Manifest No

(align:"==><==")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''//Manifest No// by Kaemi Velatet''] --- //Manifest No// is an eluma (hypertext novel) about survival in a flooded world. You read this eluma by clicking links to new passages. [[Start->mstart1]]: Enter the story. [[Chapters->mchapters]]: Select a chapter to read. [[Advisory->madvisory]]: Peruse a content advisory.

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter I''] --- Heartbeats breaking on plague gates guarding my no home. Beneath swollen stars oozing gaps in my midnight shadowsole of solitudes by phantoms severed, unspeakable remainders in gnarled beneaths false captures [[glistening->mglistening]] the sickle stasis of soon to be a story or silence in struggling to keep meanings unmolten to sluice my blood's drums' charges, ludic illucids, the barely holding on, the grinning what you think is the smile they expect, down whatever trestles chain not their channels to a leaden symbol sky, but hyperventilation shears the slung to torn as unborn rebornes [[subterranean->msubterranean]] rise offblack golems pulling from the gel scimitaring hillbacks opposed crescents merging in the righting to a dark engulf split by a white scar still yet pulsing, emulsing minerasynth, broke my threshold sanity, squirming gasping cool tile as in burst my head that wrenching everything at the end of the [[suppression->msuppression]] emotion's return to the ever more too heavily laden, gladiators with moon mouths bloodfeasting communal consumeds sundered, whirling zero of any sentence by which to read the chaos as the world crunched inwards, as dizzy sinking peered I the edge over into the backdrop drone that would never cease, continuity naked. Drizzling through my containment snowsilver [[shivery->mshivery]] translucence surface as time the sleet hovers over in its stilled ship staring down at reflector moonglitter which sparks out whys which never does its denial answer. Why is this [[hollow->mhollow]] compressing my spirit, lost infinity in my mute scream. //Click [[here->mchapters]] to return to Chapter Select.//

Ice's rhythm seeps us closed. Shush in the ambient [[dew->mdoused]]: let space whisper a nave to listen prison the wishless. Do not, never attempt to summit to voice, let it go, live this less, litter your senses on the contours of your tenseness. Hunched over by the blanket dry not [[coagulating->mcoagulating]] to a cough clam your soiled linen palms as stigmata of its substance; neck bobbing weakly on a shrunken chest, lulled lids washing sleep on a shaking no, knees so far below no blood dares to the tightening there, no taste of the toes, no feeling, nod, nod into this, the [[border->mjet]] into yourself cannot be uncrossed. Be in the break, says the bittercage. Why not? You're not real, you are after real.

Possession of the second loses the tingling depressures. Impassion impossibles the afterash I ache in unsaid. Lost in the [[echo->mjet]] even as it happens, events do not happen when they happen, but a lag lingers us through the motion, skitter through glitchy vistas resplendently rainbow gradients of goneness inclade of your exclusive lie. From this gap you gape at the [[solidifying->mcoagulating]] like a statue as a sculptor sees it, at last the completion crawls back to unveil the [[undone->mshattered]]. Uncanny to watch yourself perform and see the moments you can retract your performing. So much could you as you seethe in your cannots, settle in your cannots, our only blankets.

Threadbare couches and the more torn people on them. Machinedeath barrelchest stolid in the corner refusing steamheat, guttural rust chortles enforcing removal empty echo buzz null migraines, terse whisper between parents with kids in earshot, no more anything, no less than this nothing. Bent over a cup with nothing in it. Where was I or a soul to be me... could I, in lifting my neck up like so, see through clot dark... slunk into this half drive wasting I remembered [[her->mlove]] in the dimness slivery silvery by the mausoleum gated by stone ringlets cut from falling limbs, causeways on the now unnamable from which chilling vastness gradually in its aeon way took up a [[sedation->mcoagulating]] tone. Which of her faces did she wear then, which debris spilled out my reply? In the infinity of her shadow I chased her endless recession but over myself stumbled to lay among broad figures clumped in the dusk lethargically waiting to strain to the work as guileless watcher I in the bedlam comfort lapped against their heels. Thoughts sought through to the end cleft [[jet->mjet]] impressions, consistent space, why do you embrace as poison, why keep me pressed when all within wills to melt the duress to a duration to wilt in waiting, pallbearer resentment, no awareness unaware of what this was, teeth like knifewinged vultures circling words wriggly on a tongue antsy to spit what rotted there, where is the who I am without this am I, nod into this you who are weaned on brown, chase the swollen false promise surreptitious in your occlusion maze, clear the ash for the ceaseless yowling, worship the nocturnal yellowing promised by birth, to shelter. Ceaseless counting not quite a pulse.

Heavy glows in the lunules wet like [[firefly->mjet]] light thrown into an acid bath seeming to suggest the possibility of a tearing [[apart->mshattered]] in the scuttled crackle leer. Turning my head could not stop foreshortening the open pipes above the bar to a single jagged fang plunge piercing our floating desire that strung us like charms beneath an ever fainter benediction. Some figure staggered, eighteen angles splitting its tumbling shadow on as veins semivisible crimson yarns tautly flexed along the eyeline's trembles, the push from the neck that surges from the drink, from the not quite acceptance mien, beetling assurance that now is far too late for. Sepia ashes of the splattered night's once charged littered our less and less substance, what bubbles beneath forgotten as the back rests on black waters. Wallowed we in the mess we made, dragged through low passion yells to banter to something lower, [[drunker->mcoagulating]] and whatever that masked, we slurred ourselves to misshape the portrait. Crinkled not yets in hunched spines bobbing to a communion suggestion, canceled yesterdays in a denied today. Brooding behind us were two Umae's that nobody knew as if the night's own eyes had come to see what disturbed it. A hollow hand signal showed what the grime genuflected, and I knew without nodding. A ragged crowman cawed praise to the matchsticks before melding back in my migraine's protored prodding.

Thumbnail dragged along the palm's meridian desert digging, tear into the sweat harder, transgress this border. Jaufr emerged from my inability to bear the lack of an absence, under the light his frame unlit looms undergrowths of foregones, forgottens, forge of fomenteds, seeming to teem impossibles to touch, desperate to touch, cannot scent his closure, everything he says singes in these dreams closed awokens. Begging for his sound to true in saliva failing to construe the way this tongue weeps, wish could I kiss his ankles, beg his angles stay their infinites, forever lost the chase, no more the racing after, something half true still grander than all these wanderings, unslaken treaders for springs upon the burning after. He will not [[relent->mrelent]], wish could I drink this from him, but he washes away my will with stained breath waves studded with strangled elsewise, hand shaking ravaged earths running downhill in a lightless longing spilling dribbles viscously prepostviolence. "But not to its worst part eh, so's how's should I feint so meh, coming round behind to everyone, unneeded, because, and this is the thing, right, there's never value what can't be externalized, living for yourself the worst most terrifying, because any given day must be earned by the experience, when rarely does any day earn existing in it, the few that do embitter the gray ash, and I'm not, you know I'm not trying to cheap to the emote, you know how much I hate those who exacerbate the, the, but isn't it true so, the extent, to an extent, I've tried my best to make things better, but they all hate me, everyone, all of them, but infinitely the everyone she was, the entirety of her, a world what wants nothing of me, compels me to perform that none, how's that my soul isn't supposed to shatter, how, and like, so what was it for, who was it for, what did I create then? Because if any meaning you make is stored in stories told by strangers, and like we have this fantasy, daydream, somehow it all adds up right, some benevolent, omniscient narrator will rescue us from the melee, tell us honestly, but we can see for ourselves what has been added up, rare waking with any of yesterday but the aches, forget past years, lives… if nobody remembers me as fighting for their good, and nobody alive considers my fighting any good, then who, Emnin, who? I thought it was her, and yes, okay, sure, a little vain, little selfish, but those who want their saints ascetic are welcome to the lashes decades in the dark, I yearned to taste something precious in the mode, to fight for a justice I could summon, we could delight a togetherness, even when it wasn't mine I, I… but it's not, none of it is… so who’s supposed to care eh, who's the one left openpursed forced to close all our eyes one by one before the sea swallows our momentaries? Who for it yeah if no one holds the debts, nature? Nature tried to drown us all, seems content to starve us out of this Tower, shows what it cares hey. Even if I do consider myself noble, good, just, they drown those in their snarks, so what's it matter I wasn't selfish, evil, cruel? If I lift the world, my spine snaps, we plummet to the abyss, then why should they not curse me the same as if I never strained against the inexorable? Shall I prove blue to spite the green? Living the rebel up to a flame worth the snuff? Should I shower in the welter aye, get soaked in the nowhere sethen? I'll prove my soul to you, you consumers, come split my skull and suck the solution I'll store there! Why shouldn't they judge how I numb it? Isn't that the essential eventual, that to get through to whatever end we imagine, we must slake the numbness? Who cares where, we'll worry we won't reach it when next our anxieties beg us besieged [[shattered->mshattered]], but I beg my where nothing, beat myself into its frame victorious, mightiest of warriors brawls before you strengths! Grab me another pour, yeah won't you, Emnin? I'll send you lot groveling my majesty, unassailed, unbuckleable by any poison, isn't it shouldn't it be so? What, you don't want? You balk me, doubt my impervious then? Prove yourself up to the, up to the show, why don't you, let’s make a night of your heresy, shall we aye, aye, hey, you're not willing to say I can? You're like them again yeah, no difference anymore brutalizer, you of all, of all, even, not you too, why don't you believe me, you have to, you must, at least you Emnin, no, you, you've always held me in contempt, don't you, always had the wry distance to unavail yourself my [[mistakes->mmistakes]], would rather slink away my spasms sincerity, don't think I have no right to anything, to, that I can't do what I must, what, what's so easy for me? You don't believe me, think I'm lying? Admit it like the rest. You've againsted me. You're out against our [[bond->mcradling]]. Always have been! Always been alone."

For the fifth time in four minutes his nudge nearly knocked me over, one more and it would, would I crash into his sea. "Don't do this, you're better than this, this doesn't have to be like this." I. "Doesn't have to be? Everything with you has to be but me. You're against me. You don't think I can! You think I'm like Olyasz, can't set deep, ha! Don't you squirm out. Animal like the rest of them, incapable of guessing what isn't present. Shame on me ever the thought else. No one, hey! No one here believes I can shot my each coin? No one, not one of you worthless? Well, you're all doubters, know that? Always said, people who don't believe don't live in, in, or maybe you're afraid, eh, so's your call? Hate the thought I can, can get away with... you're afraid, of me lah, but all too stuck up to admit it proper, none's the balls to put coin on. See you all shaking in your boots fleabitten, beisza [[disgust->mdisgust]] me. Miserable wastrels is what you are. Yeah, that's right, go on then, slink lower in your drinks, pretend you don't see! Isn't that what you've always done. Come on! Don't believe me, say it. Put coin on. Show me a desire, I beg you, any man worthy of one. I forget what they look like." "Jaufr, please." "No, don't you weasel your way out of this, Emnin! Emnin doesn't think I got it, you all know that? And we've been as we could for how long? But he tears us weak, can't uncoward his purse, not like you lot. I know there's among you, hey, look at me! I demand to be seen. Who wants to see me shot seven to the grimiest Benni's stacked? I'll do anything, your pick so, as already got some in me it's a winning bet, you cowards, you craven, you failures to dream!" "More than some," Marko to some laughs.

"Just wish to slush another's fortune," as if arisen from the ice a pulse missmisted Leiska from the crowd, "as if you haven't enough vampirism to your name." Frost aura enjambed his jumbles and shapes all snarling, but the world oozed in to parse his disparity. Jaufr clapped him a rival wink. "Shrug the worry ace, if I can't yeah, I'll pay it all myself, and double, honor best." "Said yourself you're skint to seven," Marko. "How you measure eh?" "I'll slave up the cleanse. As many dawns as it takes I'll go. Benni's in it, aren't you? You'll let me. You're in on it. You're a rounder." "Yeska, Jaufrei." "You're in on it," Jaufr. "Benni's in. He'll let me. I'll work it off." "Alright, dyenne," Leiska spat. "You're on. Seven shots. I choose what of." "Go the call, ye mighty," Jaufr grinned graceless. "I'll down it, as you the mood." Darkening inward into slaughtering the animal there and then, blood gushing his vengeance tides across the seasick floor, relishing squeals and retches of death, like my spirit was stolen in his stare I felt him feel it, but Leiska glided his imaginative hells to the shelves. On the bottom row half hidden clumped some filthdrafts, one behind the rest a storm frozen in damp. A dagger tongue parted Leiska's lips like a pick hacking his block of ice. "That one way down yah, Benni?" Benni followed the gesture, then crept his pupils away. "That's, uh, no no, that's an old cutpurse brew curdled up in underdens overline. No Winners or the like. It's, I mean you know how they are overline, makes you vomit, that's their thing isn't it, pain and spasms the taste, unique feelings bottled to their expectations of feelings. You, you know how they are. It's gross, utter trash ah, but kept it a curiosity, uh, a game to keep up the laughs for the mettle over mind, but I, it's, not like this, you're not supposed to, it'd be stupid to take seven shots, poisoning yourself you are. Ridiculous, juvenile so, no way the worth, earning the clouds such a thing, making a mistake if –" "Abandon him his own decisions," Leiska waved the back of a semiclenched fist. "Jaufrei knows how to use thoughts, so he thinks. Let him decide how he, if he." Skeptical stares, even I behind him burned. Jaufr disappeared into the moment's gap, but when he climbed out to meet us his shoulders eased, he thumped his chest, hollow bluntness. "I can do it. Look at all you, doubtful. I'll prove to each of you, just watch, I'll show myself victor, seven shots can't lessen my resolving." "Excellent," Leiska clasped his hands. "Tonic the yego, Benni, I'll tab." Benni shook his head and just kind of sighed. "Total waste this, though suppose you can't waste waste." Summoning the bottle from the bottom shelf seemed to scar the room with newly intense attention. From the wound of the air's throat bled mutual hurricane dilating the dripping into mugs to bleak dots blurred to be behind our eyelids nightmare of the scopeless melding of a million things the same size jammed, but the growing and juttering did not shrink the challenger, not outwardly. Plucking of empty soiled cups gnashed a darklit roaring. I swallowed: saliva like the taste of a grate. Seven shots pooled the dim flickers, hinting at deeps. Benni didn't recap the bottle, didn't seem to want to believe he'd even held it. Hesitation. Sinister across Leiska curled. "Well, it's there for you, don't waste it, or are you as less as your taunts make you? Thought so myself, but all seven you said, though now eh? Imagination not the real world? Strange you'd finally face that. We didn't believe you, but you swore us dizzy, didn't you, keeper of the count? One for" let the words singe "[[every->mevery]] [[single->msingle]] [[coin->mcoin]] [[you->myou]] [[have->mhave]] [[left->mleft]]."

Listing sideways towards the door a lament for where no longer can we go Jaufr bent into the bolted, shutjaw dewhisperer alive with never again can be shareds. Soaked by the sunrise ghost that will not pierce this mum nocturne. Decay snakes through skin the extinguishability. If I touch him, will he evaporate? Desire to appear inside his holding cells together. Leans into the leans into the stutter free from expectations into the dance to music we must imagine. Following him trembling the ripples soundless to subsume, buried in the breath. Shadows he casts I color, I pall his wake. Densening into the [[doused->mdoused]] dapple maple caked slitsill's silt, accumulate of many and many a moon dusted and forgotten. Wish could I worship his dreamtwists mystic, but in the grayscale sigh he simply twists, and I cannot dream. Glades from the clutter we carve call us not by the names we shimmer within their moonlit gloom but submit to the winds' cold longing cognomen. Who should we be to face the moon? He hints into the forest darkness, and I stagger crawl after, the roots gnarl and knot, lose track of his shadow recessive, touch him cannot, kissing how the earth breaks to riot life trapped. In every landscape we imagined, as more uncertain delved the fantasy, would wake to find myself alone, his quiet marking a distance I could not retread, not now, in the shards of a world he had ceased to share. Mechanistic angels fallen quintessence of aesthetics teased but torn, artwork sways which should have raved the darkening to gloam, speak now of a time that did not come to pass, in how we fail to arraign reply thus to dust, but no annunciation ripostes the damnation drone of rays of change which changed slowly to the lenticular venetian vaulted, [[cagecry->mlethe]] closure. Jaufr feinted flangely disjuncture gels the scene to television fizz. Forward I leaped to assist his splattered, nurture him back to stance, but onto a sofa stumbled we, nodded him into my increasingly [[cradling->mcradling]]. "I feel, sorry, am I, sickened, Emnin..." Jaufr. "What's wrong? You look, oh gods, you're, so, eha..." "Can't get the head of it, just nausea the suddenly. I'm sorry, didn't mean to... did they see, that lot? Speak for it hor?" "It's just me, Jaufr." "That's good then, that's good. Sorry about." "No, there's, never the worry then, let's, shall we find some other night?"

