"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife
His mind was never a strong thing – Before (before the purple, before the girl who was and was-not, before the burning, drowning, falling) he was a religious man but not a particularly strong one, he was a man whose knees were worn bare from prayer but had nothing to show for it. It’s only now that he realizes how strong it had been, with a single consistent string of memories. With a mind that stayed put, stayed placed within him.
That man did not know the strange feeling of reaching your branches to the sky, or the way the scent of rotted meat is suddenly ambrosia in a predator’s mind. That man did not know their histories, the piecemeal moments he collects unwillingly.
He’s touched broken girls and boys, and wicked ones. He is always sorry. He does not mean to know them in such a way, but his mind is an unleashed animal, it runs to them and does not heed him.
It is exhausting enough, to exist like this. Add in the dreams, add in the purple – the sensation of other lives lived tickling in the back of the mind, the strange symbols floating up, the thoughts, the sensation of loss – of losing her, losing himself.
The thought, too: She loves us.
He is not a strong man. He is not even a religious one, now (somewhere along the line faith was lost, drowned in what is surely madness). He is a lost man, a confused man. A man with the piecemeal knowledge of a dozen strangers, knowledge he does not want to bear.
(A man with the knowledge of how he looks, in their eyes – slack-jawed and stupid, colored a purple so dark and deep it’s black, unless you’re in the right light.)
He passes the girl and flinches involuntarily, expecting his mind to jump out to her, to return with some terrible knowledge for him to bear. But it does not. He feels it reaching, for a moment, and then the sensation is gone, and he is steadied.
He stops, and looks at her. He did not intend to speak to her, to anyone. He intended to walk on. But she stopped it. She did, or something else.
“What…” he says, struck, “what are you?”
and I ran back to that hollow again
the moon was just a sliver back then
and I ached for my heart like some tin man
when it came, oh, it beat and it boiled and it rang
There is something in her that is attracted to the broken ones—to the dangerous ones. The ones with pointed, jagged edges that draw blood when a careless finger traces their outline. There is something in her that seeks it out and then settles around it—wrapping herself around the flame even when it burns too brightly and she gets singed. In the case of Kingslay, a literal burn, but alas—
She is daydreaming when the one with a broken mind finds her, and it takes her a second to bring herself out of her reverie—muddy brown eyes clearing with a slow blink, and then another. “I’m sorry?” her voice was silver bells, all chime and soft elegant lifts. It was, arguably, the only pretty part about her. The daughter of Vanquish and Yael, she had been given two loving, powerful parents and yet none of their striking appearance. She did not have her father’s imposing figure or her mother’s graceful one. Instead, she was stuck somewhere in between—muddy brown and long-limbed and average.
But Etro, oh Etro, she was anything but average. Constellations and destinies were trapped in her breast, and if she ever let loose the cannon of her abilities, she could wreck dynasties. She could topple wars and even playing fields; play benevolent or malicious god. But she knew none of this, thirsted for none of it. All she wanted was the burn of the desert without the illness. She wanted the comfort of her fathers shadow chasing her across the dunes, the comfort of her mother’s magic wrapping around her.
The sweet agony of Kingslay’s flat, unforgiving gaze.
Mistaking his question for one of more normal intent, she gives him a soft smile. “I’m Etro!” There was something odd about him, and although perhaps her pulse should have quickened in response, she did not feel any urge to flee. Instead, she pressed the softness of her nose against his neck in greeting, blowing out a warm breath against his flesh. “It is nice to meet you…” and here her voice trails off in question, waiting for him to fill in the blanks and give her his name in return.
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife
He is broken in mind if not body. In appearance, he might be appealing in his own way, coat stained a purple so deep it’s practically black (only when the light catches does it betray him). The purple is new, though – before that, he was black, similar to Garbage, perhaps with a bit more refinement to his limbs.
Still, he was never particularly handsome.
There was no one in his life, no love (odd, that the child of such hopeless romantics should be so pious). There was Garbage’s head, laid across his back, a warmth – but that had been Before.
It had all been Before.
Whatever handsomeness he might have possessed was drained as his mind went to hell. He eats only sporadically now, his skin shrinks up against his ribs. His coat has lost its luster.
And inside the body – the shell – resides the howling darkness of his mind, the man asunder.
“Etro,” he repeats her name. His mind stays steady inside of him, it does not reach out. He is grounded.
(There are still memories, selves, lurking behind the curtain. But at least his wretched mind is still.)
“I’m Sleaze,” he says. The name grounds him. He wants to say it again and again because he knows there was a time when he could not, when he was someone (something)
else.
“Etro,” he says her name again, as if saying it could unlock her, could explain her.
“You’re…” he trails off, grasps for the word, “you’re quieting.”
