”

“Ah. Yeah. It used to be Demetria’s room.”

“Can you tell me about her?”

“She was someone who came here originally because she had a crush on someone who frequented here. I liked to give her a hard time about it, but I let her stay because the whole thing amused me. Can you relate to that at all?”

“What?” I wrote in response.

“Having a crush. Have you ever had such feelings for someone?”

“Only for God.”

And even then, not that. After all, I can’t have love for something that doesn’t exist.

He leaned back, then smiled a slight smile.

“Was that some kind of joke?” He asked.

“I have to try to keep a sense of humor, even in the darkest of times. There needs to be some light, no matter how small,” I wrote down my reply.

“I see. I used to think such things as well. I seem to have lost my sense of humor ever since this fog. She got lucky, though, that Demetria. She left before everything went south. She said that she needed to figure herself out, and I respected that. I even extended the offer that she could return at any time. However, once this fog started up, I didn’t want to risk such a danger. I texted her and told her that I didn’t want to see her again, hoping she’d get the message without asking any questions.”

“Did it work?”

“I have to assume so. I just feel bad for it, like I wonder if I made the right decision. She probably has a bad impression of me now, like I don’t care, when the opposite is true, and I’ll have to live with that. What do you think, Sister Cecilia?”

“I think you made the right call,” I wrote for him. “I think it’s for the best that she’s not here, given the circumstances.”

“Thank you, Sister Cecilia. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if she was still with us.”

“I don’t know,” I had no other words to offer.

“Me either,” he shook his head, solemn at the thought.

Great, now I feel bad for asking. It’s like I touched on a sensitive subject.

Nervous, I pulled out my switchblade from my pocket and flicked it in and out. As embarrassing as it was, I had a habit of fidgeting with it when I got nervous.

“Oh? You have a knife?” He pointed down.

Crap. I wasn’t paying attention. I really wanted to hide this from others.

Desperate, I wrote down an explanation:

“Yes. The head of the clergy gave it to me, said that I needed something for self-defense.”

“Heh. It’s just that Demetria also had a thing for knives.”

Interesting. Something in common.

“Father Time gave it to me before I left the monastery.”

Funny that priests were called that. I never even knew my own father.

“Father Time, huh? That’s an interesting name for a priest, or anyone in general.”

“Yes. Time comes for us all,” I answered. Like before, I had to have some kind of sense of humor, even with a topic I never thought to bring up.

“So it does. I’m just wondering when that time will come,” he replied.

“Soon enough. You have to have hope, Ray,” I wrote down. It was a hollow gesture, as not even I had hope, or even knew what to hope for. But I wanted to comfort him in any way I could.

“Hope for what?” He asked.

“I don’t know,” I had to admit, and that was when I got up out of my seat. As always, we were at a standstill.

There was still no clear indication as to when such a hopeful time would come, or when that time would be right. In early September, two new faces showed up: One, the person named Wendy who I had heard of when I first arrived. The other was a nuisance and a sailor who called himself Captain Acab.

Wendy showed up one day and strutted in, nary an injury to be found. Before I could even direct her to a seat, she walked past me and sat at an empty booth. I was a little appalled that she wouldn’t wait, not even acknowledge me, and so having taken her seating as a slight, I walked up to her.

“The waitress will be with you shortly,” I wrote down and held up the paper.

She looked up, texting on a phone in her hands.

“She will, will she? And who might you be?” She flashed a smile. I even thought I saw a wink.

“I am Sister Cecilia, a nun who has taken on a vow of silence,” I introduced, holding up one sheet of paper that had been written on long ago.

“I see. You might make for a good conversation partner, then. Name’s Wendy Day. I’m an escort and I’m currently pretending to be the owner of this phone in my hands. I’m texting this girl’s mom and being like ‘ay, what’s up, ma?’ I’ll be honest, it’s hard pretending to be someone else, but I like to see their reactions.”

“Why would you do that?” I wrote down and asked.

“Well, she gave me her phone and asked me to do so while she sees someone named ‘Hera’. As to why I agreed...I dunno, but the next time I see her, I’ll give this to her. Say, wanna see a selfie her friend sent her? I’ll tell ya, I had no idea she’d have such a cute friend. I bet Remora would be jealous if she knew.”

Before I could reply that no, I did not want to see a picture of this stranger’s friend, Wendy held up the phone anyway. On the text screen was the face of a girl with dark hair and silky, olive skin. She was smiling in the photo and held up a peace sign.

“What do you think? Cute, huh? Not that I think so, but like I said, I bet a certain someone would get jealous.”

“I refuse to comment on someone I know nothing about,” I wrote down.

“Suit yourself. You can get the waitress now,” she shooed me off. I was just about to go when she added, “say, how are you liking it here?”

Despite my better judgment, I replied with the two words: “It’s hell.”

She snorted up a babyish laugh.

“I guess so, huh? What led you to this hell, though?”

“Rumors,” I gave my simple reply. The longer I stayed, the more I felt like I would be in an interrogation.

“Figures. Rumors can be such a nasty thing. I try not to put too much stock into them unless I have evidence. Well, I usually pull people out of here, but I think Ray wants me to stay a while longer this time. That way I can protect anyone, in case things get too bad.”

“I hope things don’t get too bad,” I wrote out my reply.

“You and me both. I also hope she gets here soon. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting pretty tired of pretending to be someone else. Plus, she promised me some action.”

Whoever she is, I would rather less people deal with this predicament, not more.

“Best of luck to your friend,” I wrote down instead. As always, I tried to be as nice as I could in my words, even if my true self was rotten to the core.

“Heh. Thanks. And best of luck in hell,” she flashed me a grin once more. At last, I felt I could move on to other places in the diner. I just didn’t know what moving on would bring…

“Ding-ding!” Went the chime of the bell above the door.

Damn it. What now? I cursed that bell and every new entry that walked in. Yet as it was my job, I rushed to the aide of whoever it was who entered.

When I got to the door and was all ready with the sign welcoming the new inhabitant in, I was met instead with a tall man (well, tall for me, anyway) with shaggy blue hair along with a long, blue beard and mustache.

Who is this? Krusty the Clown?

His face looked frozen and he shivered in place, then, he looked down and once our eyes met, I saw the bloodshot look in his and a look of either surprise or pure terror filled his face. That should have been my warning as to what came next, as he wobbled some more before collapsing over me.

I tried to hold him up as best I could, but he was just too heavy, and the angle was too awkward.

Ugh. Please. Stand up.

He didn’t even look that injured. So what was it? Exhaustion?

“Sister Cecilia, what are you doing?” Ray’s voice called out in the background.

I huffed and thanked my lucky stars it didn’t make so much of a sound.

“Hurry up and get him off of you and get him to a seat,” he scolded.

It was still too much of a struggle. Desperate, I reached for my paper and just tried to hold the man up with my own shoulders as I wrote down one word, as bold and big as I could make it. Then I held the paper up for Ray to see.

“HEAVY.” It said.

Ray took a look and scoffed.

“Of course he’s heavy, but people are going to fall from time to time. You should be used to this by now,” he continued to scold.

It’s not just that, but I’m wearing heels, which makes it very hard to move my legs much.

Ray helped the strange bearded man up. Then, when the man was back upright, and leaned against the hinges of the door to keep himself up, he spoke up.

“Heh, sorry about that. I guess you could say I ‘fell for you’,” his voice was low, but in a sort of fake and deliberate way. Also, he reminded me too much of that creepy cowboy man I remember helping out. All in all, bad vibes.

“I’m not impressed,” I wrote down.

I showed him to a seat, and one that for better or worse, wasn’t far from Wendy’s.

“Arr, thanks, miss,” he crooned like he was trying to talk like a pirate. He then pulled out a pipe from his pocket and put it in his mouth, and that was when I noticed the sailor uniform.

Maybe it’s not just an act. Either way, he could use some work in sounding more genuine, but that’s just me.

I soon pointed Astraea toward the sailor man and she strolled over to him.

“Here is a menu. Please take the time to look at it so that you may eat food. I will soon return, so be ready for me. Amen,” Astraea recited.

“Thanks, matey,” he told the waitress.

When Astraea returned, just a few minutes later, he asked her: “Say, who’s the pretty lady in the black dress?” Pointing to me. I felt sick to my stomach.

“That’s Sister Cecilia.”

“Holy hell, she’s beautiful.”

I scowled.

“Err...I mean, pardon me, being a sailor, I tend to curse like me.”

“Hey Ahab. Are you going to order or not?” I wrote down, done with his dilly-dallying.

“It’s ‘Acab’, lass. Because the ‘C’ is very important to a sailor, yes,” he took a puff of his pipe and nodded.

I’ve only known that guy once, but I swear he’s gonna give me a headache.

Some odd minutes passed and I floated around each table. Astraea returned to the sailor’s table with food in hand. By then, I had stopped paying attention to any of his antics, but somehow in the short span of time, not only had he received his food, but so did everyone else, and Tigershark was seated atop his lap.

How did this happen? I had to wonder.

“Arr, lass. How goes ye?”

“You remind me of Santa!” Tigershark exclaimed.

He bellowed out a hearty laugh.

“Aye. Ye think so?”

“Yeah! And your lap is really comfortable! Say, why do you shiver so much?”

He scratched his chin.

“When ye sail the mighty winds of the ocean, ye feel every breeze. Yea.”

“Wow. You sailed in the ocean?” Tigershark asked, amazed.

“Aye, lass. I’ve sailed every which way in search of my mortal enemy, Moby Duck, a giant duck who strikes fear into even the heartiest of men. Its call, ‘shuba shuba’ brings shivers to my spine to this day. In fact, I was close to facing off with my enemy when my ship crash landed near here.”

Giant duck? Seriously? You’re not fooling anyone.

“Wow! A giant duck!” Tigershark’s mouth hung open and was sucked into his story.

Fine. Maybe you fool one person.

I really wished that the sailor along with every troublesome guest was able to leave so I didn’t have to deal with them. With each passing nuisance, I wished the fog would dissipate, but my wish never did get granted. It really felt like all of us were stuck in a perpetual state of suffering. Tigershark and Astraea were able to keep their high spirits, but what about everyone else? Even then, how long could those children last? None of us could hold out forever, and if something didn’t change sooner or later, we might all fall to the ravages of time.

It was a quiet November. Little progress. Late in the evening, not a single soul stirred. By some miracle, we were all asleep, whether it be in the dining hall or one of the rooms. I was the only one left awake.

I took the time to let down the cloth over my mouth, open wide for a sigh of relief. I’ve spent so long, having to do everything in silence, find small windows of time to eat in private, without the watchful eyes of anyone around. Shower, use the restroom, anything. There were precious few moments of ‘alone’ that I was granted, and that moment happened to be one of them.

On the bed beside me slept the middle-aged couple: Turmeric and her longtime boyfriend, Cumin. Those two never gave me much mind, always absorbed in each other. As much as I disliked seeing their displays of affection, I was thankful for their quiet. When I first saw them, the two were in terrible shape. Now, however, they looked much healthier, even if their faces displayed sheer sorrow whenever I caught a glimpse of either of them.

“How long do I have to keep this up?” I asked myself, my voice, foreign and hoarse. It had been ages since I spoke a word, and in the dead of night, I allowed myself the simple sin.

What brought me to a startling fright, however, was the door to the bedroom, opening up. It creaked a slow discordant creak and I jumped in place before turning my head.

Astraea stood in the doorway, and even through the darkness I could see her blank stare and that snowy, shimmering hair.

“Oh, Sister Cecilia. So this is where you sleep,” she spoke up, a breezy whisper, yet both clear and direct.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, but then covered my mouth. I couldn’t believe I did such a thing.

She too looked surprised, and covered her mouth, then let go.

“Ah, so you do have a mouth.” She crept in, and closed the door behind her, then tilted her head and a slight smile spread across her face.

“Don’t worry, Sister Cecilia. Your secret is safe with me,” she assured me, but I did not feel the least bit reassured. I scrambled for my paper and pen and in haste, wrote down:

“Well I know you’re not human.”

She dropped to her knees and leaned in close, closer than I would have expected. Her eyes widened and it was like I was staring at a bug through a microscope.

“I’ve gotten better at reading,” she informed me. “And yes, I am human. I may not act it sometimes, but I don’t have to act like a human to be one. Just like you don’t always have to act like a nun to be a nun.”