"I can, I will so," Jaufr turned not to face him. "Be patient. You'll see." "We're all waiting." "Just give me a second!" Jaufr tentatively – No, deep breath. Trying to hide his shaking Jaufr reached for the first cup. Too much doubt, too many smirks, he closed his eyes to them, to us was it, sought an outer anything other than this dread, and [[drank->mseizures]] like it meant something. Jaufr's face warped an unnatural – "You okay?" I – Cough penance doubled over grunted to not cry out like a child. Laughter undulations. "Yeska, Jaufrei, you alright?" Benni leaned over the counter. "This isn't worth it kid, can't do six more of this stuff. It's not funny, it'll kill you, poisonous lah. This is stupid." "I'm alright!" Jaufr hacked. "I'm alright. I, can do, another. I'm good, never better eunh."

"Let's see it so," Leiska. Provocation enough. Jaufr realigned his jaw, snatched the second cup, downed it. Staggered back with wounded steps clutching at the air beast of the cinnabar gaze scouring for stability in the spinning thumping. Reddish prevomit rivulets ran. Agony wrenched his eyes apart to gawp at what caverns above us, [[pleading->mseizures]] with soot skies he shook. Teminu shoved him back to the counter where Jaufr his head crack slump slapped on whose heels. He heaved. "Fjelske!" Benni. "That's enough! Leave the sot off. I'll keep tab." "Let him decide," Leiska would have snapped had it not been supernaturally even. "It's his choice." "No it isn't! Not anymore. My pub, my draft, my rules, I count him gone." "Shut up, Benni," Jaufr grueled. "I can do it. I don't need your pity." "Hell's wrong with you mate?" "Just shut it. I got it. None of you think I can do, but I can, watch, just watch. This stuff is nothing." "Suit yourself hey, but you're an idiot you keep drinking that. Literal poison that is, actual bodybreaking kepka. You're going to die." "Pride's a cliff to those below," Jaufr. "I can carry the world's soul." "Trash platitudes won't pump your heart."

Angry at too much to sort through, what else to do? He [[downed->mseizures]] it. A seemingly single second ticked six til the vomit blew, some of it blood, most of it blood. Sweat or tears slathered his contorted. Benni cursed his lip curled. Teminu mocked a pat on the back which jolted Jaufr like a stab, and he arched like an alleycat against the filthpool on the floor blurbling rage drowned in shock to become confused whimpering. Teminu laughed. Marko hid himself behind a sip of rum. Gap sized to my objection… my whole spirit sagged under the weight of standing. Nothing but noise in my head, creak open my eyes and why be surprised that's what's there?

"Number four to take," Leiska picked Jaufr up. "Ey don't so glum kid, three's more than I thought. You're getting somewhere." "I'll, bluh, and it won't, I'll show you, you all, geskecz," Jaufr snaked his arm through the thick obscurity. "It won't even, be..." "We'll see yeah, go on then, show us what you are." Breathing through his sweat. Still he found the fourth shot, and postteenage brashness knocked it back. Once more he fell to the floor, and there he laid for too long to laugh at, delirious, spewing, writhing in convulsions amidst his filth. Comedy's brink to tragedy belled. Marko looked at Tyese; Tyese looked at Teminu; Teminu looked at Marko; Marko looked at me. The question wailed beneath us. The Umae's [[receded->mseizures]] as if the night knew and needed no more. "You're getting there," Leiska dragged Jaufr back to stance. "Leiska, hey..." "Let him do it, Marko," Leiska smiled. "Fjelske, you're sick men, both of you, all of you, every single one of you," Benni slashed his finger across us. "I hope you all live to regret this, Jaufr especially." A twist of the heel and he marched out of the room.

"I can, I can do..." a lapse, perhaps, of consciousness "I can, tota, total... do, jus... watch, you'll, see. You'll all, see." "That's it, buddy," Leiska pulled Jaufr close. "You got this." "You're right, I..." I muttered tears already soaking the sweat cold. I shook my whole being in the attempt to shake my head no. Leiska supported Jaufr's head back like a baby and gently poured the fifth shot over a gurgling mouth, a babbling, dirt brown liquor in a fizzed froth sinking to a purpose. Thrashes [[muted->mseizures]] to twitches.

Before anything resembling swallowing, Leiska added the sixth, and a shout, but more like a cry, a gargled plea brimming faintly like the memory of throwing fire, a last loveless laugh turned inward, exited the body like a soul, and after [[seizures->mseizures]] a smothered breathing stopped where nothing ever started again.

Atrocity haze. Numbly nodding into acquiescence of irrevocably inexorability. Welling up at the thought, at the reality, wincing kneeling before pleading with the serpent translator. This doesn't have to be; nothing does, but something has to was, is it this, is it him? Blurblaze of transience, plume of flames my palms, cannot reach, my fingerprints the fire. Leiska's wolf slits prickled me still. He let the body drop. "You're his friend, aren't you, Leiru?" I stared at him like one stares at [[encroaching->mencroaching]] cataclysm: [[wordlessly->mwordlessly]]. "Clean up your mess."

When did it fade, the last light, that now we wander midnight? Where was this hope we tasted in lost dawns warmth of a might begun shut forever in thus [[hell->mhell]]? How does time keep going when we do not? We're still in there in soul, the glaze yoke gleam, stretching together with no expectation of the day but that it will happen, that one of us might happen within it, that this might be the hour cast back by our memory when we lie in the dimming, the thinning, the salivaless and mucus, our damnation. How often we seemed unlimited by often or rarely, how rarely we found in the chill black what the what we were looking for was. How little I remember. How can I have lived so many years under this sun and still see it as alien as when we were strangers? I don't know what has happened to us, can't find the years when we were, how have I ended up in our ended, how is he here like this, how can he, can't be, how can he can't be? As if at any moment his color might flush up to us laughing like in all the would be memories I thirst to recall in this now blankness. As if at any moment he, any more moment of he. Trying to brush into his skin the feelings I stored there, to feel if they are still real, if he is still, if this is real. Like I have blinked and missed decades and no one remains. Like no one was ever here at all, even me. Like these tears contain any silver but the echo. Somehow it never matters when it does. Somehow it never matters that it does. Somehow the fire does not forge, we simply go out. Somehow we, no, I. Somehow I see in him my mother's face, and they both unstare back. What is happening? No, what is not happening, that is what is, all that it is. We never feel the present until it is [[past->mdeath]]. Leaving home loss by loss until you have none, never had one. Isn't that what I am holding? What am I holding? How can it not be Jaufr? I can't breathe, and worse, I can. Why do I still take in moments, impressions, ideas, when I was never and never will be more than he was? I cannot contain more, but I go on to more, no, I go on to less. I live the lessness my withered to fill it.

From beneath my horizon gate I inched out to where lay Jaufr dead. Slid about his shoulders my arms the last act of an old habit. I did not move, because he did not move, and I... somehow I slumped into myself like swallowing your soul, our motions staggered mutual nowhere to the Docks, how limp he lay in my drudging dragging, hope echoes muted in a lockmaw sludged silence through which I drew this corpse to the Docks to trace his signature in the material both of us pretended was pliable in littered slowly smoke congeals in our lungs unto sleep assumption of the darkness, into our together against the cold we lay where he shares with me the nothing, so much more does he now. Absences had I been this as in prophecy of this shiver... why, why must this, reeled repulsed from the body, gasping, a little crying, kneeling to cradle, lifting us to the [[caustic->mhell]] that strips us of what we did yet not ken until that's all we hold… could I be a child again without innocence nepenthe, see so much soon to be burned beauty and relish precious relics as they still anoint gleam the motion to geist, learn what these moments were while in them, live in the count aware, love everyone to the degree of their fading, only then might there be life before death, might there be an innocence not ignorance, and all its attendant joy impossibles. If I could see my loves and kiss them before they in turn kill us could I die on any pyre blissful to damn the rest with twice the terror of this trauma, but trudgers teased by prophesies to race and trip to muddrip sleight beneath this sludge I an ash of an anger fertilizing all this [[death->mdeath]] will raise my childrenless to fear, because I will love them non. These nails lengthen to goliath against my unresolved so I might capture the moon and crush hug it to this earth, swallowing the world in water, so might I peer into this mystic moonness its enigma trick to asleep like the rest assure me comes, if you wait, wait, wan, yearning this is the first last time to erupt me free of time, free of any time but this exact second, how stiff he is, and he is, he isn't.

Dizzy drenched in inaction, powerless but to the sweeping forceds, thrown away together, Jaufr and I in one last passing, a lot can be learned from a dead friend's face. Behind me shadows stalked their tips, dull lengths in the hidden sun elongating a chase, but kneeling I whispered only Jaufr's name, a present with no exits, and I alonely sent that senseless creature to the sea silently screaming, solitary as all lost are in the shadows that fill feelingless collapse to currents darting into I forth from this endless peering to a shifted refraction to follow his sinking, glowing blue eradication unto which I cradled this finish with a wish to be kept by the place to which his head had always been native, please assume, I shouted it through my no throat, please assume a seraph in which I might shelter beyond a roaming from ruins to ruinanointed altars, a purity threatening completion which, well, who will accept their undiluted self, who will stand before a nonskewed mirror not bubbling regret though darkening unharkened an intensity demonizes the vein [[static->mstart2]] to flushed flashes supinely distorted bending before what this body cleaves as it breaks away from this arrow kingdom in which nothing must remain unshot, a crypt in which to wander ghostly pale, remnants that knew not how to fade like shades of an understanding, dusts of the imperious ephemeral, eternity wilted on our sleepless convulsing, this never amending moment which throws beyond the impenetrable veil a fire roaring right behind our scattered dwellings whose name our lying failed to fulfill, our being a plague with no remedy outside the faint blush glimmering this sinking body films, ether temples deep in the undervaulted abyss relinquishing no light upon a barren souls desert, abjection's aridity, where in secrecy might he find what kept him restless reified, negadeified to touch in whose chthonic gloom where what once was Jaufr to me would spend all the subsequent pain lurking at the clipped fringes of our horror, the void teased by the whispers in our cellars, that unknowable dreamlessness that torments both its fearers and its foreign with a home refused, a malady ubiquity equalizing heirs in the sudden assumption of a passing of life and a way of living, this breath, this moment.

"That's not true, Jaufr, you know that's not true!" I. "I'll beg truth from the sunken shall I need it, all I'm to say is how you've battered me here, you, you're the one who should've, but you've been against me the whole time ehh, clung to me a doubter. How many a time have I engaged with you a cause, we could be caused together, but again and again you abandon me with the consequence, forced out to face it with you faceless in the shadows snickering I suppose with the rest of them. To a hundred have we gone heart and soul only for me to turn around to see you gone, begging the absence, beseeching the gulf not to spread, and if it has, if, if it has, Emnin, who am I to blame but you, eh? Your abandoning infects me, injects me to this inexorable inexhumable, sweltering buried in the anglethrust gloom, pulsing, pulsing, eahh... but I won't let it, won't let you, or them, or, hey! All of you! Think you've interred me ah, I'll show you, I'll requite the impetus its antagonist, bring me to bear on a [[bet->mdisgust]] will you, hey, listen, I'll crush you to all new noise."

Dappled despairs flanged through fimbriated sighs gelwavers ghostly roving the grayscale wash. Jaufr bisected the glare a feint I followed towards the sea, towards he, uncertainly quivertrail tracing fears effacing us slowly as we slumberwalk sunder. A little limp lungecycled his leanfall wanderer. Tattered his shirt, his face, his voice, his silence. The Docks gleamed, or so I wished they would, to meet us as we need it. "You know, Emnin... let's sit, shall we? Strange night, so? Sometimes you feel the night strange, laden, lurking. The moon is [[hunting->mhunting]] me, has been, is why I've hidden inside, perhaps that's a trick I've learned from you, but maybe I should swim out to meet it, dazzle its pale to [[drown->mdrown]] me, force its fierce yeah, if you're hunting me, have me, gauge if that's the bled out you thirsted, been salivating for so incessant the drone, you've heard it, haven't you, Emnin, the drone? You've been hearing it, it's how you hear. Like a warhorn the devils rallied to the hell we winter. So blashly cold these nights hey, getting ever the colder, can't but the freeze seep into what the skin lies unified... tried sleeping out in the open, figured if the cold could catch me it'd not need to chase me, but then it's just you know, it's just, cold... I don't eh, but um, you've never changed your mind about the diving now? I kind of wouldn't mind to dive." "No, it's um, not I'm scared uh, or but that I am right, a respectful terror, submit to the sea too much to challenge it, tempt it, and I'm, you know Jaufr, it's just, it's not a good idea, you know about how Yuli -" "Yeah aye, so's you've always said leh, but we're not him, are we, and we need our own dangers, don't we, some searing terror more than this cold?" "I don't know, I don't know." "Come for it hey, it'll be meaningful, I'm worn down too much not to suckle chances for meaningful, I need this, Emnin, I need to dive, just once, and I, you know I'm not for it solo, I need you, for it, you know, meaningful..." "You, yeah?" "Yeah Emnin, I need to dive with you, you won't deny it me, will you? Why would you? Take my hand, let's apace it, we'll go under and see what we've left there." Twitched my mouth an inability to deny. His grasp tingled me too alive to reject how we tumble into a treble sharp splash.

Sunsunken the dribbles of home helical in sudden terror of a barrier we forsake as the waterrush revels bubblephonics entuning our descent synth reverb vaulted. In a daze descender Jaufr diminished to the world, shushfired sublime unto my luminous desire to reach out through the fizz to breathe against denial. Dream to enseam our submergers syllable burst the sinking feeling bluewave veiling his wavering form. Below me arced he back above slashtraced a slingshot to the surface, seconds later I surface gasped to his laugh. "Beautiful down there ah? Convert of the depths yet?" "Dark down there yah?" "I know, purity of dark water, how you see only presence and the roil. Never know which way leads which, better than the miasma up out, [[progresser->mencroaching]] round rigidly gridded yet never intend any angle its bind til looped dizzy you acquiesce real the reel of lanes, its lack riot. We hazebred, we were meant under the surface being, our sufferings are our surfaces, how we sail, how we tower, but if we could just, and, oh Emnin, ought to get down deeper assure, where it gets really dark, that's how I need to feel, that's how I need to move." "Don't know about -" "Ayeh you never know about, always double triple quadruple guessing yet never the answer! Just accept the uncertainty, that's what is." "That seems not like a Jaufr line." "Does it not? Well, I'm not feeling much myself tonight. Maybe I'm down below eh? Come help me fish myself out." "Hey ey, Jaufr, ah!" Dived. Vague shapes assumed the shock of ordered lines, haze primordial, murk elemental, umbilical darkness. Underneathing his elusive silhouette shadow expansive enfolds, larger and larger, my entire perception swallowed by a blackness rising, guttural bellow cathedraline stained glass filters the light to a leviathan maw altar, twisting in the tremulous Jaufr turned to me and as if a smile breaks through to seal the time, crush, [[crush->mcrush]], suction flushed flung to welter agonized spasming to the surface gasping desperate for sounds the air [[never->mwordlessly]] again shall carry. Reaching into the nightwhere to rescue from the shadows the shadow that eclipsed the scythe glint but numbness seeps in lethe intense, spasm, Jaufr, Jaufr! The leviathan rose azure daemon, agate and peridot studfractal glyphs unknowable about a creature more continuity than life, earth as if a mouth, forgotten mountains winking untouched snowcrowns in the sunken sunmight, spectrally eons burst flash below me turns, descends, descends beyond my diving, gasping up to the surface for breath, diving again, desperate to see its estranger gleam, but there is night, so much depth... swallowing a gush suffocation to scream.

Lush the glimmer of lights skews langly unto the brink, harbor hoperoads to guide frigid voyagers where they will discover they have not left, are unable to feel bereft in how its silence resumes when, upon the Docks, they step into the resumed as harrow, the hulch frozen, homeslowed starwards to drizzle slush twilights, journies never intelligible in these frames, stories this sentence evulses, hence the need to seek them, us. Out into the farness Jaufr swam faster than I could follow, with the wake seeming to seethe. So many yesterdays cleansed his laughter near the Mouth, border between two sames, how he teemed energetic as if to disperse into the darkness embrace, a life open to choice, forever refrain these bound visibles, restrain into pure potential, never materializing, never embodied to failure, pure quintessence of the symbol unwritten. Perhaps could he sail out into the never and make of it a home, perhaps that was what he was doing when day by day he thimbled us to dream, but nameless the anxiety shadowed in my fear of what furthered the gulf inset scar of our shell broken open upon this gap breathing lunar lightfire, tenuousness and dread. I waved at him to return, wishing I could hug him to shore, but he floated there, floated, as if time could never reclaim him, and I opened my mouth to scream when it sucked in water, tugged beneath the surface, staring down at a greenglow grandeur, seance sparkles celestial in neon and argon agelessness stringing angelic choir glades cycling candelabra incandescence hived to ghostlands of moans almost recognizable, as if but the submergence prevents the hymn from harrowing you with recognition, spanning beyond space this beast beyond sight deeper than the depths it rose from roared emerald supernova, and in the grip of a limb I wrestled, spun free, only to see Jaufr sucked down further with an, an, expression, glee? [[Thrashed->mcrush]] to the surface I vomited drowns and cries. I dove again, but into the greater darkness the creature, Jaufr, weeping into the water...

