Chapel Orahamm's Blog, page 10

The Feather on My Scale: Ch 9

“What are the steps in The Drawing of the Bolt, High Husband of the God King?” Adom’s voice echoed through the corridor as I was led to my morning routine. It had never occurred to me, until that moment, how much earlier the rest of the Temple staff were awake then me. Having left Wash to sleep off the last of his wedding wine, I had taken for grant it that he would have been in his house in the morning.

“Dusting of the rafters, performed by the low wab. Sweeping of the floors by the secondary wab. Opening of the doors and cleaning of the steps to the practitioners by the high wab. A cleaning of the steps with holy water and lotus by the low priests. Preparation of sacrament by the middle priests. The Spirits of the Night bring forth the Sun. The selected wab or second hands to the high priest and high lecturn –

“Wait, does the high lecturn maintain the role of cleansing in The Drawing of the Bolt, and I oversee it, or do you oversee as high council and I preform the cleansing as High Husband? There is no precedence in the text for one who shares a soul with the Pharoah.” Wash stopped his listing as I made my way into the golden box.

“If you are half-god, as you say, then your will is as much law as is the Pharoah.” Adom’s tone had turned snide.

Turning to one of the female wab dressed as a Spirit of the Night, I leaned in to keep my voice low. “Duck into the hall and get the High Husband for me. It appears he and the High Council need assistance in determining the order of things. Leave the High Council in the chamber.”

The Spirits of the Night were not supposed to leave my side, but seeing no one else available to do as instructed, the woman in veils dipped low before skittering down the hall and bowing into a side door. A minute later, Wash followed her back to where I stood waiting at the back door to the golden suite we used for morning rituals.

“Your Highness?” Wash bowed. His fingers trembled, clutching at the long white sleeves of a new top of strange design. It appeared that either the Temple or Nebra had been busy with commissions. The make-do outfit from the day when I declared him holder of my soul paled to the fine costuming of the new morning uniform. A high neck cinched together from Adam’s apple to collarbone with gold luck knots. The tassel of the lowest knot hung low to skim from bare chest to flat stomach and lower yet to a gold belt holding up white hakama. The high-necked collar lay fitted across shoulders and under arms, to drape away from him in floor length kimono sleeves. His pastel green wings had been carefully curried until they glistened, as was his curls shaped and quaffed and kohl now played magic around his eyes.

Pulling him in under my arm, I whispered so that the seven onlookers would get the hint to leave my words alone. “For everything that is holy, if you’re dressed like that, have Adom see to my bathing. If you must participate, keep him from pulling my hair out, but I won’t be able to remain presentable today with you like this if you have to go scrubbing me.”

“Sire!” his voice cracked.

“Sorry. A bit of blunt honesty is going to keep me from having issues and you from having to deal with me having issues.” I released him.

He stayed in close rather than putting distance between us like I thought he would. “Do you want me to find other clothing? Is this too much? Retainers showed up with them from Adom’s personal tailor. I can tell him you felt it was too immodest.”

“Only if you aren’t comfortable wearing them for yourself. I can only imagine that it probably feels better on your wings, not having pressure on them.” I offered a middle ground. I had not expected Adom to have taken the initiative to see to Wash’s wardrobe. I would need to set a conference with him in discussing what I was responsible for in seeing to Wash and what the Temple would claim as their responsibilities to His High Husband.

“You dragged me out here during my lesson with the High Lecturn to tease me after not taking me to bed last night? Pharoah, if I was none wiser, I would think you the reincarnation of Setekh.” He tugged my necklace into shape as his eyes flashed fire.

“Not-not that I mean to tease. Just trying to forewarn you that I find you attractive and would rather the entirety of all the little old grandmothers who come for morning prayers to not get an eyeful.” I begged. His fingers were cool and decisive against my robes as he straightened me more so than Seth had already done.

“You could have found me attractive last night. There are ceremonies in the books and consider it is a sign,” he coughed, “a blessing of fertility if you end up – well – up during a ceremony. I might let you suffer.” He went to then straighten his own regalia out.

“You were tipsy on wedding wine, High Husband. I will not take advantage of you such that you can blame your actions or mine on the state you are in. That is no fashion by which to leave your concept of self-worth.” I helped him loosen the knots in his collar so as to relieve the itch the embroidery was leaving him in. “I’ll tell my tailor to insert silk backing in this if you come back to my rooms after the morning ceremonies.”

“I had plans for last night.” The rims of his eyes had gone red.

“And they are still entirely usable. If you want to have time with me, at least let our first not be with you inebriated. I’d rather you be able to tell me if you don’t like me doing something, rather than let the alcohol take over and you say yes to things you aren’t comfortable with.

“For now, though, if I keep you here much longer, Adom is going to come looking for what is keeping you.” I turned him toward the door before he could brood much further on the fact I had not bed him shortly after wedding him.

“I’ll keep that in mind.” He let himself out.

I sighed, debating on if I had done right by making him upset at me for the night before rather than the morning after.

Rituals proceeded in order and Adom did end up seeing to the bathing while Wash plated my hair with his gold threads. The change was a breath of fresh air and made the morning bearable.

Wash provided golden auras around the food when I blessed it. The practitioners murmured in reverent awe at the show of holy magic. I could hope tales would run rampant through the temples in the dome. If the nobility could be made nervous, this was a way to do it. More murmurs and elated gasps changed the tune of the Temple when the food reached practitioners’ lips.

“It’s warm,” Wash whispered to me with a soft smile as he watched one frail woman weep as she ate. I slipped a hand along the small of his back. His distraction with maintaining the warmth of the food left me able to help him without him running away. Smooth skin tingled at my fingertips. The care he put into thinking of warming the food to soften it for the elderly gave me great pride in him as a priest and a man I now called Royal Husband.

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Subgalaxia: Ch 26 – Finale

“Finally.” Fane breathed.  He buttoned a series of massive insulated plastic drapes that ran from ceiling to floor closed.  

“They were happy,” Ishan mused from the centre of the private space.

“And now we’re godfathers to how many little ones?” Fane fought to sound serious, though a smile pulled at his lips.

“Three boys and two girls makes for one hell of a litter,” Ishan chuckled, motioning to his husband.

“Two sets of identical twins.  That’s gonna be a handful for them.”  He softened to the sight in front of him.  He padded over, pulled his top off, and collapsed on the blue orb next to the object of his fixation.  He set a small black case down near the pillows. Blankets tried to alleviate the hard surface. Fane burrowed under the blankets to find Ishan bare to his birthday suit beneath it, save for the matching machined wedding ring. “Hello,” he whispered appreciatively.  He ran a finger down Ishan’s chest to circle his waist and pulled him close to savour a deep kiss.

“Ready to get this thing up off the ground?” Ishan whispered nervously.

“I’m leaving that part to the rest of the crew.” Fane nibbled along soft skin. “I’m going to enjoy my wedding night.”

“I feel like such an exhibitionist,” Ishan confided.

“No one can see you in here,” Fane tried to reassure.  He worked his way down Ishan’s chest, trailing fire along muscles.

“They can sure as hell hear us. That and the damn heat strips,” Ishan pointed out the sensors plastered to Fane’s skin.

“Labrat,” he muttered with feigned annoyance.  “I got you something so you can ignore the space,” Fane reached for the black case.  Ishan leaned over to get a look at the mysterious present. From within, the redhead pulled out an old mp3 player and a pair of noise canceling headphones.  “Yeller asked for them back at some point. He found them when we went looking for ammo before…” Fane trailed off. Memories of the battle were still fresh. Sleep had been better, but the terror was hard to leave behind.

Ishan reached for the player and scrolled through the music selection.  To his amusement, he found a playlist drawn up with his name as the title.  “What kind of fantasy has been playing in your head, lover?” Ishan smirked, his question not more than a gentle breath in the enclosed space.

“One where I get to watch you turn inside out,” Fane whispered back.  He pulled a bandana from his back pocket and held it up for Ishan to see. “Thoughts?” he offered.

“You’re really trying to get me hard,” Ishan smiled at the playfulness.

“That was the point, Muse,” Fane ran an appreciative finger up Ishan’s length, causing the man beneath him to shiver involuntarily.

“You’re gonna turn me into such a pillow princess,” Ishan quipped.

“I’m not hearing much of a protest in your voice,” Fane leaned forward and tied the bandana around Ishan’s eyes.  Ishan adjusted the fit before running his hands along Fane’s chest. A smile spread across his lips with anticipation.  “Now lay back and let me have my fun,” Fane checked the noise level before he carefully sized the headphones around Ishan’s ears and pressed play.

“You’re enjoying yourself,” Ishan whispered.  Fane kissed him over the comment. His husband went pliant beneath him, spreading himself wide for Fane’s adoration.  The orb beneath them hummed, casting the space in a gyrating sea of swirling blues. Fane ignored the call of warphole initiated as he explored Ishan’s body to the fullest.  “I found happiness,” Fane confided, the red bands around his arms glowing beneath the blankets.

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Subgalaxia: Ch 25

A sliding unease rattled Fane from his dreams.  He held his love close to him, tucked under warm blankets.  Ishan was breathing softly. Fane listened for a tell-tale sign in the darkness.  Silence. There had been no logical reason for his waking. He could not recall a nightmare.  His heart rate was not up. There was a nagging feeling of familiarity, though. One that brought back the metallic smell of the armoury in the basement of the palace.  He drew in a breath and waited.

It had been three days since the coming-of-age ceremony.  In that time, he had made preparations with a machinist to mill a pair of wedding rings.  He had left many of the finer details to Ishan for a wedding at sunset they planned to conduct the night before the launch of the Subgalaxia.  

He had gone out multiple times to ransack vacant houses in the St. Petersburg area in hopes of stocking a defensive armoury.  Small-scale weapons would not do much against the Grey Monster, but they were going to make their stand. He had been surprisingly successful in his ventures.  Though finding the skeletal remains of those who had died from what he came to realize as a biowarfare attack was unsettling. Several of the machinists, local to the area, filled him in later about what had transpired.  Many of those who had survived left the city shortly after. Looters could only carry so much, and many vacant houses sat undisturbed, perfect for scavenging.

They were supposed to have another three days before the creature arrived.  Something nagged, though. The slippery feel of slime oozed across his skin and set alarm bells blaring in his mind.  “Hey, Muse?” Fane whispered in the quiet. He pressed Ishan until the man woke.  

“Fane?” Ishan rubbed at bleary eyes.

“Get dressed and head down to the vault.  Grab everyone you can along the way.” Fane climbed out of bed and packed out his regular arsenal.  This was the first time in days that Ishan could remember Fane this type of sombre. He had reverted back to the quiet stoic.  Ishan grabbed up his over clothes and was dressed and heading out the door by the time Fane opened it for him.

“You sure it’s the monster?” Ishan whispered in the dark of the hall.

“No.  It might be all in my head,” Fane confided.

“Come back safe,” Ishan pulled Fane to him, hugging him fiercely.

“I love you.” Fane kissed him before they went their separate ways.  He slipped down the corridor and the stairs, his boots silent on the concrete.  A restless ache blistered across his scars. He made his way to the stash he had made to load out more to his kit.

A rumble underfoot set the rafters to creaking.  He looked up to watch shifting dust motes fall from I-beams.  “It’s here,” he whispered to himself. He slung a semi-automatic over his shoulder and grabbed up a bowie knife.  Thirty pounds of weaponry was a warm blanket wrapped around him, reassuring in its weight.

“You sure about this?” Bern asked at the door frame.

“Keep your grandson safe, lest you want me haunting you to an early grave.” Fane patted Bern on his shoulder as he made his way past.

“You come back alive.  You make my grandson cry, I will curse your burial,” Bern returned.

“Terms,” Fane called back down the hall as he eased out the door of the warehouse.  Another resounding thud shook the siding, sending the building shuddering like a rock in a tin can.  The air was a vibrating fume of blue rot. The stench of sulfur lay heavy on the ground. It swirled about his feet in swathes.  The horizon burned a sickly green, blurring a bloody dawn. He knew he was awake, but his reality tread too close to his dreams. Tentacles wiggled like maggots above the treeline to disturb the stinking fog.  A screech of death made him shiver.

“You shouldn’t be up here, Ishan,” Sun Hee protested.  Ishan stood in front of a small window in the warehouse and watched Fane walk out toward the trees.

“He’s going to get himself killed,” Ishan hissed under his breath.

“No, he’s going to face his demons.” Bern watched the scene solemnly.

“Why are the glendwellers not helping him,” Ishan accused, turning to Dietrik.

“He made us swear an oath to keep you safe.  We will not break a promise with a Shaman,” Heinrich supplied.  “We should be down in the vault, not up here,” he reiterated.

“Take me from this window, and I will show you hell,” Ishan cautioned.  He was bluffing, and they all knew it. They left him to his devices, all crowding around the tiny window.  They watched in awed silence as the Shaman brought down a curse on the land.

“What?  Do I have the song of the siren?  Sailors drowned from their calls,” Fane growled at the shadowy inferno hiding behind the tree line.  An answering bellow forced the trees to sway and crack. With practiced ease, he released the snap of the sheath at his back and pulled the knife as he ran for the undergrowth.  He palmed the Glock at his hip and used his knife hand to balance as he sighted on the massive target coming into focus.

An insidious fireball of an eye glowered down at him from within the canopy.  A compact hatchback would have easily floated within the pupil. The starburst iris restricted its focus to Fane’s darting form.  He had to fight the itch of worms wiggling beneath his skin as he caught the creature’s attention.

An icy cape exuded from the redhead as he ran, forcing the haze of sulfur to crystalize underfoot in yellow blooms.  “Please come back to me,” Ishan whispered. Fane lept as a tentacle crashed through the trees, sending leaves and mud flying into the air.  Electricity cracked in the clearing, and a flash instantaneously lit the air in a burst of blue flames. The shockwave hit the side of the building, forcing those around the window to take a protective step back.  A whip-thin length of grey-green flesh few out of the dense orange to thump against the window, leaving a dripping blackish purple ooze sliding down the double pane. A blood-curdling scream resonated through the building.

“Kill my people and give me nightmares!  I’ll shred you and take you apart piece by piece, you fucking calamari roll!” Fane seethed under his breath as he dashed and pirouetted under thrashing limbs.  He pulled up and out, slashing open tentacles. A wet heat brushed across his back, and the sting followed closely after. “Really?” He called out to the creature.  “You’ve done worse!” The acid of his void was nothing to the thin cut that had sheared his shotgun off his back. The maw of the creature opened wide, and a massive red orb of energy pulsed at the back of its throat.