It’s not the right word but there’s no word for something that stills your mind when it runs from creature to creature, returns dripping in memories he does not and cannot bear to own, certainly not when he is already so torn apart, vivisected.
and I ran back to that hollow again
the moon was just a sliver back then
and I ached for my heart like some tin man
when it came, oh, it beat and it boiled and it rang
She has been told many things about herself before, but this is the first time that she has been told that. It is an odd sensation to be told that she is calming, and she cannot say that it is an unwelcome feeling; it was soothing to be told that she had that affect on others, and her smile is soft and genuine as she lets it sink in. “I am glad to hear that,” she says softly, although she is still not sure why. Perhaps because he looks like the kind of soul that needed to be quieted—perhaps because he seemed so grateful for it.
Whatever the reason, she was quieting and he was here, and she felt some sort of obligation to stay for him—like an anchor in a world that seemed like it had been altogether too cruel to him. “What brought you here today?” she asks, and she lowers her silver voice a tad as if she could break him with just too much volume. She sidles over to him until their bodies touched as gently as a whisper, her filled out form resting against his emaciated skeleton. Concern races through her veins, but she does not voice it.
And, like that, her mind is quieted too. Where before she had been filled with thoughts of Kingslay and the metallic-tang his presence left in her mouth, now she thought of nothing. Her mind was a pond without a single ripple—just solid and calm and serene. It has been a while since she had felt that kind of tranquility, and she reveled in it, pressing her nose comfortably against his neck again for a second, hoping that she would be able to draw out the peaceful moment for a second longer.
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife
She is quieting in a way he had forgotten existed. The possession has not been with him long (its inception is part of that missing time, the chunk carved out that he cannot recall, the part that lives behind the purple), but already he forgets life without it.
(He must forgot life without it, lest the longing drive him mad.)
But she is an oasis – somehow, she stills his restless mind. She does nothing for the Other memories, the ones lurking beyond, but she keeps his mind where it belongs and for that he is so grateful he would throw himself at her feet.
He’d even pray to her, if he was still the praying kind.
What brought you here today, she asks, and normally, with others, he would brush the question off. But to her, in her stillness, her calm, her beauty, he wants to tell her the stories even though he knows they are strange and the ramblings of a demented man.
“I don’t stay anywhere too long,” he says, then, “my mind hasn’t bene my own. It touches things. Others. I don’t mean to. I don’t want to. I don’t want their memories.” (Their secrets.)
She touches him, side to side, and his breath catches. He isn’t used to being touched. She is solid and there and sweet and he leans into her, just slightly.
“But my mind can’t touch you,” he says, voice still wondrous, “and I don’t know why.”
She is at once an anchor – solid, grounding him.
She is at once a life raft, and he, the drowning man.
Whatever she is – anchor, life raft, goddess – he doesn’t know and won’t question, not as long as his mind feels quiet and he feels himself, feet on solid ground.
and I ran back to that hollow again
the moon was just a sliver back then
There is a part of her that knows why her mind cannot be touched; there is a knowledge buried in her bones that she is…different. It had started small—the signs subtle and innocent enough that she could have missed them. The way Noori had run up to her with astonished eyes. The way Kingslay had gone from burning inferno to quiet, smoldering ash under her touch. And, most of all, the way that the magic of the Deserts had begun to sink into her veins like arsenic; the way it spread illness throughout her. But it was a truth she did not want to acknowledge.
Because to acknowledge it was to turn her head away from the beauty of magic—and how she loved magic. She loved watching her mother whip up sandstorms and her father powerfully charge across the sky; she had grown to love the beauty and mystery of magic. If her instincts were right, then that would be stripped of her entirely.
Worse, she would be the cause of its disappearance.
Of course, she had never considered what she believed to be a curse (in the darkest corners of her heart) could potentially be a blessing; she had never once thought that perhaps it could help instead of hurt. So while she may bring him peace, he does the same to her, and she is flooded with relief as she takes the liberty of laying her cheek against his neck. “I know you don’t mean to,” she murmurs softly between them, although she is not entirely sure she knows what he is talking about.
“Perhaps your mind can be your own today.”
Perhaps hers could be her own as well.
and I ached for my heart like some tin man
when it came, oh, it beat and it boiled and it rang
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife
He is son of a magician, son of ill magic (two stallions procreating when nature should have forbade it, making him, birthing him), yet he was born normal. A black boy, a plain boy. He never met his magician father (their affair had soured before Sleaze was brought to term) and so he was raised by another plain black stallion. It had been quiet and simple and they had prayed there, half-formed things that felt right. He’d been devout, Before, had prayed so often his knees were worn bare.
(Still are, but now, he does not pray. There is only a snippet that drifts through his mind, gliding like a shark through water; yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil.)
Her kind words make his knees weak – the understanding, the touch, the gentleness. The quiet. He wants to sob against her, confess his sins and the sins of others, the ones he collects inadvertently, the flotsam and jetsam of their minds.
But there is no time, because then she says it - perhaps your mind can be your own today - and he remembers the purple, the other lives.