Thrashing out of the terrifyingly placid I splash whimper writhed before the feet of Leiska, enthroned icy before my shivers, thundering judgment laughters. "You saw it, didn't you, the beast? Been flailing about as if you've. Did you dive to debate it then, was that his go? Please tell me it got him, please, oh please tell me Jaufrei is dead, oh gods, this is too perfect, I'll cry the poetry." "What, what was that? What is that?" "They've taken to calling it a keizmi, if a name matters as the named remains [[elusive->mencroaching]]. Been stuck in the Docks a tick, is why no one's outing, or much worse, swimming, swimming, can you imagine! It gave Jaufrei what for eh, is why you're out there dolphining? Ey, don't abate yet the chance, can't let your cuddler drown aye?" Kicked me into the rolling eternal, rolling, seeking in the cyclical darkness any symbol of nonend, incompletion [[silence->mwordlessly]]... Thrashed me ashore before his acidic my belief in no, my need for no, my so many needs burning plasmic. Leiska brimmed a verity thorned. In his hand saberlike glints of a piccolo. I gasped too much to ask so he answered the bare. "Do you see this instrument? It's pitched to whines that pierce the waves, it calls out near to the borders where hearing bursts and the invisible condemnation pertains, it summons the demons from their depths. I called out to the creature, I sung to it a surface, and your Jaufr was there to be so assumed, so desecrated eahah, isn't it beautiful, your bejeweller of tomorrows swallowed by the ineffables of yesterday, lostness itself? Because I have lost, he has made me lose, and so in poetic hate we lose sight of him into that which cannot be seen but by the lost... you know, Nejani used to tell me aye, he used to say he relished the decay, that the profusion of qualities was tolerable only insofar as they were compressed and effaced to spectrals, that we might among them amount. You've sniveled at your lover's shadows to worship grim his essence glear, but I, who hate him greatest, have given him a dithyramb worthy of deserving death, have given him the symbol your mewling never did, never will, and I do it for me, for my own loathing, that my hatred might mean on so grand a scale as I will claw from heavens. Go, trawl my verse, unravel its subcursions vivid to presence! I forever am here, he is sunken below place, and in the difference drown!" He kicked me into the sea again, above below my whirling skyless darkened to stormsear suture seal grievant sundersunken a soul expiring sigh.

Jaufr sigh relented to the mood we had both known for weeks. Into his hands he shook his head. Seemed to speak through a portal. "Reason aye we tame crawlers is to savor precious the innocence of their removal from the hunt, curs lapping up at you as if the face of god emanated serenity, because the torment built into our veins is pulling fish from the sea, seeing them slap about like they know already what has come, and the eyes, their damnable eyes, look into the eyes of a creature as you kill it, how it knows you by name, and you just want to hold it, beg it, please lor, forgive me, I wish you didn't have to understand my existence only through this violence prism, though sometimes you wonder so, through whatever guttural tunnels they gawp upon the world, is that portrait truest of me? Keeping a cur about just so that when it bounds up at you you can see in its face not even the awareness of the possibility of violence, a being that has never been hurt, that only knows the world through love, yeah it's all the lie for it hey, aware the vaguery of it, how if they kenned a mouse flit past they'd return to natal murder, but in this matrix of predation where everyone hurts everyone all of the time by nature, you just want to look, at least once, into a face that loves you in a way you could never love yourself, never deserve to be loved. What of the rest? We will be cursed as we must. But that kernel, that purity, sources the purpose of any fight less than the real." "You've never crawler kept, what're you on about?" Marko. "Do I have to to guess on it?" "Yeah so, I'd think. You're literally unqualified to talk; I mean that generally, not just about this." "And what's your counter eh?" "Do I have to have one? I can't balk you down to size without reasoning up my own ridiculous?" "Ah, and if there isn't a perfect encapsulation of you [[doubters->mrelent]], never more than that guise ah, sheer negativity with no positive correlate, raw hate flailing in an acid bath." "I'm the hate now? You're the babbler about how the only purpose of a pet is that it isn't hateful, you're the one with the stone heart who doesn't understand a simple joy, both because it's a joy, and worse, simple." "I, I agree, Jaufr, this isn't like you, this kind of idea." I. "Agh, am I privy to a tiff? I'll let you swooners cry it out in peace," Marko laughs off to the bar. "What isn't like me? How could anything not be like me, if it's I who does it? Perhaps you mean, doesn't fit into the fetishization of me, well fair, suppose it doesn't, but where has sculpting myself an icon given me life beyond the grating, the breaking, the sameness, the shell for itself? Upon the grindstone gasping for [[lethe->mlethe]] am I brazen to spark? Perhaps so, but who cares so, I shall do as I must, desperate, increasingly..."

Would none of it have happened without the soul strength to strive used to be the phrase to from his lips pounce, but he sags the sigh depth trawled in unspeakable hours we blunted into the dullness of hardness, the strange indefinition of lines, axe minds sloughed in chaff and rinds piled to a plugged sense of sky... Distance of yesterdays tangible in their echo shells we pillow upon in the alleys that guide to nowhere. Could not I ken where he moved, but he moved, somehow I followed, because my bones have been built to this gulf bridge, to stammer uncertain before Jaufr's [[voidrasp->mvoidrasp]] suppression expressives, anguish tortured to clarity bereavement by nonachievement glinting to blade. He stared refusals to relinquish what in his blinks hid. I wish in them was I swaddled, some castline truth incapable of corresponding to the sunshine steriles so I need not weep their nonappear, but I do not never once appear in how he irrupts the drainage reaver. He slumps before the moonlight's slightest slither, chiaroscuro hatchwork despair pseudogentle in resignation, or so I imagined of his illuminated wreckage, splatter of yesternots. Before me he splayed an honesty he had never permitted, never would, so I sifted this guise how it failed him. "Eah, Emnin, what I seem to remember is, what frazzles electric in my brain beleaguered, is that she said to me, in the frigid hour she turned to me and said, so you're a fighter then? With those eyes like they could spit the sight of me, not of malice, nor of repulsion, but simply the nonwant. I had always believed the value in such a word, used to flurry up my courage for a fight with the notion they could not deny me a fighter, savored the rage against the smother, how so desperately alive we sweat real, refusal not to be, but yet the way she said it, as if it explained me, as if, oh so that's your noun then, go off into its fulfill why don't you ah, and I didn't even reply, ironically there's the moment I most didn't fight, just kind of nodded, like, yeah. Yeah. I don't, and the thing that gets me is, I'm not even certain why she said that, used to love that about me, but why then the distance, the glare, that glare! Why do the very same traits incite both [[love->mlove]] and [[hate->mhate]]? Why's nothing change beneath the twirling coin? To what end, to what end, all we argue, when the truth liberator strangles you upon the estranging dawn?"

Those with whom you struggle to speak summon the deepest and hardest to form. So much could I fever to you in daydreams crushed to essence, but ion quiet divides the dreamt sundered to day suddenly today, so suddenly which way strays the words [[fraying->mcoin]] to unmeants, [[unsents->mdeath]], underwents we shiver through to opposite [[rends->mfight]], shatterspeaker shadowweaver.

"Agree, world's so [[hostile->mhell]] is the blade, can't sleep without the gnaw that no one wants you to wake up..." I. "Aye, all begrudge you your bread, any dust you clump to sculpt must be stolen from your neighbor, or so they revel the not worth living while you keep on fighting yeah as if it’s worth the sweat, but I’ve broken to realize those who love you through failures value grander than anything success brings, that's how you endure. After a dozen dozen scraps, not the winning, not the losing, do I remember, but the healing. No victory more precious than a tomorrow. And I, Emnin, I’ve lost her, so what will I endure of this defeat, do I? Should I not bow to the blow, admit how it levels me leh? What of this rubble but the rush of wind?" "You're tipped an oblique to this moon." "Nah, so's the always assumed, even as it differences. Part of why it mattered to me so much, you know, fighting, is because if I wasn't there to mend their emotion, no one would, merely another wound, cycle rewound, anxiety that the world is just worse if you let it, that if you don't get ground up in the gears glumping it to stutter, the machine machinates because of you inexorable. Fear mutuals entwine empathologics. There's an endlessness I cannot find cunning to gladiate, now sans her serenity, her empathy, I feel like I'm losing mine, since she was everyone I was... what does it mean to [[fight->mfight]] when your soul [[leaves->mdeath]] your body?"

Limitlessly ergodic rove lungewish wildernesses entwisted on my wristvine glistenous with diamond sweat his nearly a touch were it not too taut to touch which snaps the string a twang prying his pursed mouth with germ words gnarls fractal gating, webbing the awaiting, prays of the moonshine ecstasy. Heady with the wreckage he fumes funereal [[dredgesaids->mhunting]], upon our sandbar bulwarks he stops, simply stops, sails no more, maroonment in our minds. He says it, somehow, in the timbreous tenseness emberous, embryonic the tension jet [[juts->mfight]] in, drains, nexal now of veins to roads, siphoners of a missive envisionous, an us somewhere to emerge.

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter II''] --- Regolith bareness bred the saliva stagnant to coarsing, sandpaper swallows. Blinks lacerated. Dizzy with the wakefulness, sleep incapable, consciousness muted to a drone gray, fizzling, fizzling, [[fizzle->mfizzle]]... startling into the migraine [[propulsion->mpropulsion]], anxiety erratics needly in sinewy pregrets gauzed syrupy swamped by too many [[memories->mabandoned]], way too many remembers to compose the scene [[stable->mstable]], nauseously luridly awake in decay. //Click [[here->mchapters]] to return to Chapter Select.//

Debauchery and the din that came with it. I mumbled to the ether eating everything. So many silhouette people to lay sterile among, the loneliness borne by crowds, in their vesper alterations smoky against the nightening amber outlines smear in blur hedges obscuring the ways in or out. Tongue slung to taste not this blood gel memory, fugue wisps trailing in residuals and a mortem blare. So many figures, were who they? Their crowds shook with the anticipation of realizing they together stood like a crowd. Can't clutch anything, lungs rusting, sulfur. Shivers never tingling the skin cold enough to release them. Am I up or above the surface, days old peach peels in the back of the top of my mouth and the whole esophagus lining, faces coagulate, eyes become four. It's not that I want to be here, but that I am still. Marko and Olyasz in opposite slants slumped heads bobbing as if the geometry had broken to float in a tear. One, who knows who, gnashed their teeth, or bellowed in a way difficult to differentiate. So blown his eyebrows sweated Tyese huddled with pillows he mistook for women, and beneath horrendous overtures he began. The wood of my seat had splinters I rubbed and rubbed my legs against, some weird raw chafing feeling to nub numb my skin. Reikka [[nurtured->mnurtured]] Volya's nodding into drinks while speaking, speaking animatedly. Where was the ground beneath our feet? Cumbersome but not plummeting, yet. Mylecz played darts near the door with four growling men though there was no board. Puddle. Suppressed the volley of our discontents to any receptacle willing to be more than simply filled by extending to the horrendous addition of another's also, pale facade through which you grope after ashing embers. Grimescored daemon denizen, and under that gulf laid I attacked by possibly visuals if only I would close my eyes to watch them play. What kept me awake was the gnawing in my gut that said you are a skeleton, and wherever I looked I saw in filth reflected bones with eyes, and from those dim apparitions I [[scoured->mscoured]] back to this room to try to find who led me here, but on encountering myself, shudder turned to where violently rustlush ghosts overwrote the tapered forms, terms of an all consumption which might as well be the whole purpose of choosing life in this moment.

Passing into the second second bereft of the fire which pushed us to it. Ennui our errance of sopped steps sweeping us through footwork fractals of our absolute gone, rust minds irreading our way. Curs incapable of discerning the ends of habits had we waited at the Docks for any master that might claim us, invigorate what sloops to equilibrium with the silence, any new strain impetus to bisect this gnaw numb, tensely relaxed exhale heat exhaustion on the heel of exanimate thirsting the rush these muscles seem to dimly remember from some past [[life->mlife]], sweat salivating to salve these wounds aching with the burnt assurance of real wounds, but in the patter wallowing behind our patience brittled, bristled into nerves to shock us along in pulses. In the stiff salt air yesterday [[replayed->mreplayed]], replayed long and lone twilights looping one staleness stickling the lungs to sterilize the chill nocturnes that yield us denuded to the accost as unfeeling flame peeks through the mouth of the Tower to balk its forgotten its forever removed, peaking at the arch an altar whose sacrificial trickles arc in rays soft white gold semisolid on the weightless phlegmstone penance enough for one more month of silhouettes in the cavern grim where not even the sun changes these shadow's lengths, lengthen these specters glacially in the ice night negadawning, stolid sea slosh unpunctuated with the beat of passage as muttered we against the serenity with half jokes jostling open questions, chest noose tightening. Less than [[abandoned->mabandoned]]: never having been left.

Stone assimilates you: lay on it long enough: you are the stone. Hard pain pool on the skull section most prone to migraine its brain root, the firm, continuous push on a spine which will not bend, the ache which settles to new nonfeeling. Every stimulus wrings the stillness unaware solely the void listens. No one feels death's second, nor descent's second, but between the two they shake with each tic absolutely aware. Surely he knew. Staring at a roof which becomes off its color the longer you are lost in it, the length between things you must travel alone that stretches to submerge you for so long you lose bearing, being. Trapped in the glass prison slowly morphing. When you resurface your bulbous seastare fails to form a contour to humanize terrestrial icons with you, noumenal constructs forced to dance until the masks fall off to show masks under the masks and a sense you have missed the joke. Loneliness is the hours between others' minutes. Lie in the cyst contemplating its slimespot scripture monk of its silent vow. Ghosts of the [[ensnarled->mensnarled]] detangling in low moans, there is a reason echoes emerge from hollows, hollows no one was aware was a where. Separation from the [[semblances->msemblances]] which suggest we whisper not in vain from this world of ghost whispers. The sleep between the dream wonders us if this absence will accumulate.

Jaufr yawned his shoulders, tried to tip over the mush sofa to rest headfirst on a hardness, but it squelched instead. Marko slapped the strings of his lute: "Yeska, mewls worse than the alleys, hear so?" Marko strummed a slopped frown. "Been threatening to quit the torment forever, but, hey, catch that gone." "Hither it, I'll fix it," Jaufr. "Fix it, aye you will, wasn't that what you said on the deheater?" Marko. "Gods, the nightmare," Tyese groaned. "Had to row back in a furnace we did, nearly of heatstroke died so many times my memory convinces me I so, keep waking regretting I hadn't." "Ey, the time I said I'd fiddle with it, never said anything about expertise, didn't I say so, said I didn't know much about heaters, or deheaters, or whatever, was a gamble so's I said. It didn't fix, but that's not like that's my fault. This is different eyeh, I know lutes, music's the one thing surely even you won't deny me." "Like how the glow switch was different?" Marko laughed. "Or the, er, whatever that thing with the widgets was," Tyese. "Okay beisza, you wanna bet I can't?" Jaufr. "I'll bet you four over I'll fix it. I'm good with lutes." "You're not good with anything," Marko. "You're a dyenne is what can be said of you. You break more things than time." "Then bet me. Grow your courage, yeah? Bet if you don't think I can do." "The holes in it's the problem. How you gonna fix [[holes->mhush]]?" "Bet me, I'll show you." "And the strings like slime, you can't just tune it, yego. You gotta –" "Look, bet me or not, but if not, at least have the courtesy to slink." Marko shrugged. "Have it your way then, just to ungnat my ear. Four coins." "Reasonable fee," somewhere between confidence and smugness. Weaving through frets small fingers tapping gently on the worn wood, liquid membrance sliding home. Opening his satchel, applying patchworks deftly despite the scoffs, rising and charging into his thought expanded to us alive, pulseless [[splayers->mstreetsleepers]] on the sotted decor stirring to his song, his playing touching the inert nerves clasping us in a chain chain, a break in the always pounding tinnitus to say these are veins trembling heavy flow, unreckonables sequestered from the everpresent real, the wake, the work. A whole group gathered out of the permeated empty, and you felt it in your skin, our together. Marko shrugged into his pockets. Youth's sands, how much you cover.