“I wouldn’t try it if I were you, darling,” Fane smiled as he ran up the length of one of the creature’s larger appendages.  He dragged his dagger up the length and allowed ice and electricity to burn it from the inside out. The creature gulped back its tirade and shifted, trying to move its mass away from the sudden pain.

He jumped from the limb before a mass of tentacles was able to capture him.  He landed nimbly in a tree and sighted on one of the creature’s eyes. A soft breath steadied his aim, and he pulled.  Nothing. The bullet fell away from a shimmering field of gold.

“Oye, Yoda, didn’t anyone tell ya to stay away from the ‘roids?” Fane jumped back down into the fray.  He cleared the front conglomeration of flailing limbs to land just left of its massive teeth. The creature tried once more to open its maw and let loose its destruction.  A flash of silver beckoned in the night before being swallowed by the creature. “How does the saying go, you ugly grey alien? May the force be with you?” Fane smiled maniacally, a pin stuck between his teeth.  He flipped back and dropped between limbs as a fireball lit a shockwave in the clearing.

“The warehouse will come down on us.” Dietrik reached for Ishan.

“Fane won’t be able to get us out of the vault if it does come down on us,” Ishan snapped, his attention never wavered from his husband.  The flames had singed the blue fog, clearing the air. Leaves and broken branches smouldered in the underbrush, underlighting the horror of the grey monster.  A nauseating skull the size of a mansion pushed through the brush as a nest of tentacles wrestled over its back. Veins and muscles throbbed under the burn patches.

“You promised.  He neglected to make me swear.” Nat padded up to the group in barely more than a pair of hospital pants.

“Bloody hell, no. I almost lost you last time,” Yeller had turned ashen seeing his boyfriend in the flesh.  Fresh scars ran along Nat’s stomach and back. Ishan was stunned to see a pair of large healed scars in his shoulders like he had been hung up by meat hooks.  When he turned for a moment, Ishan was given a view of an extensive series of powermarks that ran across his back in henna brown. The difference between the pale white Nat in the void and the man in the real world was that his hair was a strawberry blonde, and he was covered in a dusting of freckles across the tops of his shoulders and arms and the bridge of his nose.

“They said glendwellers healed fast,” Sophia muttered, glaring at the scars.

Nat smiled with a glint in his eye.  “I won’t go breaking your handy-work, Sophia.”  He turned to Yeller and caught up his hand, “He did a lot for us, Yeller.  I’m making sure to bring him home.”

“You bring yourself back intact and whole this time,” Yeller demanded as he pulled Nat to him and kissed him harshly.  “Keep Tereza safe,” Cashia whispered. Nat hugged him back fiercely and escaped the building. Yeller stood next to Ishan in the centre of the window, now a place of honour as the others crowded around.

“I had watched Sven in Fane’s void.  He’s fast,” Ishan murmured.

“It’s not Sven that’s fighting this,” Cashia replied.

“You would allow Nat to go out into this?” Ishan blinked.

“He can do something that Fane hasn’t figured out yet.  He is a thought-stealer through and through. He can force our transformations.” Dietrik smile could have melted flesh.

“What’s he gonna do, take the monster’s dirty secrets and air them to the press?” Ishan’s heart was in his throat.

“They take the soul and anything they want in it.  Thought stealers can take over a being’s body. Rend tendons, break bones, cause insanity,” Cashia whispered.

“I pushed him after a particularly bad spell and stepped on his toes when it came to Yeller and Cashia.  He forced my shift and…shared a lot of what happened to him that sent him into that spiral. I ended up with bruises from head to toe for a day just by him touching my forehead.  The white streak is his doing,” Dietrick admitted. “He could have broken my ribs. I felt it deep in my bones that he wanted to, but he didn’t. Now I share his nightmares.”

“He still should have.  Would’a taught you to keep your foot out of your mouth,” Yeller hissed to himself under his breath.  “He pulled Cashia’s human form into the real world just because he was curious if he could.”

“That’s dark.” Ishan watched as Fane shouted at Nat.  Nat waived Fane’s worry away and approached the writhing nest of tentacles.  “God, I don’t know who’s scarier, my husband or your boyfriend. At least mine’s armed to the teeth,” Ishan muttered.

“The hell you doing out here, Nat!”  Fane spotted the freckled strawberry blonde walking into the field.

“I’ll stay out of your way, just thought I’d help!”  Nat smiled up at Fane’s bounding antics.

“Don’t go giving your boyfriend any reason for him to pound my face in!” Fane called back as he pushed a burst of ice into a limb.  The spot froze solid beneath him instantaneously. He slammed a spare blade into the spot, shearing the limb in half.

A pit dropped into Fane’s stomach when one of the thin tentacles shot out at Nat at high speed.  The man brushed it away before it could make contact. The creature withdrew from the touch, leaving a semicircle of cleared grass around him.

“What’d you do!” Fane called down.

“Rebounded its power back into it!” Nat called up as he stalked his way toward an unruly limb.

“That’s why mine’s scarier,” Yeller whispered back.

Nat reached a hand out and grasped onto one of the appendages and held tight, fighting with it in an overpowered game of tug-of-war.  Fane lept down from his position up in a hoard of limbs to cover Nat’s exposed body. Ishan grasped onto Yeller’s hand in fear. The limbs slashed in fury at the blockade, drawing blood across Fane’s back and legs.  The tentacle went rigid as the two talked quickly. Fane nodded and slashed at a flailing tentacle, slicing it clear of them. Nat pointed up toward the head and then pointed off to the side of the skull.

Fane stepped away from Nat and asked him one more question.  Nat deflected, yelling for Fane to go. Fane pressed a blade into Nat’s hand and turned.  The bodyguard pulled his way up the vast creature, making for the head as Nat had directed. 

“What are they doing?” Corbin asked pensively.

“Something a nuclear bomb could not,” Benj ground his teeth.  

Nat fell back from the creature to the safety of the building, ready to bolt for the door.  Yeller popped his head out. “The hell are you two doing?” he demanded, reaching out to pull Nat in.

“I have to stay out here in case Fane needs directions,” Nat yelled back over the din of the shrieking creature.

“What did you do?” Yeller asked.

“Found the damn thing’s weak spot.  It has ear holes like birds, just stupid times bigger.  I sent Fane up to one. Thing has a force field it throws up with fuel based projectiles.  Shooting it is futile. I don’t have the strength to take the thing down like I did with Michael’s wings, but I at least rattled its nerves enough to find something it didn’t like,” Nat smiled, his teeth gleaming malevolently.

“Right.  Get your butt in here if it gets worse.”

“It can completely level this tin can, Yeller.  It won’t matter where I am if it baulks from its fixation with Fane.  Only reason it hasn’t pushed farther than the woods. Fane’s what it’s after, and as long as he’s on it, the creature won’t move forward,” Nat cautioned.

“If we’re both dying at the same time, I’d rather die holding you, if I had the option, mo gra,” Yeller closed the door behind him.

Ishan fidgeted as he watched Fane dodge and dash across the beast’s limbs.  He practically floated across massive gaps of empty air. His knives flashed as he let them fly from his fingers, pinning some of the appendages to trees, rending others to ribbons.  Electricity coursed across his body, leaving him a vibrating white-blue. Everywhere his flesh touched, ice caused grey-green skin to mottle black and blister. “Why isn’t he shooting the bastard?” Ishan spat.

“Nat says it has a force field.  He’s probably saving the bullets for the brain in that ugly skull.  It’ll take more than one from those peashooters to affect that thing,” Yeller guessed as he returned to the window.  He related what the plan was from Nat to the rest of the group. Soon the machinists had emerged from the vault to crowd around the glendwellers to vie for a spot by which to watch the action.  Nat commanded from the ground, deflecting limbs that came near him with a warning touch. He acted as the guardian of the building while Fane scaled the massive height of the creature, constantly climbing upward.  The thing was panicking, swatting and bashing at Fane, the mosquito in its midst.

Purple-black blood ran wherever Fane was able to slash, tormenting the thing.  The sulfuric fog ignited in sparks across its skin every time it oozed forth from its orifices.  Electricity crackled across Fane’s skin, burning off the noxious fumes at every turn.

The prince was not aware that he held his breath as the man cleared the last hurdle and pushed forward to the side of the beast’s skull.  He stood next to it and was not more than an ant to it. Ishan guessed that he stood at least eleven stories up at that point, and yet the monster’s skull rose higher still.  Skin and muscle sloughed around the shattered teeth where the grenade had made it’s impact. Massive feral eyes kept track of Fane’s persistence. The crying shrieks that vibrated the rafters told them all that Fane had irritated it on his way up.  

Fane waived down to Nat who ran from the building at the signal.  “No!” Yeller pushed himself up against the window to watch with horror as Nat dashed to the monster.  The world outside the window dimmed as if a massive cloud suddenly blocked out the sun, throwing the scene into pitched red and grey shadows.  Fane disappeared in the sudden chaos.

“Where’d he go?” Ishan demanded, searching the ground and the writhing limbs.  He feared the creature had finally captured Fane.

“Used the cover of the shadows to disorient the thing and made for the ear, I hope,” Dietrik guessed.  A rattling crash sent uprooted trees and broken foliage flying into the air as a screech louder than before shattered windows starting at the far end of the warehouse.  Yeller pulled Hana under him as the other glendwellers grabbed their mate’s protectively. Bern wrapped around Ishan and took him to the ground to protect him in time for the window they stood in front of to burst.  The air pressure changed suddenly. Their ears popped, some ruptured at the distinct difference. Wind and mud and bark shot through the building like shrapnel in a hurricane.

They listened to the warbling scream of the creature as they all huddled together under the window.  “That better be that thing’s death rattle,” Zola hissed, her voice lost in the wind.

Minutes dragged by.  The building threatened destruction.  Chaos abounded. Ishan heart pounded hard enough that he could feel it pulsing in his wrists.  The putrid smell of sulfur, burnt and fresh, seeped into the cavernous warehouse. An unsettling stillness washed over them.  The wind and shrapnel cut out. “Is it over?” Sun Hee asked timidly.

“Oye, Yeller, come get your boyfriend!” they all startled at the sound of Fane’s voice shouting in the silence.  Yeller quickly unwrapped himself from Hana and popped his head up to the broken window to see what had happened. Fane supported Nat under one shoulder.  A bleeding gash ran across the younger man’s eyebrow. Yeller and Ishan pushed out of the crowd and fought with the warped door. The glendwellers, machinists, Ishan, and the scientists emerged into the horror of the woods behind the warehouse.

The rank stench of the creature was atrocious.  Its bowels had evacuated upon its death, leaving an oily sludge pooling beneath mountains of tentacles.  The monstrous skull and its remaining flesh lay atop the nest at an odd angle. Its massive eyes had gone glassy and unfocused.

Ishan and Yeller ran to Fane, who stood in a circle of the dead thing’s appendages.  “Is he okay?” Yeller called. “Are you okay?” Ishan pressed as they clambered over shark-skin rough hide.

“I’m all right.  Just light-headed.  It’s been a while since I was up and in human form for more than a couple minutes here and there,” Nat smiled reassuringly.  Yeller hefted him into his arms. “Princess hold much?” Nat teased.

“I put you over fireman style, and your internal sutures might burst.  You look healed, but I’m not trusting it for several more months,” Yeller kissed Nat’s temple and turned back to the warehouse.  “You did great, mo gra.”

Ishan approached Fane, who was bent over, puffing for air.  He was covered in a thin film of greenish-yellow muck and grey matter.  Red blood swirled in the gunk. “You got ‘im!” Ishan praised.

“I need a shower,” he smiled wearily as he led the way back over the tentacles, Ishan in tow.

“Is it really dead?” Ishan asked, looking back up at the gruesome sight above him.  The noxious sulfur was dissipating as the sun burned off the haze.

“It better be.  I went through all the ammo I had and all my knives to hack it apart from the inside out.  That was more disgusting in the real world than in my dreams,” he opened the door for Ishan.  A crowd of onlookers greeted Fane as he stepped into the warehouse. Cheers erupted, startling him.  He looked about bashfully. After several minutes of handshakes and congratulations, Sophia was able to drag him away to the medical ward to help get him clean, disinfected, and stitched up while the rest of the crowd filtered out of the building to get their fill of the grey monster and begin the arduous process of removing it’s carcass before it started decomposing.

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Subgalaxia: Ch 24

“Your armoury is crap, Corbin.” Fane regarded the miniscule stockpile in a make-do locker room near the medical ward.

Corbin leaned against a doorframe, watching the redhead meticulously clean guns, which apparently weren’t enough to keep the man happy. “Not like I own the military.”

“You could have.” Fane slid the mechanism back together on a Lasfair rifle.

“Figured dropping my money on preserving people, not killing them, was the better idea.”

“Well, here I am, trying to preserve your people, asking you if you have any way of supplying me with equipment.”

“You’re in a mood.” Corbin drawled.

“About to deal with the giant slimy thing from hell, and I have maybe a hundred clips and a box of blades to work with when nukes weren’t taking this thing down. Tell me how I’m not supposed to be in a mood.”

“This is the piss end of Old America. Flor-fucking-gia. Where there were more guns than people just as bad as Old Wales’ problem with sheep. You want guns. Go take a looksee. Probably come away with enough to supply a platoon if you just look up and down the street.” Corbin folded his arms across his chest.

Fane drew in a deep breath and let out a sigh, his shoulders sagging as he stared up at the ceiling, “I didn’t want to do that.”

“Not like there’s that many people still here. You feel that humidity? No one without a working AC’ll live through that in summer. We’re the only ones with a generator-driven AC for miles around.”

“You saying the humidity’s gonna keep me from taking a popcap to the heart?” Fane put away the cleaning kit and closed the locker doors, rolling the combo locks as he went.

“Why am I more nervous for someone who encounters you than your worry about going and finding an abandoned house has residents?” Corbin offered a teasing smile.

Fane returned the smile, his sclera going black momentarily.

Corbin regarded that look with one of contemplation. “You keep doing that, Sophia’s going to conduct an opthomology exam to figure out exactly why it does that when you go all murdery.”

“Hey, if she can explain why my hair grows a meter and a half every time I chop it off after I go play around in my void, I’d love that answer first before the eye thing.” Fane led the way out of the armoury.

“Don’t care for the long locks look? Seems like your grandpa-in-law and husband like it.” Corbin followed Fane into the medical ward.

“Not that I don’t like the look on other guys. Just some bad memories I don’t like revisiting.”

“Ah. Need it off your neck for a bit, huh?” Corbin motioned over one of the machinists who was sitting with a foreman babying a hand in a sling.

“What can I do for you boss?” she asked.

