#tbh I think going back it would’ve been fun to skin sunny as a genasi or an eladrin

[casualnepotism]

“You are all the colors of the world, mon kè.”

Brown, like the earth that sustains us all.

Green, like the plants that feed and delight us.

Blue, like the water that feeds the plants.

Yellow, like the sun that shows it all to us.

It was all even, Grann would point out as her fingers tickled across my freckles, in the right places. She would always end the story with her hands cupping my face, her crinkly thumbs rubbing softly under my eyes, smiling like she always did under the sun.

“The world must have cut away a part of itself when it made you.”

Her words echo in my brain as I turn, staring at myself. I don’t have a lot of time, I don’t think. But no one’s come to get me so maybe I do. I don’t know long I spent in the shower trying to get clean, letting the fucking goo slide away, trying desperately not to move, biting a hole through a sponge.

I’ve been using hot water so long that I forgot: cold water also hurts when it’s sprayed on open wounds.

My hands - wrists, forearms, biceps, traps, pecs, neck, face - flex in the mirror and my head tilts along with them. The black goo had faded into a dark purple stain. It’s darker where it’s pooled and settled into wounds though, like usual in those spots, it’s taken on a skin-like feel. I won’t know for a few days if it’s just from prolonged contact or if it’s a god thing. (It’s probably a god thing.) It would be beautiful on another canvas.

Like the skies before the storms, Grann would probably say. She was always good at making things sound positive. They warn us of the coming danger.

A bright, electric purple scar is scattered down my right calf, falling from two large punctures. They seem to pulse under the low light of the room. Only a vague memory of them comes to the surface - sitting on the grass, my family a muted roar. I said something. Cog was with me and then - a stifled breath, pain excruciating blinding ragingslicinghurtingcuttingstealingslashingbreaking and Maelo was there. It’s hard to take my eyes off them; they glow.

Like lightning in the summer, choupèt. It dances for us, but it never approaches.

I stare, hand tracing up the paint-like purple splatter on my hip (like flowers in the spring), across the faded grey-blue bullet wounds that strafe my stomach (the ice that heals summer’s wounds), up to the dark, umber-red burn scars across my chest (the earth as it prepares for new growth), landing on the just-settling ax wound against my neck. King. My breath shudders, inhaling too quickly and- “Fuck!”

A slash of pain on my back. How quickly I’d forgotten. I spin, eyes focused on my left shoulder blade. A circular scar, pinched as it has always been, now stained a bright and vibrant red. It’s spread, the red seeping outward with every beat of my heart. I squint, lean forward, curse - “se yon glas, sòt” - and squint harder.

Small veins of black and electric green cut through the red, reaching out as though to escape. Reaching down towards -

My eyes, distracted by the bright new red, drop slightly. Following the veins of black and green.

To the pain.

A line cuts across the small of my back. Black, I think. Maybe. I don’t know. It didn’t bleed, there’s no stain near it. It hasn’t scarred at all. It shouldn’t hurt, I don’t think. It’s just a line, like I’d drawn it on with a pen. But it hurts. Not always. I shift a little, twisting my spine just to see and -

All my breath leaves me in an instant. It hurts. Whatever Asmo touched me with as he died, it hurtsithurts.

I’m kneeling. I know that. My brain is moving - slowly - trying to catch up. I can see the red of Jack’s scar on my back (Like the sky over the ocean; either morning or night it is a sign of safety for the fishermen) This time, there’s a pause in her voice and it changes, deeper, smoother. Unless they are already in the water, of course.

Another deep breath. I stand, breathe out, and flex my body again to see my back. The same, excruciating pain, but I’m ready this time. I breathe. It passes.

I bend. Pain.

I stand. Pain.

I turn, spin, jump, squat, shimmy. Pain, pain, pain, pain, pain.

Each time, pain. Each time, more bearable.

I stand, straight, and look myself over once more in the mirror. My many colors. All the ones of the earth, Grann said, and she’s only gotten more right. I don’t know what she would say about this new scar because she couldn’t know what it is.

It’s the same color as the sky whenever we run into Asmodeus. Outside his dream window, in the tree, in the forest, even the spaces between his eyes.

Leaning down to scoop up spare clothes forces me to shake off another roll of pain, and I glance once more at the scar. I force a grin.

Grann would be thrilled: she always said that the earth cut a slice of itself away to make me and so, it seems, did the stars.