[P] speak from our tongues, not our hearts

[Michael]

"I think we deserve
a soft epilogue, my love.
we are good people
and we've suffered enough."

The churn of the populace has dwindled to a steady trickle. Somewhere the last few shops hung in candles and gold fabric are waiting out the end of the season, though everyone else has boxed their decorations and tucked them away for the next celebration. At long last, Denocte lets out a breath - no more strangers, no more masks, no more of the itch at the back of their neck that says fear, fear, fear in an endless loop. 

Michael is among the first to leave, tired of ghosts and drinks and the roar of the crowd (loud like the ocean, loud like thunder, loud like words spoken in an empty room) and nobody watches him go.
-
Here we are, says his chest, in the mountains again. Here we are in the tall pines pocked every hundred meters or so with the reds and yellows of deciduous autumn. Here we are in the early morning fog that clings to the canopy and the air so cold it hurts to breathe. 

Michael likes it here. 
He likes that he can think.

Two days after the end of the festival Michael is winding through the woods - the timberline is about a hundred yards uphill and the cold wind blowing down the mountain has Michael shielding his face with his scarf, blue and shimmering as it slaps at his cheeks. Below the whole of Denocte is spread against the sea, smudged in all the colors of an earth bedding down before winter.

It starts to occur to Michael that he can't remember the last time he felt truly warm, that there was not some breath of this mountain wind in him, circling endlessly because it cannot escape. He wonders if he will ever feel warm again.

He wonders if he will ever feel anything, again.

Michael frowns. The wind flaps his scarf against his cheeks and he does not move. The trees creak with its blustering and he does not move. Only a shape, barely visible downwind, climbing the narrow path, draws his attention. It is a large type, hulking and solemn. Somewhere, the sun is crawling ever closer to noon. Michael assumes this shape is a soldier on rounds.

"Hello," he calls, "Are you headed this way?"
He cannot telll if the answer he wants is yes, or no.

[El Toro]

the abyss between frames…a careful preservation of wounding.

Toro was not quite willing to admit that he had escaped to the mountains intentionally. It may have been that he hadn’t - all it held were strange, dark meetings, night and hate and blood curling in on his heart like a thorny vine. Suffering and death and not-death. The quiet incenses him. He can only think of these things and they batter his heart like a storm. There is so much, always. Just barely does he weather this world and its horrors. Today Hajduk prowls just out of reach and Toro is left on the edge of a cliff with the world on his shoulders. Our world, and the one he imagines killing him, over and over. He wants not to die but to cease existence. To float in the abyss without feeling would be freedom. Silence. Rest.

But not contentment. 

The autumn sun lights up the stranger in a way the whipping wind cannot. His scarf is a nice color. Toro hears his question and does not answer, his approach halted. He thinks about Anzhelo. 

This might not be a good idea.

He pushes forward through the wind and stops a few feet from the stranger. ”Suppose so,” he says. El Toro likes the way his hair flies in the wind, like a cloud rushing over the sun. He thinks his muzzle looks soft, but not cloud-like, too pink for a cloud but not pink enough for the sunrise. Pink enough for a living thing.

Toro clears his throat. ”I’m Toro. Shall we?” He nods towards the path, beyond them, high up and elsewhere. His intestines feel like the world’s most intricate knot.



@Michael | revision, impromptu
"What I say,"

What I think,

What Hajduk thinks,

credit

[Michael]

"I think we deserve
a soft epilogue, my love.
we are good people
and we've suffered enough."

It was not easy to learn, but Michael has come to understand that everything is suffering - that there is an undercurrent of pain that runs through the veins of the earth. Eleven - and it hurts to think the name, but there it is, somehow - would say he was cynical. She would perhaps think we was selfish; that he is turning the world to a soft and sad thing because he cannot understand anything that is not.

Maybe she's right.

And Michael does want to die. It is a cold rock settled at the bottom of the deep lake of his heart, silt-covered and tucked away. He has forgotten this over centuries of doing the opposite (persisting, in spite of his efforts, in spite of the roiling black clouds of fate) but it sits in him still.