When the stasis swallowed our hopes. The knot in our stomachs tied with the one in our throats. Another thin evening rationing last week's dregs. Attempting to escape we prowled the pubs in search of, but it was too early to drink to end the night drunk, and the poor break tradition only when [[broken->mstreetsleepers]]. Wicker combines of stores open in name alone shunted us, do not measure yourselves against shelves both too towering and overdusted. Trudgers used to it turned we to find the worse wind to which our sails were condemned, up the First Staircase to the First Floor to slink before one more closed port, xenophobic parapets built in brick and thick reclusion, before which edifice laughed like a sigh wet like the stone on our toes Olyasz to recriminate reciprocate nativity his acridity. Menaces grinned unleash soon in the murals' chipping. Growled the gate with the constantly defied's inviolable sternness. Through the narrow lane cluttered with fallen bridges we slunk between the walls watching our feet rather than the one beady stare the parapets occasioned. Up the Second Staircase to the Second Floor we climbed; melting in its worldless breadth we glowered against the slouched despair half full buildings sweat. Headache cauterization against the spread too thin hints of limp light, any second they could flicker and cease. Home, for the next morning's waiting? Longed to drown in my empty room, but in our solemn straycession I stayed locked in the pleaful psalm our neutral faces wept, monks also of a shame, many shames more terrifying than the thought of another day's wreck. As a single unit advancing for the sheer sake of some kind of progress these steps mirrored some selfconcept not poisoned with who really marched it to the Third ignoring the various cries of those beside, together to avoid meaning alone with the thousandfold thoughtsnarls wishing to claw through the clammy undone with at least one familiar face, one voice not this echo that ongoes to the Fourth up beyond our ascension, seasick solidness in which we nearly seize too much a sky in the crush [[hush->mhush]] vault, prayers in name only unto the haze of our aimless lust through earthy smudges strayed along mazy mortardrop houses which waylaid the road across' maudlin mewling pleading for any alley strong enough to stop it. Mirrors our motions to parallax, pilgrims progressing to a fire shrine's imprinted windpersisting long after the flames failed the insindiary formative venomym. Some neck propped up or impaled by slanted boards. Greasy signs swinging by the last of their two chains and their croaking doorkeeps could not entice us inward, no blankness promised with sawdust enthusiasm to overcome our lack of relent admissed something in Teminu's knees to buckle, and he stumbled, and we stood still staring straightskew as he grogged his way ahead unbalanced in the sucking of an auditorium's doormesh's outbound hint. Languidly we followed. No entry fee in deference to the audience demand or mostly indifference, but Mylecz nevertheless pressed the coffer with a lost signet, daring or severe melancholy, choose which his exhale tastes like in these lungs, and with too loud a clang the coin bounced from the tin hanging for a split second as if to forgive, but before it reached his still open palm it teased away snickering, and Mylecz lolled away to emphatically physicalize the rejecting jolt, the tic of chagrin at even caring, resolve not utterly destitute of pride that pressed him reversion pliable to the wavers of semimusic that philtered the thawed air crackle where into the unsure Mylecz molted moorless to the azure unshoreable, unsecured multiply we wove through him westerly to the afire quiver. Marko, behind him, glanced down the tin to the coin desolation, envy's freezing fingers slipping round his throat embitter embrace, but he stayed his hand in either solidarity or solidarity's despair, choose which, and he resolved into shoulder stunting me through to the burning orange dust hanging more like a veil than smoke over the inside. My heel hurt as if the back of the tendon had a maggot chewing, chewing. Wincely soft the grunt attempt to breathe through the dusts caked the nostrils burial, shroud lined my lungs, and I [[spluttered->mspluttered]] so many coughs I could not see.

Curling blink lashing corrupted circles in a rapid [[stagger->mstarving]] Yuli groaned out to me, but I shook my head and stepped away, he kept groaning to show he had no tongue, to say the so much that suppressed. Grime mouth scab putrid spitting saliva gruel, I gagged on it, Kostiye's indictment fulfilled, his hate was a thousand times preferable, but Jaufr evened me with a this must we too, an understanding but determined glance, and Yuli in his rags nodded as he groaned as Jaufr knelt by him looking back at me. I was [[dead->mstart3]] long before him is why I managed to outlive him. Head smogs with heat uneasy shoving up to the outer swelter.

In various interpretations of the back row scattered whatever was we fumbling through the implacable dark for far longer than the distance and our bodies til might ourselves marooned on the shore of a strange new fog foment from these exanimate acceptors of the firmness letting the lost sun ersatz wash over us willed into the dark to drink whatever trickled. The first act, or what noise filled the void, spat bodies gangrenous, wide drains sluiced by hidden cold sweats, no distinctness to lines, a meshing of the border between the violet glaucus splash sloshing this and that burning internal fuzzing back and forth into and out of each outline in endless regression and procession snaked mixed reductives of a forgotten theme my [[nodding->mnodding]] away needled into my memory's rhythmic watertap inuring succumbing to freezewheeling from some internal toxicity across a second act or the third or fourth or fifth, and stop, Jaufr, not the sixth, please, or was it the first having slapped on fresh faces, and lushless pulled from the pointless unmold sans a gravity to temper it wildly balling scraping with claws that flaked off no shadow to cloak its horror misshapen it begged for absolution to an audience that wished less for the salvation of this suffering thing than for the quick and inconsolate end, caught as we are waiting on this life, and I struggled to scream open my mouth, but [[haunthints->mhaunthints]] of moans were all that leaked, sole being for others of a world which wishes it wasn't, which was, which was lost in the others I have, lost...

Stillborn words plucked from years adrift, nothing he could do could wash him ashore his desire, is that what had killed... what would peter from this, and what would remain? What can be said when they no longer speak? Perhaps, although, and what else? Isn't that the point, the emptiness a [[vanishing->mvanishing]] leaves? We're afraid we're afraid for good reason. In the [[pooling->mspluttered]] of externals drains no self to a paradise of the frozen forever formed, if that, indeed, would be paradise...

The abandoned know a child's need for distraction is not inexhaustible. I fled home to press from my mother a warmth withinness, and I [[approached->mselfish]] she who framed by the bookcase by the last twilit ray of a [[submerging->mphysicalize]] turned slowly to an acknowledgment. Gravity in the mist pull, no motive in this nearing, children only have a motive in small things, any need that had me clutching these skirts required her to prove it to me, but she reshelved the book and temporally resolved in the black heat, but spiderlike I scurried to her reverse terrain, I sat near her in mimicry of her distance awaiting. Minutes [[engorged->mengorged]] the seconds bloating the hours, and in their interchange I spun sateless, unfocus dazing me, and dizzied from the spinning nothingness almost sick I drifted to [[changeable->mchangeable]] dreams, an oblivion that would not ask for what I did not have to give through whose numb web I would leak to a softened awareness, when I found my father domesque perched on a chair opposite my mother chattering like to the summit chill dying. "Damn shame of it, Anya, that we spent months on it, months, long, long months, tried everything and some, and even at the end it's not that I know but just can't, worse, I don't even understand, there's something to it beyond parsing. The machine wants to be [[broken->mbroken]], there's a will to secrets in species of death we do not share, invested in our, invested in..." My mother muttered something too gentle for my ears to overhear, conciliatory but half hollow, tenuously on the edge of complicity, I could taste a [[tone->mtone]].

"So hard, though, fixing up those scribers, they're junk, the lot of them, always been. Fact, grands used to complain about those things lor, used to call them ticking bombs sure, right when you needed it thus erupts, rusty jets all over your everything. Deya's whipper hated them too I remember, back when he ran the shop, days gone ah, called them yvera whenever a customer brought one in, your guess is as to what so. Once uh, who was it then, wasn't it little Kaiya's uncle, you know Kaiya, cute little Kaiya, Emnin's friend? Her uncle, Domeda, or Domega was it, can't count me to know left from west, but he brought this huge utter hulk of a scriber, bigger than he was so, with whatever that back thing, poor kicker, and Deya's took one look at the thing and was up to instantly [[cursing->mimeni]] the guy out of his ears, or one would hope numbed, truly was a sight to see, you know how he could get, the kyauska. He was all up in a storm shouting some honestly horrible stuff, things not to say right, calling him names never I've heard, I mean he used to read a ton, how's I got you those books recall, the little old orange ones you liked, do you remember, yeah, those, those little things, Deya gave them to me when the old man went, so's he knew that sort of stuff, made him real good at throwing a body up the rack, and me and Deya, of course, well we ran after the poor guy, told him no, gently on with ye, back to us come, assure we'll fix it, ignore the cranky dyenne, pay him not the cheap of your mind. Ended up discounting the job so's to he wouldn't spread too much through the pubs, aheeh… and weren't those days, me and Deya, we used to have such times, his dad wasn't bent to functional but could belter you out a wheeze too many to stand, thus the truth I say, was so good he at that stuff, like any question we threw at him he'd have it solved by the night perfectly, and I miss that, absolute I do, you know, to be able to work without the terror of failure forever, isn't that, you know, not that that's what this is, or could be, but it's like, you know, things were, they just used to..." [[Trailing->mlanguid]] off, not willing, not when he was this tired. Furrowed brows over a fallow pause, but my mother placed a hand on his knee, and in a [[voice->memotion]] pitched to weak glowing she spoke at length. The rumbling, though, no soothing stops it: "We've been so [[hardpressed->mselfish]] without him, even today, even now, even now..."

"Don't you take that tone with me ah," my mother rebuking my [[unwilling->mphysicalize]] to rise. "You're to settle when you've gotten somewhere worth staying, never before, you must remember that, child, in all you wayscattered weepings. Do you see me curling in while the winds still blow, who knows where they go? Sharpen up your [[dulled->mdulled2]] and [[strike->mstart3]] out a [[semblance->msemblances]] worth shellurk."

"It wouldn't have bothered me to the first yeah, but it's been over months now, maybe going on more eh, since last we did refurbish. People are losing their faith, aye? Had a guy, what's his cleped, short beisza, one with the woolen caps, yeah, yeh, heah ah, he's the coward, you know what he said, you wanna know what he said to me the other day down Docks?" Short pause for the baited question. "He said, you ever considered coming out on the fishers with us hey, ought to, we could use you, and I told him, cause I knew he was ruding me, I spoke him straight, you know I'm up at the mechanics Tomya, what's your angle now, but you know what he said, the chipper? The kyauska, he went, oh yes, sorry, often I forget. Tch, like he forgot. The way he phrased it, that's how you know he's driveling. Only saying it to spite me, as much my enemy as my shadow. Like he actually forgets! Unbelievable. Don't even care the insult, throw one take ten, but just how, casual it was, it wasn't even, I don't even think it was something he thought of earlier, he just, saw me, he saw me and decided to splatter, and that's what I've always hated about them, the Mityesz, they never know when to stop. They've got no tact." Tomya wavered in columnar sparks, scraggly hair and barfloor voice, and I reached through the gunsmoke to punch him to the Docks, shouting, you know I've a job, Tomya, you know that, as hollers swirled up daemon loomers that spat back my agitation, imagining him falling to the ground bloodlessly begging my mercy, white eyes wide lay he rent [[image->mhaunthints]] in nonsense patterns whorling through my tearless but terrified, never moving but for the quivering nor resisting, and this scent of despair roiled the blood [[antibromide->mvanishing]], but with each visceral splatter softened my knuckles until they retracted through my arms, chest anvils. I staggered home, there they were in their chairs, but as I puked coagulation my mother retreated into the solidity of her tiny world, how small everything appeared from the leatherbound portcullis, and alone with my father's voice I retreated further into sleep, but bladed limbs tore hate grooves in the chalk walls as my father followed, fifty floors tall with a mouth ready to speak binding me to listen, but he collapsed, and a jawstone crushed my ribs, chest flattened, until my mother ventured from the safety to wring me out with stories shrinking beneath her breathy waiting stare regress majesty. Simulacra stony as my father clodded home in a sweatgrime that glistened. I gurgled into myself. He sat alone in the ill lit awhile before calling her to hear him express what he could never [[articulate->munderposited]].

An act, the hundredth, how many are the [[unnoticed->mdulled2]], but the power to crush the reverie had fled this world, nothing could cause the past to cease the echoing. My mother gently rocked my head in the long after midnight whispering a soft song her mother used to sing, and her mother too, how far back are the [[unending->mstart3]], and it played and replayed, then replayed in a droning dream, no noise outside that song, resting in the one day I will awake alone and listen to the no longer sung. (align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[Deiyanasz swa dieya vo, Delaya esero so, Yketczana amiya nlo, Nabyisi krali moya no, Deiyanasz swa dieya vo, Delaya esero so...]

The buzz of her voice somewhat shrugged my nod. Kaiya's perfected serenity's concern assumed Jaufr's customary lounging groundchair for she had only recently heard, but I surrendered nothing to her, gave her the same torpid inking this haze. I cannot parse a cry to a real person. In my head I had even imagined Kaiya listening, she had been a good ghost for me to weep to, but before her reality I felt abashed, and because abashed, furious, and because furious, abashed, and silence splashed out the result, which she expected, but the expectation mismatched the intention which further slimed my skin, not that it was not always, which thought made me want to jump out of my chair and start screaming and tearing at my hair until the shock of anyone, anyone at all, might jolt me to the scene, but then I would flee weep to a ghost again so many more burdens of this I don't want to share with you for your sake as much as mine, but I can't admit, because silence is the admissing. What is it I'm supposed to give when bereaved? What is in this figment but our shared answership, how was I ever to know? Watch one scatter a clarity into a puzzle, you can resolve it, but what is the originally a puzzle? Don't make me be more than what I can feel! Let me feel nothing, pain's negative in an antitumor. Why would she not leave me alone when all I wanted was to sob onto her shoulder everything! This serpentine tongue soon shall smash its cage and reveal why we both should have rushed for more chains instead, did she not see, do not shatter, do not break under but are you alrights... I wanted to hold him close, to smell him, kiss him, hate him, but what could... I wanted to beg her to hit me, throw me to the floor so I could feel as Jaufr, so that his ghost could fail to save me, and could we be equals in this at least at last, but scalding insensible what vexed me most was her calming too starkly a kindness to rebuke equal to its felt as violence, her genuineness beseeching a pulsespike assaulting my eye's veins til again too will I fail to give back what is given to my absence, shivered [[selfish->mselfish]] afresh, despair veer me pressurized superneon vaultstrobing proclaiming enormity [[yawning->memotion]] its dawning into which I strode to burn. Charnel anguish aftermathed her grace.

Sense severance. Closure is felt in how the continuing [[hobbles->mpropulsion]] incomplete. After the mark is made the mundane murks uncanny as a loss without loss. How easily all of us could go and still this will go on, and on and on it goes, and what then, who then, why then? Where the emptiness [[stirs->mselfish]] the air alive marks your hollow to begin. And yet! It's. The way the pulsing plods along nods you to a normal as the lessening [[estranges->memotion]]. Numb to the hollowing until nothing is as a normal. Sleep until death awakes you, then, surprised, cry out.

Volya's viscous surprise gazelock slid into my holeness summoning him to the action I was for him. Up he staggered past Reikka's sigh without surprise, trudging topsy turvy in a slitting focus formulating his plastered grin's purpose, grabbing my arm to jolt me to his charged. "Aye Leiru, hold it hence awhile won't you, isn't it so I, I've heard..." He shrugged, but in my hypermotion slow he shivered from side to side black drops in a scarlet slash over his unresolved steadiness. He suggested a desire to finish, but the sobriety eluded him. Kaiya's face became one sunken dot. "Get on you cur, elsewhere sleaze." Reptilian hulk his neck swerved its scales sideways to perceive this new impulse. He blinked hard hoping to conjure meaning, scrunching eyebrows capsizing, then, oh, a glint of recognition slithered. "Isn't it the snow princess, how is withering the world to match you?" Kaiya resumed the strong expression that terses many things. "Leiru hey, you dreary dyenne, heard about Jaufrei," Volya clucked his tongue, perhaps to say what a shame, or these things happen, but it seemed neither charmed him. "Yes." I said. "Did you, send him?" How caustic, how blunt it was. I almost sighed, but finding my jaw too tightened to open I ground my teeth instead. After an intentionally significant pause: "Yes." "Well ah," an attempt to transition, the throat clear replacement "Marko was roving about previously on something about er, seven shots so, apparently a bet or the sort, so I... cause it was Jaufrei right, hell, you know the guy, knew the, but like he said one for each coin he had, so, as it stands..." "What?" "Well, and, I mean..." "Want the coins?" Gravel absence of incredulity. "Nah ace, no, you're wrong around, doesn't to me what happens to those coins lah, that's blood money, Leiru, don't have it me for blood money, it's bad luck." "Then why are you here?" Rising acerbic. "Nah mate, listen, listen, you've got it wrong, I see your look, it's not that at all, trust me. It's simply, as a, you know, as someone, I wanted to say that, people are saying things, you know what I mean? Whispers, mate, whispers, [[rumors->mrumors]]." "Emnin wouldn't rob Jaufr's, his, him," Kaiya, indignant. "Matters not what you've heard, that is if it wasn't you to say it. You're so wrong, you don't know Emnin. Why are you bothering on about this anyway? I never knew you to care about" glare. "Ah, your frozen majesty, ukase cannot its effect I'm afraid, why clunk your semithinker to assume screaming silences? No, no sense to it. Words are too violent to murder, so's the invention of blades to dull us peaceable. I'm only just to, to," he stopped to scrunch to stem the headache claws "just saying what everybody's saying, thinking the crowd aloud." Volya admits he has no original thought, Jaufr would have [[declared->mdeclared]], instead of the uncertainty I mumbled.