She then stood back up and headed for the door. Before she left, she craned her neck back and turned to me.

“Goodnight, Sister Cecilia.”

Trembling, I waved back to her, and my heart would not cease to pound against my chest.

What the hell was that all about?

I couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night as I just wondered: Why? Why did she enter that night, and why did I feel so uneasy? More questions than answers floated around my mind and once again, I just had little else I could do but hope, hope that things would change soon.

#remoras full #story #writing #fiction #drama #slice of life #nuns #astraea #tigershark #arctic #new character #sister cecilia

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remastered-feedback · 6 years ago

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Alright, lets run down the problems here.

Many, like Butcher, say they’re in training. Others report disability. All are missing out on a hot labor market and crucial years on the job, ones traditionally filled with the promotions and raises that build the foundation for a career.

I don’t think it needs mentioning just how offensive lumping someone who’s on disability in with a group your article is centered around painting as making unwise career decisions. I’m pretty sure most of the people who are disabled would much rather be fully able-bodied and working.

Their absence from the working world has wider economic consequences. It marks a loss of human talent that dents potential growth. Young people who get a rocky start in the job market face a lasting pay penalty. And economists partly blame the decline in employed, marriageable men for the recent slide in nuptials and increase in out-of-wedlock births. Those trends foster economic insecurity among families, which could worsen outcomes for the next generation.

“How dare you not buy weddings you don’t want and houses you can’t afford!”

It’s difficult to pin down whether the demographic wants to remain on the sidelines or is kept there by a dearth of attractive options.

It’s the second one. As a member of the demographic in-question, I can tell you with 100% certainty that it’s the second one. I’d much rather be working, making money, saving up to move out. I spent all summer applying to entry-level jobs supposedly aimed at people with lower skill levels, as well as for jobs my degree should have me eminently qualified for. I’m not unemployed because I want to be, I’m unemployed because nothing is hiring that pays enough to have anything to save after taxes, bills, transit costs, student loans, etc.

Other social changes could be exacerbating the trend. Better video games might make leisure time more attractive, some economists hypothesize, and opioid use might make many less employable. Young adults increasingly live with their parents, and cohabitation might be providing a “different form of insurance,” said Erik Hurst, an economist at the University of Chicago.

“Clearly the problem isn’t a lack of competitive wages or work-life balance, it’s those damn videogames! That, and they’re all drug-addicted layabouts. Those are probably tied to the out-of-wedlock children we mentioned too...”

Replace “videogames” with “rock music” and you have literally the exact same argument that’s been made about every single generation for the past 70 years.

Young men have been reporting higher rates of school and training as a reason for their non-employment in a Labor Department survey, and a large share say that disability and illness are keeping them from work. Those factors explain much of the wider post-2007 participation gap between 25- to 34-year-olds and their older counterparts, according to an analysis by Evercore ISI economist Ernie Tedeschi.

“Those damn lazy millennials, ignoring this booming economy!”

“Actually, a lot of us are too sick to work, and a lot of those who are able to work are too busy getting more advanced training to get a job too. We spent 20-30 years watching our parents work themselves to death in jobs they hated, while they spent the entire time telling us that education and advanced training were the ticket to a better life than that.”

“Of course, it’s the videogames! That and the drugs...”

I can go on about this article for a while, but I have better things to do. Like, topically, applying for jobs. One last thing I want to touch on though is to give my personal experience about why I, a man between the ages of 25 and 34 who is ostensibly the target of this article, am currently unemployed and not partaking in that “hot labor market.”

I graduated college in 2015, and managed to get a job in my field a few months after graduation. I worked that job until mid-2017, when I quit to go back to school. The main reason I quit was because it became clear pretty quickly that there was no room for advancement in that company. Two annual reviews in, I was working the same entry-level part-time position that I started with, at the same entry-level hourly wage I started with. With the exception of Jewish holidays - which I think I made up for by coming in on Christmas and Easter - jury duty, two days I was bedridden, and that time there was literally an overturned truck blocking the highway, I never missed a day, and I never said no. They said jump, I said how high, did everything you were supposed to.

Both of my annual reviews were glowing, and yet in this job that, according to the article, was supposed to be full of raises and promotions, and doing work that, according to my manager, was top-notch, I repeatedly got passed over for both.

Annoyed that I was working borderline full-time hours - technically you’re not full-time unless you’re working 40+ hours a week, and I was routinely working 36-38 - without any of the benefits of full-time work, regularly getting at-most one day off a week, all just for an attaboy and a paycheck that barely covered commuting costs and student loans, I quit and went back to school.

I thought about getting a different job in the same field, but I decided school made more sense, because programming and network security, the two fields at the heart of Maryland Governor Larry Hogan’s jobs initiative, a jobs initiative he’s so proud of that it was one of the core pushes to his reelection campaign earlier this week, had much higher earnings potential than my old field.

To recap, I found a job, worked it for a year or two, did everything I was supposed to and then some according to my boss, yet got passed over for a raise or a promotion multiple times. Dissatisfied, and at the urging of my pro-business, pro-jobs governor, I left and went back to school to get certifications and complete coursework to change careers into the field he was aggressively pushing for more people in my state to change into. I did very well in my courses, got certified, and spent all summer applying to entry-level jobs in my new field. I got one call-back all summer, and it was for a company that wanted me to relocate to Northern Virginia for a job that paid less than $20,000 a year. Housing in northern VA is ridiculously expensive, with a median house value over $500k. To call that financial suicide would be an understatement, especially since my interviewer made it very clear that raises, promotions, or other advancements would not be happening for at least three years. Eventually, I got desperate enough to apply for jobs in my old field, and the only place that returned my call was the place I used to work. I’d prefer not to return there, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I’m considering it.

I’m not asking for pity. My ship will come in eventually, even if it’s less of a ship and more of a canoe, and even if I have to build the damn thing myself, board by board. All I’m asking is that instead of assuming that that millennials are out-of-work because we’re lazy drug-addicted gamers with unrealistic standards, consider that maybe we’re out-of-work because we’re getting next-to-no job offers, that the job offers we are getting pay so little that once you factor in the costs necessary to take them, they’re a net loss, and that when we do actually get a job, those raises and promotions you seem to think are so plentiful are nowhere to be found even after literal years of good, hard work.

Also, stop calling this a red-hot booming economy. Wages are stagnant and haven’t kept up with inflation in our lifetimes, housing has become prohibitively expensive in the majority of cities with jobs to offer, underemployment is at the highest it’s been in decades, and the vast majority of jobs that have been created since the recession are low-wage, part-time jobs with no potential for advancement or career prospects.

The only people this is a booming economy for are people who were already well off. For people trying to get started or who don’t have much money in the bank, the people that this article is criticizing for our lack of economic participation, this is a horrible economy where everything is expensive, home ownership is a pipe dream, nobody’s willing to hire anyone for more than minimum wage, and in the off chance you do land a job that’s not a dead end, they have no interest in giving you a raise or a promotion at any point.

#Drama ahoy!#Feed is mad

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jediryssabean · 8 years ago

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i am free whenever you’re in front of me

HELLO...... I’M SO SORRY. i know this is like..... 2 months off my schedule but i hope it’s worth the wait!

shoutout to @baegerbombtastic for reading everything every time i add two (2) sentences as always..... literally as always. thanks to @ereriere for telling me i’m not a piece of shit for being busy. and thank you to @burningfairytales for managing to be excited despite the fact that i took forever.

Pairing: Eren/Levi Verse: Dead on Arrival (an urban fantasy au) Rating: T Summary: (There are moments in his life that are impossible to forget, no matter how many times he rises from the dead.

He knows the taste of riverwater, though his taste buds have changed countless times since then. He knows the feeling of broken ribs, the way that tires sound when they can’t get proper traction against the road underneath them. He knows the way that twenty-four hour laundromats smell between sunset and sunrise, and knows the way that the smell of cigarettes mingles with the thickness of fabric softener as an analog clock ticks in the background.

Eren remembers a lot of the moments that have changed his life, word for word.)

Or you can [Read on AO3]!

chapters: i | ii | iii | iv | v | vi | vii

(Levi had been shrugging on his coat when he’d asked, “what kind of story do you want this to be?”

The apartment had smelled too strongly of Chinese food, had smelled like Eren’s older magic still clinging to Levi’s keys, had smelled like whatever shampoo it was that Levi had used before he’d gotten there. Mint, it seemed like. And raspberries, maybe. Whatever it had been, it was embedded in Eren’s pillows and his couch and his clothes. It even seemed to be sticking to his fingertips when he’d lifted his hands to his temples.

It had been as if there was a foreign magic in his home, and he’d been the one to let it take root there.

But for all that there should’ve been panic rising in his gut, for all that there should’ve been an earthquake beginning in his chest, for all that there should’ve been an alarm screaming in the hollowed-out space between his ears where his fucking brain ought to be sitting—Eren hadn’t been able to find anything like regret hiding anywhere inside his body.

“what?” Eren had replied, pulling his sneakers onto his feet, if only so he could follow Levi down the stairs to lock the back door behind him. The fabric of his socks had whispered against the weight of his shoes.

“you said that this,” Levi had gestured between them before beginning to work on the buttons of his coat, “is how mortals get caught in tragedies. what kind of story do you want this to be?”

The city had been a presence at the back of his skull, humming through its early morning motions like it had always done. The nighttime bus routes faded into nothing against the shape of his bones only to have their rhythm taken up by train systems and heavier traffic, the people stirring against sidewalks and along roadways, the interstates beginning to congest in his sinuses.

And yet the loudest thing between them both had been Eren’s own breathing, and it had tasted of his own magic, and raspberries, and mint.)

Eren can feel Seattle vibrating in his sinuses.

The parking garage smells like wintertime and chilled rubber, scattered against the concrete at uneven intervals, interrupted only by the shiver of the garage’s pylons that shake loose some brine-dipped memory of Puget Sound when a breeze whispers in from the city outside. It’s a contrast, a little, to the soft sighs of coffee steam, rising from the two cups balanced carefully on the sloped hood of some kind of Porsche, the paint some unidentifiable mix of silver and mother-of-pearl.

He can’t tell if it’s supposed to bring to mind the surface of a mirror or not, for all that he can catch the distorted shape of his shoulders out of the corner of his eye. Maybe that’s just an added benefit of the chrome-like finish. Whatever the case, the most he can say is that the paintjob is just this side of tacky, like something coughed up by a movie set right before the turn of the millennium. The future, after all, was meant to shine in shades of silver and off-white chrome.

Instead, it ended up caked over in mildew and patches of moss, tucked in the hollows of gutters and between broken mortar on too-old brick buildings. Instead, the world had made a home for darker things, monsters that mirrors never could quite catch.

It’s entirely possible that the fae never would’ve made it in a future like that.

“Does the owner of that Porsche know that you’re using it as a cupholder?” Levi’s footsteps echo in the parking garage, almost loud enough to compete with the sound of the stairway door falling shut behind him, sliding back into place with the whisper of polished metal against metal.

The city huffs against Eren’s teeth when he smiles, the cold rubbing at his nose. “Maybe I should leave them a note, let them know that it’s worth the money. The shape of the hood is perfect for coffee cups.”

Levi laughs and it curls away from his mouth on a cloud, his eyes catching the fluorescent light like chips of ice as he closes the distance between them. “Have you thought about writing the company instead? They’d probably like to know what consumers are looking for in a car these days, and external cupholders might be pretty high on the list.”

“I don’t drive,” Eren tells him, passing over the coffee cup that smells of cinnamon and hazelnut, sweetened barely enough to make it drinkable, “but who knows? I could be the demographic they’re aiming to please. Businesspeople who have no business driving.”

This laugh is louder and echoes longer as it skips against the concrete pylons, lingering in the empty parking spaces where rainwater had puddled beneath slowly drying cars. It swallows the hum of late-night traffic knocking at the inside of his skull, muffles the clatter-squeak-sigh of the train system going through the motions of its graveyard shift.

It’s alarming, in a way; he’s never felt the city get as quiet as it does when he’s here, as it does when he’s with Levi. When he’s—when this happens.