It occurs to him, suddenly and without warning, there on the mountainside in the company of this white horse, that he will. A year has come and gone and he is sure that he is so tired because now, at last, he is aging. The slow decay of being alive.

And suddenly he doesn't want to die at all.

Michael smiles, and nods, and while it is brittle it is genuine. "Toro, I'm Michael. I'm from here."

And up they go, until the trees break into rock piled on rock, until the trail is edged on either side by open air or alpine meadow that slants toward Denocte, laid out before them by a map. Michael stops to catch his breath. Michael turns.

His eyes are pale, angled toward the sun - even squinting, even so desperately tired. 
"I must know, do you come here often?" he asks, and he can hear his own thin smile in it. "And also, why?"

[El Toro]

you are a black and heavy weight

Toro’s heart skips a beat when he smiles.

Michael.

Toro nods once, swallows, and follows him up the path.  It was a steep incline, yes, but Toro is surprised when Michael pauses. He would have walked, indefinitely, perhaps, thinking about what to say or what not to say or if he should say anything at all, until eventually he would follow Michael off the edge of the peak. He has a warrior’s lung and a half and lets his eyes glance over the other’s abdomen. In, out, in out. Mountain climbing.

Toro doesn’t like his questions.

Often isn’t quite the right word, but yes, sometimes I come around when I’m contemplating my death. That’s about when I come across some golden boy with pretty pretty hair and a pretty pretty smile and I think about that that is not what I ought to be thinking about, and then I want to die even more and then, hopefully, we walk back down the mountain together, both still breathing with beating hearts in our chests.

”Sometimes,” he says, ”but not that much.” A pause. ”I guess I can think more here - “ he laughs, tight and unhappily ” - but I’m not sure that’s good for me.” Toro looks at the ground, then back up. He tries not to stare too hard but doesn’t know how. ”What about you?”



@Michael | gasp! I can’t believe he Exposed an Emotion. | Battle for the Sun
"What I say,"

What I think,

What Hajduk thinks,

credit

[Michael]

"I think we deserve
a soft epilogue, my love.
we are good people
and we've suffered enough."

It's rare that anyone likes his questions.
Michael likes to pry - he likes to pull things apart, pick at the pieces that hurt and pull back the dead skin to see what's inside: blood, and more blood, and pain. Michael says, here is your suffering, and I will sit in it with you. Michael says, you don't have to let it go now, but you have to let it go eventually. He does this while smiling like buttermilk and he does this bent under the weight of his own heavy heart.

The wind howls down the mountain. Michael has to tilt his head to keep the scarf out of his eyes. He has stepped into some part of Toro that not many get to see and he has this distinct feeling that he has done something wrong - the tight-chested panic of standing on sacred ground. The leering eyes of the pious.

They are staring at each other and it is far too long before either averts their eyes. It is Michael first, matching Toro's empty laughter with some of his own, but breathless. When he laughs it sounds like apple cider.

"I think I live here?" And because he is laughing already he keeps on laughing. It echoes off the rock and bounces down the mountainside with the wind. "I think we're a lot alike. I'm not sure that's good for me." But he smiles anyway, and it is not unkind.

As if to say, anyway, Michael take one last deep breath, then turns to continue up the mountain. He thinks of a dragon and a golden cage and what it meant to fly. He hopes he never feels like flying again. The golden horse says over his shoulder, barely even turning his head, "So, why are you here now?"

[El Toro]

OH, TO BE HERE ON THE GROUND

Toro might not like what he was asking but he certainly liked the attention. The staring goes on, and on, and on, though, and it gets weird, until Michael finally starts laughing and says, ”I think I live here?” which is an odd thing to say, and then he keeps laughing and speaking and Toro wonders if that is an insult, but it sounded so nice, and beneath his muscles his pride writhes sinewy as if to ask and do we get to hurt him for it? but that is rather an odd thing to ask too, and so he just follows Michael in silence up the mountain. He wants to say something and again is convinced that the anticipation will eventually guide them both of the ledge, but then Michael speaks, just as before, and there lies another ugly question on the path.