“You mind helping Fane out with his hair problem? It’s not part of your machinist contract, but I know you owned your own salon-“

“Stop you right there, bossman. I’ve helped him outta his hair three times in three days, and he keeps commin’ back with enough to make a wigmaker cry.” Tiffa held out a stilling hand.

“It’s getting annoying.” Fane nodded along with Tiffa.

“You just need it off you, right? Come back to dealing with your psychology about the problem later, right?” Corbin ran a hand through his own locks. Picking at one braid, he cocked an eyebrow at Tiffa.

“Uh-uh. No way. Rows like yours would be terrible for his scalp health. He doesn’t have the right texture.” Tiffa crossed her arms.

“Could do looser braids?”

Tiffa sighed, exasperated. “Fine. I’ll see what I can do. Then I’m getting back to my bench.”

“Thank you, Tiffa.” Fane followed her back to her work bench where she pushed him down onto her wheeled stool and stared at him for a solid minute. He shifted uncomfortably.

“You are hopeless, aren’t you?” She hissed, before pulling out a tin full of rubber bands. “This is gonna cause so much breakage. But, you have to have it off your head. You’d make my momma jealous with that hair, and you want it lopped off?” She opened one of her tool drawers and extracted a rat-tail comb from the back, and started segmenting out his hair. “You put it up like a pro, so what did you used to do when it was long before you started cutting it?”

“Braids at the side, bun at the back I’d wrap it all into if I didn’t have it down. Sorta like a psuedo-mohawk.”

“Well, now, that’s easy enough. Why didn’t you do that before you had me shave this down three times?”

“Because I just didn’t want it to begin with?” he offered.

“Well, looks like you’re stuck with it. Here, start on this side while I get the other, then we’ll be able to both get back to our regular jobs.”

“Sorry about this, Tiffa. Thanks again.”

She drew in loud breath. “I can’t get your rings done if I keep having to help you out of your hair.” Fane took segments of hair she handed him and worked on getting the curls tamed down. “What are you doing after this?”

“Apparently out to go restock the armoury.”

“Bernard and Benj left off to go see what they could scrounge. They’ve got walkies if you wanna meet up with them.” Tiffa made quick work of her side.

“Any requests for all the time I’ve wasted?” Fane offered.

“A bottle of perfume. What I wouldn’t give to not perpetually smell bearing grease. Don’t get me wrong. There’s a love I have for the bench, but every girl’s gotta have something nice to smell every once in a while.” Her fingers stilled as she started daydreaming.

“I would ask if you have a preference, but I’m not sure I’d know what I’m looking for outside of little glass bottles in bathrooms.” Fane wrapped a rubberband at the end of one braid.

“If I don’t like it, there’s enough women in this shop, and a couple guys, who’d probably trade me tools for it.”

Half an hour later and a full description on the finer points of perfume scents, Fane had his hair off his neck and was mentally ready to explore beyond the walls of the Subgalaxia compound, if only to not question what the difference was between bergamot and gardenia ever again.

“Benj, Bernard, respond, over.” Fane clicked across the walkie talkie frequencies until he got static and garbled words.

“Yes, Bern, it communicates across the air. Here, Fane. Over.”

“Which way am I headed to meet up with you?” Fane grabbed rope, knives, a hatchet, and a multipurpose wrench-screwdriver combo while Benj gave him directions.

“Heading out?” Ishan caught him before he left out the side entrance.

“Yeah, wanted to prepare for the tentacle god of death. Wanna come or were you still helping Sophia in the medical ward?”

“I was being a coffee go-for for the docs. Be careful out there.” Ishan kissed him on the forehead and waved him out the door.

He met up with Benj and Bernard two blocks over where they had a beat-up shopping cart half-filled with dry food, canned goods, gallons of water, and litres of soda. “Ya’ll have a nice stash going there. Anybody around to give you trouble?” He greeted.

Benj shook his head. “Haven’t seen anyone. Kinda spooky. We’d see some here and there when we made our way down from Oregonia. Dallas had quite a few, but even at that, people just tended to stay away from us. Save for a batch of doped up kids, but that was different.”

They led Fane into a section of the blocks of housing that contained a strip mall and bank. Most of the houses, most of the stores, anywhere that people would store things had been pilfered, but there was a point where the three men found that people had stopped breaking in to places. There had come a time when people had moved on from the town altogether.

The gun store in the strip mall was empty – the glass and bars were long since destroyed. Storage sheds another block over proved more fruitful. One shed had to have belonged to an apocalypse prepper. Fane ended up hunting down another two grocery carts that he lashed together and filled to the brim while he asked Benj and Bernard to look for a bottle of perfume in any of the other sheds, explaining his perdicament with Tiffa.

As they tore apart the storage shed complex, Bern and Fane discussed the finer points of life beyond Bern’s knowledge of the 17th century and the Subgalaxia compound.

“Tell me about your husband and wife.” Fane tore open another cardboard box and dumped the contents to find it full of baby clothes. He tossed them into one of his carts.

Bern stalled, thinking as he watched Fane strategically work his way through a shed that contained plenty in the way of children’s goods. “What do you want to know of them?”

“Did they have powers like us?”

“No. None of them did. But they came from lines that did. My first wife’s aunt had the white hair like me. Rory’s void was like yours, but he slept in his. He didn’t have powers.” Bern held up a breast pump Fane handed him.

“Set it in the cart. One of the machinists might be able to get it to work. It’ll help if one of the women can’t get their baby to eat.”

“What an amazing invention.” Bern stared at it in awe.

“Were there many who could do what we do? I mean, I know I’m weird, but you?”

“When Corbin took me from, it was Naibh – my wife’s aunt, me, and Eoin.”

“Just three? For an entire clan?”

“We had forty-eight blood relations and seventy incorporated, but yes, it was just us three. All blood relations had lines we could trace to the White Horses.”

Fane let out a low whistle as he found a Christmas tree box containing three more rifles and skeet targets.

“Will those really do anything to that creature living in your void? The one Corbin says is out in the world, swimming across the ocean?” Bern took the stocks and set them in carts.

“I’m not sure. If a nuke couldn’t do anything against it, I don’t know what kind of ammo would get through it’s skin.”

“How has your powers been since tattooing your soul?”

Fane rolled his shoulders. “Not really sure. A bit less – I don’t know how to explain – less like the underside of my skin is perpetually buzzing. Does that make sense?”

Bern nodded. “The tattoos act like a channel, giving the power a direction to flow in, sort of like a pile of wool and a drop spindle. You can pull and twist it yourself, but having the tool helps you get a much thinner, stronger thread.”

“Not entirely sure what a drop spindle is, but I’m assuming from the description your analogy is that my power is a giant pile of fluff that I’ve been trying to shape the hard way and you gave me the easy way by somehow introducing pain and getting my memories to work in the correct order.”

Bern blinked at Fane in confusion. “You don’t have drop spindles?”

“Uh….not that I know of?”

“Who weaves all your clothes?”

“Well, before the world ended, apparently, we had shops where people made them. So they probably did it. But most clothes are plastic anyways, so it’s not like most people can afford wool anymore.” Fane let out a woop when he opened up another box, this time of a nauseating floral pungency that yielded hundreds of travel size bottles of perfume. “Now Tiffa will forgive me.”

“By the very Forest floor that’s strong,” Bern gasped and backed up a step.

“Yep. Gonna drown out all the shop smells.”

Fane stalled over his carts, fingering the crumpled edge on a box of ammo. “Nat and I, we’re related, aren’t we? Some how? Why isn’t he as powerful as me?”

Bern found an a stash of old electronics and motioned Benj over to look at them. “I don’t know. His void isn’t like yours. Isn’t like…” The Fyskar sighed. “Isn’t shaped like Rory’s. He didn’t have the talent, but you do. Sophia explained the genetics thing to me. I find it phenomenal, but also confusing. It would me he had a child, though. Right? One without Fernella? You are related to him, and he never had anyone with her. Eoin took after me, and Ishan, from what Sohpia said, is a direct descendant from his line.”

“Sorry to bring up a sore spot.” Fane ducked.

“I’m not sure how to handle that information. To me, Eoin is only sixteen. It’s been not even ten years since Rory died of plague. And yet, here you stand, several hundered years later, the spitting image of him. You sound like him. Your void gives you away as one of his. I can’t just ignore that.” Confusion and dejection lingered on his features.

“You loved him a lot? Or was it one of those arranged marriages?”

“It was arranged, but I also deeply loved him and my first wife. I miss them every day. I remarried, but they also did not live very long. Talking to Sophia about them, my second husband had cancer. There was no feasible way I would have ever been able to save him, and in some way, knowing that his health was out of my control, does give me some comfort as an apothecary. Knowing that Berc’s mother – she was bed-ridden ever since giving birth to him – knowing that she probably had significant damage that I never would have been able to mend, not without Sophia’s technology, that too, I feel guilty for saying it, but that too, reassured me. But Rory and Fernella? Plague? Sophia showed me how streptomycin is made, and if I’d just known that, known about the other medicines? That in the right conditions, I could have given Eoin back his mother, kept Rory? What I wouldn’t give to go back and try. To have saved them.” Bern’s cheeks pinked, and his eyes rimmed red with that admission. “It’s hard, knowing that you’re his kid, grandkid, great. Knowing that he was unhappy enough in our relationship, whether it was me, or Fernella. That he went looking elsewhere and found what he was needing and I couldn’t be enough, or Fernella. It hurts immensely.”

Fane set a hand on the man’s arm. “You are not a failure here. Not in medicine, or as a spouse. You did what you could to the best of your ability. What he did was his decision, and it can hurt, but do not blame yourself for what he did.”

Bern drew in a hard breath and nodded once. Pulling himself to his full height, which was towering in Fane’s opinion, he returned to helping gut the inside of the storage units.

Four more lashed together shopping carts on the already existing ones, the three men made an ungainly trek back to the compound to offload materials. Tiffa and several other people from the shop floor distributed the box of perfume bottles and made the place reek, sending those not keen on the smell running for the commissary.

Fane roped Deck and Yeller in on bringing the boxes of baby supplies to the women who immediately pushed them back out the door and pointed them in the direction of the laundry room where they spent the rest of the afternoon trying to get the mildew out of too many baby socks. Benj had the breast pump taken apart, cleaned, and put back together in working order well before the other men had gotten through cleaning the mound of clothing and toys. Bern watched the gears in the pump work in fascination while Benj tested the tubing.

Taking a shift break from cleaning to go unload ammo, Fane found Bern following him to the lockers. “What’s up?” Fane slid his packs off his shoulder.

“I wanted to say that I’m glad I met you. Even if I’m upset with Rory at the moment, I wanted to say I see you in him. The man I cared for, and who cared for me. And that I’m proud that my grandchild, well, very great-grandchild, picked you, out of everyone he could have found, to handfast with.”

Fane, flustered at the praise, gave a lopsided smile in reply. “It’s funny, I never knew my grandparents, and really, I barely knew my parents, and you and I are the same age essentially, but I’m glad I got to know my in-law too and that he’s not a half-bad guy to boot.”

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Subgalaxia: Ch 23

Over the course of the ten minutes it took to clear his lungs of the liquid and his skin to come back to a normal temperature, Fane had time to sort through the memories he now could flip through easily.  It was all at the edge of his fingertips. Nothing hid from him behind walls and dark corners. He was not sure he wanted to remember everything now that he knew what it encompassed. The rest of the group helped clean out the pod and set the warehouse back in order during Fane’s inversion.

When he slid off the rack and reached for his bathrobe, a hand stopped him.  “Fane,” Ishan was staring at his back in worry.

“What?” he asked, trying to look over his shoulder.  

“You’ve got tattoos.  Sort of. I mean, they look more like really deep red scars without the skin damage aspect.”  Ishan traced the dragon face labyrinth on Fane’s back. Fane tried to see what he could of himself.  Shallow red lines well under his scars skimmed the edges of his shoulders. He twisted to look at his sides where more lines were sunk under his skin.  Then he noticed the thick lines on his biceps. He rubbed at them, only forcing the lines to show up brighter under his fingerprints before they returned to their sallow red.  

He looked up at Ishan and then to Bern.  Bern wiped at Fane’s back in curiosity and rubbed at his arm to see the lines darken and lighten under the pressure.  He spun on Ishan and plucked at his shirt sleeve. “Do you have them too?” he asked.

Ishan pulled the collar of his kurta over.  Bern peeked down the back of his shirt and then pulled it to the side of his shoulder to expose his upper bicep.  No lines were on his back, but matching bands to Bern and Fane circled his arms too. “What is this Bern? You didn’t tattoo me,” he stated.

“No.  I didn’t,” Bern poked at the band on Ishan’s arm in confusion.  “They’re wedding bands.”

“Wedding-” Fane started.

“-bands?” Ishan asked.

“You two got married in the void and didn’t invite everyone else?” Sophia pushed in on the conversation.

“I don’t remember the ‘I dos’, and I’m pretty sure I’d be squealing for joy if I did.  Do you?” Ishan asked Fane.

“I remember us discussing marriage back when I wailed on Heinrich earlier, but there was no priest to officiate,” Fane offered.

“You’re Catholic?” Ishan asked in confusion.

“Atheist. Mum was Catholic,” Fane shrugged.

“I’m a priest,” Bern offered in the midst of the interchange.

“Bern’s a priest,” Dietrick said at the same moment

“Oh, okay, same.  I was gonna say…  Wait. What?” Ishan turned from Fane to Bern.

“You promised each other marriage and then Fane opened up his soul to you in the most intimate way possible and you accepted him for all of it.  I was proceeding over his coming-of-age ceremony. The Fyskar I grew up with paint these symbols on your back during wedding ceremonies rather than during coming-of-age,” Bern offered.

“You’re a priest?” Fane demanded.  “I thought you were a Healer and I was a Shaman.”

“I deal with the soul of the Fyskar, so, in a way, I am a priest,” Bern admitted.

“You married us?” Fane and Ishan asked at the same time.

Bern and Dietrik exchanged a questioning glance.  Bern shrugged. “Congratulations?” he offered.

“Well, that was a short engagement,” Ishan muttered.

“I was sort of looking forward to the whole down the aisle bit,” Fane murmured.  Ishan turned to look at Fane with a raised eyebrow. “What? Having you witness my whole life wasn’t my idea of watching you walk down the aisle,” Fane admitted.  Ishan had a difficult time not smiling at that admission.

“There is a beach you showed me,” Ishan offered.

“Sunset or dawn?” Fane turned to him.

“This seems rather fast,” Sophia offered.

“Apparently we’re already married, so let me have my wedding,” Fane grouched at her.