(“oh,” Levi had said the first time Eren had shown up with two coffee cups, almost three weeks before. His left foot had hesitated on the bottom stair between the hospital stairwell and the bottom-most floor of the parking garage. It had smelled much the same—the damp softening the pointed edges of gasoline still lingering around the trash cans and parking lines. “shit, huh. seems like you weren’t joking about the location services thing.”

Eren’s skin had prickled, and heat had settled behind his tonsils, and he’d replied, “no. i wasn’t joking.” Behind the exhaust fumes and the still-warm coffee, he could catch the whisper of raspberry and mint. “but i’m curse-free. i brought coffee instead.”

Levi had smiled, had let it relax his face, and the soles of his shoes had huffed against the cracked pavement as he’d taken the last step down.

“a man after my own heart,” Levi had told him, and their fingers had brushed as he’d taken the coffee cup, pressing against the cardboard sleeve with his thumb. “do you need a body cut open?”

His mouth had been dry, his tongue a stone in his mouth. “does the world really need to be ending for me to want to say ‘hello’?” Levi’s reflection stretched across the hood of his own Prius, curling toward the headlights, the color clinging to the corners. “besides, chinese food is pricey. consider it a down-payment on my debt.”

Levi’s laughter and been loud enough to make Eren forget exactly where he’d been just then. For the heartbeats that it had lasted, he couldn’t feel the railways or the bus routes, the tides or the partygoers.

It had been just them, and the coffee, and the cold.)

This has been happening more than it ought to be, really. And Eren’s been letting it happen.

“You know,” Levi says, resting one knee against the Porsche’s headlight, making the suspension creak beneath his weight, “just in terms of what you’ve probably spent on coffee, you paid off the Chinese more than a week ago.” Eren watches Levi’s thumb trace the edge of the cardboard sleeve wrapped around his coffee cup. “The additional legwork is probably unquantifiable.”

Well—that’s not quite right. Technically, he supposes, he’s been doing the happening this go around, after the... dinner. After the time they’d spent on Eren’s sofa. After the last of the raspberry and mint had faded from the cushions there.

It’s the faerie half of him that’s allowed this, surely. There’s nothing quite so weighted as an unpaid debt.

“I was already out,” Eren replies, his own mocha warm between his hands, “doing shit for work. The extra travel is an excuse for me to take a break before I end up back at the store stitching anonymity enchantments into thrift-store sweaters.” Another door opens from the hospital into the parking garage, two floors above them. “And you didn’t bring your car today. If I paid off the Chinese food a week ago, how did you know I’d be here?”

Levi looks at him, his head barely tilted to one side, and his jaw sets around something. It’s a look that Eren’s becoming familiar with—the way it shapes Levi’s face and thins his lips and pulls at the skin around his eyes.

“I didn’t.” The car’s suspension creaks again as he leans harder against the headlight. The structure rumbles around them as someone leaves for the night, their engine idling one floor up as they make a turn. “But what’s the worst that could’ve happened? The walk home is too healthy for me? I get today’s and tomorrow’s cardio in?”

“Or, alternatively, you get mauled by some supernatural being and die. I can’t really speak to the facts of this, but I’m pretty sure it’s harder to get mauled while you’re driving.” Eren’s coffee is almost hot enough to scald his tongue, and it brings feeling back into his toes.

Something rises onto Levi’s face in slow motion—a question, probably. Eren can almost see it trying to cling to his teeth as he swallows it, can see the shape it had been trying to take as his throat bobs around what it had been about to be. There’s been more of that, recently. Hollowed out questions, left to be filled by whatever answer Eren chooses to put there.

Levi’s afraid of drawing blood, he thinks. Eren doesn’t know whose blood it is that he’s so scared of shedding.

“So,” the Porche huffs with relief as Levi drops his knee, shifting his backpack for the second time before he makes his way to the door that leads out onto the street, “how’s work going? I didn’t know magicians made house calls so late at night. Were you booked for a birthday party or something?”

The city eats Eren’s laughter before it can get very far, the door to the parking garage falling shut behind them both. “First of all, I would never perform at a birthday party, and second, no.” The end of autumn presses cold fingers to the back of his neck as they step outside the hospital’s shadow, the streetlights pretending to give off a warmth of their own. “It was... changeling business. I had to help move someone around.”

“‘Changeling business,’” Levi repeats, arching one eyebrow. “Is that part of your distance-routine, or is that what you actually call it?”

Eren can smell his own magic on Levi’s keys as they turn a corner, the crosswalk signal blinking orange across the street. He can almost feel it’s rhythm against his ribs. “It’s the easiest thing to call it, kind of. The fae have their own inefficient government institutions just like mortals do, and some Courts are kinder to changelings than others. I help move them to safer places.”

“Oh,” he says, the pad of his thumb scraping against the edge of the cardboard sleeve as he turns the cup between his hands. “That’s... not at all what I thought you were going to say.”

“That’s because sociopolitics is boring,” Eren tells him, listening to a burst of laughter from nurses heading toward the hospital for their shift. There’s the smell of magic sticking to one of them, and it curls Eren’s tongue with something bitter. “For the record, you call a lot of the shit I say ‘part of my enigma-routine,’ or whatever, but I don’t know that much about you either.”

Eren bumps their elbows together, arching both his eyebrows in the perfect imitation of one of Levi’s favorite faces, but it’s an effort that goes entirely unrewarded. Levi’s attention is elsewhere, focused on something just out of sight. This is what it must be like for humankind, probably—knowing that there’s something in your periphery, but not knowing anything about what it is.

Another pause stretches between them then, and a different expression flirts with the edges of Levi’s face, tightening the skin at the corners of his mouth. It reminds Eren of the way clay looks as it hardens, settling into an image that’s made of sharper lines and polished points, as if they hadn’t left the too-bright lighting of the parking garage behind them.

A second crosswalk comes into view, and the icon across the street says that it’s safe. A pick-up truck idles at the traffic light as the driver checks their phone. It’s barely the beginning of the walk to Levi’s apartment, and the conversation has already taken a turn for the uncomfortable. It’s the perfect time to let Levi know that it’s not him that makes this shit happen—it’s not the questions about dying, or about pierced ears, or about the sociopolitical climate of the world wedged in between the humans and the purebloods. It’s just Eren, and the way he says things, and the curse that comes with wrapping words in barbed wire to keep people three steps away from his personal space. Except it’s not a curse.

Shit, it’d probably be easier if he was cursed. At least you can fix those. Skills are harder to get rid of.

Levi stops at the crosswalk, even as the signal across the street continues to glow a steady white.

There’s nothing sharp on Eren’s tongue when he breathes in to say something, and what he wants to say doesn’t cut his windpipe on the way up, but Levi beats him to speaking anyway.

“When do you have to be back at work?” Levi asks. The driver of the pick-up truck rubs at their nose, their features cast half in shadow by the light from their phone.

“Um, probably not for a couple hours? I promised Connie a vanilla chai latte for taking a generalized ‘coffee break,’ so that probably gives me about half an hour of wiggle room.” The signal on the crosswalk changes, blinking red at them in anticipation for the pick-up truck to restart its journey to wherever it’s going. “Why? I didn’t mean anything by—you know, it’s fine to be a private person, and you’ve been really understanding about this whole... thing, so...”

The crosswalk stops blinking and the pick-up truck rumbles forward, making a turn onto the cross street. The driver’s phone is back in the cupholder, or on the passenger seat beside them. It’s then that Levi takes the corner, away from the crosswalk toward his apartment, and begins to skirt the edges of the medical center, sipping from his coffee cup.

It’s surprising enough that it takes Eren more than half-a-breath to follow after him. “Where are we going?”

When Levi speaks next, it sounds like carved marble, shaped in exactly the way he’d intended it to be as Eren falls back into step beside him. “You’re right. About the fact that I don’t really tell you anything, I mean. So if you’ve got the time, let’s go somewhere.” There’s a pause, and Levi’s nostrils flare. “We’re going to need to take a bus, though. This would be just a little too much cardio after a graveyard shift.”

“No such thing.” His response is a reflex, almost, and isn’t anything like what he’d wanted to say. He clears his throat to try again. “I really didn’t mean anything by it. I was joking. It’s really—you’ve given me a lot more information than you’ve needed to, so I’m not—“

“I’m boring,” Levi says. It’s like a marble, the way it hits the pavement beneath their feet and rolls ahead of them, clattering softly in the chill. “Compared to you, I’m boring. I’ve lived an average life with average problems, so it didn’t seem important, really.”

Eren’s feet stutter over a raised crack in the sidewalk, and feel his insides knot around his stomach. When he swallows, he can feel the imprint of tires against his tongue. “Last I heard, there wasn’t anything wrong with an average life, and from personal experience, weird shit happens to you. Even if it didn’t, I don’t see how that makes your business less important than my business.” His own lips are chapped from the cold as he drags his tongue across them. “You didn’t think you were boring when you were telling me shit about you in the coffee shop, back in October.”

Levi snorts, a quiet thing against the mouth of his coffee cup. “That was different.”

“No,” Eren replies, and when Levi glances toward him, he holds onto his gaze with both hands. “It wasn’t.”

Rhythms shift beneath Eren’s skin as Levi sips from his coffee cup, dropping his eyes away from Eren’s face. Night buses trim their routes a little further now that two o’clock is coming, and the ferries are still hours off from their first runs of the day. There’s something else vibrating in his gums that feels like the city, or something squirming around inside its borders, and it makes his head ache. But the discomfort lasts only as long as the pause between them does, and when Levi opens his mouth it’s almost enough to make Eren laugh.

“What do you want to know?” The question is carried on what looks like coffee steam, twisting through a series of shapes as its caught in the backdraft of a passing cab. Levi’s nose wrinkles—at his own phrasing or the reek of gasoline fumes, it’s impossible to say. “Jesus Christ, is that how you feel when you ask that? Like you’re going off to war?”

There’s coffee in Eren’s lungs when he tries to breathe past the snort that had almost killed him, and the nighttime is cold against his teeth. “More like to my own execution, ready and waiting for you to call me on some bullshit and then pull the lever and, whoop, there goes the noose.”

Levi’s lips thin further, going bloodless underneath the pressure before he says, “that’s not how it is.” A pause, punctuated by barely-there traffic and the whisper of lips on the edge of a paper coffee cup. And then, “so what did you want to know?”

It’s an echo from Eren’s apartment, and when he blinks he can see the imprint of Levi’s face on the backs of his eyelids as he leans forward with his elbows pressed to the surface of the table. His chair had creaked when he’d leaned forward and he’d said—

“Everything.” His voice doesn’t carry very far, though it should. Instead, it sounds like they’re sitting in Levi’s car, with Eren’s speaking low enough that it’s Levi’s tone he’s trying on, tasting antiseptic and formaldehyde when he breathes. Except this doesn’t taste like the morgue had—like after-the-morgue had. Like a burning body and the edges of a saltwater fog. This is something else entirely. “But I’m sure I can settle for less than that right now.”

Levi makes a sound at the back of his throat that’s a cross between a laugh and a scoff, hiding it against his fingers as if that would make it any less audible. “Do you save the shit I say just so you can use it later? For that little extra impact when I’m feeling particularly stubborn?”

Eren’s coffee cup almost slips from his fingers.

(There are moments in his life that are impossible to forget, no matter how many times he rises from the dead.

Eren remembers a lot of the moments that have changed his life, word for word.)

“Nah.” There’s sandpaper in his throat as the sole of one sneaker hits the curb on the corner of Pike and Boren. The sign there advertises the bus routes, both for the morning and the nighttime runs. Every 15 minutes, it says in peeling paint. “Nothing like that. Are you trying to avoid the questions I haven’t even asked yet? That’s admirable. I’m not sure even I’ve done that, and you’re really fucking nosy.”

Raindrops, left behind hours before, still cling to the signpost on the street corner. They quiver when Levi leans against it, falling to the pavement as a grimace pulls at Levi’s mouth, wrinkling the skin beside his eyes in a way that laughter ought to do. His coffee cup turns slowly in his hands, one of his thumbs dragging against the edge of the cardboard sleeve. It’s a habit, Eren thinks, and his attention is always drawn there.

“So, what do you want to know?” Levi’s voice opens like flower petals, unfurling before a sunrise as he asks the same question—but it feels different. It feels intentional, when he speaks like that, though his eyes are focused on a storm drain across the street. A newspaper sticks to the grating there, its headlines blurred by the day it’d had and the early evening’s rain. “Specifically.”

