someone says: i have forgotten how to pray; this is not to say that there is no divinity between us, in this; merely that i do not know what to do with it.
Pilate laughs again, ragged and breathless. It is a tangible sound that hurls past his head as he flies, almost too fast to have heard at all. Not that it matters; he will hear it in weeks, rising in every silent moment with reams of parchment and clenched teeth. He will hear it in years, when this winter has gone to the past with his youth and he has only the sound like a bird in his chest. The force with which it hits him almost hurts in his own ragged throat, his own burning lungs.
He tells himself he's tired, sleep-deprived. To his credit it's more than half the truth.
The other part--- well.
Pilate stumbles and in the way of beasts Andras is leaping before he knows it, forward and up with one quick stroke of his night-dark wings, leaving the clattering of his own hooves behind. If he laughs, like his rage coming out in waves, it is lost entirely to the wind; his stinging lungs can't push it forward, just let it go and hear it twirl like a rag toward his back.
Andras feels his hooves scuff on the pavement, a vibration that wracks up his legs to his aching shoulders. Divinity is not all churches and hymns. There are gods of war, of vengeance, deities as savage and ruthless as his black little heart. His shadow crawls up Pilate's back, spilling over the heaving ribs and the rolling hills of the spine. He could tie his dark ankles in bobbing snakes, tick the edge of his one pink hoof on the back of his head. Andras has perhaps never felt more like a predator than he does now, a dark spot against the sun.
"That's big talk for a dead man!" Andras roars in a puff of steam. Pilate might not hear it at all. Somehow it doesn't matter as much as the act of saying it.
If anything is holy, or unholy, it is the rage or joy that dumps into him all at once. He is glad Pilate can't see him grinning. He is glad no one at all can feel his chest, full to bursting, and his stomach, clenched so tight it hurts, and hot as molten steel.
(Part of him wishes for the opposite -- he wants someone, anyone to see him coming alive. He wants a witness to whatever this is, salvation or damnation or something altogether different. It feels like flying in a way that flying never has, more than just the wind fingering its way through his feathers or the rims of his glasses dug into the bridge of his nose. He hates it. He hates Pilate for it.)
His shadow falls now on the cold street; Pilate ducks out of the way and it takes Andras longer to bank around the corner, skidding across a far wall and pushing off to send him hurling toward the ground, than is does for Pilate to dodge out of the open. Andras thinks if he hates him he has never hated him more, filling with something like disdain but not quite as sharp -- elation, maybe. Anticipation, definitely, that follows him to the ground and sits on his back as he takes first one breath, then two, before folding his wings neatly over his back and ducking through the still-swinging fabric that hangs over the door.
It's dark, and quiet, full of strong, thick incense that does nothing to ease his lungs, worn raw by cold, wet air. Andras tries not to see the shopkeep, a stern woman that glowers over the counter, says "Good afternoon, Warden," with no small amount of disdain, then turns back to her book. In its own, ridgidly mild-mannered way, Delumine often ignores Andras, or at least only looks once he's left, throwing sparks in his wake.
Andras huffs. It is heavy and sharp and hurts his throat, his chest, as it comes out. "Pilate," he demands, leaning around first one shelf, then the next. Listening. Hunting. "Glasses, now."
all you want to do is dance out of your skin into another song not quite about heroes, but still a song where you can lift the spear and say yes as it flashes.
@Pilate (please excuse the slightly changed html alsdkfjalg)
When I duck into the store, I am hit with a wall of warm air filled with the acrid smoke of incense. It washes over me like a tsunami of the highest caliber; as I skirt the corner and come tumbling inside, I am briefly made breathless by the change in temperature and the strength of the scent, which swirls in to burn holes into my nostrils and tongue. I cough. My lungs have run ragged. I don’t feel tired at all, except for the tightness in my chest, which might only be from the smoke—the rest of me is unnaturally awake, sparking all over like a livewire, coiled too tight to unwind without breaking.
Tense, my movement stilted by the buildup of energy, I creep further into the store. I am struggling to keep my breath even, filtering it through my clenched teeth. The shopkeeper glares at me from behind her counter, her eyes narrowed with suspicion. But what can I say? What explanation could I give to satisfy her? Instead I smile at her. It’s the smile that has kept me out of trouble since childhood, the sweet, plastic grin of a boy made of royal gold and raised on a steady diet of diamonds. I can tell she isn’t pleased—her mouth tightens a little, and her gaze tracks me around the room—but she doesn’t trail me or chew me out, either, and in this case I think it’s the best I can hope for.