Reikka, who had been listening from afar, finally slid over, her glance elsewhere, jumbly, perhaps merely looking for the energy to bounce away. "I'm swear to you on my honor's dubity hey, ah, Reikka," chest tap "tell them so, Reikka, it's true yeah? People are saying about Jaufrei, I mean, about his coins? And Leiru yeah?" If not for the intensity of Kaiya's troubled gaze, then that might have been the bounce Reikka needed. "I have heard one or two people say it." Volya shrugged a delicious grin. "So then it's proved irrefutable, asks the question for me doesn't it of did you take it." "No. No, I didn't take –" "No, he wouldn't, not Emnin," Kaiya. "I've known him since we were young. That's not him." "Hush, geskecz. Let the kid speak." "But you –" "The reason there's no gods is you were given lungs. How am I supposed to hear when it's you speaking?" She simmered, but, why? Held. "So [[what->mwhat]] did you do with it then, absent the taking?" Volya.

Kostiye teemed opprobrium promises over those sloshed similar. "Ey Jaufrei, been gambling have you?" Loud enough to involve the room. "Not with you Kostiye, spare me your putrid this still pleasant day." Kostiye fizzed mock offense that slowly foamed serious. "It's very much my problem, Jaufr." Hung on the consonant's halt. Jaufr swung on him his full attention. "Okay then, gnat, first to rights is don't bring up my name to me ever, alright? There's that. Secondly, I haven't bet you, I've nothing to pay you, so it's none of your business, so you should jam your high moralizing –" Jump to the fist which is always the point and Jaufr [[smacked->msmacked]] into the bar, bounced, splayed on the floor, stirred into the possibility of audience, electrified the moment with what was really his full attention. He ripped to speak, but Kostiye cut him off. "I will as I please on your heartless unorthodoxy, clear not only how your festerers named you but also how they raised you your vagabond inheritance, you breaker, predator, you've learned the devour from them yeah, they from the gaping chaos, isn't so to you gambler of souls swindling lasts, where's your shame, care you not the least what happens to others post your point illustrious, pain illustrated, starvation artist, carver of carnage curlicues? Haven't you like the rest of us heard decency's names echo from houses nearby? How can you in good conscience drain people to dying for spurious kicks, perhaps you've lost your conscience to bad dice hey, but then why do you come in here boiling ears with bladed aspirations to idol some lost conscience, a description perhaps too apt. Already living in utopia of the deathful, do we not need yours. If you're gonna blather on being right, then you've to own up to being wrong. Worm monster squirming through wilted hearts, won't take it, not anymore dyenne, not while I watch kids waste away, malnourished faces like they've seen it, what we think they're trying to grasp onto, seen through it, and just, relented... drives them mad, the parents, why shouldn't it, sends them careening through thievery to murder, everything is within exhaustion's reach, and it just keeps going, evil echoes, you've a society of sufferers clouded by your divine provenance. Breaking purses on a bet ruins more than an argument's worth, you have to know this, yet you keep going, question ah? Why wreak more suffering when everything that bumbles out from whatever orifice you talk with is about reducing suffering? Your name means nothing but misery for molten pride. You worship some false immaculate in the dust and bloodcleanse it in delusion." "You don't know what you're steaming, you're calling a blank page openminded, but I'll settle you free of your ignorance for pay of you thrashing past. Let me tell you what as I'm a gambler: I thrive by taunting the bleak to poise so that I can frame it slayable, there's the gambit, that I shall marshal it to prove more than. The dyenne slapped free of purse by I are the trash as deserves to be counted worthless, failures viral the lot of them, those who, with any bit of purchase they have upon the rockface, tear into our edifice, reveal the gape and plummet upon which we precarious. I bet thirsters who deserve to lose, so's the victory in winning. Murderers, slavers, the nihilists that render slavers mundane, people who earn money like most earn guilt, people who, should they slip down, shall leave the world happier, healthier, them I hasten to a grave, glory in their starvation. I preen us free of parasites, so's you catch me aye preening, proud as I ought, alive as you never can fathom, you tinkerer of sentimodalities, preacher of ooze aahs." "So's up to you then justiciar of humanity who shall starve upon the streets? Everything sorted to how you see it, otherwise obliterate? Who have you judged so guilty hey? Amadeo kind as I've known, best we had to medicine also, yet he said something your drunken judging jeered unwise, so you've lotted him in with slavers or whatever other nouns you can safely externalize onto, thence your slaughter almighty. Any merely not you earns your most virile condemnation, those make up your murderers, those who aren't you and need be acclaimed a crime essence, so you've sleazed your plague decently around the city, not merely to those you bet, but those about them, dependent upon them, precarious upon their precarious. Thank gods we have the justice of Jaufrei to fleece our mortalities. Who are you to decide from disagreement death? Are you at last perfect truth, that's what your gin's saying? Besotted god of the broken before you. Paid your way settled in the pubs how you cleanse them, a right janitor poet you've proven." "I haven't paid for any of anything, dyenne, though perhaps suffering you is how I do. Doubtless the scoundrels milking your hours talk only on the money. You want to know what I've done with every coin I've pawed from a bet? I'll tell you hey: [[given->mwhat]] it to the [[streetsleepers->mstreetsleepers]], have so, every clink of it. Yeah, veracity, not for me about the money, not the slightest, that's what certains me different than their exist, rather I bet translate their humiliation to world dignity. I stoke their seething depravity and douse prove in the human better, manifest truth against what they take for given, settle out of the wrangle the principles I bet your charity cases never mention. When someone degrades the beautiful or belittles the good or caustically marches on in their pessimism at everyone's expenses, when they twist this world into something bleak and raidable, I force them prove it, and when ho they don't, I make them pay for it, and I relish it, I do, Kostiye, savor their suffering, save up enough to pry new day from the agonized bereavement of they and their lost gods, not because I want their inert chill, but because I love pain as justice, giving some arrogant nothing their hour. They come to you fleabitten, it's their own sin biting them that hurts. I pity not the least of those laggards, hilarious to their hunger. They bet me world devourers slagging serpents from goredripped mouths, and I bet them vanquisher stasis, stability of some construction innate to the disjunction. They've lost, they're erased, they deserve it." "And what of their families eh? You're not drabbling some drunk in a bar, you're snatching crumbs from their kid, costing out their nights more and more on dependents. You don't get the grimness, you haven't seen the diseased and dying like I've gone about bearing witness, the bereaved behind the drunk starving of your cruelty. You haven't tasted the destitution your rhetoric wreaks, you're numb to the pain of the innocent as all obsessed with justice are, but perhaps you wouldn't care if you could ken human emotions, because you are this pub, the game and its pain and nothing more, nothing outside of it. The real suffering your bet starks us slips from your care, because it transpires in cool mornings as you're sleeping off the act. You will die crouched on corpses kissing an idea." Onward word jaggedry. Possibilities forming equally fast with beautiful phrases sung to perfect the violence, angels suspended in lightning clashing, hemispheres of a dual mind vying for control of the body spasming for monogamous expression, for whole truth. Though a crowd bustled us into a blur I was alone buffeted between the dueling gales, tremble winging through skies stained crimson in the crossfire as these dream demons whirled across the welter wake. Amidst the wreckage of points and counterpoints I trawled the burnt sacred.

I sighed my gravelly rivulet forced through a wasteland. "I gave it to a beggar," I ashed. "Sought the hungriest on Docks, gave it them, all seven. I don't uh, know her name. I couldn't, tell you who she is." "Boka. You're, what, there, there's, ehh a beggar though? That's your, your clash? One you didn't even, know? Come to it ace, that's actually the worst excuse I could think of, had I the brain to think them." "I did though." Slight, unpersuasive, usual. Even Kaiya slightly slouched away. "So the rumors are true!" Whiskeywashed laugh. "You did steal it, Leiru. Took it for yourself, did you? I'd say I thought better of you, but." "Shameful," [[Reikka->mreceded]] wrinkled her nose. "To rob a man's rest, the sacred bond of, of uh..." "But I didn't!" "Did you?" Kaiya in a facial whisper. "No, I didn't, I told you! I didn't take it. I gave it all to a beggar." "Which beggar?" Volya. "Could we go out now to beg the dying your alibi?" "I told you, I don't know. She was a stranger." "How convenient eh, suppose you couldn't point her out if we searched the Docks right now?" "I –" "I knew you couldn't be trusted. The silent ones, they're the trouble, they're busy brewing all sorts of unspeakables."

Fast upon the flack of flesh on floor flash blasted brittly patient Jaufr to likewise fury. The crowd roared awoken. Blood boiling in the thicket of blows I [[receded->mreceded]], not fled, simply was less, too gone to be there, tremulous disgusted by him, by me, them, we, the hideous, hopeless, inescapable we. "You're a good kid," Jaufr rubbed his bruised temple, "always there for a friend in need." "I..." Because of course he was right, and I lowered my head, less than everything.

Reikka, ignored by everyone but me: (align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Rue rob a rest of death, Hard harbor hard heart holds dearth to death of best, Rid rid shamed shameridden copse of breast, Measure mounting the meaning to, uh, um, meaning to, matter, or…"] "Jaufr did it, so I did it. Ask Kostiye, he knows!" "Oh, so Kostiye's to come to your aid?" Volya laughed. "The one who hates you?" "He didn't hate me, he, he hated Jaufr." "He hated Jaufr," Kaiya nodded. "I know," a cough, a moment to regain, a cough anew "I know he" another cough, frustration "but how could he not hate you, Jaufrei's only friend?" "Ills are transient between friends," Reikka, sagely. "You mean transferable," I snapped. "No, but that's the saying, ills are –'" "Yes, but you're misusing it!" "Listen Leiru, we can go in on this, I can keep a secret," Volya. "Just tell me where you're stashed. I'll help dispel the rumors." "How do you know I'm misusing it?" I closed my eyes until I was in my room. Black courting maroon bed, sheets large enough to swallow the world, fortress curve carved against the hail and marching, a here where here was safe or dead, where the innumerable grievances numbed, where the echoes in each sound muffled, an unraw reality begot by the power by which I forgot. Overwhelming noiselessness ruled as steward for a king that would never return, in the tenseness of the dragging temporary I heard peaceful nothing. Here could I sleep where the people waiting outside my door would not endure. You are alone with everything that means. "Leiru, ho, up to it!" Volya slapped my knee with the back of his hand. "You there ace? Answer so!" "Yeska, get your hands off me," with more energy than I anticipated. "I don't have Jaufr's money." "I believe him," Kaiya. "I do remember Jaufr actually used to do that, that was one of his, you know, one of his ideas, Emnin's right. You're not going to get anywhere with this, rumors or otherwise. Emnin's an honest person." "No, he's wrong. He's a liar. A beggar? No way." "But oh, Volya: care fair pare snare accuse the rob wrong ruinous, since thence none attest," Reikka. "How is anyone supposed to believe you just handed seven coins away? Oh, because you're a good person? Oh, so hallowed, let's slap our gums panegyrics, praise unto you, dread accomplice, abandoner of brothers!" Ashen. "Shut up Volya, you don't –" "Hush the amok, Kaiya." "Don't hush –" "A beggar! Unbelievable! The absolute worst excuse I've ever –" "Oh, oh Volya: how fair care to careless attest accuse unsparing –" "Baelu, I heard your spittle prior, you [[gurgling->mstart3]] festrot! Gods I swear Reikka, I swear upon every Floor of this Tower, by geskesz, I will tear your throat out, I will eat it, I swear upon gods I will eat it. Has anyone said that to you yet? I hope not. I hope I'm the first. I hope this is the first time anyone has" a hiccup "looked at you straight in the eye and told you that, so's I can be the first person to take you seriously. I hope you never blink, not once, not ever, Reikka, because, if you do, that's when I'll sink my fangs in, I swear it, I will eat your heart and relish every [[spurt->mfragments]] of blood." "Fjelske, Volya, what is wrong with you?" "What is wrong with me? What is wrong with me!" "Volya, please," Kaiya. "Shut it, slutless. Have you heard this guttersnark she keeps sludging? I can't take it. Maybe you can, but I can't. She's been doing this all night. It's nauseating, I can't take it!" "What are you talking about, Volya?" Reikka. "You never mentioned you didn't like, like how was I supposed to know –" "Didn't know? You didn't know? Nobody has, has ever wanted your tripe, not a soul on the planet wants party to your failings, but you didn't, I, can anyone miss that many social [[cues->mtone]]? Are you empty in the meaning parts, beisza? Did your mother carve out your skull for a vase?" Riptail waddlers drawn insensibly toward the spectacle like bleating creatures carousing beneath bonfires jostled a fringe. Olyasz and Tyese watched airily from the far end of the room; Marko sloshed his beer and shouted at the fight in selfdirection; I edged away quietly to sneak out before the ire returned to me. Kaiya let me go. "The hell was that?" Reikka rubbed her temple. "You had no right –" "You had no right to spew in my ear all night, but you did it anyway, you're a mouse who thinks she's a storm." Another punch wild and cracking on Reikka's jaw. "Volya, whoa, that's, stop, please, people are [[watching->mnight]]!" "Only in your head they are!" Volya shouted. "You only think people listen to you, but they don't, they never do!" "No, I mean –" Shattering was what I heard as I ducked out the door.

Bristly vine hunger hangs [[languid->mlanguid]] in the gently breezy doldrumming. Dollish laid in open catacombs while whistling the air nurtured fruition from nowhere, sick ivy dripping upward then outward in slow green fire, aching limbs, the dreamless stare hollowed in barren vault sockets beneath complacence in which [[suffocation->msuffocation]] grows gnaws raw at the stomach lining, dryness in the molten charge. A white static hummed under the drip of buzzing dressed in a thick coat of noise thinness. Echoes rattled tin clanking on emptiness not sinking but bouncing then retiring to floating suspending a half breath forever. Nerve sparks shot velvetveiled bullets through tinglenumb skin in a silk massacre. You cannot stay put, but you could not possibly move. We lie leaden, ravenous in whatever pale, dulled and dulling hunger.

Inky figures in an inscrutable sky. "No one knows why though, or even where exactly, just that, I mean I heard from like five different people they were on the, yeah, up uh, somewhere on the Third somewhere. Crazy though hor, thinking they might be like right, like next door or." "Who?" I rubbed my head. "What, weren't you listening?" Mazyu. "Veda. Friend on the Fourth says they descended round about sunset, two of them, but none's shaked out why, or where they even are ah. I've never met a [[Veda->mveda2]], my cousin neither, says it's been at least a century since so down last."

"How do you know they're at the Docks?" Mojyi. Trying to right myself to this scene's angles, but askew, askew. "I didn't say that, I said, my cousin said, it must've been a century since last they came to the Docks, I –" "Right so, the Docks." "No, you're not listening to me, I –" "You keep saying, your cousin –" "Will you shut up?" Tyese growled. "He keeps saying they're at the Docks!" "I never once said that they're at the Docks. You keep mishearing me." "Who's at the Docks?" Marko staggered in. "The Veda!" Mazyu snapped. "The whaa? So they are at the Docks hey." Mojyi. "No, Yeska, I give up. Kid couldn't sell up as an echo." "Wait, so what happened?" I. "Mazyu says there are Veda at the Docks," Mojyi. "I just, can't you hear yourself? You must know how annoying, deliberately provoking..." "No, I mean, last night, what happened?" "Depends which [[night->mnight]] was yours," Marko.

"Reikka got brainbashed by Vasya," Tyese chuckled. "Then there was something about trumpets, nothing good." "The hell is a trumpet?" Marko. "You mean, Volya," Teminu. "I haven't seen Vasya in ages." How many people? Was I outside? I tried to look around, but I couldn't stop from blinking. "Whoever," Tyese shrugged. "Oh, so because you haven't seen Vasya, Vasya can't exist? Gods am I lucky to be beside you!" Mojyi. "That's not what I said, that's –" "Just leave it," Mazyu. "The kid's impossible." "Reikka's dead?" I. "Nah unfortunately," Marko. "Fjelske, my head hurts, probably alike the beisza. Anyone got a drag of painkiller?" "I got a fist," Mazyu. "Painful, could kill you. You're welcome to it." "Shut it, Veda. You rob the joke?" "Euh, you rob your reel ah?" "Ooh, low blow, let me climb down a ladder to feel that one." "Always right to the party favors," Mojyi lolled. "Oh don't you, of all –" Mazyu. "Gotta go straight for the unpleasant surprise." "You're not even good, Mojyi, don't pretend you're so –" "Can't waste one second before sinking to the jack of all trades." "You've never, not once said anything even incestuous to funny, you're like a little –" "Kid's got a point though," Marko shrugged. "Shall I kick down your hangover?" "Nah mate, your voice's already done." My brain reeled circuits tightly wrapped around a burning black stone. How did I get? "So, what happened?" How my neck worked? "What do you mean, what happened?" Mazyu. Tyese had managed to prop himself up on a broken wheel, no spokes, I could see that. After a pause, he asked the same. "I mean, how did I get here?" Mazyu started laughing in his throat. We waited a significant while for him to stop. "Only thing anyone knows is no one cares," Marko. "I thought you were too prim to get floorward, Leiru." "I don't, I didn't." "Sure," Marko. "I can't remember how I got here either, but I can remember how that happened. Bysze, I'm [[starving->mstarving]]; anyone got chews?" "Got a fist," Mazyu. "Smash right on your teeth, should you're wanting." "I swear, Mazyu, I'll savage you." "That's what I just said." "Gods, why're you a nail through the brain today? You wake up without your kneecaps or something?" "Nah, it's this kyauska here who can't listen a word without opening his stupid oval shaped mouth, asking me what I'm about to answer. Give it some time, he'll infect you with the same mood. Hasn't he already actually? I thought that's why we're arguing." Mojyi muttered. "The hunger's already got me to the mood. One of you's got to have a nibble. Be a [[friend->msmacked]] aye, I'd do the same for you, you all know I would." Marko. "We're snapped, everyone of us," Mazyu. "Tyese, how much you've stashed?" Tyese pulled his thumb and a finger to a zero. "How about you, Leiru? Anything?" There were two coins in my back pocket. Hunger gnawing. I shook my head. "Nobody has anything," Mazyu yawned. "You should know by now." Contemplation, or was it despondency, crawled across Marko's face, then slipped to his limbs, congealed. I struggled to my knees. "Ey Leiru," Mojyi. "Where's [[Jaufrei->mjaufrei]]? Thought you two were inseparable."