“Why did I not picture you of all men wanting a wedding?” Sophia asked as they walked out of the warehouse.

“What? The scarred, short, ill-bred, foul-mouthed, military redhead can’t want to watch his partner dazzle with a fantastic backdrop and maybe some flowers?” Fane pulled Ishan in to walk side by side with him.

“Dazzle?” Ishan snorted.

“Yeah? You dazzle,” Fane pointed out.

“Why is Ishan dazzling?” Yeller asked at the door to the main compound.

“Get this, they got married,” Deck let his friend in on it.

“Looks more like he got baptized,” Yeller nodded at Fane’s still damp hair.

“And somewhere during that time, Bern presided over us getting married.” Fane held the door open for the rest of the group to walk into the building.

“You didn’t invite the rest of us?” Yeller quipped.

“Didn’t know we got married till we came back out,” Ishan added to the confusion.

“How did you get married and not know that you got married?” Yeller asked.

“The fainne posaidh dearg,.” Bern tapped his arm.

“Fainne bainise dearg?” Yeller checked his understanding.

“The crveni vjencani prsten showed up, Cashia,” Dietrik added.

“Seriously?  I thought you guys were doing stuff in the void, not actually branding.” Cashia closed the door behind them and followed Fane as he led the way to the medical ward side of the building.  “I’m amazed he’s up after that,” he muttered to Ishan as Fane opened the door to Nat’s room.

“We didn’t brand him,” Ishan explained.  Fane grabbed Cashia and led the way over to the hospital bed. “Why are we in here?” Ishan asked when everyone had crowded into the room.  Sven perked up to the greeting of all the men and looked up to Fane’s approach. Fane rested his hand on the wolf’s head and launched all of them into the void.

“What are we doing in here, Shaman?” Cashia asked, suddenly nervous.  Tereza emerged to wrap her arm around her husband’s waist.

“I won’t question time to see my boyfriend.” Yeller smiled as he hugged Nat behind Fane.  Sven shrugged and settled into a seat.

“I needed to talk to you and Tereza, and didn’t want to put you on the spot with everyone else.” Fane rubbed at the back of his head.  His heart was beating out of his chest.

“What’s with the lines?” Nat asked.

“Well, Dietrik was right.  You do have the red wedding bands.  Congratulations are in order, Shaman.” Cashia reached over to shake Fane’s hand.  Fane shook it bashfully before clearing his throat.

“Not those lines, the ones on his back.” Nat pointed.

“Cashia,” Sven cautioned, noting the marks Nat was interested in.

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Fane nodded.

“Well, let’s see ‘em.” Cashia spun Fane around.  

Tereza’s gasp had his heart breaking.  “Jian,” she whimpered.

“What’s the meaning of this, Shaman?” Cashia asked in a harsh whisper.

“Had Bern and Dietrik tattoo my soul for the coming-of-age ceremony.  It’s visible out in the real world too. He gave me a lot of people to look through for a pattern.  Found this one and resonated with his brand. Said he was a prior master. I can keep a shirt on out there when I’m around you, and in here too, if it bothers you, but I didn’t want to hide what I did from you,” Fane explained while Tereza traced a line across his back.

“You don’t need to do that, Shaman.  I am not so weak willed to ask you to.” Cashia allowed Fane to turn back around.  “You two would have gotten along.” The robust blacksmith smiled down at Fane sympathetically.

“Dietrik said the same.  I just…I didn’t know what type of relationship you had between you and this guy. Fire and ice, he called one of the components to the pattern.  I didn’t want to bring up painful memories carelessly,” he said.

“Thank you for your consideration, Fane.” Tereza’s gentle smile calmed his nerves.  “He was a good man. I worked for Liling, his wife, as a hand maid. She was always considerate of me and intervened when other men tried to harass me.  Cashia learned his blacksmithing from Jian.”

“I had a subtle impression, maybe it was just me jumping to conclusions, that he didn’t just teach him blacksmithing.  I have a bit of a past, and tend to assume the worst of things,” Fane tried to hedge.

“We enjoyed each other’s company.  Social circumstances left us at arms length in public.” Cashia took up his wife’s hand.  Fane leaned against the back of the chair behind him.

“He didn’t…” Fane trailed off, allowing his question to hang.

“Jian and Liling always let us say no if we didn’t want to do something.  They were good partners and good employers. I call them employers. They paid me for my blacksmithing services and Tereza for being a maid.  By the documents they provided us with, we were freemen. We stayed with them because they offered us protection from others who would have enslaved us readily, even with our documents.  Paper can be destroyed easily enough. Come, congratulations are in order for you and your husband,” Cashia motioned to Fane.

“You sure?” Fane asked once more.

“Perfectly, Fane. Thank you.” Cashia patted him on the back.

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Subgalaxia: Ch 22

Ishan stepped into a closet sized bedroom stuffed with a bunk bed, a dresser, and a crate of worn toys.  The sun cast orange rays on the brown shag carpet. Greasy wood paneling held onto the nauseating scent of tobacco.  Laughter alerted him to the door behind him. He eased the warm brass handle to peak out on a crowded birthday party filled with adults and children.  A little red-headed boy sat at the head of the table with the biggest smile on his face.

The apartment was tiny and squashed.  The kitchen had not been renovated since it’s installation in the ‘70s.  Linoleum cracked and splintered. The windows were coated with a yellowish brown film.  The laughter died.

Ishan glanced back at the table to see it empty.  He swiveled. The apartment dimmed. A girl lay on the sofa asleep.  The boy sat on the floor, his finger tracing bizarre lines in a notebook as he tapped pointed toes to a silent beat.  A woman in a soft daydress walked passed Ishan to look over the page. The boy pointed to a line and asked a silent question.  The woman thought about the line for a moment before moving the coffee table up against the wall. She had the boy stand next to her as she demonstrated a combination of movements in the cramped space.  The boy mimicked her. She clapped, happy with his effort. Her smile fell when she mentioned something to the child. The boy’s shoulders fell.

The room changed to a caravan.  The boy was growing like a weed.  He was tall and lean, with a shag of hair running amuck.  He had settled over the built in table with the girl to look over a tattered book.  A different woman sat across from them, carefully pointing out words on the page.

School yards and classrooms flitted around Ishan.  A ratty backpack and second hand books fell to a concrete pad, pencils scattering.  Kind and harsh faces of children and adults circled around him. One adult in particular, a man with a dark splash of brown hair slicked back caused a shiver to run down his spine.

Practice studios and gyms caught releveis and back handsprings.  His world was filled with movement, performance, and struggle. Frustration was growing though at the base of his spine.  His heart beat hard enough to make his skin prickle. The frenetic pace was nauseating. He wanted it to slow down.

“I wanted it to slow down too, but I didn’t expect the car wreck to change my path so drastically.” Fane stood before him as a ten year old with a bruised cheek and a set of stitches in his eyebrow.  A baggy blue cardigan, red tie, and worn white button up shirt hung about his frame. A shout drew their attention. Fane turned to the brown haired man and slouched. His footsteps crunched on red gravel as he walked to the black car where the man waited.

Ishan sat down on the expensive leather of the car’s back seat next to young Fane.  Nervous dread swamped the space. The boy leaned his head against the window and watched the sleazy part of the city slip by.  “I was numb to everything for years after that crash. The only thing that brought me out was being up in the air. Maybe it helped to put up so many walls.  Some memories aren’t meant to be shared, or remembered,” the boy muttered when the car came to a stop in an alley. Ishan followed the boy and the man into the back entrance of a building.  A low thump of a bass permeated the building. Ishan’s hands started to sweat at the sickly sweet odor that oozed from the coarkboards lining the hallway walls.

Muttering and the sound of plastic chips clacking together echoed behind a door they walked past.  The sound bounced around the hallway and followed Fane to the dressing room. Inside were several teens in varying states of costume dress.  Some were stretching out on the barre, others were helping apply makeup. “When mum and da died, Melody and I became his legal ward. Boss had made them sign us over to him if something were to ever happen to them.  We were collateral against their debts, even if it wasn’t directly in the paper.” The boy got dressed in a pair of black form fitting leggings, a long blousy white button down and a lightweight loose blazer. One of the faceless teens helped him apply a heavy eyeliner and slick his hair into ringlets with mousse.

Finished preparing, Fane stood and the room shifted underneath to a dimly lit stage with a series of poles across it.  Ishan sat back into a cheap padded theater seat. A body moved up next to him to sit down. He shifted over to let the person pass.  “Cops came here, you know that?” 

Ishan looked up to the older Fane he knew sitting down in the seat next to him.  “Fane?” Ishan asked, confused. He turned to see the younger version on the stage.  His fiance settled into the chair with a grimace.

Fane folded his hands to rest his chin on his fists.  Regarding the stage with a sneer, he pointed to a robust brawler in a relaxed suit. “The one over there, left of stage, was the Chief Superintendent.  Three inspectors are off behind my right. New guy and two veterans. My homeroom teacher is up at the bar with the principal. The Commissioner is in the backroom playing poker with the Secretary of State for Transport and Lord President of the Council.”

“Is this a sting?” Ishan asked hopefully.  Fane shook his head, his eyelids lowered to half to watch the stage in cold indifference.  “What happens next?” Stones settled in Ishan’s stomach.

“Melody could draw in consistent regular customers every day.  I could command a packed house with standing room only and a line out the door in a heartbeat.  It got so bad that Boss started making my nights by reservation only and cover-charge was doubled.  I never understood it. I hated it. Who’d show up like that to watch a boy dance? Now I know. It was that blasted call.  Watching my memories…it all fits.  

“As long as I could lose myself in my dancing, I could ignore the creeps, pretend to be in a different world.  I could imagine getting away from there and what I knew would happen when my stage time ended for the night. That was my downfall, though.”  A self deprecating laugh escaped his grim lips as he continued to watch his younger self. The youth practically floated across the floor, his steps feather light and his technique on par with professionals in a national company.  The space radiated a pure warm joy that could melt hearts.

“Heard of a kiddy ring?” Fane asked morosely, breaking the awed silence of the enraptured theater.  Ishan’s hands trembled at the question. “I learned early not to trust cops, politicians, teachers, authority figures.  They’d take what they wanted regardless of me begging and crying. Learned to quit crying. Learned to quit begging. Learned to stay quiet.  To get it over with faster. To please those around me to make them go away. My sister and I, after our parents, our guardians died, were nothing more than dolls, toys, something to use up and toss to the side.  I served a purpose and that was other people’s pleasure,” he muttered, his eyes going silver on black as the theater began to chill. The stage shifted around the dancing youth as dank backrooms, dressing rooms, back seats in cars, and box seats at the top of the theater rotated through the stage.  Each one filled with men and women, groups and cameras. Money changed hands again and again. He continued dancing through the scenes, growing older, growing taller, ever a commodity for the brown haired man. He watched his life of horror scroll across the raised floor like a sick flip book. Ishan shifted, fought to drag his mind away from the sight.

They came up in Fane’s dressing room in the void.  Bern and Dietrik were working the soft spot over the kidneys.  Bern glanced up to Ishan when the man dragged in a wretched breath. “I need a moment,” Ishan admitted to the men.  Bern and Dietrik laid down their sticks and helped Fane sit up. “Do you want all the way out?” Fane couldn’t look up from the floor.

“Give me a sec,” Ishan pleaded.

Fane cowered against the words.  He had been opened up under the pain.  The sharp heat had flayed his skin and gutted him.  He had no control over the memories that seeped out of him with every puncture mark.  They tumbled out of him in torrents. He could do nothing to stop their procession.

“I’m sorry,” Ishan sniffled.  Fane finally looked over to his fiance.  Tears dripped around fingers that hid Ishan’s face against the head of the table.  “What am I supposed to do with this information, Bern?” He wiped at tears that refused to stop.  “How am I supposed to help him?”

“You are helping him.  Is it coming to you in chronological order?” Bern asked as he started preparing another batch of ink.

“Yes,” Ishan leaned back in the chair and stared up at the ceiling.

“I’m sorry you had to see that, Ishan,” Fane apologized.  He made a move to leave the table.

“I’m sorry I made you show me.  That can’t – that can’t be easy.” Ishan reached over and laid a hand on Fane’s thigh.  

Fane startled at the contact and looked down on the hand.  He eased back to the table and reached for the heat, engulfing the digits in his own.  He brushed his thumb along Ishan’s long fingers in quiet thought. “I’m not directing it.  I would keep these things from you. We can stop,” Fane offered.  

Ishan shook his head, wiping tears on his arm.  “I just need a bit of time. Zephyr told me you butchered the men in Sanguis and I have to settle everything else I just saw before I see that,” he admitted quietly.

“Do you need to switch out?” Deck offered.

Ishan sighed in thought before shaking his head.  “No. It’s okay. Thanks, though. How are you holding up, Fane?”

“Been better,” he turned back to lay down on the table.

“Ready?” Bern asked.

“If Ishan is,” Fane dragged in another breath and resigned himself to opening his life up to his boyfriend.  Bern and Dietrik glanced up to Ishan to wait for an answer.

“I have one question before I dive back in, Fane.” Ishan placed his hands on the back of Fane’s neck gently.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“The void is supposed to be the place you find comfort.  Why does yours look like this, if so many awful things happened to you here?” Ishan leaned his head on the back of Fane’s.

“The stage out there is different.  Even this room is different from my memory, if you look closely.  These were my dreams, when I’d be free from the boss. I wanted my own stage, my own dressing room, my privacy.  I loved being an aerialist. I could escape when I was up above the stage. It was only ever when my feet was on the ground that the world turned itself inside out.  My parents made bad decisions financially. My home life could have been better, but they passed onto me their pure love for dance. I’ve never been able to throw that away.”  Fane shifted uncomfortably as Bern retraced a line of paint.

“Is this – is this why you were so drastic when you retrieved my niece?” Ishan was barely able to whisper the question.

“I didn’t remember my childhood before seeing her.  Maybe there is something ingrained in me from that time.  No child should be subjected to such a cruel fate.” Fane settled both his hands over Ishan’s reassuringly.

“Shall we continue?” Dietrik took up his tapping stick.

“Ishan?” Fane asked.

“I’m ready,” Ishan bowed over Fane’s head protectively.

Needles punctured.  Pain shattered Fane’s precarious hold on the void.  He fell into the pitch depths of his own memories. They crashed around him in cascades of black and red.  Ice and shadow ripped through him, breaking open every scar and brand. Razors ran across his brain in malicious stripes.  The stinging burn drove the flow mercilessly. He was left to float forward, ever forward through eddies and currents of jumbled thoughts and experiences that slowly stitched themselves together in a coherent torrent of terror and anguish.  Time trudged along the murky shallows. It staggered , plunging him further into the recesses of nightmares he had not visited in years. All along the way, Ishan held him tightly, keeping him from drowning.