Slowly the pounding of my heartbeat ebbs away. Slowly the rushing pulse in my ears fades, replaced by the ringing that always accompanies silence when I’m in it. The store is still as an oil painting, pretty in the way of all things old and overgrown: crumbling at the edges, weighted with age, everything coated in a fine layer of golden dust. Each ornately carved shelf is laden with heavy candles, their bodies strewn and decorated with dried flower petals. Some cabinets hold bundles of dried herbs and butterflies in glass containers; others are filled with carefully pressed cones of incense, stacked like Egyptian pyramids, and sheets of beeswax still patterned by the honeycomb they were torn from.
For a moment, despite the knowledge that a rabid Lilliputian miscreant is after me with a vengeance, I am entranced. I feel peaceful, warm, and pleasantly tired. I peek into each aisle and find myself smitten with the place’s completely unrefined charm, pastoral to the point of peasantry, so different from the clean and lavish places my family takes me to and the market stalls they manage. It’s strange. It’s enchanting like the temples of old, like runes carved into the sand. Enchanting like nothing else I’m allowed to love.
Then there is a sudden noise, the clicking of hooves on tile. The opening of a door.
Instantly I snap out of my haze. The hairs on my back and shoulders rise, a chill runs through me like a spear, like a flash of thunder—I bolt a few short steps, slinking behind the auspice of a bookshelf, where I can peer around and try to see Andras before he sees me.
Pilate. The way he says my name makes me want to give up, give in already like I don’t have anything left to prove—like rolling over and playing dead should be enough. I inhale, exhale, measuring my breaths to make sure they’re slow and faint. I can see his shadow moving across the floor, flickering in the dim light of the candles like he’s just learned how to change shape.
I blow out another breath. He’s in front of me now, back turned to me, in just the wrong place for him—just the right one for me. Careful to stay silent, I hand Andras’ glasses off to one of my snakes, who reaches out and holds it in his smiling mouth like a faithful dog.
Then, with a laugh suppressed into a growl, I grab a piece of Andras' tail in my teeth and gently, selfishly pull.
someone says: i have forgotten how to pray; this is not to say that there is no divinity between us, in this; merely that i do not know what to do with it.
He steps forward. The store is alive with the sound of his breathing, a noise that fills every corner until it fades into the same myopic blur as everything else. The only thing clear is the drum of his heart as it clunks away in his chest, clumsily scrambling for purchase in the cave of his deep, dark want. The only crisp line is the bend of his knee as he takes another step, then another, creeping with the patience of a cat: not quite patient at all, really, just a slowness in opposition to the tight line of his back, or the thing that is coiled in his stomach, cold and heavy.
The thing is named, "Pilate," a name he says again, and again, because it feels good in some entirely unwholesome way. If he wasn't overcome, suddenly, by a bigger, deeper need than the rest to see what his own name looks like when it's said by a prince, it may never have occured to him at all that Pilate doesn't know his.
It matters so little, really; what is Andras? An animal? A warden? A fool?
It matters so little, except that now he can think of nothing but the mouth saying his name, in that voice that makes him clench his jaw, either because he hates it or he doesn't.
The room is as quiet as a church, now. Andras pulls a breath that is smooth and lets it back out in a way that is entirely too graceful to be natural. He imagines Pilate doing the same, breathing for silence, lungs filling so slow they hurt, the manic smile of someone either getting away with murder, or trapping a boy in a store with his whole soul in his throat--they're about the same, considering.
Through the fog of the room, the uneven shapes, the faded discs of light that are no more an object than they are a color with no lens to filter them through, Andras feels a pinch, and a tug, that jolts straight up his spine in a crackling wave. It hurts like a thing in him falling into place, loudly. He half-expects Pilate to react to the sound, it's so loud. Fuck, he thinks for the hundredth time, though it sounds more like a prayer than a curse in his head.
Andras turns, either ripping his tail out of Pilate's grip or breaking the hair between his teeth. It seems fitting that Pilate is the one thing he sees clearly; behind him there is the sharp blur of the bookshelf and beyond that the dark shapes of the corner. Beyond that everything is an indiscriminate smudge of color--but he can see Pilate, the sharp lines of his face, the snakes that smile as well as any snake can. Andras' own face is sharp and dark, tucked into a humorless frown, that grows into the tiniest smile when he sees that one of Pilate's snakes is holding his glasses.
Andras untucks his wings and leans forward, reaching for the frames with the tip of one. He hates this game, hates the tension, hates that each inch winds him tighter, and tighter, until--
"Please," he whispers, "can I have my fucking glasses back."
It doesn't sound so much like begging as it is.
all you want to do is dance out of your skin into another song not quite about heroes, but still a song where you can lift the spear and say yes as it flashes.