Eren can hear the water moving beneath the sidewalk.

“Well,” he speaks against the lip of his coffee cup, shifting his weight between his feet, “where are we going?”

Levi’s laugh hits the theatre across the street, scattering against the backlit marquis. The streetlight above them tucks itself in the lines beside his mouth, spreads itself across the hollows of his cheeks. It makes Eren’s throat feel tight. “That’s a surprise? That’s barely even a question. I thought you wanted to get weird and personal, not impatient and juvenile.”

A bus brakes up the street, its hiss making its way down the street to precede the soft squeal its tires as it rises from the curb where it had stopped. Sylphs flutter in front of its headlights, casting shadows along the wide windows of the buildings. From this far way, they almost look like pixies.

“I thought I would make it easy for you,” Eren tells him, watching the bus lumber toward the traffic light at the intersection of Pine and 9th. Levi steps away from the bus stop, tossing his empty coffee cup in the wastebin behind it. “But if you insist...”

“Now you’re just dicking around,” Levi replies, pulling is wallet from his back pocket. “And after I told you my fucking birthday.” He clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth, a smile playing with his lips. Everything he says is colored white, balancing on the vapor even as it disappears.

“Maybe I couldn’t decide on a question. Maybe I’m biding my time.”

The Night Owl pulls over, kneeling with another hiss, and it makes the air around them taste of diesel. Eren can feel the rumble inside his chest, can feel it tap a counter-rhythm to his heartbeat—and then something inside him shifts back into place, scribbles the street-map of the city back onto the underside of his skin, and the inside of his nose stings with the smell of gasoline.

He can feel magic itching in his palms as Levi steps onto the bus with a snort, swiping his ORCA card twice at the ticket station. Behind him, Eren can catch the still-stale smell of his magic attached to Levi’s keys.

It isn’t until the bus begins to move again that he smells a different kind of magic.

The reek of diesel fuel is forgotten under the weight of seaweed and seal fur, and the rocking of the Night Owl is reminiscent of something else entirely—like a fishing boat out at sea.

The driver and Eren only lock eyes for half-a-moment, and the wide, dark pupils swallow the whites of their eyes until they look back at the street through their windshield. Their webbed hands are loose against the steering wheel, their cold-weather clothes worn close enough that it’s almost impossible to see their too-smooth skin even this close.

There’s no Selkie skin tied around their waist, or worn around their throat—and Eren has always known a changeling when he’s seen one.

Levi is waiting for him in the back seat, despite the fact that every seat is empty. The column of his spine is pressed against the window, his legs stretched around across the seat beside him. Eren takes up the same posture at the seat’s other end, the city moving slowly around them both.

“Smells like a beach,” Levi tells him, one arm draped over his backpack, resting in his lap.

“Smells like a Selkie.” The air unit above them comes to life to breathe out a huff of warm air, soothing the almost too-cold tip of Eren’s nose. “But I figured out my first question.”

Levi’s eyebrows arch high as he shifts against the window, the corners of his lips turning upward, though there’s tension settling in the hard line of his jaw. His eyes are doing that liquid thing, as if moonlight is trapped inside them, and his eyelashes catch the harsh white of the fluorescent lights along the roof as if they’re holding onto stars.

There are a countless number of things he could ask here, things that a member of the fae would want to know. what’s your blood-type? what time of day were you born? where are your parents from? what’s your earliest memory? He knows what kinds of magic each question lends itself to, knows the dangerous pieces of information that humankind offer up without knowing just how powerful they are.

But in that moment, Eren feels like a human grade schooler—like a boy playing twenty questions at the ass-end of the morning, unable to sleep with a phone in front of his face. what’s your favorite color? what’s your favorite song? are you a cat person or a dog person or both? is there anyone you like?

Every question is coated in something sour, in something too-tart to stomach, and it purses his lips into a thin line. It’s enough to make his teeth feel close to rotting.

When he swallows them, they scrape against the lining of his throat. “What did you want to be when you were little? Before you went to doctor school?”

Levi blinks at him, and the thinness in his smile disappears as it relaxes in surprise. “That’s your first question?” A laugh, soft and disbelieving, the ghost of mist over water. “You could ask me anything, and you ask me that?”

(A harmless question, stuck between a coffeeshop window and the general noise around them. Everything had smelled of ground coffee beans and baking things, of autumn and the rain, of Samhain magic building at the edges of everything, curling under doors and pressing against walls.

“so where are you from? you’ve got an accent, and i can’t tell what it is.”)

“‘Hi, my name is Levi, so where are you from? You talk funny, and I’m not sure just what kind of funny it is.’” It’s an oversimplification of a scene that Eren knows verbatim. He can still see the way the question hangs between them, can still see the way it had rested on the table. He can still feel the way his own magic had been building on his tongue.

But it earns him a snort, soft against the inside of Levi’s nose, and the force-less weight of Levi’s sneaker against his shin. “This’ll bore you. You’ll say it’s the most boring shit you’ve ever heard, and I’m going to tell you that I told you so.”

Levi’s gaze is heavy enough to feel like a hand pressing down on his sternum, and Seattle once more goes quiet beneath the stretch of his skin. “Stop stalling and tell me what you wanted to be when you grew up.”

A sigh, and his head hits the window, his shoulders rolling slowly. “I always wanted to be a doctor, I just waffled on what kind of doctor I wanted to be. When I was in elementary school, I wanted to be a pediatrician, and I wanted to ban shots.” Levi’s nose wrinkles when he laughs, his eyes following his memories back and forth in the space where Eren’s knee is bent. “When I was in high school, I wanted to be an oncologist, because I thought that was very noble. When I actually got to medical school, I appreciated the precision necessary for surgical work, and I could save lives with skills like that, instead of guessing at saving lives. I felt undefeatable, for moments at a time, every time I changed my mind. Like, I don’t know. Like ‘this is what I wanna do for the rest of my life.’ Shit like that.”

“I’m not as surprised as I thought I’d be by that,” Eren says. “You are really stubborn. It figures that you’d pick your career at, like, age five.”

Another nudge from Levi’s sneakers, another snort that hits the backs of Levi’s teeth. “Fuck you. You’re the one that’s like ‘ah, yes, I’m going to cremate bodies all by myself because I am the only one who knows what I’m doing at any given time.’ Stubborn my ass.”

Eren’s own laughter drags itself against the roof of his mouth. “Excuse me? You are Doctor ‘I’m very obviously uncomfortable with all this faerie shit, but I don’t want you to erase my memories because I’m stubborn.’ That’s literally a conversation we had. Multiple times.”

Levi’s fingers tighten around his backpack as the bus takes a corner, the momentum jostling them both. “Ask me something else. I like you better when you’re not being a fucking know-it-all.”

“Ha! Okay.” Eren wedges his empty coffee cup between his hip and the seat itself, resettling against the window at his back. He can feel the coming winter through the glass, can feel ice settling against his shoulder blades. “Hmm. Did you collect anything as a kid? Coins? Bugs? Baseball cards?”

Levi’s fingers toy with one of the zippers on his backpack, his thumb pressing hard to its topmost curve while he hums a tone that might be something thoughtful. His head shifts, offering up a view of his profile, and it’s haloed by the city’s lights as they move through the streets, crawling down Eastlake Avenue toward Portage Bay. Holiday lights throw pearls of color over Levi’s skin, turning the edges of his irises into an endless play of shifting shades.

They’re like freckles, almost. Kisses left behind by streetlamps and traffic lights blending in with the shadows left behind by nightshifts and a high caffeine intake.

When Levi finally speaks, it’s like the drag of fingertips on sand. “I collected poetry books.” The zipper pressed to his thumb taps gently against his backpack when he lets it go. “Older ones, if I could get them. First editions at thrift stores. Yeats was one of my favorites. He’s the asshole that wrote that—that wrote ‘wine comes in at the mouth, and love comes in at the eye; that’s all we shall know for truth, before we grow old and die. I lift the glass to my mouth, I look at you, and—’”

“‘—I sigh,’” Eren says before his mouth can hit the brakes, and the last line tastes like mocha on his tongue. One of Levi’s eyebrows rises, a little, balanced in a question he doesn’t even have to ask. “I’ve got a friend that—she likes her poetry. Usually it’s really Classic stuff. She—Shakespeare. Very into—yeah.”

“And you’ve got a Bachelor’s in English Literature. I remember.” Levi’s face softens in places that Eren hadn’t even realized were tense, and this smile is different from the few that had come before. It’s even different from the one’s he’s seen on recent nights a lot like this one, where Levi’s on the other end of their stupid question-game.

Levi looks so human—but that doesn’t make sense. He’s always human. This is something—different. It might be something different. Eren doesn’t know what it is.

(There’s a memory, here—though it’s old enough to be faded at the edges.

“humankind is beautiful,” his mother had told him once, before the world had decided to carve her out of granite. He’d been curled up in his bed, had been buried beneath one blanket and one quilt as snow had fallen outside his window—snow that would be melted come morning. “they’re soft, when they let themselves be. they’re trusting.”

She’d reached out from where she’d been sitting, her wooden chair creaking with her weight, and she’d pressed her finger to one of Eren’s cheeks. “like you,” she’d said, as if his mortality hadn’t been a curse, then. As if the human world wouldn’t come after them both.

He’d blown a sound at her with his tongue pressed between his lips.

Her face had gone gentle enough to look almost human.)

Ah. It’s that Levi looks vulnerable.

“Why poetry books?” Eren’s voice is barely above a whisper, as if they’re sharing secrets in a place filled with people—as if this information is something the bus driver would be craving on a run this late at night.

“I like the rhythm. Started with that Shel Silverstein shit when I was a really little kid. Carried from there, I guess. I’ve got like two full shelves of them, just to have them around. I haven’t even read them all—just found collections of them with poems I liked and bought them to skim through.” He lifts a hand to wiggle his fingers, leaning forward to speak low enough that goosebumps rise on Eren’s arms. “Besides, it’s easier to work when you can find a rhythm that gets your mind off of the hard part.”

For a one heartbeat, the city is loud enough inside his head that it’s almost unbearable. Magic is pushing against his skin, pulling it tight enough to be painful. A sudden chill, the press of a hand against the back of his skull, mud and silt and reeds beneath his fingers, the feeling of people everywhere at the edges of his awareness, the feeling of the town becoming sharp in his senses as water filled his lungs—

The moment carries into two heartbeats. Three. Four.

(“the hard part.”)

Levi speaks again, and there’s the rhythm—the city settles again into something quieter. “My mom was really accommodating, all things considering. She’d spend hours in thrift stores with me. Old bookstores. My friends have even gotten me little pocket poetry books, as if I carry that shit around with me. I’ve got a drawer of those.”

A pulse. Rail lines, bus routes, pedestrians. Storm drain runoff and shifting tides. Traffic light sensors and the traffic itself. Diesel, brine, and the electric-hum of life. Energy. Humankind collected. Magic.

Eren’s mouth is dry when he says, “did you know that you’re really not near as boring as you think you are?”

Levi blinks, this time slowly. The timbre of the bus changes as they hit the bridge across Portage Bay.

When he smiles, it begins around his eyes. The skin there wrinkles, making lines that will one day be crow’s feet. It stretches over his cheekbones, makes the hollows of his cheeks disappear. It pulls at his mouth and lifts the corners of his lips. It dips his shoulders, curls his spine, and pushes him another half-inch forward.

“Shut up,” he says, and the city’s lights behind him drape over the water, rippling in the breeze. “Ask another question.”

“Right,” Eren replies. There are Sluagh in the city, somewhere, and he’d left his store behind for longer than he’d planned. He’s been taking time like this more often than not, recently—meeting in a hospital parking garage for an hour or so at a time, taking a break from the careful balancing act between two worlds that can’t handle one another. There’s work to be done, because there’s always work to be done. But here he is, on a bus, across the city. “Okay.”

The work will be there when he gets back. It’s always there when he gets back.

It is then Eren pushes aside the curtain between the mortal world and the fae. He can feel it give beneath his hands, flutter against his fingers.

And he reaches out.