Numb and frozen, Fane washed up on the shore, Ishan wrapped around him protectively.  Opening his eyes, he came to in the dressing room of his void. His skin was on fire and tears were streaming down his face.  He dragged in a broken breath and shifted.  

“Shaman?” Dietrik asked at the movement.  

“Am I alive?” Fane gasped against the shrieking electricity snapping across the full length of his back.

“Your heart still beats and your void still exists,” Bern replied.

“I feel like death,” he muttered as he shifted to sit up.  Ishan eased him up until he was sitting fully upright. “Are you…are you okay, Ishan?” Fane finally looked up.  Ishan was pale and shaken. He nodded mutely. “You’re not okay,” Fane stated.

“I’d hug you, but you look like you’re in pain,” Ishan placed his hands carefully on Fane’s pants, wary of the red lines that ran along his sides.  Fane pulled him into his embrace and held him until Ishan softened. “Let’s get out of here. Bern, are we done?” 

“I’ve never tattooed a person’s very soul before.  We’ll find out if it worked when we get out of here.  Otherwise, we’ll need to find a way on the outside.” Bern set the tattooing sticks on the table.  He and Dietrik were haggard and worn. Deck had fallen asleep on the couch. Fane could sympathize.  He wanted to curl up in bed and sleep for a month, preferably a dull, dreamless, sleep.

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A Meeting

“So, what did he do to you?” A young, white-haired man asked over the coffee table.

“Do you really want to know?” The redhead grouched, flicking a glance to the brass bell over the door ringing. A tall man, the type with padded muscle who would never look like a bodybuilder but could bend steel, ducked a nod in their direction. Black hair fell around his shoulder as he pulled a small chair out from the table and settled into it.

“Hi.”

“You must be Dmitri?” The redhead cocked his head to give the man a once-over.

“Um…yeah. Kinda weird hearing someone use it. Call me Lunam. It’s what everyone does.” He glanced between the two men’s coffee cups. “Are you Eoin and Fane?”

“I’m Fane, that’s Eoin.” The redhead flicked a finger for the server. The tiny woman beamed a smile and nodded, letting them know she would be over.

“Hi.” Lunam swallowed again.

“Seen the other guys?” Fane asked.

“Merin, Tylwyn, and Thaddeus? Not yet. Oh, and the couple of new folk too. Roman said he’d have to miss for the night.” Lunam gave the server his order for black coffee and a sticky bun.

The clock was overly loud in the silent bubble as they all stared at each other and the change in the group dynamic. “Fane was just about to tell me what Author did to him,” Eoin tried to open up the conversation after the twentieth tick.

“Gave me a terrible childhood, ptsd, and a fucking tentacle monster is what he did,” Fane hissed. “Well, not the fucking part. Wasn’t that type of story. Heard that was Merin’s story. Dark. Action. Adventure. Hot boyfriend turned into hot husband, so would like to not complain entirely, but jeez, Author has a dark spot.”

The bell on the door rang again. This time a twig of a man with strawberry blond hair down to his shoulders joins them at the table.

“Nat!” Eoin’s smile broadened.

“Gonna need a bigger booth.” Fane motioned for everyone to shift over to the large booth in the corner now that they knew they had enough people for it to be polite.

“Hey, Fane, good seeing you again. Nice to finally meet you, Eoin.” Nat shook the white-haired man’s hand.

“And you,” Eoin’s smile could break hearts.

“So, is Author done with our stories then? He’s moved on to other people, new stories. Feel like we’ve kinda been waiting for a while.” Nat slipped into the chair rather than the booth that Fane, Lunam, and Eoin had already slid across.

“I heard something on my end recently,” Lunam kept his voice low.

“The Egypt-Japan thing?” Fane regarded the black-haired man warily.

“Yeah, well, kinda. I mean, The Library of Thoth is supposed to reference things that’ll get expanded in three more books with a big conclusion regarding Corbin and yours and Ishan’s fate. I’m supposed to be doing something in this upcoming story, but Author’s not sure if he wants me to be speaking in it or having Temp translate.”

Eoin rubbed a hand across his head. “Not more italics.”

“Yeah, more italics.”

“That one is always a pain in the ass. Tell Author no. Don’t do it. Go with the translating.”

Fane perked up. “What’s wrong with italics?”

“Everything.” “Formatting.” The two answered simultaneously.

“So, is that whats-” Fane was interrupted by another bell.

In ducked a shaggy-haired blond man with a multitude of glowing blue circles spiraling across his hands and disappearing under his long-sleeved white shirt. Fane waived him over. “Merin! Over here.”

“Hey,” Merin’s response of nerves was almost mirror perfect to Lunam’s.

“Welcome,” Eoin smiled.

“Oh, woah. I thought Author shot your throat out? Sorry, that was rude. Nice to finally meet you, Eoin. Um…Lunam, Nat, Fane. We still waiting on more or someone pop over to the bathroom?” He cast a glance toward the far end of the cafe where an alcove hid a pair of doors.

“In my main story with Fearchar and Seonaid, I’m mute. My internal monologue, so me here, is the one before getting my throat shot.”

“Huh, okay.”

“I hear tell Author is stumped with your story.” Lunam regarded Merin with a raised eyebrow.

“Rushed a…um…” Merin coughed, cheeks going bright red, “rushed the intimate scene and didn’t have a plan for after that because the battle with Keris was actually supposed to be part of the climax, and I was supposed to meet with my progenitor before that, but no, Author went and got himself stuck up a tree mucking about with a perfectly good storyline. So, now he’s been sat in his chair staring at his computer demanding I give him something to work with, and I’m over here going ‘you’re an idiot, Author, and it’s showing’.”

All the men let out a heavy sigh of shared exasperation.

“He does that.” “Why does he always?” “Story. Line. Storyline, you dunce.”

“The guys from the short stories have at least been enjoying their time in the sun,” Nat offered.

“I heard Author is sad about those. He was enjoying his time playing with those but was getting annoyed that he couldn’t get anyone close to him to read any of his bigger pieces. That he was feeling used.” Lunam supplied.

“Feeling used, yeah. But who the hell wants to read gay stories by a trans author? Especially with explicit stuff. It’s just not what normal people palette.” Merin crossed his arms over his chest, his lights fading.

“He finds it a good way to figure out conversations with people, and the stories are stuck in his head,” Eoin placated.

“Author left you with Marduk. How are you even okay with the situation?” Merin shot back.

Eoin rolled his shoulders. “It’s the story that needed to be told. I don’t hold it against Author.”

“You are amazingly forgiving,” Fane growled.

“You sound ticked.” Lunam motioned for the server for a refill.

“The way Author plays, he’s gonna do something mean to Ishan, and I’m not looking forward to it,” Fane hissed.

“Mean is a soft way of putting it.”

“Ya’ll have some bad stories?” Merin took a sip of coffee from a fresh mug.

“Who doesn’t when Author gets involved?” Nat muttered.

“Don’t think he has anything bad planned for me.”

“Not that he has anything planned right now anyways,” Lunam sighed, turning his focus to the gridiron and plaster ceiling.

“Took a pretty good hit to the feels recently?” Eoin guessed.

“Not recently. The rejection dysphoria hit pretty hard last October or September, I think. You know, you get a nice handful of people who are pleased with the writing, and then just a couple negative comments completely crumpled him. He needs to get a thicker skin. Seriously, not everyone is going to like a person’s writing.” Marin frowned at his coffee, grabbed a salt shaker and added in the crystals.

“Heard he did another stay at the hospital,” Lunam provided.

“He got that AVM resectioned; seizures show up again?” Eoin retrieved the salt shaker before Marin could twist the cap off and dump it.

“Hey!” Merin protested.

“You’re part-Kraken; doesn’t mean you have to eat all the salt in the restaurant.”

“So, why hospital?”

“Oh, he’s been trying to pin down some bad dizzy spells. Saw a heart doc who said it wasn’t his heart and wasn’t sure if it was disautonomia. So, he went to visit with the neurologist, you know, to do a follow up on the resection and talking to the guy, comes to find out he’s got chronic migraines. That led to a nice round of trying out medications. Had an EEG. No more seizures, at least. None that could be triggered anyway. One of those meds landed him in a hospital because of a bad stomach ache. Nothing learned at that point, but a couple weeks later ended up back in the same room with the same docs and getting a lovely diagnosis of colitis. Which got him admitted overnight and triggering his ptsd.” Merin gave the other men the run down.

“Bad stomach ache was the colitis, I guess?” Fane asked.

“No, called it pelvic congestion syndrome, which got him spiralling on a different ptsd avenue dealing with reproductive organ docs. That one’s gonna be fun. He just wants the organs out entirely so no one can go mucking with them anymore. Has enough dysphoria to deal with on a good day. Then there’s the politics going down. He thinks the docs are wrong about the pcs and instead firmly believes it was the med that had a warning about excessively bad stomach aches. I don’t know which to believe, but at least another episode of ptsd going off the charts will narrow down one or the other.”

Eoin sighed. “I can understand why Author is struggling to get a story out.”

“Doesn’t help he’s dealing with trying to get an Etsy business up and running along with general house care, cooking, and education,” Merin tacked in. “Apparently, the med giving him the stomach ache at least let him have a level of productive focus he hadn’t seen in years.”

“I thought Author was doing Line and Substance editing. Why is he trying to open up an Etsy site?” Lunam tipped his empty cup in hopes it wasn’t as empty as it was.

“Was. Doesn’t trust people to actually read the contracts. Doesn’t want to deal with people complaining about commas when what he does is look for repetitive grammatical patterns. Pretty much is just not sure how to advertise his services. Wants to do the work, but with all the medical and personal life stuff going down, doesn’t know how to carve time to do what he’s good at. And doesn’t want to keep doing free stuff because it just adds stress, and ‘if he’s going to be stressed, he might as well be paid to be stressed.'” Merin slid down in his seat.

“Uh, that’s just giving up on yet another idea. He does that a lot,” Fane grouched.

“I don’t think he wanted to give up on this one. He doesn’t know how to advertise his services, and-“

“Those are excuses. He can do the editing. He can get another social media account and actually advertise. He’s not trying hard enough.” Fane slammed his cup on the table.

“He doesn’t even know how to try. So he’s making an effort at something tangible,” Lunam came up to the defence.

“What a waste,” Fane muttered.

The conversation stalled at that. Merin finished his coffee and pushed his mug to the center of the table so the server wouldn’t come back and refill it. “What are we going to do about the stories? I want mine finished. And if anything, Author does always give us a happy ending.”

Nat sniffed at that. “Ruben would like to have a word with you on that.”

“You did get a happy ending, just in Fane’s story,” Eoin pointed out.

“I don’t know. He seems keen to work on Tynwyn and Jaegar’s stories at the moment. He’s got other story ideas, like an expansion of Roman and Jule’s world.” Lunam set his mug next to Marin’s.

“He likes the honeymoon phase of his stories, doesn’t he? Author likes developing chemistry between us mains and our LIs. Then he actually has to get a story down and hits a brick wall,” Eoin snickered.

“Slow writers are slow,” Fane bemoaned the fact.

“Eh, ten weeks on my story, so I wouldn’t say he’s slow,” Lunam smiled.

“Lucky. He wrote mine for a decade and a half before he brought you in and finally figured out how he was going to finish it.” Nat pointed at Fane in a blaming way.

“What about Jian’s story? Is he going to work on that for Cashia? I remember him mentioning that once.” Eoin stacked his mug on Lunam and Merin’s.

“I don’t know. He wants to do the Glendweller’s arc, but having so many other stories already active and dealing with all the other regular life stuff, he hasn’t figured out more than a paragraph worth of an outline,” Fane provided, finally dropping his gruff persona.

“Wanna go see what’s taking the rest of the guys so long? If they’re at the coffee shop across the street, I’m gonna laugh.” Merin scooted out of the booth to let Lunam out.

“Might as well go on a look-see. About time for dinner anyways.” Nat got up to follow Merin, whose blue lights were glowing merrily.

“Is he still trying to learn Gaeilge?” Nat opened the door.

Fane rolled his eyes. “Wants to. Keeps getting a few weeks in at a time, then getting off track. Wants to keep up with Japanese and Scots, and on top of that, wants to take up Danish, French, German, oh and Welsh. Can you imagine? He needs to figure out where his focus needs to lay.”

“Hurray for neurodivergence,” Lunam sighed heavily, closing the door behind the group.

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Subgalaxia: Ch 21

“What?” Fane opened the door to Sophia’s banging as Ishan pulled his kurta on.  Sophia tripped forward through the door frame, startled at the sudden change. Ishan tossed the black compression top to Fane.

“The orb connected fully!” she boasted excitedly.  Fane pulled his shirt on over his head as he raised a suspicious eyebrow at her.  Realizing what she had done, she turned a soft shade of pink as she glanced between the two men and then to the room as a whole.  “The fuck happened to the footboard? And the floor?” she demanded when she saw the bent metal and melted linoleum.

“You said it.” Fane grabbed up his boots and exited the room.

“How hot can you get?” she asked.

“I appreciate the compliment, but I’m taken.” Fane encouraged them to walk down the hall with him.

“Oye! Not what I meant, and you know it!” Sophia stocked after him while Ishan locked the door behind them.

“Give me some thermal strips or whatever next time, and I promise I’ll wear them for you, labrat,” Fane offered.

“Really?” Sophia could not hide the excitement in her voice.

“Long as you don’t come pounding on the door next time,” he forewarned as she caught up with his quick steps.

“Promise,” she conceded.

“Where are we going?” Ishan called after the two as they descended the stairs.

“Off to find Bern, as usual.  A thought occurred to me while I was getting dressed,” Fane offered.

“You’re gonna do the ritual, aren’t you?” Ishan slipped his hand in Fane’s.  

Fane squeezed it reassuringly.  “In a way.” He led them to the cafeteria where he found Bern and Dietrik in close conversation over cups of coffee.  “Perfect. Now I don’t have to find both of you,” Fane announced, startling the two. He let go of Ishan and went to grab a couple paper cups of coffee.  Ishan and Sophia sat down at the table with the Glendweller and the Fyskar. Fane set one of the cups down in front of Ishan before seating himself.

“How can we help you, Shaman?” Dietrik asked amiably.  Both he and Bern were edgy and stiff. Fane could guess why.

“I want to do the coming-of-age ceremony.” He sipped at the lukewarm liquid.  Dietrik and Bern turned to him, shock smeared across their faces. “Is it necessary to conduct such a ceremony in the physical plain?” he persisted.  Dietrik furrowed his brow at the question and turned to Bern.

