you must know life to see decay; pollock

[bruise]

Finally (finally) it was time for Bruise to find his father.

Find his father and show him what he had done, what he could do.

It was time to secure his place as the favored child, to secure his spot at his father’s right side.

It did not take him long to find Pollock, not with his speed and agility returned to him. It did not take him long to seek out the golden stallion, the brighter version of his own coat of ash and soot. He approached quickly because there was no time to waste; his eyes were fever bright and his lips pressed together. 

“Father,” always formal—perhaps too formal. It was only right that he give his father the respect that he deserved; after all, his father was who gave him these gifts and who would, with any luck, be the one to teach him how to hone his craft. Bruise knew that he was still clumsy with the Fear. He could manipulate it but without any finesse; it was a club in his grasp when he wanted it to be a scalpel. He wanted to be able to treat Fear like an orchestra, like the finest of paintings. Right now, he was brutish with it.

“I have been given a gift,” not that he was thankful for it—not really. In his mind, it was nothing that he did not deserve, was not owed to him. Perhaps, in time, his own arrogance would be his downfall, but not now. Not when the power flowed through him and when the world was cracked open before him like an oyster, all of the potential ripe for the taking. “And I have been given the ability to pass along the same gifts to five others, with or without limitations as I see fit.” Of course there would be limitations.

Of course.

But not with Pollock. 

Instead, Bruise just dipped his head, dark eyes sharp. “I cannot wait to see the world tremble before you and the Fear.” And, with a crack of his tail, as he had seen the fairy do, he used one of his five gifts, granting his father the only thing that he could: power and Fear.

 

Bruise

head like a hole; as black as your soul.

@[Pollock]

[Pollock]

I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well, to glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray

One day he will tell him how it all began.
One day, perhaps, he will unravel it all, lay it out before him like a roadmap of stars and a freeway of vessels and synapses.

The constellations of them; not from a mother’s womb, but from the hand of man.
(Thine is the power and the glory, they say. And it had not been Phina who had fashioned the first gift giver, she only erected the skeleton of that profaned and venerable cathedral. ‘Never ask me about that bitch again, Bruise,’ and with that, he purged the false progenitor from her throne.
It had not been Etro, either. One day, his boy would find out that she is the Antichrist. The anti-Fear that seeks to bring them to heel. A thing that must be destroyed, lest she tear them down, stone for stone.

‘You’re with me now.’)

When all the puzzle pieces, like so many errant embers from a great fire, find each other and rebuild the bones of their genesis – re-ink and translate the parables and tales lost to the deeper parts of his human mind – and spark alive an even greater conflagration than before.
(They are elusive, those memories. As if they are not even his, but something distant and detached, like a bedtime story. They have, for many years, twisted from his grasp, hid in the tracts of his body where they could not easily by loosed. They are ice and snow; it is the black and terrible ornament in his chest that had killed any promise of love or affection in his heart at it’s fetal stage.)
Then, he will tell the blessed son how it all began.

“Bruise,” he says simply, as avarice brings an ugly gleam to his black eyes. He moves forward, disturbing the dust of their rotten kingdom, one great, unwelcome wing reaching out towards the boy. He hesitates, examining the curve of those brutal weapons, picturing them painted slick with red, then guides the tip of his longest primaries to brush the horns on his son’s young head.
—but he does not speak, he fixes his gaze on him – demanding and stern – and lets him explain.

And as he speaks, a wide, crocodilian smile splits his face and reveals straight, yellow teeth.
—my, my. Men like them…
(That this boy is his near equal… well, that is a thought to be pondered over another time, not something to be allowed to poison this moment. No. He buries that, for now. 
He is not the only one – there is one other; the rest are cast-off, uncared-for horseflesh, besides, perhaps, the ones Sinew grows in her scars.)

As his tail flicks, there is a strange tingle where his over-wide, glossy wings connect to the tissue of his shoulder muscles. Something he feels, just barely, like a cut made into flesh slaked by novocaine. They do not fall with the heavy, thud of dead flesh – they simply leave, reclaimed by the same foul realm that had sewed them to him in the first place.
But he does feel the unevenness in his left side, a familiar one that had been with him his whole life, as his useless wing sprouts, limp and dirty. And then, his head grows heavy, and he remembers waking up, having fallen for a lifetime, to the same powerful heft. He tilts his head, right and left, feeling the great, curved gear add themselves back to his gravity. His muscles twitch as he tests the satisfying shift of his invisibility, flashing in and out of sight once or twice.

Finally, the the fingers, black and hooked, yawn out from his mind – towards his son, to the passing emptiness around them, yearning for the soft yield of grey matter to plunge into. His eardrums thump with the faint sound of silver bells, and perhaps the vile scream of a goddess scorned and he smiles, sighing a deep, elated exhale.

“Bruise,” he steps forward, “this is a powerful thing you have.” He runs his tongue over his lips, his eyes bright with possibilities. He turns, feeling the agile give of his body, to look over the barren, naked badland around them, “we have much to do, my boy. You have much to learn.”

POLLOCK
the gift giver

[bruise]

One day, Bruise will listen with eager ears.

He well bend a knee before his father, the gift giver and Father of Fear; he will quiet his mind and slow his pulse and dip his thoughts to darker, deeper things. He will steer his ship toward the silent pools of his father’s nightmares where the Fear had been born, released, given. He will sit in awe at that which his father had accomplished, what he had created. 

(He would burn at the revelation of his mother—at the power she wielded over them, the prison she represented. She would need to die, eventually.)

But today was not that day. He knew it as well as Pollock. He did not ask for such tales.

Instead he just dipped his slender, coltish head, ever the dutiful son. He was pleased to have given this back to his father, he was pleased to witness the transformation before him. The same curved horns that adorned his own skull set upon his father’s head like a crown. The same split in the hooves. But there were other gifts—there was more. Invisibility that cloaked his father from sight for one breath and then another. A singular wing that draped from his shoulder, broken and magnificent in its weight.

When his father turned to look toward the barren wasteland, grey and empty, for the first time, Bruise did not see it as a graveyard. He did not despise it for its open, yawning chasm; he did not loathe the whistle of wind as it made its way through the canyons. Instead, he saw it for the possibility. He saw it as a blank canvas and his father as the ultimate artist. They would paint their reality over it, would spread the Fear from their vantage point until it was splashed upon the landscape like the constellations themselves.

He stepped forward to his father’s side and nodded.

“We should begin.”

Bruise

head like a hole; as black as your soul.