Tepid flames churned crackling within their furnaces glowing iridescent in the plush gloom. "Ask your scoundrel heart, Jaufrei, why you fixate on a woman, what makes your ideas of love appear there most convincingly," Nejani pet the air with cupped palms. "Which form is an adequate receptacle for what your pen is? Principles with curves? Hmm? You have all these images, which says enough about your intentions, but underneath their shallow gleam they're all blank color as sparse as your head. What does she actually look like huh, your ideal, bloodless but certainly not skinless? Surely you've spent time on that part. Admit it. What good is a woman who won't catch in her lips the saliva from your raving? You don't know. You think you're in love, which shows you don't know the first thing about what you're after eh, need to –" "You're the one making it about, about that, that's not at all what's happening here, there's a deep, internal, spiritual connection that –" "[[Spiritual->mspiritual]] is it? Ha, surely so's your delusion. The damning evidence of its physicality is given up in that it must be a woman, this spirit of yours, those perfectly artistic curves eh, you wouldn't go chasing the same drug should you find it in a man, it's just the trick of your conscious that makes you need this kind of body, so you've neatly woven a web to veil with meaning the curse grunting hooting from within." "That's not true, you have no precept to your argument, entirely spurious –" "Here's your precept to choke you hey, why haven't you given your shadow here so much as a wink? He's gone slobbering after your bedraggles for ages, sold his soul to whatever spirituality you so kindly anoint upon us, but the instant a set of curves hesitates onto your word, aye Leiru to the side will you, busy up I am now, got what I've been after, yeh, shall you disprove it? What makes Mariena more than Leiru to your spirit? Oh, we all know the answer, best not to mention it hor? Your motives are entirely [[naked->mnaked]]."

"That's not, that's different, you –" "Oh different, veracity, we're all agreed there, but assuredly you're chasing an ephemeral, a phantasm, some goddess to your domain; you don't want a lover, do you, Jaufrei? Merely a muse eh. Unfortunately for your trite artistics, Mariena's an actual human person, can you believe it, smart too, she'll know you out once the youth wears off, pincered now by the verticality of what you say and what she wishes what you said said, but when she wakes up, gods, can you imagine it, years of such loneliness opening out into the only communion she's ever known being an even greater loneliness, the uncanniness of escape being a more painful return? Surely it'll singe her soul, not that you'll care, because, you see, she is the elusive x that keeps your function pumping specifications, the inert genesis. You deify her precisely because she is like a god, a blank slate to sustain isolation's dream fulfillments, but she's not, she's a solid state, she will not melt to your hot air lah. You take people frozen in a fall, and you shove them whichever way you think is right, but there's beauty in suspension, suspension's the soul's whole art, and choice is our definition gravity. You did it with Leiru, ruined whatever there was to ruin there, and you'll do it with her, that is, if I would let you, but I won't hey, because I know her and Mazyu, grew up with them, would rather die than see someone else's face in either of their blossoms. The world is cruel and hostile, so you’ve got to bet up on what little actually matters, and I will, trust me I will. So I'll ask politely: please, don't do this, not for me, nor you, nor these games, but because of her, her alone, let us be united in our mutual love and do what's best for her. You ruin everything you touch, because you're almost right, you're the venomous in between, you've got the right spirit to the wrong whims like any criminal worth less than the thought of himself. You try to make things better that are better left alone, you shove yourself in places that are best not attended, and you make a mess, always, you break fragile puzzles with your forced solutions, and it's left for me to clean it up, or Kostiye, though the selfrighteous dyenne is as to his own ways bad enough now. You've broken too much to be allowed to approach the gods through any more innocent conduits, so I'm going to ask you gently, friendly, putting all our animus behind us: leave poor Mariena alone. She's not right for you. Go sail for Umae's and stay there, do us all a favor. There they're lifeless and goodlooking, just right up your alley kid. They take everything you say for granted, and oh, do they love rhapsodies, they don't understand them, but so much the better hey, who cares, they're not written with words anyways, they're written with raw attraction, with juvenile mysticism and adoration. If you want love that's not affectionate but admiring, there's your place. You're welcome; I usually charge for my advice." "Yehh no understanding! You always think out of yourself and so can only understand those bobbled into your failures, you'll never ken what to trust, can you even feel in your bones the echo of a belief? Thus our language, mutual religion blessed in a kiss, and yes, will use the word, I'm not afraid of themes grander than me, I am willing to die into my sincerity, come whatever hells. You may shiver alone searching for niches to mausoleum your cynicism, but I will believe in someone, I will act out a dream, and if it fails, let it indict me, abate my truth oh endless tempests, but so long as I still sear this stone to bleed, let such surge birth us angels to a hymn. I dare, and yes, dare, what you've never had the courage to do, to believe in what isn't immediate, what needs someone else's possibility to become immanent. Immerse yourself in this world just once, and I promise you, these blunt reflectors will reveal details you haven't begun to fathom, arrays of eidetic potentia awaiting their blooms for you to balk, a rearray to your capable ah, recombine hope and choice to viva us, not trudgers to linear [[death->mstarving]], we are the potentates of an empire of the yet foreseen. Don't you see I pulse beyond the suppressing calm, sing the melody I cannot hear else in her voice when she says this name with love, and I transform, no the tear, steal, gnarl, ruin, your arsenal of adjectives for the timid to live, but alteration, the act of her elevating me by adding her term alters my existence to a new level of choice and feeling, ambrosia of the next heaven raining down to my new now earth, you have no idea what it's like to ascend to a beyond greater than the journey thence, the palace beyond the previous space set in the stars which rise upon it, her and I combining our domains to approach a set beyond us for us, that is what we are. You assume her a passive to be marked, but I see her as a fellow gale to a chromixing dawn. I am nothing, do not attain, neither the act nor the outcome but an alteration altered. Our spirits spiral convergence to form new features. You treat me like a child, but I –" "You are a child, listen to you babble. The next heaven, really? How can you not hear how that sounds?" "You reduce me for no reason! You refuse to believe in any feeling you haven't had. How selfish, puerile –" "You want to talk about selfish? Your gale, your religion, cherishing whoever sees you as you want to be seen and there parrots your love as you craft it eh, is that anything more than the self desire, self instantiated through subordination of the otherized? Call me a nihilist should you wish yeah your tripe thus, but nihilism truest is making yourself a standard, the cause and purpose. Because you are the answer, isn't it, you're the thinker, the high heaven you wish to achieve, and she poses nightly, I mean sorry nicely, your elevating aspect, never the other way, never you the symbol leh, rigidity projections to mirror receptors which dye it, distort it, and please gods worship it, to return it into yourself, you love women only because they are beautiful you returning into you, that's what's so, just so pathetic about all your sexuality, is that, these women are stuck with two possibilities: either they are inert bodies, which you reject, so they become celestial bodies, which you embrace, somehow believing that to be less lusty, therefore convince yourself to other motive, but it's not, it's your other organ hardening. Heaven, stars, dawns, you see her only in those terms, because she doesn't dwell here, does she, because you need an elsewhere to reach, so dissociated are you from the premises, because your premise, whatever argument you build it out into, and trust me, I know hundreds of varieties, is that women are nothing which must be made into something by this sexual fixation which will not let you go. Sexuality is a curse, since it convinces dreamers they shall not be alone unto the estrange and dying, but you will, Jaufrei, you will be you sans any heaven til hells swallow to take you, and you should so be swallowed, devil, demon, man, no the nihilist to say men are monsters to be reviled and feared, where's the slur in the obvious? I hate myself, that's what I believe in, that's my religion, pure guilt before the relentlessly judging god. Alas the best to be is not there, but there you are, Jaufrei, dipping into women like paint to illuminate some sign to apparition your soul higher truth you conceive and conclude over our corpses." "How can you possibly -"

"No, you're wrong! Gods I don't know how you can spit so much bile without choking. You're the one making it about women, but it's not about that, it's not about categories of any type, it's about –" "Boka, it’s all it’s about, otherwise why then only the women, never dare you suggest it the men that might –" "No, but it's, her and me, two people, beyond our being in our beings invoked." "You're dressing up the naked truth!" "Nah, so broken and jaded you can't understand someone who thinks else into pure. Everything with you begins by assuming the worst, then assuming so the world. No this divide you conjure but the unity transcending it, a paired motived solely in a mutual self bothly constituted, no room for this subjugation you feverishly imagine, because there's no separation. Am I such a horrendous person to think that you can make somebody happy if you just try, is that so wrong? I reach out and say, together we can be happy, and you say, yes, rip that body apart, slake there your cruel joy, because you yourself are such a void, you are the one overwriting the juncture of two likekinds. Love is the human will wishing to extend beyond itself by seeking deeper into its name; we love the other person, the surface obscurant, to discover the extent to which they are already the us we have wanted to love for so long; you see, it's not about me, it's about who I never was, it's about who Mariena never was, it's about who we together can be." "Gods, listen to ye prancing like a prince never to vomit in a gutter, but I know you better then, so should you." "Listen yourself, glum sourwits in a little sobbing circlejerk, or sopping, maybe, don't know, but not even for a second does your whining and doomsaying and neverhopes flounce me out from hazarding a smile to achieve what you yearn to drown. So much potential in these lives we can live, but you have to dig deep into the dirt to unbury it, strain your muscles to sustain it, you've got to surrender your need to the long suffering will which will actualize the moreness of being given the time to endrench into its scenes, but you won't do it lah, you prefer reclining, wish to convince yourself this is all there is so as to obliterate the possibility you're wasting what you've to uncover, all the stories that you could have been hushed in your hellmaking. Sigh engravers obscuring any virtue's glisten with circumspective ambivalence, you blame me for [[selfishness->mstarving]], but you're who cannot a voice catch but the brute that barks the silence, but I call out to ask others to return theirs, voices a communion, brightening combines. I love Mariena, and aye so maybe short I grasp for fully what that means, but and what so, who has woken to the heart of any mystery they have not yet touched half the half the depth of? What of any building but the binding summoned? Perhaps you've presaged me properly a failure, but I hazard that entire, anyone who tries anything should approach the act storm swallower enveloped in the crash and thunder, but I'm willing to learn through the bruises to breach any sunrise foreshortened from your duskland glazing. I shall fight unto my soul any mode of human I can harbor. You cannot stop me, should you even stand up to try." "And yet, ever so obvious, remove you this from her again in the return to as if a surprise your unity into which she sinks; gods, I've never heard a lover speak so much about themselves! And you wonder why I don't trust you. You rant on about your oneness, because that's all this is, some philosophical ultimatum of your own devising in which she is chained changing symbol sublimating your wolfish thirsts vaunted upon the altar of so poisonous a word, so repulsive a –" "But you're the –"

"Leiru, hey, are you here? Mate, where are you? So famished aye, like really close to the edge, come on now, where are you, wake up, wake up hey, this is vital!" Thrust into a voice like Marko, but I couldn't solve the [[fragments->mfragments]], squeezed shut into a pain not yet sharp enough to [[physicalize->mphysicalize]], to – "You alright? Gods you look as you've been through it. But so listen hey, listen I won't bother you for long, but I um, well I know you sent Jaufrei, Leiru, Emnin uh la, ace, um, I know all about it, and it's terrible, absolutely, I'm with you on it, and yeah I know you'd prefer your peace, but I mean, you've got to, you must have the coins on you somewhere, I know it. It's fine, it's cool, I get it, but there are rumors man, nasty sort, wouldn't want to be caught up in them yeah, worse than they've been before, but it's alright, can stop the lot I can, we just need to prove that, that you kept the money, then you can, we can use it wisely in front of everyone, it's all worked out, it'll look like charity. Where'd you hide them then? Is it in your room? We aren't far from your riser, we could go there now. We can figure this out. Hey Leiru, wake up buddy! This is important, I'm telling you!"

Emergent phantom motions swerved to the standsickness thermal shading in wavy swelter shimmers strummed leylines across the raze askances slash spilling effervalences of the half real fever pitch solitarium in whose dead white light droop my mind which does not shut up when not being so wheels subtones quake and crush across the fuschia trembling shriveling in the desiccating shapes so blurred beyond contact as thus have we known it that meaning merge melted the glare to sheer immanence palpitating under a thin membrane of gamboling shambles jammed together strangers, nonsense juxtajuttering anatomies knit piercing through wrong way connections. Liquid [[Marko->mstart3]] waved his hands to a summoned choice, but this blinker tuned to darks slouched as his hands became mountains, skypiercing out of focus obscurities whistling gulfs words or ostensibly so slipped out out of order, careless conscripts carelessly commanded, and they tripped and clambered over each other eager to [[return->memotion]] to form, but each desperate grasping clutch scrunch sunk them back to the scramble slunk splattered urgent over what few noises approximated homebound pulses leaking through apparitions slipperiness of the unperceivable syntax of, of… how long this useless? An interregnum of cognizance abode. Pressure punched through me: limbs squeezed, chewing spasms, and a guttural truth, starving, ah! Fatality my sole instinct, hunger, white gnawing. Could no feel no but this buzz and its tingles in limbs. Stand... impossible, no.

"Leiru, are you listening? Are you dead? Yoah!" With a grunt ground the fled away. Gone to the unending dark still going, cease to await the for it going hungry, be not more than the hunger as are you it. Attempting to motion no. Attempting to [[emotion->memotion]]. Feeling my way through what what little of what little I saw retained lucid semblance seemed to paint loops in my brain proper to rememory of what [[Floor->mfloor]] was this? Chewing feels good even without food, you almost get the sense of it. What is that strikes so when so many streetlamps so bright, when were there so many, what year, who even lit them? Why? What Floor is this, what even is bright! Eyes [[hurting->mdulled2]] from how far in my arm I shoved them.

"Emnin, oh, hello!" Yawned around my [[fist->mstart3]]. Stared firmly down. "Emnin nyeh, you're all sorted up?" I swallowed several deep breaths as if in migraine retches. Tried to speak, felt like not, definitely felt like not. I looked up, tensed: [[Imeni->mimeni]]. "Oh, um," straightening up, focusing in. "Hey, uh, uh, wow, hey? How, how are you?" "Fine as it goes," she studied me for a second. "Sure you're alright? You look terrible." "Thanks." Light amusement overshadowed by confusion. "Listen um, do you know where Kaiya is? There's a bit of a headway at Benni's the evening, so I'm trying to track her alongside." I told her no. She sighed, tousled her hair, crestfallen. "Well, thanks anyway, I guess. Suppose I'll keep looking." A pause and a purse of the lips. "By the way Emnin, I, heard about Jaufr... you sure you okay?" "I'm fine." "You sure?" "No." She frowned, then started to turn away. "Well, see you around?"

"And what makes you different?" Jaufr slammed his mug. "You're a hypocrite, Emnin, judgmental yego! No one else's reality's quite as real as yours, is it? You've emotions, but can't speak for everyone there. When it's me, it's wrong, but when it's you, it's right? How are you to possibly justify? Hypocrite, ingrate, betrayer…" "It's not like that, Jaufr," but I heard myself, too gross. "Boka, exactly how so! You side with Nejani against me, yet oh –" "I never sided with him against –" "Yeah so not in word but certainly in affect! Yet now you want me to side you against Yakacza? Tell me that's not the happened, explain why should I consider you reasonable to the coursing." "That's what I'm trying to, if you would just listen –" "Listen? Listen, precisely your refusal so to me? Do you know how many times I begged you hear me out about Mariena, but did you ever hazard me half the chance? No, it was always, I'm just not sure about this, Jaufr, or let's pursue else, Jaufr, or I'm simply not equal for the moment, Jaufr. Eh, ring your tune, beisza? Gods it was like asking the sky. You didn't believe me from the start, because you never felt the origin, and that was the leap too far for you, into somebody else's needs. You've only ever cared about your participation dires, that's the key, isn't it, the ability for others not to tarnish the only true spring. You want me to listen to you, I bet! That's all you've ever wanted in all your listening. Emnin, sole soul, here to imbue your cause with meaning. Otherwise, why bother?" "Jaufr..." "You really cast yourself better than me, Emnin? Got yourself a right to be happy I don't? After all I've done for you, for us, even in those times you sat silently the background nothing, nothing, while I fought both our battles! You honestly think you're measured better than I, as because you don't say what both we think, as so you let life break you shy the brawl for dignity? After all we've been through too, I must say I expected, foolishly, that you would support me ehh, conjure up to something at least; naive, I know, or and perhaps you're so far beyond my shambles I cannot fathom your hyperreasons, but I really truly thought you would back me on this, that you would be even a quarter of the friend I've slaved myself to you. After all these years, nothing, as a stranger!" "But you're not hearing me, you're not –" "You're not, you've never been!" Sobbed sorries to [[slunk->mdulled2]] shoulders. The sour joy sea, love [[lost->mfloor]].