“How do you mean?” Bern in turn sipped at his coffee.

“Conduct it in the void.” Fane finished off his coffee, making a face at the bitterness.  He still didn’t care for the stuff, but he wanted the caffeine. Bern and Dietrik shared a silent communication of questions across their faces before Dietrik shrugged at the unknown.

“I have never dealt with tattooing or branding an individual in the void,” Bern said.

“I could not answer if the Bai had ever tried it during my service,” Dietrik added.

“The pain is the point of the exercise, correct?  Something to open up the memory. I understand from when I took the music from Yeller, that it caused him pain.”  He fiddled with the paper cup, pushing in the sides nervously.

“It is worth the attempt,” Dietrik nodded to Bern encouragingly.

“And the monster?” Ishan pressed.

“We stop if it surfaces and continue when it is calm?” Fane offered, hopeful.

“I don’t like either of these options,” Ishan admitted.

“Is it even necessary at this point?  We got the gate open,” Sophia pointed out.

“Maybe more necessary than you’d think,” Corbin pulled a chair out from the table and joined in the conversation.

“You were messing with satellite images last I left you.  See something interesting?” Sophia asked.

“Grey Monster floats.” Corbin slid a print off across the table to her.  She held it up to look at the foggy blue and grey image carefully. Grotesque tentacles spread across the surface of choppy water.  A black and white ruler running along the edge of the paper provided an unbelievable scale to the creature.

“Where’s it heading?” Sophia handed the paper back to Corbin.

“Across the Atlantic.  I have a program running to predict its destination.  The current landing point is Carolina.” Corbin pulled a cheap pen from his pocket and drew a makeshift line of the East coast and a couple rough lines across the sheet to emphasize his point.

“Think it’ll head our way?” Ishan asked the question everyone in the room did not want to know the answer to.

“It made its way to the New Punjab the day we collected you.  It’s been trampling around Asia and Africa for two years with no motivation to swimming.  It is now making its move for America. Wanna guess at what I’m thinking?” Corbin leaned back in his chair to regard Fane.

“I’m bait,” Fane supplied, unsurprised.  Corbin nodded. Bern went to protest, but quieted under Dietrik’s gaze.  “How long till the ship is finished? And are we going before or after the children arrive?”

“Sibor told me this morning that she expects two weeks at this rate,” said Dietrik.

“The ship still has three weeks, at least,” Corbin chewed on the pen cap in contemplation.

Fane rose from the table and took Ishan’s and his empty cup to the trash can.  “And the Grey Monster? When will it arrive?” He couldn’t face the room at the question.  His heart was in his throat. He could not forget the feeling of slime across his skin from the morning when Corbin and Sophia had rescued them.

“The current calculation is predicting five days to make the full crossing.  If it is dead set on coming here, tops seven days.” Corbin took his and Sophia’s cups and joined Fane at the trash can.

“What’s been thrown at it?” Fane leaned against the wall.  He wasn’t sure what was to be done to keep everyone safe.

“In the beginning, when it was first freed, it was so fast and all-encompassing in its destruction that no one had time to prepare.  Too many of the large first-world nations with the technology to destroy it were gone before they had time to formulate a plan. By the time reports were coming in, so many had died that there was very little documented as to what it was attacked with,” Corbin admitted.

“Someone knew that Ishan and I had died by the plate in my head.  You said that. There were enough people left alive for you to get that documentation,” Fane pressed.

“Drought and bombings.  They nuked it several times.  Then those that had been left out, bombed us, everyone else.  No one knew where the Grey Monster came from. Profiteers saw an easy way to control the population in the panic and confusion.  We’ve been dealing with the fallout since then,” Deck supplied quietly. Corbin nodded in agreement.

“What is there to be done then if it comes this way?” Ishan asked.

Corbin turned back to the table.  “Fane needs to go through with the ceremony.”

“You think his abilities can kill the thing?” Ishan brushed back his hair in thought.

“We are not equipped for all-out war, let alone a small skirmish.  He’s our best bet.” Corbin returned to his seat.

“Where do you suggest we try this, Dietrik?” Fane turned the decision over to the Glendweller.

“If it’s in your void, it probably doesn’t matter,” he shrugged.

“Coldest spot you’ve got, Sophia?” Fane asked.

“I could put you in a cryo-chamber?” she offered.

“Colder than the freezer?” He thumbed back to the kitchen’s backrooms where a massive industrial freezer contributed to the low hum of the building.

“Drops the brain to -72 C in three minutes. I won’t have you at that cold, but still,” she shrugged with a nod.

“I don’t have to be plugged into one of those, just lay in it, right?” he asked.

“It’s the liquid you’re lying in, not the chamber itself necessarily,” she rubbed at the back of her head.  She gazed at the picture in front of Corbin.

“Do you have spares available?”

“Several.”

Ishan cleared his throat.  “You sure about this, Fane?”

“Nope.  Doesn’t look like I have too much time to make up my mind, though.”

The tank warehouse was creepy.  He had seen it momentarily back when Bern had given them a tour of the compound but had avoided it since.  Sterile, sealed racks of large pods glowed blue in the dark. Motors and pumps whirred in the background, providing a hair raising din to the already strange space.  Naked sleeping bodies floated in the blue-lit liquid, not relieving that horror house vibe. A series of drained pods were near the front of the warehouse. With quick work, Sophia had one laid out and open.  She hooked hoses up to it from an individual tank. Fane stood in little more than a medical bathrobe and disposable booties, having been cleaned to within an inch of his life in a bio-radiation level shower at the front of the warehouse.  He, Bern, and Dietrik watched her work while Ishan walked the length of the warehouse.  

“Ready?” she turned to Fane.

Fane shrugged, staring at the empty pod.  “Probably as close as I’ll ever be. What do I need to do?” he asked.

“Lay down, get comfy.  Close your eyes and put these on.  It’ll keep your eyes from freezing and getting your eardrums messed up.” She offered him a pair of thick goggles that fit to his eyelids and tight-fitting earplugs.  “You don’t get to have the luxury of being asleep for the next bit. Try not to scream about the cold.” She held a myriad of chords that were hooked up to machines to keep track of his heart and his oxygen.  He sucked in a breath at the already chill warehouse and pulled the bathrobe off. He sat down on the edge of the pod and kicked off his shoes. She stuck him with more sticky dots. He worked the earplugs into his ears before pulling the goggles over his eyes.  This was going to be the closest thing he would ever get to a sensory deprivation pod.

“Might be better for you if we get into your void before she starts running the frost cycle,” Ishan offered as he came back to the pod.

“I’m good with that option,” Fane said emphatically.  He shifted his feet and slid into the form-fitting chamber.  He arched against the cold of the plastic against his back. “Jeez!” he cringed.

“Told you.” Sophia shrugged indifferently.

“You’re bedside manner sucks,” Fane growled behind a gasp.  He was having a hard time getting control of his breathing.

“Reason I never went into general practice,” she smirked as she cranked a knob on the tank.  A viscous blue liquid glugged in the pipe before it seeped into the chamber at a snails pace.

“He’ll breathe the liquid in if you can keep him down long enough to take it,” she offered.   Ishan took one of Fane’s hands to reassure him.

“Wait, I’m breathing liquid?” Fane gulped.  He had a difficult time hearing what was being said due to the earplugs and the blue liquid quickly rising around him.  His skin was burning with cold already.

“You can’t breathe liquid,” Bern protested.

“Perfluorocarbon you can.  Has enough oxygen that your body will accept.  The tank has a series of filters, coolers, and pumps to clean and temperature regulate the fluid as it circulates.  Fun to play with. Useful for liquid ventilation. It’ll keep all these guys going. Re-engineered so that the viscosity level is less dense, allowing the lungs to actually push it in and out comfortably without need for mechanical assistance,” Sophia smirked as she pointed back to the chambers behind her.

“That doesn’t stop the ageing process,” Ishan pointed out.

“No, but there are other chemicals I’ve introduced into the IVs.  Could discuss the intricacies with you over dinner?” she offered.

“I think you’ll just give me a headache.  Benj will probably enjoy it,” Ishan turned her down.

“He’s already shown great interest in it,” she smiled back as she opened the valve further.  The liquid flowed more freely, quickly filling the floor of the chamber. “Fane should hit hypothermia of the brain in three minutes if we can get him to calm down.  That’ll give you thirty minutes of working time before I need to bring him back out if we aren’t storing him in here asleep,” Sophia turned to Fane.

“Calm?  No one told me you were going to drown me!” he protested.

“You aren’t drowning, long as we invert you once you want out to get all the liquid out,” she reassured.

“Easy for you to say!  Ever tried this?” he asked.

“Yep, with an endotracheal tube in the airway when I went into cardiac arrest as a teenager.  Weird as hell, but useful. Good for burn patients with smoke inhalation too. Didn’t want my people suffering from a trach, so I redeveloped the system.  Long as they go in under anaesthesia, they don’t have a problem taking the solution.” She tapped at a series of her machines. “All right, guys.” She pinned the men around the pod with a look.  “Ya’ll gonna have to hold him or else it’s not gonna work, so dive in now. Fane, you’re gonna need to breathe,” she directed.

Fane wasn’t sure about breathing.  He wasn’t sure about much at that moment.  The liquid was rising over his throat and chest.  It was freezing and slimy and gross. He desperately wanted to get away from the burning cold.  Bern and Dietrik pushed in on his shoulders to hold him to the back of the pod. Sophia leaned over and snapped a clamp over his nostrils.  He squeezed down on Ishan’s hand and dragged all three of them into his void before he had to think about the cold for much longer.

They all came crashing down into the plush chairs that circled his ring.  Protests rose from all of them at the ill-treatment. “I’m the one drowning out there; I get to complain more,” Fane quipped as he stood up.  His hair was long again in the void. He brushed it out of his face in frustration, pushing it up in a stack of braids that cascaded down his back.

Once everyone was straightened out they looked to Fane expectantly.  “So, how do we want to go about this?” Fane asked, still not sure how this was going to work in the void.

“Give us a flat area to work with first,” Dietrik eyed the black ring warily.  They all turned to the ring, and Fane nodded at the unspoken question. “Here, follow me.” He led them around the ring to the opposite side where a camouflaged door led to the back rooms of the theatre.  The walls were covered in corkboard with posters and notes tacked up in an array of colours.

He led them past the first door labelled Dressing Room to a second one and let them in.  Ishan and Deck stalled at the doorframe. To the left was a wall-length mirror surrounded by bulbous lights.  The desk was covered in a variety of makeup, hair accessories, cold compresses, and ankle wraps. Costumes hung from hooks, and a ballet barre on the far wall.  To his right sat a patched-up sofa, and a large masseuse table was pushed up against that wall. At the wall next to the door was a giant corkboard filled with notes and a set of finger grip boards.  Shoes littered the space beneath it. The smell of leather, wax, and hairspray was a hit from Ishan’s theatre days that he had thought he had forgotten.

Fane had Bern and Dietrik move the masseuse table off the wall and shift the sofa to the wall.  Fane extracted a collapsable poker table from behind a series of costumes and opened it up near the masseuse’s table.  He produced a pair of tall stools that would allow at least two of the three working around the table to sit down.

“This work?” he asked the men.

“This was your dressing room?” Ishan asked as he ran a finger along a series of eyeshadow palettes.

“Sort of.  From the age of ten to seventeen.” Fane turned to smile at Ishan.  His age slipped across his face. He shivered before turning to Deck.  “Not sure if you can help or not. Why don’t you grab a seat on the couch for now?”

“Sounds good to me.  Let me know if you need me,” Deck pointed the last comment to Dietrik.  The glendweller nodded and waved to take a seat. Deck sank into the couch to watch.

“So, what have we decided, Bern’s tattoos or Dietrik’s brands?” Fane turned to the poker table.  He snapped and a blue paper sheet spread across the surface, along with a series of stainless steel trays and a box of medical gloves.

“You know you won’t get an infection in here, right?” Ishan offered.

“Feels real enough to me,” Fane shrugged.

“If it makes you comfortable,” Ishan pulled one of the stools to the head of the table.

“I think letting Bern conduct the tattooing would be better.  I may remember watching the burning, but I never did it. I could not say I’d know how to do it properly.  I can provide you with a template of what the Bai tattoos originally looked like if that would help with taking you back to the Red Hare’s time,” Dietrik offered.

“I’m good with that.” Fane leaned against the poker table and crossed his arms to regard Bern.

“What about the tattoos I’m familiar with?  Are they not the same from your time?” Bern asked Dietrik.

“They’re almost like short form.  They weren’t as thick either.” Dietrik walked over to touch the dressing room mirror.  A slew of red and white-haired people crowded against the reflection. Extensive, intricate tattoos and burn patterns spread across chests and backs.  “Each had meaning, station markers, prayers, demands, expectations. Here, Fane, see if you can find one you like.”

“I recognize some of these.  We painted them on in woad for ceremonies and festivities.” Bern looked over the ghostly images.

“Not surprising,” Dietrik dragged in a deep breath and sighed slowly.

Fane rose from the table and walked around to the dressing mirror to look over the images closely.  One stood out prominently to him. A male a row back, facing away from the mirror had caught his attention.  Pungent red hair burned brilliantly compared to the others. Black-stained branding swirled in mesmerizing symmetrical labyrinths across his back.  He possessed an average warrior’s build. A short sword hung at his hip. A soft leather skirted apron protected a brown and gold kilt. “Who is he?” Fane pointed the man out to Dietrik.  

Dietrik glanced between the image and Fane.  “Why him?” Dietrik asked.

“The design is cleanly finished.  Got a good strong back. Works with his hands more than that sword by the way his shoulder muscles are developed,” Fane mused as he studied the man’s build.

“He was Cashia’s last master,” Dietrik provided, sweeping the other people from the mirror to bring the man further into the light.  Fane checked Dietrik’s face. The Glendweller was glaring at the image.

“Bad guy?” Fane pressed.

“Best Red Hare he served under as far as any of us were concerned.  Better than most I showed you. Jian proved to be one of the most talented blacksmiths of his generation.  He was entrusted with Cashia when Jian’s father died. He provided scrolls to him and Tereza for freedom for when he died.  Until then, he protected them with his station. Other Bai would have taken Tereza otherwise. Jian taught him everything he knows about the art.  Cashia’s why we escaped our servitude when Jian died. The village was going to bury him and Tereza with his master. They tried to deny the papers Jian had provided them with.  That’s his story to tell, though, not mine,” Dietrik mused.