(Eren’s shape had fit the doorway almost perfectly as he’d leaned against the doorframe, the streetlamp from the mouth of the alley barely strong enough to cling to the edges of his face, to the curve of his irises, to the line of his throat. But he’d been distinct enough, backlit as he’d been by the light from the stairwell, haloing his shoulders like a nebulous cloud.

“i’ve got a weakness for happy endings,” Eren had told him, and he’d spoken so softly that Levi had almost missed it inside a breeze that smelled of distant seawater. “like, real happy endings. the heroes win and the bad guys lose, all that shit.” His eyes had looked impossible, edgeless and wide, throwing even the weakest light as if they’d been cut to do so. “tragedies have always been hard on my stomach.”

Eren had said it like a secret, as if he’d murmured his confession into an envelope and physically pressed it into Levi’s hands.

The air around him had tasted a lot like the city’s alleys always had—like old newspapers, left to soak up stagnant rainwater, like the Sound, just too far out of reach to freshen anything. But the shop’s back door had been wide open, and the smell of magic had been pressing hard against his tongue. Cinnamon and maple syrup. Rainwater and heather.

“you know something?” Levi had replied, leaning forward to leave his own words against Eren’s palms. He’d been able to see a bicycle resting against the stairwell wall out of the corner of his eye. “me too.”)

The darkness of the planetarium is split apart when the projector comes on, displaying labeled constellations on the curved walls, lines connecting stars together that would be impossible to see in a city this size. For a moment, the only sounds are Levi’s fingers on the keyboard and the hum of the equipment to either side.

Eren’s shadow reaches across the stars as he skirts the edges of the wall, trailing his fingertips over the paths that human eyes had traced between the stars, making shapes or whatever it was they’d looked like centuries and centuries before.

Levi can’t tell if he’s impressed or not.

“I never really visited the astronomy department,” Eren says, standing on his toes to follow the line of Capricorn with his index finger. “I didn’t even know this place had a fucking planetarium and I probably graduated after you! Maybe I was a worse student than I thought.”

“I’ve got a friend that works in the astronomy department,” Levi explains, tapping his fingers against the keyboard until the lines between the stars disappear, the solar system flickering into view as stardust rotates along the walls. “They’d let me study here when I had exams, and they showed me how to work the equipment. They were bored, I guess, and I needed a break sometimes.”

There’s a hole in the curve of Saturn’s ring shaped like Eren’s head as he wanders along the wall, still trailing his fingers along its edge. “You studied in here?”

It’s not the question Levi had expected. Eren hasn’t asked anything that Levi had expected.

(Levi had seen it on the inside of his eyelids when he’d blinked. “and they gave you a key to this place?” The Eren he’d been trying to predict had said. His eyebrows had arched high on his forehead, and Levi had caught a glimpse of his teeth as he’d smiled. “i saw you with a key to this place.”

“they did,” Levi had said in the fake-world he’d made to practice in, in the world where he could’ve said any number of more interesting things, “after they caught me picking locks for some peace.”

This is what he gets, Levi supposes. One should never try and predict the unpredictable.)

“I did.” There’s almost no echo in the planetarium, even as Levi joins Eren near the bottom of the stairs, Jupiter coming into view around an asteroid that has a name with more numbers than letters. Stars stick to Levi’s skin when he points to a long table that looks almost white, just outside the projector’s reach. “Right over there.”

Eren’s footsteps are silent as he makes his way across the floor, his shadow traveling along the wall in his wake, scattering stars and planets and space-rocks with his shoulders. It doesn’t disappear until he perches on the corner of the table, the wide cone of the projector’s lights barely missing the artful mess of his hair.

There’s a pause between them as the stars watch, the room filled with the gentle murmur of running equipment and the heating units set into the walls. From here, Eren’s eyes look like nebulae—like stars ready to be born.

“Are you coming, or not?” And there’s the smile Levi had pictured, the hint of teeth behind his lips. “You’ve got a pop quiz.”

“I didn’t study,” Levi says, though his feet are moving him forward anyway. The solar system rotates around them, it seems like—even though the Sun itself is farther along the wall, the size of a fist in the infinitude of space.

“I have the utmost faith in you.” Eren speaks over the scrape of Levi’s chair along the floor, the toe of one shoe resting against the tile beneath the table. “So, first question—what are the given names of the Big and Little Dipper, respectively?”

It feels silly, this whole thing. The way his elbows feel against the table, the way Eren’s lips are curved just enough to make this question something mischievous, the way Jupiter comes from the left and turns the room red and brown and yellow. The colors tint Eren’s hair, a little, clinging to the strands that aren’t quite safe from the rotating projector.

“Ursa Major,” Levi tells him, resting his chin in the palm of one hand, “and Ursa Minor. That’s not even a real astronomy question. That’s a question you ask kindergarteners.”

Eren snorts out a laugh, his teeth pressing against his lower lip to smother it against his tongue. There’s a whisper of sound behind him, something that sounds like music, and a flicker of light out of the corner of his eye. Another sound, this one even softer than the first, the murmur of... claws? Of... something against the floor.

And then nothing but the hum of machinery, the projector whirring gently against the curved slope of the ceiling.

“What’s a real astronomy question, then?” Jupiter has left a wine-stain against Eren’s throat as it moves between the stars, its moons winking in and out of sight. One of the many presentations in the planetarium uses this exact system map coupled with a voiceover, engaging and informative. Levi knows that there would be a question about Ganymede, the largest of Jupiter’s moons.

So he says, “is it possible that a gas giant’s moon could support life?”

Eren’s laughter carries out into the darkness, captured by the gravity of Europa, Jupiter’s second largest satellite. “Fuck, um. I don’t know. Probably? I think that happened in Star Wars. But I—shit. I don’t know. You turned my quiz back on me. That’s hardly fair.”

Levi slides his fingers into place over his mouth to hide a smile, lifting one eyebrow only slightly. “Maybe you should ask better questions.”

He’s rewarded with another snort as Eren turns his head to watch Jupiter rise higher on the wall as it moves farther into space. One of his cheeks is sucked in just enough for him to chew on it, the motion shifting muscles in his jaw as he thinks. Levi can see echoes of thoughts moving through his body—the way his sneaker twitches against the tile floor, the way he leans his weight against the palm pressed to the surface of the table, the way his throat bobs when he smiles.

Whatever it was he’d been thinking about settles in his left hand as he lifts it, palm out. It’s a ridiculous posture for a classroom—planetarium. A museum would want art like this, a boy with his hand held out to someone in an offer. A faerie, about to make a deal with someone. A story, beginning with a half-smile and an introduction, instead of a gasp and a muffled curse, instead of a room that smelled of preservatives and antiseptic, instead of—

The image breaks apart when Eren speaks.

“If you could make up your own constellation,” he says, “what would it be?”

Levi blinks. “What?”

Eren’s eyes aren’t on his face, but he can feel his attention as if they were. “You said to come up with better questions, so I did. If you could move shit around to make your own constellation, what would it be?”

“Is this the essay portion of the quiz?” It’s a stalling tactic, a sentence like that. It allows time for him to process whatever his answer would be. For a moment, he’d been on even footing, had been able to guess at the information Eren had been looking for. Standard things, if asked after in a roundabout way, or things that Levi hadn’t asked himself in years.

This isn’t quite like that. Levi’s never thought about this before. He’s a doctor, not an astrologer. He wouldn’t know how to craft a starsign if it bit him on the ass.

“No,” and Eren’s standing, a breeze ruffling the hem of his shirt. Levi’s seen this before. “It’s show-and-tell.”

That’s the only warning he gets before planetarium goes dark.

It’s a darkness that his eyes can’t seem to adjust to, though the projector is still whirring from deep inside the shadows, as if it’s undisturbed by the fact that it’s suddenly become ineffective. The central heating is just as noisy, and Levi can smell it still pushing warm air into the room, can feel it curling around his ears. He can taste it, too, just before he opens his mouth to ask Eren if they’re both about to die.

Eren answers him before he can even ask.

“‘With a golden string,’” his voice comes from beside him, exactly where it had been before the lights had gone out, only this time it’s melodic, carried on a tune that Levi doesn’t know but raises goosebumps on his arms, pricks at his scalp. It’s beautiful enough to border on unnatural, as close as it sounds, “‘our universe was clothed in light.’”

The smell of rainfall and heather sighs across the floor, like a candle had been lit and blown out in the space of a heartbeat, barely long enough to let the smell linger—until a bubble of light comes alive in the center of the room, casting the tables and chairs within its reach in a yellow-white glow. Eren’s magic sighs again as the first light is joined by a second, the smell strong enough to push itself over the backs of Levi’s hands, up the line of his neck, over his cheeks.

A third, closer to the wall reveals the projection of the solar system, Pluto coming close enough that its color is washed out by the extra lighting. A fourth, bursting into existence at Levi’s shoulder, revealing Eren’s shape beside him, his hands tucked into his pockets as he murmurs under his breath. A fifth light, and a sixth, and a seventh, joined by at least ten more, gathering together around each other like oversized fireflies.

Or, rather, like stars.

(Memory-washing, pressed against his eyelids. Protection charms, wrapping around a keyring. Listening to the echoes of a life cut short, a silent film played out in the center of a morgue. Cremation, the acrid smell of smoke and burning things. Warding windows and doors, covering them in magic threaded together like lacework.

There had been a function to spells like those—magic given in fits and bursts, in situations where options were limited, in moments that were either desperate or routine enough to barely warrant the batting of an eye.

This feels like something different. It feels—like Chinese food eaten at a kitchen table. Like a baking competition, seen only in the form of reruns. Like a birthdate, spoken without any preamble, tucked between the cushions of an ugly-but-comfortable sofa. Like the beginning of a tale that has an ending worth finding out.

It feels like magic given freely, and Levi isn’t quite sure what it means.)

“So about that constellation?” Eren says, his eyes glowing in the lamplight—starlight. He nudges one of the bubbles with his hip, letting it bounce against Levi’s elbow with a gentle heat. “Words don’t count, by the way.”

“Well, there goes my idea of writing ‘what the fuck,’ in the stars.” The bubble is solid between his hands, though it feels like a paper lantern when he drags his thumbs across the surface. “What happened to the relatively normal questions you were asking before? Is this supposed to give you some special insight into my personality like some weird, space-age Rorschach test, or are you just showing off for my benefit?”

Eren’s laughter is like—stardust. No. Like rainfall on concrete. Like... fuck. Levi doesn’t know what it’s like, but it carries across the room, hitting tables and chairs with excited fingers. It’s difficult to describe, when there’s magic-born light playing across his features, sharpening his cheekbones and the cut of his jaw, curling beneath the curve of his eye and turning the honey-almond of his skin a different shade.

He’s ethereal. He’s not—he isn’t human, and Levi can tell, can see it in the way his laugh travels from his head to his feet like liquid, and he’s beautiful. Almost enough to be terrifying. Almost enough to scaled his fingers if he were to touch him.

“Levi,” a ball of light is tossed between Eren’s hands, shifting the shadows across his face. It makes him look younger than he is—than he normally looks. It makes him look like this is the first university classroom he’s ever been in. “Are you implying that I’d use my magic to impress you?”

Levi’s scoff tastes of Eren’s magic and coffee, and when he tosses the faerie star in his hands at Eren’s chest, it bounces away like a balloon, half-filled with helium. “I’m not implying anything. Are you telling me there aren’t codes against frivolous uses of magic, or something? You don’t have regulatory boards for that sort of thing?”

Eren’s shrug is small enough to leave the air beside him undisturbed. “The fae don’t believe in frivolous uses of magic. Purebloods are like powerhouses—they don’t really waste magic. They use it, and they’re fine. Sure, there are some that can’t use strong magic, but for the shit they’re good at? They can do it all day.” The planetarium’s projector speckles distant stars on Eren’s forehead, settling them above his eyebrows. “Changelings are different. We’ve got limits, generally speaking. All magic is frivolous when it’s done by us. ‘Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.’ Basic physics. Changelings can use magic, but not indefinitely, and not without costs. Headaches, exhaustion, nausea...” A pause, half-a-breath long, and Eren’s pupils contract only barely. Levi doesn’t know what they’re reacting to, with the lighting as sporadic as it is. It’s like he’s seeing something else—feeling something else.

When he continues, it’s as if there hadn’t been a break between one thought and the next. “But even if there were rules about that sort of thing, I don’t consider this frivolous.”