Breathe to pretend this [[body->mstart3]]. "Yeah. You said there's something at Benni's?" "Oh, yeah, you've not heard? They're saying Myeri's on the Docks with Veda, can you believe it. Right so to the query I thought like, but then like Myeri, he started shouting his typical, apparently he's addressing a crowd at Benni's, and I thought I would go, it might mean a job. I want to make sure Kaiya knows too though, but I can't find her anywhere. Haven't seen her in days hey. Alas, perhaps she'll show, or we'll will her so sheerly. See you there?" "Don't know." "Mnn. Well." Goodbyes fluttered her off, but a sudden thought compelled me to prolong: "Wait, Imeni!" "Yeah?" "What uh, what Floor is this?" A chuckle above a scoff.

Like ghostly drumming fingers rasp rattatatting on the rusted corrugated a deep shimmer dark drew itself apart from metal malaise an amounted magisterial reaper revenant, breather of counted yesterdays, who barred our retrogression to the nightcleanse nunca, Leiska of the leyline lost. Noctilucence smile. Engine of the eventide hummed his song half swallowed, drip drooped from shadows gangly he curls wavered waywarding to skew the scene to sing his hollowed out to baritone growls. "Ah Jaufrei, you find yourself inside this chill so long my abode. I can taste inside your tears unshed the shearness, delicious, at last we can share our palaces fear." "You've absorbed the meaningless as if native, I see," spat with the rage of the wave whose surges cannot conquer. "Have you been following me?" "Of course, for years so out of hatred, knowing you so deserving, always I espied the chance to throttle your silent, bless the world silent, but you could not but by martyrdom ascend to death, even in destruction you would dance, bile building the thought of how proudly you'd die the statement of any hate smothering, I could not think of how to kill you without blessing your feigned, that smug ecstasy of pain incited and deterred my vengeance to sterile in the echo hum, until tonight, when I witnessed you as real and banal as the burdened rest of us yeah, broken to spirits you cannot symphonize, so unto the brutal I yearned you, wishing I could reflect you bone, and so I watched wish ashen, time brackened unto revoluted suspensions, you in despair, delicious, I admit. I could never kill you so long as death met your grandiose an affair, but in your eyes tonight I detect a sorrow, a yearnlush tomorrow gaunt in which I lope hellion, persist in your [[deverify->mdeverify]], I will, I will, so tired of waiting, at last now you will die undignified." In his eyes flashed all of Jaufr, yet the bravado, the drumroll, the conviction and dauntless, the unbearable witnessing cursed to claim us never came, silent he remained, until in a stark pitch beneath his voice he echoed from the hollows of gravel. Where were the aches we composed to futures in this fulcrum dread? Whom did the hours accumulate if you mutilated emerges in the lateness lone? When did we prefigure a face from the thousand denials if this, if he, if whatever of we wields thus to dusts? Jaufr sighed to sabers like unto the scaffolds. "If you wish my blood, so you may treasure the secrets these veins rivulet, if any more must be mined, if from the [[cavernous->mcavernous]] can be clawed jewels anew to the afresh fire you cleanse the harrow of surfaces, its scouring recursion endless. I am tired, Leiska, so tired even you can see it in me. Maybe now I understand your Nejani, how he felt; perhaps you can help me complete the empathy, so that if I die, I can die into empathy." "Ahaha, is that the best you can clamor from the brink? Have you finally admitted your poverty? Then let me requite you your dues." "Emnin," Jaufr, to me, but not to me, to our shadows mixing, "let us duel, yeah? I, you... well. Let me earn this outcome."

Desynched to uncyclical revocation of actual the lunge that loosens us to the volt of true spooled across a dozen dozen jitter frames whose portents I begged mystic to revolt the revere a vision future, but the abyss responded his slunk to knees, head resting on my shoulder, staring at the same skies he scried for the [[words->mwordlessly]] out of this mire that never came, never come, never again come, blood gurgling their last absence. Grinning yet staggering from the now brutally actual Leiska reslipped the neverness, and I let him go, I [[let->mencroaching]] Jaufr dream his fragments to their native mists, wept on his skin their first dews. Cradling his heatless kissing the collapse. Unable to understand how to move. Unable to the seconds counted after.

Spaceblack widthplush plashed the echoes to dreaver roam. Sunken sonics swirled to eddy. Lurkened lightless and leer the less the lashed to phase, silhouette shimmer shriekmutes modal the reverb antipodals, their faceless to faceless. Hurt cavernous they spilled their crossways to stalactites cruciform from which the drips dangled, clung, becried the yawning maw. Voicewhich volts the egress his genuflective to stance subveral to the castform recursion Leiska lethevitiates. If aught passed between, my depths did not so flow. Undersyllabic synaptic electric their severation missive pressured the push to launch dizzying, swift slashlunge split along the blink a slivering, emergent [[divergence->mencroaching]], jagged bolt lorn he tumbled, swiveled, gawping at me until I recognized, he, Jaufr... Not even cognizant of my running towards him I press into his, please stay warm, swallowing so many sobs the swallows become sobs, pressing his hand, pressing his pulse, Jaufr, Jaufr, come to me, stay with me, exist here, please, I, cannot, he does not [[respond->mwordlessly]]...

Through the fog unaccountable. Dulled to dull razors the slug of lags squirmed my muscles spasmed. Heady with the runny breath, breath about to leap from this throat, no return, no can return to Jaufr, all forever formless in the awegush anguished, begging the yesterdays to ooze, congeal to real, so desperate to feel any [[sensation->mstart3]]... too famished dizzy to keep my eyes open...

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter III''] --- Moments punch their power, fall to the floor they fade. Overrun, bleeding colors as all your [[motionarmaments->mmotionarmaments]] melt in the nova, but a single facial tic wreaks waste on a hundred more months of sleepless gasping, phantasms [[spasm->mspasm]] spat from one strong [[suspension->msuspension]] in another glistening the pressure no emotion holds, feelings hunker in their shades overcome, controller consciousness born in a single shattering jewel, ruby shards in your split eyes [[flail->mflail]] flooding blood fountains, scream wordless to sterile tile. Do not release the past for the passing of a real second, one gust guts structures of control scatter cataracts cataballismtic narrative viscera on the shocked clarity ultra in the lucid moonlight's silver enlargening another soul screaming immersive to magmatic lifeblood bellows raving rippling through sheer will to live, erupting in a tearing cry to any [[heaven->mheaven]] listening to be this, let me die in this, I have found what living was for, and it's [[gone->mgone]]. //Click [[here->mchapters]] to return to Chapter Select.//

Reikka, Kaiya, and Olyasz on the Sixth with whatever ambient breeze a memory supposes. Exiles beyond the limits of retention, upward bound against no chains to descend and sometimes that drains enough to flush us forms we in the past's carcass huddled through cold and quiet we scarred cherished this husk thus derelict. Blacklight rainbow diffusions spiderweb about the amber glow to border two senses of place: one once now no more, nones now here the gore of the glow to shiver out trauma in shellbone [[gutters->mgutters]]. Slack ligaments the way we flanged like ragdolls along verlust wildernessly, dragged figures seizing spores of the lost and losing and loosing, until I sunk to my neck in the cough stone and clattered. Traceless bearers opening their caskets to unleash to a balking calm the invisible intensity which struck them to walk this wilting we vowed in silent devotion driven faceless coplaced foreshortened before a gray and coral and floral whites and brights mural sprawling caulking four solemnities in sacred vigil observing god glimpses prophecy gifting us bitter awe reciprocates trickling through our tones caught by the cyan [[splashes->msubmerse]] sighing against the sepia wear a delta spitting years into dying swift impressions on the ebullience uncertain. Separately inundated to this phase, disaccreation isolators, those riven to this night elision in tears communitized at the edge of what we had together once known as changeless shadows dayzm glare shunt glazed to where our eyes cannot yet adjust our bearing out into being to this mural this being a human before it, a tinny temporality rainy sparklers pastels prisms sprinkling through ebb and stain millennia composed our sustaining hymn when outside hurricanes deathlust fizz suicides as insects buzz croon swarm mass preyed on the mark to which the dagger flings recking the [[bloodsun->mtear]] rising quaking at the approach of ends slivered through births, an abhorrence at what had arisen that descends unto itself selfeating barbary cyclical but intensifying in the frenetic filthifying of us staled to secrete of our wholes, worms in our thirsts, rats scurrying arteries of our garbage gnawing and gnawing, bright schools plucked up to yellow teeth, diseasestruck wasting the killing shivered studying the gluttonous earth, the remorseful creator blank against the breath, begging: who can observe their encompassing peacefully, or what else is the wailing, what else rips the tidal gorge implicit in our tears? When more would we move than this?

I did not want to be, maybe append here, but such was. I turned to notice what my eyes were now well enough adjusted to physical things in their thingness to notice. A langly skeleton stretched and skinless hung over courtesans as if puppet fingers could control the fleeting delusions we harbor in skin, his jaw slagging, serpent whip teasing the strike. Peer through the oily, you will not find the selfassured, even where they appear. I moved to leave, then stumbled, then helped myself back up to my seat, stared at my plate, so hungry that the idea of eating repulsed me, meszknye with its [[mulchy->mgutters]] wobbles. I was and was not; dazed into this dying to demand again the daze, death is the home all doors open into, and, surprised, you discover no more the [[window->msubmerse]] wish. Rapping on the bar one of those cluttered in this sleaze, like me, isn't so, isn't so, yearning Jaufr to reprise in a sudden [[violence->mtear]], thrash this cudgelkin upon the counter... hold the blink long enough to forget nondarkness...

Loops in my brain loop with me helplessly thought and its opposite swooning attachless this aftershock so locked in its origin serenity which is nothing more than a subverted despite the dancing that drudged behind me which I dreaded to consider. Conjugate elusion the antagonized which makes of those motions oscillating into my ears along the traced grooves to imprint a layered disc of bursted reveries [[blueblaze->msubmerse]] razors to slice the sky like scythes, wounds oozing verdant and crimson wisping thin clouds to cover a rainbow god, all retraces of how much I missed years, not that I missed them, but that I am missing in them, [[sawdust->mgutters]] meszknye coated my mouth unsatisfying, gravelly enforcing of this is your only current, lucidizing anger at being forced not to dream, to relive the dead within, stillness imprisons you when gravity ceases to. An impression [[eradicates->mtear]] the groove. Consumed.

Urn legs uneasy tilting atop a quakespine, [[crushquell->mtear]] [[dankswell->msubmerse]] chestfeel of being in a room too darkened to alight your soul. How easy to flee this impossible, impossible. Distance despite my attempt not to know, look up at the jet realm of not to be yours to feel rooted helplessly to whatever [[dust->mgutters]] we inhabit, face our existence in our faces, our existence's essential horror: it is ours. Slouched on a numbed. Our aloneness is a powerful lost.

Felt my skin's [[grime->mgutters]]. Glittering mauve zealot robes hooded on an agate glare which would pierce were it not long centuries beyond aloof, the inquisitor floated in a spheric autonomy glacially poised in just above slow where he waited a response. I creaked a plea open, but he presidium hell held in a crozier across a hollow hall lit with cosine wavering pearls melding into a [[blue->msubmerse]] spark fluid second as the two rows tied their helix closure smeared across the wall accompalypse on every wall a case of heads in different perspectives all chanting and thimbling gold lines littering a lozenge pattern on an arching orthogonal inbound vertex to lay two paces past the inquisitor's aura's exosphere, itself a seraphic urn. No shout would transpose so ornate a distance without tearing apart its origin. [[Sliced->mtear]] a wound crescent to connect his gaze and said, yes.

Glass dust swamping my shoulders with aftermath. I guess this is me, still. I tried to ask the [[murk->mgutters]] to mean, or at least to forgo, but tinny music kept rinkling in my ears to prevent from freezing to a painting, so languidly I turned, half hoping the [[motion->mtear]] would [[submerse->msubmerse]] breath... less... how he looked, in this finality he was so insistent didn't have to... kept eating, this at least is.

Cerulean cool the sparkling tapestry washing hints of the true indiscernible whole. Mylecz while we bobbed winded through sea mystery by its escaped smokes augurable in hushed awe, the robed zealot knife in hand marching to the alabaster altar wreathed in crimson cloth aware of what swarmed through him to the gate by his fear juttering open. Blesscursed with awareness, he mentioned the word beauty. Pyeisa scoffed. "Ey to your eyes up here kid. You'll grade less the sea when you consummate." Mylecz's cheeks heated with offense, but he demured to a glower. An argumentative tone without its payload harumphed hollow in the bleak. Tyese chortled on the brown he was coaxing down his throat, urging Pyeisa to the tension squeeze. "Something so touching about the sea," the low intensity with which Pyeisa imagined every sincerity, "maybe it's just the fish nibbling." "Did Reikka rent her tongue?" Marko snorted. "Could see her sblubbing such a rhapsody. Least you spared us the rhyme, thence the pangingest migraine." "Aye so," Pyeisa. "Your verse hasn't retched me up blood, so there's to encourage you." "I'll drink to not retching blood," Volya. "I'll drink to retching blood!" Tyese. "Refill me honest yeah?" "More than a drink to drag you honest," Marko. "Wary you diluting the pour, ought to spare our groom's beloved hey, might he be disconcerted by the amount of mouths she's been in." Pyeisa. "So's the strength of her wit," Volya chuckled. "Spare me your safe in the gallery," Mylecz burned. "Did I accident to sincerity? Attest to this crime, I'll do, apologize for the slight character to my character, didn't intend to offend cynical one notes." "Character to my character, flourish, absolute inspiration that," Pyeisa. "If you could pour your brain, our Captain'd case it straight up, tingle his tongue golden dreamy while we slop up the bilgefilth." "Captain to our skeletons would strip us, so's to could, work the bones to wavebreak without so much as sleep or slop," Volya. "Don't you always strip to the skeletons, or why then the strip should excite the bone?" Mojyi. Tyese laughed like stepping into a bit of damp but it squelches surprisingly muddy. "Wouldn't ho that make it better if it were literal, like, coming home the day, ripping off your flesh clump by clump, dangling it on gorehooks, squiggling into bed a muscleswamp gooey over the prodding and aahing of bones, like imagine if bones could moan, lifting a heavy box and your spine just guhhs, and or imagine if –" Mojyi. "Let it shy you plodder, you've stretched it," Pyeisa. "I'll stretch your neck too far eh." "Already is, why's I look down on you lah." "Well, while you're looking down there..." "Nah, I'm already brimmed on Mylecz's bride ere." "Ey Mylecz, what is it you're moving when you gazing at water?" "His reflection, isn't so they call it masturbation," Volya. "Leave him alone," in my best Jaufr impression. "Alone should we then, Leiru?" Marko. "Suppose you're empathetic with spurned lovers?" Anger and passivity alternating rapidly; anger followed its nature and beat the other out. "You don't know what you're talking about," I steamed. "Ooh, touchy tread there." "Guess there is a bond ah," Pyeisa jut in hastily. "Two adorers bereft of consummation." "Cool it on Leiru, yeah," Mylecz. "Give the kid a break for once." "Aww, looks to they'll share themselves free of virginity," Pyeisa. "Eh, and what happened, Leiru, someone shame her into asking your name?" Marko. Winced into myself but could feel him staring as if he wished to [[tear->mtear]] his way in, stare, spit.