She can do nothing for them, because they are not magic, they are not gifts or curses – surely they are things of madness, swirling howling terrible, these other lives, these images. There was a girl. There was no girl.
“Not with the purple,” he says before he realizes what he is saying, this nonsense, then, “I’m sorry.”
Not that she knows what he is sorry for, but he is sorry.
and I ran back to that hollow again
the moon was just a sliver back then
What it must be like to be him, she thinks in sadness as her cheek rests against him in the quiet pool of their strange union. What it must be like to hurt as he seems to, the crazed edge of his words seeming to affirm in the back of her mind that something was wrong. But not wrong in the way one would expect. She picked up on the danger of him, the brokenness of his tongue, but it did not drive her away as she was instinctually meant to; instead, she just holds him closer and her heart breaks.
“What is the purple,” she questions into his skin and feels the warmth of her own breath roll across it and then back against her. And then: “Please don’t apologize.” He was correct in thinking that she did not know why the apology was born, but she did not need to: she just didn't want it. She didn’t need him to gift her with an apology; she just wanted him to feel at ease, to relax, to knit himself back together again.
Her eyes close and she takes a deep breath, the sound of her mouth sucking in the air breaking the tension between them, all of the unspoken ghosts seemingly haunting them both. “What is your dream, Sleaze?” she asks, slightly out of curiosity and slightly to redirect their conversation. “I would like to go home some day,” she confesses, because it seems like the kind of conversation where truths were just needed. “But I don’t think that I can.” A moment of silence.
“I don't even think I have a home anymore.”
and I ached for my heart like some tin man
when it came, oh, it beat and it boiled and it rang
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife
Even he does not fully realize the danger in him, that the possession would be the ability to touch others minds, control their bodies. He could send them over cliffs, into the ocean. He does not know this, he barely controls the trait – it is a feral thing, wild and unpredictable, and it’s all he can do to coexist with it.
He is grateful to not know her mind, for whatever reason. Grateful not to have shards of her memories and thoughts poking into him, coloring their conversation in ways it would not otherwise be colored.
This is pure, in a way. He never realized the purity that exists when each creature’s mind is their own.
“Something happened,” he says, clarifies, “to me. Time’s missing, something happened, and when time came back I was like this.” Like this -- colored purple, colored mad, mind hazy with queer thoughts dancing at the periphery.
“There are…things,” he continues. The story is a strange one to tell, “things I can’t recall. They’re a blur. And when I think about them it’s just…just purple.”
Purple like a curtain, sweeping down to hide the memories. Ah, but some creep out, and exists like talismans in his mind, scraps of memories, though whether they’re real or imagined is still unknown to him.
What is your dream, she asks, and he wonders. She continues on and he lets her, hears the sadness in her voice.
“Why can’t you?” he asks, curious. He cannot go home, either, but that’s because home was a mossy meadow, home was Garbage, and neither of those things exist anymore.
“My dream is to be whole,” he says, “I don’t want to be fractured like this forever.”
Perhaps it’s less a dream and more of a confession of fear: the terror that this is his lot, and that he will not survive it, not like this.
and I ran back to that hollow again
the moon was just a sliver back then
Perhaps the reason that she is drawn to broken things is because she herself often feels so broken. It doesn’t make sense, because at first glance she is healthy, strong, altogether average. She is medium of build (what happens, she supposes, when a large father and a slight mother come together), muddy brown with obsidian points, nondescript eyes, and a homely face. She is a once-Princess of a land of sand, where her parents reigned together through the gales and the storms and the draughts. She had parents who loved her and a land that should have called to her bones.
But she did not feel whole.
There were parts of her unfounded that ached with longing for things she did not understand. There were parts of her made sick by what should have made her well; parts of her that broke at points where they should have been the strongest. Her heart was swallowed by the constellations and flung up into the night sky, giving her an eternal sense of wanderlust—a feeling that she could walk for years and never gather herself up once more. Her very veins pumped starry-eyed wonder through her.
She was fractured and jagged on the edges and perhaps that is why the plain mare felt so at home next to the murderers and mad and sinister. So she smiles gently when he tries to explain the unexplainable, and she does not move from her spot by his side, just nodding so he knew that she was listening. “I don’t think that I will ever understand,” she confesses in the silence between words. “But I want to say that I do, because I feel like I could.” A soft, silvery laugh that drops off suddenly.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
And then: “My home doesn’t want me there.” It is the first time that she has ever voiced that single fear that has become a swollen monster in the back of her head—growing with time. “I don’t know why, but it doesn’t.” She wished it did, wished she could run amongst the dunes like she did as a child before this all took root—but she knows that is a hopeless wish. Looking at him, her expression grows hopeful. although she cannot help the sadness that creeps into the edges, “Perhaps we can find a place where you can be whole and I can be home. Wouldn't that be wonderful, Sleaze?”
and I ached for my heart like some tin man
when it came, oh, it beat and it boiled and it rang