“And the meaning of his brands?” Fane studies a particular looping pattern that resembled the face of a dragon in a fashion similar to the face of the Picts’ dogs.

“Wards and charms for strength and fortitude.  A particular blessing for fire and ice. Protection and wisdom.  He did not hold a high position of power, but rather a service job, so he did not have position markers.” Dietrik moved away from the mirror.

Ishan walked up behind Fane to look over the image he was studying so fervently.  “You like this one?” he asked.

Fane continued to stare at it, uncertain.  He liked the flow of the image, but he wasn’t sure about the fact that it was attached to a meaning that might not be well regarded by the Glendwellers.  “Will it upset Cashia?”

Dietrik regarded Fane and the image in the mirror.  He shrugged. “I don’t know. It may or it may not. Cashia was close to Jian and devastated when he died,” Dietrik provided.

“Fire and ice.  Were they that close?” Bern begrudged a question.  The question hit Fane in the gut.

“That’s his story to tell,” Dietrik bristled quietly.

“Tell me this much, even if it is his story to tell, before I get a deadman’s pattern placed on me,” Fane directed Dietrik’s gaze.

“What?”

“Was it consensual?” Fane sat down on the counter of makeup.

Dietrik’s eyes widened at the question, and his cheeks went red.  He coughed to clear his throat and dashed his eyes away. “Cashia triggered Jian’s abilities.  There’s still a soft spot he and Tereza have for the man. He never said a negative word about him.”

“That wasn’t a yes or no,” Fane pointed out gently.

“As far as I know, those three and Jian’s wife were happy together for years.  I never pressed, and Cashia never complained. I can’t give you a yes or no,” Dietrik answered.

Fane dragged in a thoughtful breath and sighed.  He was torn between getting on with the batch of pain that was needed for pulling out his memories in some ordered fashion that would let him get a grip on his talents and respecting those around him.

“Would you suggest a different person to emulate?” Fane presented Dietrik with the option.

“I think you and Jian would have gotten along better than many of the others.  You remind me of him in a way. Gentle, but a core of steel with the resolve to use it when needed.  I believe you would honour his memory,” Dietrik shrugged.

“Last question before I psych myself out of this.  How is this acceptable to you? Why would you even help a descendant of the Bai if you were slaves to them?” Fane left the last question open to the room.

“You aren’t your ancestors.  Just get on the table, Fane Anson.  Let’s get your talent checked. You haven’t enslaved us.  The worst you’ve done is ask for our help.” He smiled reassuringly at the man.

Fane grimaced at the table and finally stepped to it.  He pulled off the cropped shoulder top and tossed it over to the pile of costumes.  “You sure about this?” he asked the room at large.

“That’s up to you.  We can come out of this and find another way,” Bern offered.

“I haven’t heard a lot of other options other than a coming-of-age ceremony so far,” Fane quipped.

“I don’t know any other solution right now, but if you’d rather wait…” Bern let the statement hang.

Fane sucked in another breath and laid down on his stomach on the table.  “Let’s get this over with. The point is to open up my memories anyways,” he muttered.  “What do you need to work, Bern?”

Bern gave him images in the mirror of tapping sticks, needles, brushes, ochre, water, and a special mortar and pestle.  It took him more time than he would have liked to pull the images from the mirror and make them into reality in the void.  Dietrik provided Jian’s tattoos on the mirror once more for Bern’s guides.

“Ishan, I’m going to have you sit down where you were earlier.  You’re going to lay your hands on both sides on the back of his neck. You sure you want to take the brunt of his memories?” Bern asked Ishan who went to sit where he was instructed.

“Yes,” Ishan responded.  Fane was beginning to tremble.  Ishan ran a hand up the back of his lover’s neck into his hair to massage it gently before returning to where he was supposed to be.  Bern and Dietrik took on the painstaking job of painting the tattoo pattern onto Fane’s skin as a guide while they assigned the task of grinding ochre to Deck.  Nervous energy resonated around the room. Fane slowly zoned out to the constant sweep of the brush against his skin. He was on the verge of sleep when Bern set his brush down in one of the metal pans, bringing Fane out of his meditation.

Bern checked the ochre that Deck had ground into fine powder.  Bern sat down on the arm of the sofa and incorporated the powder into a fine red ink.  He checked his needles and the sticks for tapping. Fane shifted uncomfortably. “Ready?” Bern asked as he tested the skin low on Fane’s back.

“You sure about this?” Ishan whispered in his ear.

“You all right with me doing this?” Fane returned the question.

“As long as you’re happy.  It’s your body,” Ishan kissed the back of his head.

“I love you,” Fane whispered as Bern drove the needle into his skin.

Chapter 1Chapter 20

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Skull Dansuer: Ch 4

Reassembled and significantly more comfortable with my particular predicament in life, I lost myself in the strangeness of the forest before Rowan came back to find out why I was whirling around in the undergrowth. Manders were not the only unusual creatures I ran into in the woods. Eyes blinked and glowed through the various opacities of the wildly-hued leaves and limbs. The best I could equate the sensation of the forest to myself would be to refer to it as the first time I witnessed The Nutcracker on Broadway, and Tchaikovsky’s Trepak became everything to me.

“You alive?” Rowan distracted me from falling into the trap of light and sound. The forest edged away from me as he approached.

“I could be swallowed alive in this place.” I turned from the trees to follow him out.

“Not entirely inaccurate. There have been many who have entered the woods and never come back. Some on purpose, some just to get lost, others who probably made it out.” Rowan snapped off a twig and handed it to me.

Sap stuttered through the transparent branch, gold streams that twinkled in the dappled sunlight. Tiny creatures, what were probably bugs of some kind, crawled through the twisted wood and leaves.

“Are there books on what lives in the woods, or insects, what the trees are called, the plants? I need everything, or else I won’t be able to be understood.” I let one of the tiny multilegged blue pudgy things climb onto my thumbnail and brought it closer to my face to get a better view of it.

“That’s laplace. They colonize the trees and help them seed.”

“It’s a pollinator?” The thing had no wings to speak of, or the regular six legs I would assign to an insect. In a way it looked like a cross between an aphid and a scorpion.

“Pollinator? Not sure about what that is, but they dust the leaves with their shells, and that causes the leaves to swell in the wet season and by the middle of it, the leaves drop to bury themselves in the mud, and we get trees from those.”

I let the laplace crawl back onto the leaf and dropped the twig on the path. “The trees don’t bear fruit? Berries? Like, you don’t have apples or sweet things to eat?”

“No idea what an apple is. If you gather the leaves, though, when they’ve turned plump in the wet season, you can eat them, and they are sweet. They grow soft with a crunchy centre. We tend to preserve them in sofit nectar. Though the carsin trees do better being pickled. The leaves from those are a bit sour, and fermenting them makes them sweeten up.” Rowan turned from the path back to the castle to instead lead me down an agricultural field and past a farmstead.

“The kingdom? Is it primarily an agrarian society, or does it export other goods?” The leaves of the plants in the field glowed an unholy red against black earth. I squatted down to examine the leaves, tracing the thin stalk up to the puffed-up lobe. “Is this edible?”

Rowan walked back to me and squatted down next to me to run his fingers along the stalk I was fixated on. He plucked a pair of small bulbed leaves off the top and handed me one before popping the other one in his mouth. “They’re edible now, you just don’t want the lower leaves, those’ll be better dried and added to soups, the top ones are sweet. This is heneshin, a common, easy crop to grow around here. You can take the stalk and turn it into textiles. The roots are good fodder for the zhmearn. Puts a thick taste on them that yields good fat to store in the larders for winter.

“No, we aren’t an agrarian economy. We do have a good growing area where we’re located, but the plots are primarily for families to keep and eat off of. It’s the mines in the Vheser mountain off to the West that we export out of.”

I regarded the pod in my hand. Nibbling the edge of the leaf, I peeled the shell off of what could best be considered a mucous-like structure on the inside of it that resembled aloe vera. Crunching into the structure yielded a flavour similar to lemon and crab. That was an unsettling combination from something that looked like blood red stuffed Johnson grass. “What comes from the mines?”

“Primarily savan, though we do get a waste product off the sluces we call yusu that works great for greasing carriage axels and pullies that sells well too.” Rowan stood back up to continue our walk. The sun was throwing the fields into chaotic gold and dazzling ruby light.

“Savan? Is that burnable, or is it a pretty gem or metal?” I plucked a few more leaves off the heneshin and chewed on them.

“Burnable? Who would ever think of burning something out of the earth? No, nothing of the sort. It’s a strong metal that we cast here and send out to other countries for manufacturing. It’s what makes up most of our armoury and transportation. We also use it for things like shovels, cooking pots, the like.” Rowan turned at the end of the heneshin plot to point out the soft undulation of a valley peaking out behind the castle. It was covered in a patchwork of coloured squares and small farmsteads.

“What are all of those?” I pointed to the agricultural plots.

“Different things, lilit, forsyst, corser, gigit – a hardier version of lilit, and a few fodder urtanger.” He rolled his shoulders and led me down the path that would put us into the hamlet of farmsteads.

“I take it those are other types of these leaves?” I waived back to the heneshin field.

“Pretty much. Some people do grow morenet because they’re pretty to look at. Decorative bushes and such. They’re good for the remars.” Rowen explained.

I wasn’t quite getting the explanation. He was listing off so many names that had no context for me. “Remars?”

“Like the laplace. Those are a type of remar.”

“Oh, what I’d call a bug. Okay, I can wrap my head around that. So, you’ve got some kind of pretty bushes that are good for remars to inhabit and those probably benefit the food production plants.” I jumped to the conclusion as a swath of bushes hedging a field of ochre yellow grasses finished off the heneshin field. The glowing orange-amber bushes held what I would have called flowers, though they were a crystalline lavender pokey growth.

“I take it these are morenet?” I slid a finger along the sharp edge of the structure to discover instead, it yielded to my finger, burst open and scattered a white glowing dust all over my hand.

Rowan chuckled and slapped the dust off for me. “It’s traptraveler, and yes, it’s a type of morenet. The dust sticks to everything. If you don’t get it off, you’ll be crawling with shorthand, a type of fuzzy remar that likes the taste.”

“Traptraveler? Does the dust taste any good to regular people?” I sniffed at the pungent powder.

“Some people like it; some say it can be kind of astringent.” Rowan’s face squished up in an unpleasant scowl. I licked a digit tentatively. Rose and crabapple. The astringent aftertaste came from that crabapple flavour, but it was subtle.

“You said that the other people in the castle, they discriminate against you and your mom, right? Do you taste flavours differently from people like me?” I rather liked the traptraveler dust.

“Flavours are a lot more pungent for us, yes. We can smell better than you. We see better in the dark and are quieter too.” Rowan caught a glowing eight-winged butterfly-like butterball of a bug and carefully let me see it between the cage of his fingers.

“Shorthand?” I guessed.

“Yep. Little fire starters, as they’re also known for. They get drunk off traptraveler dust, and then, if they accumulate enough of a cloud of them, they’ll end up getting hot enough to light fields if it’s during the dry season.”

“That sounds worse than locusts if you ask me. Are they harmful if I let it walk on me?” I wanted to see if the velvety surface was soft like the traptraveler had been.

“Not harmful, but they’ll take your skin off if they find traptraveler dust.” Rowan cautioned.

I smacked my hands against my tights to get the powder off quickly before I was covered in the little creatures with that warning. Rowan chuckled at my efforts.

Free of dust and the shorthand, we continued walking into the hamlet with dusk setting behind us. “Where are we going?”

“To The Inkwell.” Rowan let his teeth flash.

“A pub, I take it?” I pulled my sleeves down around my hands as the wind picked up and drove a cold prickle along my neck.

“The best around.” The tall man pulled his hat more firmly down on his head and clapped me on the back to drive me around a corner of morenet brush. A road studded by shop style rock buildings rose amongst the foliage.

“Let me guess, it’s the only one around?” I fidget with the hems of my sleeves, my skin prickling at the idea of a crowded room, the noise, the press of humid body odour.

“Well, there is that too. You never made it into the village before now, at least not that I’m aware of, so I don’t think anyone there will recognize you. In case, though, will it bother you to still go by Wallace? I mean, if someone recognizes you, it’ll be strange.” Rowan checked with me as we passed by several closed shops.

“Would they recognize me if I went by a different name, or would they just think I looked similar to the prince?” I turned from messing with the hems of my shirt to scratching at the back of my neck, where the sewn edge of the collar was grating at my last nerve.

“Maybe, maybe not. You would blend in fine if you just had a hood to hide under a bit.” Rowan stopped at a modest hewn transparent copper door. The crowd inside was less than I had expected. If anything, the ability to see into the buildings was excellent for preparing myself early before entering. I dragged in a breath and willed my fingers to be still. Pulling a mask of indifferent aloofness across my face, I shrugged and nodded to the door. Rowan twisted the knob in, and we entered The Inkwell.

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Subgalaxia: Ch 20 – NSFW

NSFW: Erotica

Fane collapsed onto the bed in his and Ishan’s room.  They had returned to the warehouse when Bern had released him.  He had thrown himself through a shower, brushed his teeth, and pulled one of the more creative mechanics off the shop floor to lop off his locks.  He ran a hand through his short burr thoughtfully. He watched the dust motes float across the light paths between the blind slats. His chest was tight and heavy.  Ishan locked the door behind him and came to sit down next to his fiance.

“You okay, Fane?” Ishan asked.  When his boyfriend had finally emerged from Bern’s void, he had been particularly pensive and quiet.  The most he had said was he was heading back to his room. Ishan had followed him back, worried.

Fane lay down on the bed and curled around Ishan, hugging him. The redhead shrugged, grunting in the back of his throat noncommittally. 

“Dietrik left without telling me anything, and Bern wouldn’t talk. Is it really…is it really bad?” Ishan asked.

“Not bad, not good.  My PTSD might be a hell of a trip for it.  It just…is, I guess.” Fane’s thumb brushed along the edge of Ishan’s waistband rhythmically.

“Are you going to go through with the ceremony?” Ishan leaned into Fane’s reassuring warmth.  Fane pulled Ishan into his embrace tightly. He buried his head into Ishan’s thigh. “Maybe not?” Ishan offered.

“I don’t know.  I don’t know if I should or not.  I mean, I’m some modern man. Who actually does this kind of thing anymore?  Well…two-thirds of the population is wiped out, so that’s not much of a question.  Still,” Fane trailed off, leaving his quandary to blanket them.

“Is it silly?” Ishan asked.

“Maybe.  I don’t know.  I get the concept.  It just feels ridiculous in this day and age to extensively modify my body for some ceremony.  Bodily autonomy and all that crap. No one does that anymore.” Fane sat up and turned to lean against the headboard.  He pulled Ishan in under his arm and rested his chin on top of his head, letting Ishan’s warmth thaw his clammy skin.