Even without the star-bubble in his hands, Levi’s palms are sweating. “No?”

“No,” Eren repeats himself, shrugging for the second time. This one is larger than the first, loosens his shoulders as it lifts them. “It means I didn’t put any thought into it, or that it’s not important, or that—I don’t know.” His lips thin and his eyebrows furrow, and when he looks at Levi like that, there isn’t a whole lot he could say that Levi wouldn’t believe. “I did think about it, and I decided to do it anyway.”

Levi doesn’t know what to say to that. He’s coming to find himself in this position a lot when Eren is involved.

(“i’m lucky to have you here.” That same expression—furrowed eyebrows, a frown pulling at the corners of Eren’s mouth. The air pressure in the car had been much the same as it is now. It had felt difficult to breathe. It had felt at once like a weight on his chest and a stone being lifted from his shoulders.

Eren’s eyes had seemed to be glowing then, too—but he hadn’t used any magic yet.)

When words finally try to scramble onto Levi’s tongue, they’re all out of order and crushed together. They’re lightweight, but suffocating, like marshmallows that hadn’t quite committed to inflating yet. Trying to order them takes time, and Eren’s just looking at him, and his eyes are something that have to have some from somewhere otherworldly, and Levi almost can’t believe that he’d doubted the reality of magic, of things just outside the realm of human possibility.

With the universe twirling around them both, with more-than-manmade stars still hovering by their bodies, Eren is once again too beautiful to be human.

“You’re going to get an ego now, aren’t you?” Eren speaks before Levi can get the words right, though they’d been shaping into something that had tasted like a thank you for sharing this with me, like a you don’t have to do this, like... something meaningful, maybe. “Now that I’ve said that, you’re—“

The main door to the planetarium swings wide, its weight hitting the wall with an echo loud enough to startle them. Eren’s shoulders twitch, his eyelids fluttering, and the bubbles of light around them all pop at once, the shadows evaporating like water against a hot stone. Levi feels his own bones ice over, his skin prickling with disbelief, and the beam of an LED flashlight settles on their shoulders, pressing against their clothes with all the intensity of a verbal accusation.

“You shouldn’t be in here,” the police officer says, their voice low enough to hit the thin-tiled floor with a heavy sound. “You know this is breaking and entering? Tuition doesn’t cover after hours visits for this department, and this is private property.”

“Holy shit,” Eren whispers, taking a step backward, his entire body shifting so that one hand is just out of view from the officer, who’s already taking purposeful steps toward them with their keys rattling at their hip. “I thought you had a key?”

“A key isn’t the same as actual authority to be here,” Levi replies, hissing from between his teeth. “Hanji never asked for it back, so I never returned it. It never came back up.”

Eren’s nose wrinkles when he laughs, his teeth catching hold of his bottom lip until the sound is too strong to keep in. Sparks come from behind his teeth, and for the second time the planetarium begins to fill with the scent of heather and rainwater, rising up from the floor, pulling a fog up behind it, thick enough to cut. The jingling of the keys stops, the officer’s voice muffled by the weight of the magic, or the fog, or both.

The spell itself is something simple, carried on a tune that Levi knows he recognizes, something weighed down with excitement, something driven forward by a thrill.

And Eren snaps his fingers.

The solar system display goes dark at the same time the planetarium itself is thrown into some sort of motion. It’s as if the room had been filled with fireworks, sparks catching in the fog to give the illusion of motion, the different colors swirling together in patterns that are difficult on the eyes, weaving around one another in too-bright ribbons. The fog itself has thickened further, a living thing curling around Levi’s ankles and his shoulders and his throat. It makes him dizzy, standing here, and if he didn’t know better he’d say that there was another song, somewhere in the chaos. Fucking—he’s imagining it, he knows he is—Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.

“We’re running for the door. Hold your breath.” Eren’s voice is close enough to Levi’s ear that he can almost feel his breath there a heartbeat before there are fingers wrapped over his own. The light behind them is already slowing down, and there’s the thud of a person hitting the floor, and then they’re out the door and into the hallway, the planetarium shutting solidly behind them.

It smells different out here. The air is breathable and tastes of the building’s heating unit, though Eren’s magic is still buzzing around Levi’s body, filling his nose, clinging to the inside of his sinuses. The lethargy that had been beginning to wrap around his body has been left somewhere in their wake, cast aside as they took the stairs too quickly to be safe, and Levi can feel his fingers tightening around Eren’s own.

They don’t stop running until the Institute for Nuclear Theory is just in sight, and Eren doesn’t let go until they stop running.

It’s fucking cold outside, noticeable in a way that it hadn’t been before now that Levi’s sucking in air, the deep breaths catching on his tonsils, scraping down the lining of his windpipe, and hitting the base of his lungs like rocks. He feels out of shape in a way he hasn’t felt since—well... since he’d chased after Eren in that coffee shop almost two months ago now. Fucking Christ.

Eren’s gasping is matching Levi’s own, even as he holds onto a streetlamp with one hand, swinging himself around it as though a musical number is about to start that Levi hadn’t been made aware of. And he hasn’t stopped laughing since he’d thrown the spell at the police officer, yards and yards and yards behind them.

There are words in there, maybe. It sounds like gibberish, but it has to be something. What Eren just said had definitely not been a laugh. It had sent something electric through Levi’s body, had curled in his gut with enough force to warm his cheeks.

“What did you just say?” It’s easier to breathe in slower bouts when Levi rights himself, pulling his hands away from his knees to watch Eren go still against the lamppost.

“What?” His hair is a fucking mess, tossed wild by their run, or his magic, or whatever. His pupils are wider than they’d been inside the planetarium, and that isn’t normal. There’s more light out here. “What did you just ask me?”

Another deep breath, this one smoother than the last. Progress. “I asked you what you said. It came out garbled, and I didn’t know what you were saying, and I wanted to make sure it wasn’t another cue to run.”

“Oh.” Eren’s hand comes away from the streetlight to push through his hair, and the smile that had been sitting on his lips goes wider. “Nah. It was—“ He swallows, takes a breath, and slows down, shaping his mouth around the words, “I said, ‘rydym yn dawnsio ar y dibyn.’ It’s a... Welsh figure of speech. We’re ‘dancing on the edge of a cliff.’ We’re playing with fire. We’re flying too close to the fucking proverbial, police-enforced Sun.” This laugh is softer, the edges of it gentle when it falls upon the concrete. “Fucking—shit, that was fun.” His gaze is warm enough to mimic the feeling of palms against Levi’s face. “That was fucking fun, Levi.”

It feels like a reflex when he says, “but Eren, that was a crime.”

Eren scoffs, bumping their shoulders together. It’s a casual gesture—like the passing of Chinese food across a table. Like the sharing of a television show from an ocean away. Like the buying of coffee for almost three weeks now. “Shut up,” he says. “You’re being cheeky, first of all, and second of all you were getting high-and-mighty with me about remembering the shit you say. I call a foul.”

“Call a foul all you like,” Levi tells him, sliding his backpack from his shoulders to ease the weight of his clothes there, rolling them to make sure they still work. “I don’t see anything wrong with matching your bullshit. And when I remember things, it’s not whole conversations. You’re just fucking... good at that, I guess.”

“No. You just say important things.” Ah. There’s the—Levi can see it, when Eren tilts his head just the right way. The lamplight gathers on his skin enough to emphasize its darker color, and it crawls up his temple to curl over one eyebrow. It rounds the corners of his cheekbones, smooths out the sharp corners by his eyes, presses a gentle thumb to one corner of his mouth—and this is where the human and the fae meet in him, right here, when he smiles like this. He looks like the meeting of worlds. The—fuck. The beauty of both, or something. “You never got to answer my constellation question. Pony up.”

This is what he gets, you know, after talking about his fucking poetry collection.

Levi nudges at his backpack, sitting on the toes of his sneakers. “It probably just would’ve been a scalpel or something just as boring.”

“Stop calling yourself boring,” Eren huffs out a breath, tucks his hands into the pockets of his jacket, his face twisting into a grimace. “I don’t think you’re boring. And a scalpel can’t be any worse than a fucking belt. Three stars in a line! That’s boring.”

The chill rubs the tip of Levi’s nose raw when he scoffs, shaking his head. “So you’re an art critic now? Going to go back to school to get a degree in calling the stars liars?”

For a moment, Eren only hums in response.

The only car on the road cutting through campus just then is a taxi, murmuring along the road to take a corner toward the residence halls. A screech comes from deeper on campus, something high-pitched and inhuman—but no human screams follow it, and the nighttime is quiet again, as much as it can be in a city this size.

“The stars don’t lie,” he says, finally. It’s spoken like a simple fact, as if it’s something that everyone ought to know. “The eyes of mortal beings, though? Prone to lies. We block out the shit we don’t want to see. Out of sight, out of mind...” Eren rocks back on his heels, somehow making even that gesture some kind of graceful, and he rolls his head on his neck to loosen the muscles there. “But whatever. I guess I’ll settle for another question then.”

Levi arches both his eyebrows and he watches. And he waits.

“What was your favorite childhood movie?” It’s asked with a sort of earnestness, the kind with which Eren asks all his questions, and yet it still catches Levi off-guard. It’s impossible to tell exactly what it is that Eren wants to know about him, what kind of information he’s looking for. This has become... something else. It’s become something that’s more like reaching across a chasm and finding something there to hold on to.

It’s funny, in a way—and frustrating in another. This was never supposed to be about him, really.

(Eren bleeding out on a concrete walkway, alone. Delirium from blood-loss. Words sticking together with thick strings of glue. He’d asked for something, and Levi had known then just like he knows now that Eren would never have said it aloud if he’d had just a pint more blood in his body. His fingers had already started to go cold when he’d spoken.

“stay here,” Eren had said, and it’s something that Levi will remember for the rest of his life.)

He supposes that, at some point, the story had decided to become about them.

“Easy,” Levi replies, and his own voice feels like it’s coming from someone else, like it’s coming from far away, “Balto, hands down. Best movie I ever watched growing up.”

Eren snorts, a laugh sitting on his tongue as he speaks around it, “really? I mean... I guess I should’ve figured, huh? That whole ‘hauling lifesaving medicine to people in desperate need,’ would be right up your kid-doctor alley. I was thinking something along the lines of Disney films, or whatever. Maybe even The Goonies.”

Levi huffs out a breath that might’ve been a laugh of his own if there hadn’t been a hand around his throat, making it difficult to breathe. There are things he wants to say digging into his tonsils, his tongue, the roof of his mouth.

it’s not the fucking antibiotics, he wants to say—but it’s the things he wants to say that tend to stick in his throat. it’s the wolfhound. the half-and-half. the place between worlds, to the benefit of both.

Instead, what he says is, “I told you, I’m a sucker for happy endings.” Levi’s spine creaks when he stoops to lift his backpack and shrug it back onto his shoulders, and he can feel Eren watching him move. “Tell you what. Since the stars didn’t line up for your creativity bullshit, do you want to see something else? It won’t be the same, but...”

Eren’s pupils dilate as he grins wide. “Oh? What are we going to go see?”

It’s hard not to smile back at that, and his own lips are curving upward before he can even gather the presence of mind to stop them. “I can show you where I learned to cut people open?”

The glimpse of teeth as Eren tilts his head and his face sharpens back into something ethereal. “What, I cheated you out of an autopsy and you’re trying to make good on it now? That’s a little fucked up don’t you think?”

“That’s not what I—“

“I was joking.” Eren flicks his fingers to knock Levi’s protest out of the way, letting it land in the middle of the street. “I want to see it. I told you I wanted to know things, didn’t I?” Their eyes meet in a way that’s becoming all too common, and Levi can feel his lungs squeeze together. Eren’s are glittering, as if there are precious metals hiding in the color there. “Do you have a key for this place too?”

Levi squares his shoulders and starts walking, Eren falling into step beside him only half-a-heartbeat behind. “No. This time, we pick the lock.”

Eren’s laughter carries on the breeze, and the late-autumn chill tastes like heather, and rainwater, and left-behind coffee.

(The medical school’s auditorium is almost-silent at three-thirty in the morning, the harsh spotlight pooling on the autopsy table at the bottom of the stairs that cut through the stadium-style seating. It will feel different, standing there and looking out at all the empty chairs. Levi had never seen the room from this angle, after all. The last time he’d been here, he’d been a student.

