[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."

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?"