“You are nervous.” Ishan put his finger on Fane’s mood.

“Terrified,” Fane acquiesced.

“Branding?”

Fane nodded mutely as his heart shot into his throat.

“How much?”

“Full body from collarbone to wrist to ankle.”

“Good lord.  How many sessions?”

“One day.”

Ishan rolled over to look Fane in the eyes, startled.  “You have got to be joking. That’s how you go into shock and die.”

“Reason I’m terrified.  I want a different method.  This one…I’ve got enough scars.  I might be Red Hare Bai, but it’s not my culture.  I wasn’t raised in the traditions.” Fane leaned his head back against the headboard to study the lazy fan.

“It’s a matter of opening up your memories, reliving them, right?” Ishan turned to look up at Fane.  Fane nodded, counting ceiling tiles. “We’ve triggered some already.” Ishan brushed a finger along Fane’s twitching jawline.  

Fane glanced down at Ishan. A gentle smile waved at the edge of his eyes.  “I can’t thank you enough for it.”

Ishan rolled more fully to lay on top of Fane.  Fane shifted down to look up at Ishan. Ishan rose up to straddle him, leaned over and kissed him.  Soft warmth spread along Fane’s spine. His fingers caressed his prince’s sides to tuck into the crease of his hips.  He pulled the platinum blonde closer to him. Ishan’s breath hitched in his throat. A mischievous glint floated across his amber eyes. “Can we finish what you started back after you handed Heinrich his butt on a silver platter? Or is your mood thoroughly shot after this afternoon?” Ishan nipped at Fane’s jaw.   

Fane tunnelled his fingers under his fiance’s kurta to stroke creamy skin.  “For all that is holy, please. I’ve been strung out since we left the armoury.”

Ishan tugged his kurta off and tossed it to the far corner of the room.  “Sophia or the mutts come back; they can just sit on the other side and wait,” he muttered, kissing Fane’s neck.  He looked up quickly with a prickling question. “Fire?”

Fane’s eyes closed in a moment of defeat.  He shifted Ishan more closely to him. “To hell with the fire,” he growled, pulling Ishan’s face up to savor another deep kiss.

“Good answer.”

“You’ll have to get off if you want my clothes off.” Fane tugged at the knot of Ishan’s churidars.  

Ishan snorted at him.  “I was gonna watch you struggle.”

Fane slipped his hand up Ishan’s torso and plunged him into his void. 

Ishan blinked into the dim lighting, having landed in one of the plush velvet chairs.  “I could say the same,” Fane returned Ishan’s teasing note, tugging his golden rope playfully around to bundle up Ishan.

“Intriguing, but I’m counting the last few times I’ve been in here as my foreplay.  I want satisfaction,” Ishan purred. Fane dropped them out of the void.

Ishan got up off him and shucked himself out of his pants and underwear to stand in his bare sun-kissed glory.  “I could drink you in,” Fane beckoned his prince back to him.

“Uh-uh.  Pants. Off.” Ishan pointed to Fane’s cargoes.

Fane stuck his tongue out at Ishan and got out of the bed.  He tugged his shirt and pants off and tossed them to land with Ishan’s clothing.  “Tell me you grabbed lube from the commissary,” Ishan muttered, realizing his sudden position.  Fane smiled and pointed to the foot of the bed where a green metal locker sat. “You lovely human, you,” Ishan breathed a sigh as he bent over to open the lid.  He startled as Fane blanketed his back, nibbling at his shoulders. Ishan teased, swinging his hips while he dug through the clothing and toiletries in the box to find a small travel-size bottle.  It was next to a box of condoms. Ishan held them up to Fane, an eyebrow rising.

“Didn’t know if you’d want me to wear one.” Fane tried to get his heart to stop acting like he was running a marathon.

“You had a checker run before coming to my house.” Ishan pulled a slick black envelope from the box.

Fane plucked the wrapper from Ishan’s fingers.  “Your parent’s palace. I’ve had a few fragmented memories of what I had done in the past float up here and there.  Until I settle with them, I’d rather respect you and your body, even if I know I’m clean.” Fane let go of Ishan to lean against the footboard of the bed.  He broke through the triangle edging of the package and extracted the light green rubber. It smelled of fake melon and plastic. He checked the top and bottom of it and went to put it on.  Ishan took it from his fingers, knelt down and rolled it onto the redhead’s length using his mouth. Fane strangled a sigh as his hands gripped down to knuckle white on the rail of the bed. That tight heat was his Shangri La.  “Do you enjoy giving blowjobs that much?” Fane gulped as pressure built up in his feet and the back of his head. He melted as Ishan bobbed up and down, providing an adequate answer. His skin prickled, and the temperature rose in the room substantially.

Ishan released Fane from his teasing.  “Careful, you don’t want the sprinklers activating,” Ishan cautioned against the flames at the tips of Fane’s fingers.  The rail of the bed was warping under Fane’s hands. Ishan tugged Fane down to the linoleum floor in the cramped room.

“I’m going to melt the floor.” Fane blanket over him, hard as hell and burning up from the inside out.  

“Might try not to leave scorch marks.” Ishan brushed a hand down Fane’s arm to watch the white and blue heat radiate along the path he traced.

“Different meaning to the word rugburn.”  Fane wanted to ring out every little vocalization and twitch he could from the blonde underneath him.  He watched a blush cross Ishan’s cheeks and had to check himself from igniting. He was having a hell of a time quieting the fire in his blood. 

“Do you want me to wear one?” Ishan couldn’t meet Fane’s eyes.

“Where do you want me?” Fane asked as he nibbled down Ishan’s chest, rubbing at the man’s length with his own.

“I want you in me,” Ishan breathed as his face washed pink.

“I want to watch you come then.” Fane grabbed up the bottle.

“That’s a no to the condom, then?” Ishan shifted, his own throbbing erection demanding attention.

“I’m good without.  You?” Fane peeled the safety seal off the bottle and screwed the lid back on.

“I’m all right then.  Tell me if you want me to put one on, ‘k?” Ishan pulled his hair out from under his shoulders.

Fane nodded.  “Have any preferences?”  He poured out a few dots of liquid onto the rubber.  He trailed a hand down Ishan’s abs to circle his erection, slowly pumping to strangle a moan from his lover.

Ishan baulked at the question and shifted, wanting relief.  He swallowed and touched tongue to lips. “Go easy for a little.  It’s…” he couldn’t meet Fane’s eyes. “It’s been a few years. But,” he finally swivelled his gaze back.  Fane felt the hit of that molten honey on his brain and he almost caved at the intensity. “I do like the rough type.  That driving need sort of frenzy, hair pulling, biting type stuff,” he admitted while Fane dripped lube on his dick and lower.

“Anything you’re not partial to?” Fane massaged his thumb along the soft spot behind Ishan’s balls and further.

Ishan bit back a sigh as he relaxed under Fane’s ministrations. “Humiliation play, slapping, spanking, that kind of thing,” he admitted.

“Sub/Dom or at least BDSM from what I saw in that wardrobe of yours?” Fane took one of Ishan’s hands to nibble along the fingertips in contemplation.

“Ok, I might have a bit of a praise kink crossed with bondage play; I promise I’m not-“

“Weird? If you weren’t, we wouldn’t get along so well, now would we?” Fane buried himself deeper to make a point.

Ishan groaned in reply.

“What version of praise are you into? I’m a little rusty on ‘good man, I like that’.”

“I’m not exactly used to someone actually asking that?” Ishan braced against Fane’s biceps as he took him higher.

Fane folded over Ishan’s form to nibble along his collarbone. “Beithe, my muse, my love, just gonna say it, but that’s something your partners seriously should have cleared with you. It’s not sub/dom if it’s not consensual.”

Ishan flushed a bright red at that and nodded mutely.

“Tell me if I do something you don’t like, and I’ll see what I can do about that kink of yours. We both get something out of this, yeah?”  Fane eased against a nodding Ishan as he folded over to kiss him.  He nibbled soft lips and sharp jawline. He tunnelled a hand in Ishan’s hair, wrapping it around his fist to pull on.  With fluttering breaths, they took time to ease and accept what each other had to give. “You all right?” Fane asked when he had finally buried himself in full.

“Yes,” Ishan groaned and moved against his length.  

The tightness was enough to ring him out.  The movement built up pressure fast. Ishan’s skin sang beneath his fingertips.  He swore he felt what Ishan experienced. He had to know, to experiment, to see. He gripped onto Ishan’s hips and brought him against his length fully, his nails biting into flesh. The texture flashed across his sense in the course of a heartbeat. It drove through his core and set his lungs to spasm. “Can you feel me?” he murmured.

“How could I not?” Ishan groaned.

“Can you feel what I’m feeling, like in my void?” Fane wanted to make sure Ishan’s response was clear.

Ishan paused to think as he settled a hand on Fane’s kneading digits.  His cock bobbed as an impression flashed through his system. He glanced up at Fane’s questioning face.  “How can you do that?” he asked. Fane shrugged and shook his head. “Don’t stop.” Ishan demanded, his voice cracking.  

Fane obliged a few strokes until Ishan was moaning for breath.  “Move for me, Muse. Give me your rhythm.” Fane leaned back on his hands.  Ishan shivered at the pressure as his trembling feet tried to find purchase on the slick linoleum.  He drew himself along Fane’s length as his lover watched. “Just like that.” Fane whispered under his breath, pleased with himself at the goosebumps running up Ishan’s arms.

They melted into each other.  They lost track of where one stopped and the other began.  Fane pulled Ishan’s legs up over his shoulders, stretching him as he leaned in to kiss him.  He quickened the pace to bring out every feathered sigh and moan he could elicit. Heat and electricity snapped across his nerve endings.  His heart was crashing through his chest, and all he could feel was the burning warmth that drove through his core, or was it Ishan’s?

“Fane!” Ishan mewed, his legs tightening against Fane’s throat.  His fingers kneaded and caressed his boyfriend’s thighs, demanding, pleading.

“Not yet.  I want to watch you more.” Fane nibbled along one of Ishan’s legs.  Ishan sucked in a breath. Smiling at that tell, Fane surged forward to hear his cry catch in his throat again.  Fane circled his length and slowly drove his partner mad.

“I-I…can’t.” Ishan was turning inside out, wanting release. 

Fane bit down harder on the soft skin inside Ishan’s leg. “Then do it.” The spiralling heat that washed through his system from Ishan had him up in flames.  He drove deeper and kissed Ishan fiercely as he reached for his glorious ending.

Opening his eyes, Fane enjoyed Ishan’s pleased expression of fulfilment.  His eyes had gone a dusky caramel, and a light flush brushed his cheeks. “Better?” Fane nipped at Ishan’s earlobe as he set Ishan’s shaking legs down and pulled out.

“Mmm,” Ishan nodded, exhaustion and contentedness swamping his system.

“Good.” Fane trailed a finger along Ishan’s thigh before getting up.  He pulled the condom off and wrapped it in tissue, disposing of it in the bin.  He handed the box of tissue to Ishan and helped him clean up.

“Left a bit of an impression,” Ishan teased as they both stared at the shiny spots of melted linoleum where Fane’s hands and legs had been.  

Fane snorted.  “Glad you’re fireproof to me. Sorry if that wasn’t quite what you were looking-”  He pricked at a tapping out in the hall.

A banging at the door had them both scrambling for their clothes.  “Fane Anson!” Sophia screamed through the door.

“Didn’t take her long,” Fane cursed.

“It was freaking worth it.” Ishan pulled Fane to him and buried his head into his shoulder to bite down on his skin playfully.  “I love you, and yes, just a couple words like that worked wonders for me, and I’ll try to figure out how to explain what else works for me later, ‘k?”

Fane squeezed him back.  “I could watch the poetry that is your body for the rest of my life and not get tired of it.  I love you too.” Ishan strangled a note at that admission. His face flushed to his ears. “Didn’t know you’d be dating a romantic sap, did you?” Fane teased when he got his shirt on.

“It’s definitely new for me,” Ishan admitted, tying his drawstring.

“Bad?” Fane cocked an eyebrow.

“Chill, Casanova.  Give me my refractory period before you get me hard again.” Ishan stuck his tongue out at Fane.  Fane leaned in and kissed him, testing his tongue with his own. Ishan melted against him. He groaned in feigned annoyance.  Fane smiled against his boyfriend’s lips. “Worth it.”

Chapel Orahamm (C) 2022-2023. All Rights Reserved.

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Why did I quit social media back in Oct 2022 and ditch out after trying once more in the last couple months? I had 8400 followers on Twitter and I just dropped all that work down the drain. Why? Who would do something like that? It’s crazy talk. That’s how I was advertising everything.

I wasn’t getting the dopamine I wanted. I was getting some. Any likes, any comments were better than an empty void, but the dopamine I wanted was someone to say something positive about my stories. Thing is…most folks…don’t…want to read romance, let alone gay romance by a trans writer.

And I kinda have to come to accept this.

And I don’t.

I had four people read Fyskar. One said they hated it. And three said it was interesting and made them think. I’ve only had one person read all four of the Legend of the Bai, and maybe six read The Fire in My Blood – again, five positives, one negative. For having such a big following, I couldn’t take the fact that those around me who I was reading their stories and doing reviews with smaller followings were getting so many more reads than I was. I was jealous, and after developing what I thought was a mutual exchange friendship with a fairly large author community…I felt rejected when none of them wanted to read my stuff. The best I got from them was one person speaking up and going “You know you write literature, right? And that’s not really why most adults read anymore. Especially not during the pandemic when they want to read happy stuff.”

Being neurodivergent, this hit pretty hard with the rejection sensitivity bit, because to me, my interpretation of that was “uh, yeah, you write funny and gay and we don’t really wanna read sex scenes because that’s not my jam” – and no, I get it, not everyone wants to read gay sex…I just…I kinda wanted people to give at least some of the story a chance, at least tell me they loved a scene because of…I don’t know…because?

Anyways, I’ve given up on reaching out and trying to be in a community for now. It just hurts because it reminds me that everyone including me want to advertise our writing, and some lucky ducks get to have their stuff read, but not me…because I don’t write right.

I’m sorry for sucking at this, and not being what everyone wants, or even just what a couple people want. I wish I could do better…right…something that people liked….but these are the stories and the conversations and characters and settings that live in me and represent my truths. I’m sorry I can’t figure out how to be normal. I’m sorry.

Why did I put this down here?

Because I needed to put this feeling into words so I could walk away, and I knew no one would ever read past the copyright button.