”So, why are you here now?” 

Toro wants to think but doesn’t and so all that spills out of his mouth is, ”Oh, I’m just in town.” There is no fucking town here, you idiot, it’s a goddamn mountain range. ”The air up here strengthens the lungs. Good for warriors.” He’s not really sure what he’s saying now but doesn’t know how to stop. ”Probably good for the brain, and the heart, and all that internal stuff. Keeps you from wanting to end it all. You come up here thinking about jumping off the ledge, but the mountain air is so good that you go back down again without realizing you survived the whole trip.”And then, at the bottom, you realize you want to die again. Oh gods, what was he saying? This was too much. Something in him must’ve snapped on the way up here. He cleared his throat. A stray hair of concern from Hajduk tickled his heart; Toro reassured him with a flimsy echo of confidence. ”Kidding,” he said, but it had about the sincerity of someone “asking for a friend.” 

@Michael
"What I say,"

What I think,

What Hajduk thinks,

credit

[Michael]

"I think we deserve
a soft epilogue, my love.
we are good people
and we've suffered enough."

If Toro had asked, Michael would have said, no.
No, there is nothing wrong with you. No, it was not an insult. No, I could never say anything like that with ill-intent. No, I cannot usually say anything at all.

But Toro doesn't ask, and it never crosses Michael's mind that there's a beast at his back, a thing that could crush him if he wanted. If he wanted. All that's up here on the mountain is two drowning boys and the things they don't say.

And the things they do.

If he didn't have this distinct feeling of walking on graves, of his hands stained from digging in holy dirt, he might not have felt the silence in him, an arc of electricity that crackled from Toro to Michael and back again. When all he can hear is the crunching of rock underfoot and the steady keen of the wind each step is a needle in his skin, and by the time Toro speaks he is all but prickling with anticipation.

Oh, I'm just in town, Toro says. Oh, I want to die--and this is paraphrased--and here you are in the ringing church bells and the stern eyes of priests, and they are glaring at you. You've done something terrible, dug up something terrible, and now you can't put it back.

Michael wants to stop but he keeps walking because he's sure he'll die if he doesn't. It's the only way this can go.

"I don't think thin air is good for the brain." he says, but what does he know, because they're above the tree line and Toro's "good air" is making Michael dizzy or else something else is making him dizzy, and the gold horse doesn't want to touch it, doesn't want to even look at it. Here the path carves itself into the mountain, tucked between ridges, walled in on either side by towering rock. Here he stops to catch his breath again, though he can't tell if the thin air or the fist around his heart is why he feels so breathless.

Michael turns to Toro. His scarf flaps noisily in the wind. He cannot hear anything but his blood in his ears.
Kidding, Toro says. Just kidding. And Michael, after another, shorter moment of silence--a moment in which Michael is measuring Toro with some strange mixture of a bleak but knowing smile--says, "Of course you are."

And then, "Do you want to go back?"

[El Toro]

OH, TO BE HERE ON THE GROUND

 ”I don’t think thin air is good for the brain,” and Toro could kick himself, or smother himself, or throw himself off the cliff, because there is the pang of an inconsequential disagreement, a thing that does not matter and yet flips his stomach because there was no compliance with anything that flew out of his mouth. He hadn’t wanted it to come out, but it was wrong, anyway, and how could you say thin air was good for the brain when all you did was reveal hidden things and have them revealed to you? That’s all that happened up in these high places, stupid. That was all.

”Of course you are.” Toro nods tersely. And then - ”Do you want to go back?” so he nods again, ”Yes,” is all he says, because too many nightingales got out of the cage last time the door was open. Keep it shut and they’ll stay in, looking as they’re supposed to and never being where they ought to be. 

The whole way down, with Michael at his back, there is nothing - liar, there are so many things he thinks of saying and he says none of them until they reach the bottom of the trail. This was awful, he thinks, but then he says, ”It was nice to meet you, Michael. Maybe we’ll see each other again.”

@Michael
"What I say,"

What I think,

What Hajduk thinks,

CREDITS