It smells like the hospital in here, almost. Antiseptic is clinging to almost every surface, stinging the inside of Levi’s nose.

The autopsy table itself creaks as Eren takes a seat on it, swinging his legs gently back and forth, the toes of his sneakers barely touching the morgue-style floor. It’s a lot like the first time they met, in some ways. His eyes are traveling along the auditorium’s walls, just like he’d mapped out the morgue at Virginia Mason. The too-sharp lighting is still puddling at his back, washing out the warm color of his skin.

“so,” Levi says, and Eren’s attention is yanked away from the walls as Levi takes a seat beside him on the autopsy table, “i have a question for you.”

“i’m supposed to be asking the questions here, doctor,” Eren replies, the motion of his feet jostling the table, its wheels rattling from their locked positions, “but you’ve been really accommodating. go ahead and ask.”

“you said once that you don’t drive.” Levi’s legs are still from where they’re hanging over the edge of the autopsy table, and the metal is cold beneath his palms. “why don’t you drive?”

Eren’s feet pause, settling into stillness for half-a-breath. And then they start moving again when he says, “i already told you. there are trade-offs when changelings use magic. usually we just get pukey. but i think the whole... dying thing makes things different, or whatever. maybe.” A hum, low and contemplative, and it raises the hairs at the back of Levi’s neck. “i get... distracted. i can hear the—you know. the city. christ, that sounds like bullshit.”

Levi watches him, traces the shape of his profile with his eyes. The jut of his nose. The cut of his jaw. His fucking cheekbones. “what do you mean?”

“it’s easy to get lost in all the noise. it’s noisy. and magic comes from—magic comes from the noise. the life of... wherever you are. the more life, the more magic to use, the noisier it is when you try and grab onto it. for me, i guess. i can’t drive, because i’ll get distracted and probably hit something. i’ve got a bicycle, though. it’s easier to manage.”

It’s the pit that Levi always falls into—the weird questions that seem to be wrapped in barbed wire. “and you just, what, decided to use magic for fun today?”

Eren shrugs, and the table quivers. “told you that, too. i thought about it, and i wanted to.” Both his eyebrows rise on his forehead and a smile touches his mouth. “besides, it could be worse. it’s harder to get lost in weird rhythms and shit when you’re always asking me stuff. ‘why does magic have a smell? how many people do you work with? what’s your additional job?’”

“i knew you kept me around for a reason,” Levi replies. His fingers feel stiff.

Eren leans his weight for less than a second against Levi’s shoulder. It’s hesitant, like the brush of fingers. “shut up.” A pause, and there’s the hint of magic, somewhere. Levi can smell it underneath the antiseptic. “i’m lucky to have you here.”

An echo of an echo. Leather seats and magic and formaldehyde.

And then Levi says, “do you have any other questions for me?”)

#ryssafic #snk #shingeki no kyojin #ereri #eren jaeger #levi heichou #carla jaeger #dead on arrival #faerie au #faereri au #urban fantasy au #queue are my sunshine

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republicstandard · 7 years ago

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The Standard Conversation: YouTuber 'The Iconoclast'

The Iconoclast is a content creator and now hard copy magazine publisher from the north of England. His growth since beginning his channel a year ago has been nothing short of meteoric, having just passed 60,000 subscribers. His videos make insightful commentary on politics, demographics, Islam and Western culture.

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RS: What led you to start your YouTube Channel?

My friend and I, both avid viewers of other YouTube channels at the time, would sit in the pub and rant about politics every day. We'd talk about the latest content creator we'd discovered and recommend channels to each other. One day my friend told me I should start a channel of my own, considering I have a background in video production and an endless supply of obnoxious opinions on the world. I kept making excuses not to do it though as I was still pursuing various things in my “real life”, and I knew starting a channel of that nature could jeopardize those ambitions. Well, to make a long story short, those other plans fell flat on their arse, and suddenly I had nothing to lose. I started making videos slowly and enjoyed the feeling of finally being able to get so much off my chest, as there was nobody in my life (other than my mate) who aligned with me politically, and I always felt as though I needed to keep my head down and mouth shut for fear of social exclusion. Soon enough, an audience began to grow, and here we are.

RS: What's the purpose of 'The Iconoclast' as a name? Why not go public?

I knew I'd be discussing controversial topics on my channel, so I felt having an internet moniker was the safest way to go. Also, just from a production standpoint, having my face on screen wouldn't really add anything to the content. I know a lot of people enjoy getting to know the personalities behind the YouTube channel, and there will be a day where I appear as myself, but I didn't want to make my channel about me. Plus, The Iconoclast is just a cool name in general.

RS: White genocide is real. How do you see the next 30 years or so playing out? Is there a way back for The West?

Despite the depressing nature of the topics I cover in my videos, deep down I am an optimist. Hard to believe, but it's true. Sometimes my optimism gets severely tested (most days) but I truly think the European people have the will to survive. I don't think this survival process is going to be pretty though- I think we're in for some really rough times, but that was always going to be the case when you have a political class who routinely ignore and talk down to the people they're supposed to represent. Eventually, the populations of Europe will have no choice but to take matters into their own hands, and in some respects, they're already starting to do so. The dramatic rise of populist movements across the continent, as well as street protest groups, signals a Europe-wide mentality shift. If our leaders don't take this seriously, they will be replaced.

youtube

RS: Your channel has exploded in popularity. Any ideas why that is?

Authenticity. I think people can see that I'm just a normal person trying to make sense of what's going on and they identify with that. I don't try to put on a performance with my videos, I just present the information and give my opinion. Pretty simple. Of course, I try to keep my production standards high, which is part of the reason why I'm not an every day uploader, but I believe in quality over quantity. I'll never make a video where I talk down to my audience, and I'll freely admit when I'm unsure on something. Some YouTubers go out of their way to let you know how many books they're currently reading, or which online course they're taking in an attempt to paint themselves as some sort of expert – I'm not interested in that. I also stay away from YouTube “drama”, and I know my audience appreciates it.

Or subscribe to me instead. https://t.co/CenDlM5ARe

— The Iconoclast (@IconoclastPig) February 14, 2018

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RS: Brexit is going ahead -slowly. Do you think the British political elite are capable of delivering on their obligations?

I think they're capable but it's clear they don't want to. Like I said earlier, our political class regularly ignores the concerns of the public, and even when we had a majority of the country vote to leave the EU, they're still trying to derail the process. It's quite amazing actually, these people constantly blow hot air when they talk about “British values”, but here they are blatantly trying to reverse democracy. Not all of our politicians are bad, however, I'm a big fan of Jacob Rees-Mogg, and I hope he takes some inspiration from House Of Cards and positions himself as the new Prime Minister pretty soon. But the fact remains, the majority of our elected officials hold the British people in contempt. Brexit is up in the air right now. I think we'll end up completely crumbling and getting some bullshit half-in half-out sort of deal with the EU, which would mean we'd effectively still be inside it. But you never know, we may be pleasantly surprised (although I doubt it).

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RS: Is there a peaceful way to resolve the problems (rape gangs, jihad, Islamisation) posed by large Muslim communities in the United Kingdom?

Unfortunately, I don't think so. Ten years ago, maybe. Now we've allowed things to go too far. Our immigration system is broken, our police are cowards, and our left-wing press tries desperately to cover up crimes committed by certain demographics. After every terror attack the narrative is “Don't be Islamophobic!”, after every new rape gang that's discovered it's “White people rape girls too!”, instead of tackling the problem of jihad we should really be concerned with “far-right terrorism” etc. To be honest I'm shocked things haven't kicked off already! After the Rotherham scandal was made public, I thought for sure people were going to lose their cool. Maybe it's the typical British attitude of rolling with the punches, or that stupid slogan “Keep calm and carry on”, but there's only so much people can take. If the government are really so concerned about revenge attacks against UK Muslims, they need to sort out the core problems associated with it - end Islamic immigration, deport those who don't have legal rights to be here, end foreign funding of mosques, and police Muslim neighbourhoods properly. But like I said, as of now things are looking grim. Purely from a demographics standpoint, many cities across the UK will be majority Muslim in the near future. Most of the school kids in Birmingham are Islamic. Even my small town in the north is starting to experience Muslim immigration. My local city recently had a rape gang scandal hit the news. Things are bad. Of course we'd all like to avoid blood running through the streets, but the way successive British governments have continuously brushed this problem under the rug, a boiling point is simply unavoidable.

RS: America is seeing a growth of motivated and often violent leftist groups in response to Donald Trump. Have you noticed anything similar in the UK post-Brexit vote?

They exist but they're nowhere near the level of ANTIFA in the US. Our leftists spend more time crying on the floor than punching people. Although recently we had a small group of them crash a Jacob Rees-Mogg speaking event at a university, but the only thing that happened there was a bit of shoving and pushing. If you're asking me whether the potential is there for these groups to grow and get violent, I'd say definitely, but as of now, they're relatively tame.

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RS: You've made the decision to publish a magazine to accompany your YouTube Channel- what led to that?

To put it simply, The Iconoclast magazine is a platform for regular people to express themselves politically. It's an open-submission format where I encourage people to come out of their shell and talk about what's on their mind. I don't agree with all the opinions I decide to publish, but I think that's important. There were a few reasons why I started it.

As amazing as the internet is, I've always sort of resented it for damaging physical media. One of my favorite things to do when I was younger was to spend my Friday nights at the video rental store picking a selection of films to watch, then I'd go next door to order a pizza, and my night was all set. I know these days you can fire up Netflix at the touch of a button, but to me, that only means you can discard media just as quickly as you can acquire it. Back in the day you had to commit to your choices because you had to invest so much more time and effort. I wanted to bring a sense of that back. Having something “real” you can hold in your hands creates a sense of legitimacy. I also didn't want to get trapped in a small little corner of YouTube, because in the grand scheme of things it's actually not that influential. There are so many people out there who are just as politically frustrated as the rest of us, but they have no connection to the YouTube sphere at all. We need to reach these people, and I've found one of the best ways to do so is by putting physical media out into the world. So The Iconoclast magazine aims to bring a wide range of political and cultural essays to people in a different format. I get a lot of messages from readers who tell me they've let older family members borrow the magazine and they now watch my content (and others) on YouTube. The writers and contributors to the mag are normal people from all over the world who desperately want to express themselves, but aren't comfortable with video production, or prefer the pure anonymity and freedom writing can provide. If a magazine like The Iconoclast was around before I started my own channel, I think I would have contributed to it myself.

youtube

Sometimes I look at other YouTubers who have 10 times my audience, and I imagine to myself “God if I had that many subscribers I'd have done this, this and this”. I don't think people are taking enough risks. YouTube provides a false sense of comfort and security for a lot of creators and they stop pushing themselves. I wanted to try new things, get into different mediums, and actually try to influence things and people in the “real world”. Whether my magazine does that effectively in the future, I'll have to wait and see, but it's a start. The enthusiasm from my audience for the first edition was off the charts, and I only hope the project continues to grow and I can build something really impressive and exciting.

RS: Best of luck with your career- keep fighting the good fight. Thanks for your time.

The next issue of Iconoclast Magazine will be released in early March and will be available to buy in physical form as well as digital. You can subscribe to The Iconoclast YouTube channel here.

Thank you for reading Republic Standard. We publish this magazine and the Freebird Forum because we believe in free speech- but it doesn't come cheap! We are currently under sustained attack on our revenue sources. Will you make a small donation towards our running costs? You can make a difference by clicking here.

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godlessriffs · 7 years ago

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Comics: A Semi-Love Story

I love comics. Not all comics, mind you; most are aimed at a different demographic from any I represent, and many are straight up trash no matter who their target audience is. What I love is the concept of using pictures to tell stories the way writers use words and filmmakers use the camera. Like movies, comics is a visual medium requiring the artist to make decisions concerning things like shot composition, angle, lighting, and so forth. Like literature, comics can be created with easily obtainable materials by one person working alone (although small teams are much more common) for nowhere near what it costs to make even the cheapest motion pictures, the greatest expense being at the publishing end. It's a best of both worlds situation for anyone willing to exploit it.

What kind of comics am I into? My tastes are kind of unusual, although they didn't start out that way. When I was a child I loved Mad magazine, and I occasionally bought Cracked as well. The first actual comic book, in the sense most people imagine, that I ever sat down and read was the third issue of a four issue miniseries from DC called Tales Of The New Teen Titans. This particular issue told the origin story of the Changeling, the character known today as Beast Boy. It was a really great, epic story (and fortunately I didn't have to have read any other comics to understand what was going on in it), and the art was top notch (as it would be, since the artist, George Perez, was one of the best in the business at that time). That book became the gold standard by which I would judge the quality of all of the comics I would read for some time.

But it was ultimately my younger brother who got me really INTO comics. Some time during the late eighties, he started collecting Spiderman comics, and his hobby began to rub off on the rest of us. My father started collecting Batman and Green Lantern comics, and even my mother got in on it, eventually collecting Teen Titans and an older DC title called Ghosts. At first, I didn't think I'd get sucked into this myself, but when the family paid our first visit to the no-longer-extant Winston-Salem branch of Heroes Aren't Hard To Find at the corner of Burke and Brookstown, I did manage to find something that interested me: Marvel's Star Wars comics.* For a while I was content to collect those, but soon, spurred by fond memories of Saturday morning adventure cartoons like the Superfriends, I started collecting Superman, the Justice League, and a few other DC titles.

My tastes kept evolving, though, and I would eventually abandon the mainstream stuff as I began to cultivate a deep appreciation for the outré. I've mentioned this before in the context of music, and it applies here as well: it's in my nature to keep digging deeper, and I was always happiest when I'd discovered something cool and relatively unknown. In the eighties there was a boom of independent publishers saturating the market with comic books, most of them in black and white. These companies knew they couldn't compete with the big two (Marvel and DC), and for the most part they didn't try. Their subject matter spanned the gamut: there was sci-fi (from space opera all the way to hard science fiction), fantasy (some of it sword and sorcery, some of it truly outlandish), horror, crime noir, funny animal stuff, you name it. Superhero comics weren't unheard of (teams were more prevalent than individual characters), but the ones that did exist tended to be offbeat compared to the majors. I would have bought all of that stuff if I'd had the cash. The comics I did read went really well with the heavy metal I was listening to at the time. Some of them were reprinting old strips from the days of yore; I got my first taste of the original Buck Rogers strips reading Eternity Comics' Cosmic Heroes series.

That eventually led me to seeking out more adult material from the likes of Peter Bagge, Daniel Clowes and Los Bros. Hernandez, the spiritual successors of the underground comix, and ultimately to the undergrounds themselves. My tastes have become EXTREMELY eclectic. I do, however, still love superhero comics, but I'm really only into the ones from the golden age, and some from the silver. The child in me considers the current vogue for gritty, adult oriented superhero comics that aren't supposed to be fun to be wrong-headed and frankly kind of stupid.

Because my approach to comics was so different from that of the rest of my family, I ended up in a much different place than they did. Last I checked, my brother and my father still had all of their comics, but they don't really collect or even read them much any more. Neither one of them ever seemed interested in anything outside the superhero genre. My mother, meanwhile, eventually sold all of hers and only seems to have gotten into comics in the first place because the rest of us were collecting them. I was different. I've known for a long time that there's a fine line between collecting and hoarding, and I'm definitely not into the latter. I've never bought books I couldn't read, nor have I ever been afraid to sell or trade something once I felt like I was done with it. Then I would follow my appetites into ever new directions, and that eventually left me with a strong appreciation for comics as an art form. And because of that, I'm the only member of my family who still enjoys buying and reading comics.

Now, I need to vent about something. Namely, the common stereotype of the comic book collector as a loser shut-in with no social life who takes the hobby way too seriously and freaks out if you get near his precious collection. The ur-example would probably be the comic book guy from the Simpsons. And maybe you remember this exchange from Mallrats:

Brodie: The usual vault rules apply; touch not, lest ye be touched.

T.S.: You're such an anal-retentive bastard!

Brodie: Hey, I tried to teach you to handle comics in the fifth grade, but no, you wanted to play little league instead!

I'm not going to deny that these guys are out there, but as one who has indulged in the hobby himself, albeit not with the same rabid fervor, I can see more or less where they're coming from. For one thing, if you're into Marvel or DC, you've got to read a LOT of books to make heads or tails of what's going on. So if these guys don't have social lives outside of a tiny circle of like-minded geeks, it might be because they can't find the time for them. I'm not sure exactly how much time and mental effort it takes to follow the continuity of the major "universes", but I can't imagine studying advanced calculus would be a much greater challenge.** Meanwhile, if comic collectors seem protective of their stockpiles to an excessive degree, you have to remember that these guys are sinking a lot of money into items that, for the most part, weren't manufactured with preservation in mind.*** Hence the bags and backing boards. And let's be fair - they're right to be a little bit paranoid. Because, and here's where I really climb onto my high horse, there's a flip side to this phenomenon that no one ever wants to talk about.

See, when handling someone else's property, you don't handle it the way you would if it were yours - necessarily. You handle it the way the owner of that property wants it handled. And you certainly don't abuse it or treat it carelessly. Because let's face it, it's generally easier to take care of your personal property than to replace it. Most people, in fact, understand this; it's basic etiquette, after all. But I've noticed, often to my horror and disgust, that when the property in question happens to be a comic book etiquette goes straight down the shitter.

It's insane. Comics are either priceless, irreplaceable treasures, on par with the original Declaration of Independence at the National Archives, or they're disposable junk, no more worthy of value than used toilet paper. There's absolutely no middle ground between the two extremes, and no cross-cultural understanding on either side of the divide.

True story: in my junior year of high school, I played Albert Petersen in my school's production of Bye Bye Birdie. During one pre-rehearsal meeting in the auditorium, Mrs. Santamore, the director and drama teacher, was discussing possible props for the teenage characters to use, and at one point suggested comic books. Now obviously in 1989 you couldn't just go to the drug store and pick up the latest Batman or X-Men issue and expect it to look convincingly retro; you needed something that looked like it was published in the fifties.

Now, at the time, Blackthorne Publishing, one of those black and white independents I mentioned earlier, was running a five-issue miniseries reprinting a strip from the fifties called Beyond Mars (so called because it was set in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter). The covers of these books looked fairly retro, not really 100% of what you would see in the fifties, but close enough for rock 'n' roll as we say. And at that meeting I just happened to have on me a copy of the second issue. So I took it out of my bag and offered it up as an example.

Mrs. Santamore snatched the comic out of my hands and, as she held it up to show the cast, grasped it between her thumb and index finger with a completely unnecessary amount of savage force. I could see new creases forming at the spine where she was squeezing it. I must have made a noise of some kind, because I later heard from two of the crew members, who were backstage at that moment, that they had heard it and immediately thought, "yep, she touched his comic book." To clarify, it wasn't that she touched it, it was that she was manhandling it in a manner guaranteed to damage it. Now, to be fair, that comic was only worth its cover price at that moment and it's probably not worth even that today.**** But come on! Even if I was just going to throw it away later, that's for me to decide, not her.

I've tried to explain this idea point blank to people who look down on comics, and completely failed to make them understand. Such is life, I guess.

Nowadays when I go to the newsstand or the comic shop and check out the latest releases, I'm as disappointed with them as I am with current movies or pop music and for the same reasons. More planning and care is put into the packaging and presentation than into the content itself, and modern technology is being used to make a product that's technically perfect but fails to engage my interest. To be honest, I have a deep prejudice against slick, overproduced... well, anything, but I happen to be living in a culture that's openly hostile to anything that ISN'T slick and overproduced. As with digging deeper, it's also in my nature to support the underdog rather than the already rich and successful corporate giant. Those cheaply produced black and white independents I used to read had a scrappy quality to them you just don't see in the major publishers, and a much more honest type of gritty edginess than you could achieve by, say, making your hero a drug addict or a member of a persecuted minority. I also love a handmade aesthetic, and I can't understand why every publisher in business today wants to use Photoshop to censor the human element from their product. When everybody strives for the same production values, everything ends up looking the same. Where are the risk takers? Unfortunately, I think I know the answer to that one...

Among the items in my current collection is Shadow Warrior #1, published in 1988 by an outfit called Gateway Comics (unrelated to the company of the same name that exists today). It reads like the beginning of something truly epic, like Tolkien but with a dash of Robert E. Howard. It's everything I love about independent comics. It's in black and white, with art that takes advantage of the strengths of the monochrome page; it's lush and exquisitely detailed. It's also slightly amateurish, but to me that just adds street cred. My favorite thing about it, though, is that everything in it was done completely by hand; even features on the cover such as the title, the company logo, the price (U.S. and Canada), and even the copyright notice. No technology more advanced than a pen or brush seems to have come into play until it was time to go to the print shop.

Sadly, no second issue of this book ever came out and the company seems to have gone belly up after the first one. I haven't been able to find any information on why this happened, but sometimes startup business ventures don't work out. (In truth, a lot of independent comics from the eighties that ran for quite a few issues ended before they could be brought to a proper narrative conclusion.) That said, I don't see why the creative team responsible for this book couldn't have continued to work on the story and meanwhile looked for other means of getting new issues published. Insufficiently committed, I guess. After all, I can't imagine that these guys didn't have day jobs; Shadow Warrior looks like a spare time project.

As for why Shadow Warrior failed, I can't imagine the lack of advertising helped matters any, but I have a sad suspicion that the very qualities about this book which attracted me to it in the first place had the opposite effect on just about everybody else. "It's not familiar enough; it makes me uncomfortable." "Its presentation doesn't look professional enough." "It's not in color; black and white is a rip-off." "It's too obscure; it won't appreciate in value." "My friends who love the X-Men will think I'm weird."

At any rate, Shadow Warrior was one among many risks that failed. It wouldn't have if there'd been more readers like me, but there you go.

Now I feel like reading some comics.

* The Star Wars franchise at that time consisted of five movies, two of which were made for television, two cartoon shows, and one not very fondly remembered holiday special. Marvel's series, which had recently been discontinued, ran only 107 issues, as well as a few annuals and a Return Of The Jedi miniseries. (Which is odd; they began the series with an adaptation of the first movie, and when they adapted The Empire Strikes Back, it was also part of the main series. I have an idea why they adapted ROTJ separately, but that's a discussion for another time.) It was still possible for someone of even my limited means to collect the entire run, although I did get a major assist in the form of a gift from my uncle David, who had collected quite a few of them himself.

** Truth be told, it wasn't just my appetite for more unusual and obscure material that made me lose interest in DC comics. The continuity of the DC Universe was a convoluted mess, even after the company's efforts in the eighties to simplify it and bring it under control. (Beeteedubs, if you know what I'm talking about when I say that the Crisis ruined the DC Universe, congratulations, you're a geek. And an old geek at that.) Superman, in particular, was mired in tedious subplots that not only went nowhere when taken as a whole but barely left Supes any time to do anything heroic. I don't know from Marvel, but I don't get the impression their product was much better. I eventually realized that the big two had basically given readers a choice between reading comics and having a life. Something tells me this was no accident. After all, every minute you spend hanging out with friends is a minute you're not reading comics, and every dollar you spend on dates and cool clothes is a dollar you're not using to BUY comics.

*** Newsprint is notoriously fragile, and becomes more so as it ages. Even once it became apparent that people were beginning to treat comics as cultural artifact, not to mention collectable commodity, it still took a while for comics publishers to catch up. Around the time I started collecting, DC was experimenting with different printing formats. The familiar stapled newsprint book with a semigloss cover was called Standard Format. New Format was like Standard only with Mando paper in place of newsprint; whiter and of slightly better quality. Deluxe Format was high quality archival stock with a semigloss cover. And Prestige Format was semigloss interior, square bound with glossy cardstock; essentially a comic book sized version of the graphic novel format. Other companies were experimenting along the same lines, just not using that particular nomenclature. But most comics were still being printed the old-fashioned way. Of course, today pretty much all comics are slick and built to last, but unfortunately just because they're easy to preserve doesn't mean they're worth collecting.

**** Sadly, my copy of the fourth issue of Beyond Mars was ruined by a printing fuckup wherein half the strips were missing and the other half were printed twice. I never found out if that was an isolated incident or if the problem was endemic to the entire run, and I never got around to buying the final issue.

#comics #comic books #collectibles #superhero

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