"Get down the lot of you," Marko, seething, armed. "Go on you sleazy pissalls, get to the grunge. This is a robbery, act is it yeah, nah, groan why don't you, that's right, it's a robbery, raise the alarm, soldier up your missing braves, no? Just to your quivering then? Suits me so. Let's unawkward this as we can hey, play your parts and maybe I won't take overdue, sound fair? Doesn't weigh on my conscience you live or die, doing you a favor as I see it." "Oh Yeska, no, oh no, no!" Blubbered a wretch. "This can't be! Where's the bouncers? Hey? I though this was a –" "Marko? Marko, what?" Marko frowned. "Vasya, ah, excellent, amazing, absolutely charmed. Ey but I'm so thrilled you're here buddy, always admired how slashable your throat was." "Now now, we're kissing friends, we can skip the pleasantries. You want tell me the havoc? We'll drink it over proper, no need to corpse the mood ruined." "Do you mind getting on the floor as I asked? I told you I'm robbing you. Won't say again." "You won't again? Oh then, it's fixed, my ignorance outpersists." "I'll enjoy killing you." "Didn't ken you the courage to the climb," a sneer in any other tone. "Have you drunk the replacement?" "Oh speaking of drunks," drawled, "saw your brother the day prior, slammed a mug on that Reikka. Earthenware everywhere, really quite a mess." Vasya chuckled politely. "Marks two layabouts going full blitz since I upped. Would've stayed had I known the lineup." "Just get to the ground mate, sick of the fact you have legs." "I'm starting to vomit this opinion you have a spine." "Alright, that's it, you get one chance to argue your life here." "How of these witnesses, beisza? Everyone here knows you. You're not some faceless clamber lately down to [[sack->msack]] and [[swill->mswill]], you're a sailor, people recognize you, Marko." "Yeah, and who's to the count then? Just a bunch of deadeye sendcheats and some sweaty perverts from what I see, not what I hang about. Suppose they know you, you laggard, but doubt they speak of me as I am said. Show one to my known eh?" "How's your one here," Vasya nodded to me. "Could you stand, ace? Show yourself, shall ye, let's chat the three of us, just like the good times we can pretend we've shared." "Leiru?" Marko wrinkled his nose. "What in the? The hell you doing in this, this kepka?" Struck by the light, forced to answer, blinking –

"Dunno, just sagged out to morsel." I. "Leiru lor, you’ve sunk to this dredge?" Marko’s disappointed in his bewilderment; coalescent certainty crushing his bewilderment. "Always behind protestors their complicities heavingier than the silent! All your coy elusion of libido yeah draining out Imeni stocked up here, no doubt!" "No, it’s not like that, it’s just, I mean, to eat -" "Yeah devourer certain, you don’t surprise your waddling in, watching what you’ll relish the thought to purchase, rattling clinks of a deathrest lasciviously consumption bulbous! To think I trusted a thief, I [[robbed->mrepay]] of all trust, how can even you percolate the venom, last of the curecallers? Used to hate myself to sleep with ringing indictments of all the purity blatherers haranguing me supposed alternatives, but what alternative is this, hypocrisy thirsts [[rampant->mstruck]] and [[ravageful->mmurderous]]? I’ll show you [[ravenous->mbloodstained]]! Nothing good to this world, illusions like you least of all!" Furious burning the heaviness of being he heaved open hopepanic, scrambling to dodge a stab of the lances, and another, and so many further I ensued inside the antagonism anatomized…

"Just, I um. Eating." "Eating, eh?" Marko's voice deepened. "Where'd you get those coins then hmm? Rake them from Jaufrei, right, you worthless? Lying sendthief, and you won't even share! Despicable. Unbelievable. I'm actually struggling to be this disappointed. I really thought the better of you, Leiru, I actually did if you'll believe it, but I guess I was wrong, you're just but another cheating sot as everyone else in this damned gyah! Jaufrei was right about you, isn't that sad to be so gross even a Jaufrei could call you to rights. You only minnow pride better, but you're really the same, you're that same whining trashheap as every other mirrorcherish willing to admit he thinks. Eating in this place, this wretched brothel," glared at a wormly sprawled beneath him "despicable. Vasya, sure, foaled in the same sewage that spat us Volya, can't blame a bastard for his lineage, but you, you priest of the masquerade, you prance about your heaven mutual in our heaving, you dyenne. Liar! Eating here! Ha! Can't even hulch it, the hypocrisy. Wouldn't deign spare me a coin, but oh no, here you are sure enough feasting your foul unsateable. How much you clink in that [[bloodstained->mbloodstained]] purse, eh beisza? Enough to snag of these later? I'll bet. After, and after Imeni, after you dragged her along your unwilling to pretend humanity, gods, if it wasn't so gross I'd vomit just to choke to death on the gross. I humbled myself before you, desperate, dying, and you wouldn't paltry me a single coin, not one, wouldn't even look at me, you kyauska! You drove me to this, I came to you begging my not this, because I thought, well and that was your chance to prove the change you blather on and on on, I played your mythical beggar, but you pushed me aside to get blown silly with some sobber you'll plaster your idol's face on, eugh. Where in this filth is the future you smudge ears with? Can't see it. Wouldn't even answer me, but and it was for your benefit the like, to help you with those rumors, you kyauska! I'll give you what you for, I'll [[repay->mrepay]] your kindness in full!" Inferno thrills raced his blood burning through chugging gears churning wheels so fast hard thrash hooves he pommeled the ground so ponderous inside my nerves a powerweighting unwieldy colossus uncontrollable by so small a soul: his passion jostled him to rush the whips' intent as a warlike spitchortle hacked him along the fusing of his terror at his own momentum and his blaze enamor with the jarring strikes jouncing [[murderous->mmurderous]] intent along his enveloping everything whirlwind sundering bays in hate's sheerness swells, titan balking in a beyond our scope to see eruption, lances in a fatal fury. Fizzing bands of sulfurous cardinal accosted my sudden drop to sprawling beneath his red rupture, scuttling back like a crab as the first lance [[struck->mstruck]].

Ragepious reared up eclipse untouchable. My gasp sizzled into Marko's dark assurance as he struck: to the left from where my hips squirmed, then thrust next where I'd fled a few inches left, then up on my hands and knees, rolling out of the way, backing up, quick wild jitter jumping, skitter crawling and clambering over seats, thwarting this strike, jumping this swipe, ducking the dual lance sweep, pantomime duet of hunter and hunted in microsecond brevity, a deferation plea from one embodied violence to another, ceaseless scurries reflecting the demand and its answer with a parry for every point we imagine we make, a flourish in his fits and a frenzy in the flitting away, absolute scream that this must not be it, let it not end here suddenly my voicemaking, there is still a will in narrowly escaping each time from the deathrush in the killing glance blazoned, a positive and yet against the graveswell tides that pull and pull and snatch the leg to drag to sinking, drowning, bubbling out cries to an airless smother, down and away and further from the sun, on veils choking as sight slinks to the vortex closure in an ultramarine tomb garlanded with silences bleeding out shrouds of charcoal and charred indigo swathes incandescent in the aquatic glow, Jaufr's deepbloated [[corpse->micerupture]] grinning the fathomrizon. "Insect you are, crawl! Haughty, but your infected tissue festers same. There's no cure in you, no cure to any of this, don't you get it? We're all pathetic! We're all insects, Leiru, you and me and all these cokyessi" he slashed his lance across a slower crawler to dip his tone in ruby "and I'm sick of it! I hate this, this Tower, all of it, and especially you, Leiru, you and Jaufrei and all your kind, you dreams dangling atop a base ruinous with others' blood!"

Dust obscuro portaled the kick past its pretense, Olyasz's hair swaying with the force, and bright energy burst from the resounding [[separate->micerupture]] from its smack a laugh. "Well, though tried," he shrugged. "Wager we'll never fix it." "Where's a mechanic when the need?" Teminu. "There's the joke." "What ho Kobyu? He lives near up, no?" "Gods, Kobyu. Wouldn't shut about a soundbreaker last I saw him, wound up wishing a cur had half feasted my face so he'd not have known me." "Kobyu's also dead," Mazyu. "So there's that to counsel." "Dead? No way," Teminu. "Since when?" "Since last something or other. Killed himself. Didn't you hear?" "Bysze, no, no one told me anything." "Ah well, it's sad actually, the poor beisza. He was working on some mechanical thing right, super absorbed in it. Apparently he'd purchased some relic from a salvager on Seventh or likes, but he nabbed also some kind of blueprint assure, all he would talk about for spilling on a month was fixing it to the run, said none's done to the height since generations. You said so a soundbreaker, Olyasz?" "To my imagine," Olyasz flattened his face recalling. "Wasn't really listening to say the spite. You know how it is with him. But that's aches and aches ago, couldn't still be on about that ha?" "Nah but it was, was obsessed Kobyu was, spent bright and night on this thing, wouldn't slip but to drink out, so then one to Yoni's gets he super blown, upbeat to hyper, slurs his drunk to some random on how he was fixing this thing near finished, what a bit it was, revolutionize how he worked and the whole, how everyone would, would work, or uh well his idea of everyone, or so anyway he slurked, to the milling up he graggles his way home but to find the drunk dyenne he'd blathered to had wandered his room meanwhiles and played about, like all about, like breaking off parts and dueling with them, Nolu said it looked as the place had been rocked by a whole party, tons of people throwing bolts at each other, surely some jousting surely, but they'd utterly destroyed not only his soundbreaker but basically every else he stashed. Kobyu gushed his throat like a vein and went running about shouting a bunch of gibberish, like really unintelligible stuff, old words and whatever he imagined lay between them, a tonguestorm, gabs about going to meet the uh, or no, it was uh, he was the disciple, going to meet, uh, or whatever, and just drowns himself, then and there. Straight up sended himself hey, spectacle." "Ah, so much a shame," Marko. "Why?" Teminu. "I mean, to my mind, the right go is to hunt the drunk, right, not kill yourself. Poor Kobyu should've gotten his revenge, you know, instead of just, you know. Settle the score. It's his duty to, like to be as much as he preached, he ought to have followed his scriptures to violence, I mean he had the machines to do it. Make things right, but whereas suicide, it's like, nothing changes, the thinkless who broke his machines have won over him and us to this waste." "Right but what's he care the principle? He's gamed out, gone from the consequence. I imagine what you think of him has slipped with the earth his mind." Teminu. "Yeah, and he didn't have the right!"

Like the pirates were a storm yaw and dip deaththroed the ship. Backed into a corner as one of them knocked me down. Staring up at death. Crackle of my brain's furrows electric with stimuli. Intricate spiderwork network bulging the eye bulleting in hyperballetic tandem. From my veins panic burst out howling bloody in a blindfire blitz which burnt my face to leather, cinders and brands question, a weapon. Submerging in orange froth the struggling revelation that I had run from problems escapeless that found me there more in a mask blatant neared the actual if as my chest ruptured revealed manyhorned the beast emerge. Beyond the buoys chased by within it into tempting causality by wandering into its untempered care, was there not enough death on the waves that I had to bring mine with me? Fallen into a plunge earthpiercing I permitted the sunken my answer, only running to seek a separate sword to separate this head haunted by bloodsplatter on a bannerless sail grayer than the ghosts lamenting through the shroud, runniness of our rust blood on the headache steel. Cracked skulls, collapsed chests, arms without owners, legs from none. Beasts baying to a slaughter obligation. Every impulse deadened, the mind shuttered, and I heard madness gargled. What had been yelled to me, over and above me, against me, dimmed beyond visual evoking blocked in statement in the anemic fray, Jaufr and Nejani and nothing else but pirates, and there it was, a tear, the first tear is always a surprise and under the gibbous jury weighing I grabbed a fallen scimitar and swung it sobbing, wretched, broken in frenzy, and watched it, myself disembodied, disembowel some also violence, a pirate, a friend, a god, this world or that, all meaningless; certain only of death and the unglut desire of loathing. The surprise of actual battle bleeding into my hands rattled rather than instilled reality, [[icerupture->micerupture]] soul in immolation brackish, warsong percussed by answering cannons. Rebirthed in furor and tumult's fangs and claws, berserker brutality brawled my inhibitions and won, and so with scimitar sways I cut the cutlass cloud killing my portraiture in viscera splatters, hewed limbs limp and dangling with threads of torn tissue, incense to the final song sounding. Marko's shirt flushed liquid life, and I denied all of it with my hands, in a single fluid outcry action I slammed his head against the counter. Splitting sound and a chunk. Cry out in pain, but I took his head and slammed it again, over and over again, three, four, five, six, ten, twenty, infinity, ever and ever on, head to counter, head to counter, screams, pleas, pain, tears, terror, crunches, coughing, crying, all through it crying, and I heard – "Absolute fantastic, I'll honest," Marko nodded as he wiped blood off his tunic. "I never knew you had it in you kid. I'm surprised, pleasantly surprised. You've grown up. If that's in you, you're dependable." "Is Jaufr okay?" Staring at my alien hands. A flounce of beleaguered amusement. "Yeah, your boyfriend's alright, don't worry of him. Little coward hid through the whole of it, probably still is." A shaking of the head that sounded like laughter. "Never occurred to him he had the keeping at stake, or maybe true he did, but then so much the worse for that pathetic beisza." "Am I, am I okay? Am I fine?" "Ha yeah, you're straightened, buddy. You did fine. When the time comes, you've got to be ruthless, you've got to be heartless, and you were, you didn't hesitate. You knew when there was killing to be done, and you did it. That's quite the accomplishment. It took me years of arms training before I could kill a man without thinking. "You know, Leiru, I never thought I'd have this to say, but you know, you really good up the gunsman. Who to have guessed it, what with how quiet you are, and, well I'll, how effeminate you are hey, but when the time comes, when the die is cast, you're a real fighter, you're right up there with the rest. That's good. That may come to your advantage. It did today."

Covered in ink blots the hedge pseudolines saturated the strike piercing my fluttering sleeves. Wildeyed I kicked him and stumbling backcrawled to a stool I had knocked over. Marko spat and misstepped his dodge into Vasya who put a hand on his shoulder, swoosh tumble palm nicked – "Marko, whoa! You've lost it!" "Have I?" Marko snapped. "Have I?" Vasya skirted both the screech and its scraping recourse, then dropped to a low pose and kicked out his heel catching Marko and crashing him over. Vasya scrabbled on top of him and a vague red mist of punches and balled slaps melted into his fist trying to lodge inside Marko's mouth, then spread to an open hand trying to cover it instead, then Vasya kicked away, having freed a lance. "Leiru, quick!" Vasya. Marko struggled to his feet, but Vasya bayonetted the lance, causing [[Marko->micerupture]] to back unthinkingly into me. When once Jaufr and the midnight musically quiet caught into a rhythm sacred he ghostly held out a dream I drunk desperate, saliva dripping, wishing sanctity in the deluge, and he smoldered to my ashing a drearblur mutesparkly, when they ask of you your life, Emnin, you can only reply as all your yesterdays, and I said, yes, the hollowed in which you hide.

Marko's body lay below in sharp angles, separated in segments in [[vertigo->mvertigo]] relativity. His neck yawned open; his face fell flat. Blood and specks of brain littered the floor. Slowly, my surroundings. "The hell, Leiru?" Vasya retained his vomit. "What the hell was that? Baelu, it's all over you!" "I don't know," staring at my alien hands. "You told me to kill him." "I didn't say that! I said, I meant, that you should restrain him, or, not to, not to kill him! By geskecz, you just wouldn't stop! There's, I mean look at you, it's all over. You just slammed him, you wouldn't stop, I kept, I mean I kept calling you to... hell, Marko's a good friend of Volya's, when, when he hears, you –" "He tried to kill me!" "Well, yeah, but –" "But what? What? What would you have said to him had he killed me?" "I mean, I, but it's you, Leiru, you –" "I'm a real fighter," I moused. "When the die is cast, I'm a soldier." A [[pause->mpause]]. A long pause.

You're gone, lost, no longer where you were. Where do sounds go when they die? Flutes of our youth fall silent. No more the soft whispering of ones you love beyond your ability to rationalize, even those who hurt you, especially those you hurt, but in this bunker between these strainings to here rests a sing chronos city muted in which wayward pilgrim why mutters please to any friendly sound mind in the tongueless abysm slowly closing, claustrophobic eternity. Crushed by pressure, channeling the sources long since dried, chilled. What might those old touches feel like, forgotten now there's no smile still worn. Elusive joy prancing ever at the edge of potential, robbed, and who's the criminal? Stealing essence hints in our each incursion, collecting what is shed to mold into a bust to place atop a pillar to speak back from higher authority, we have to dig and take to know one another, and there is nothing left to steal in the dull grating of steel place. Iron taste of throat blood choking the emotion reverie flesh pulping in the throat when so alive you wish to weep so breakingly your body to flood become this image, transferal to the immiscible reminder that things ongo in the floating eroded. Too lates by which we count the time, converse with ghosts in grandiose tones all you could not express, but they will not echo you home, you will linger in the seamist grotto as moss embalms the differentiating noise. Memories sleep; the morning mists clear a horizon unrecognized: living is your net fingers spread to let the uncontrolled impetus flow through and out to sensation's lack of binding. Stem the tide? You mean stem what has already [[flooded->mflooded]]? Gore dripped to draw out my hidden trusswork. Winced the desire that Marko's blood splattered not, wounds sluiced to this gutter but not gendered in its muck. Death, but what does it bear on me? Had I really, tottering horrorstricken [[redcoated->mredcoated]] in permanent mute scream, survived? Wet squelch as Marko's head split on a stair. Jaw like a blade on a whetstone. In a rusting pipe with several layered dirty linen spreads splitting the source to thin shades I saw selfportrait, the low glow extension of the clammy cold in my talc palm scratching initials and the initiated unundoable, do not, slammed to my knees, my eyes echoed vein lines, but I chomped my own enamel, I am over, do not have an answer, do what must, though I know I won't do anything, because life is the greed I ask of everyone. Delusional to believe the expression of whatever nucleus composes us is innately beautiful, powerful, moral; no one guarantees that, no one says you are worth this inane innate, and slushing this corpse down these stairs indicts the whole system by which I live: I am this action that sullies the world. I do not want to open my mouth for fear that what I think comes out, my speech tears. Marko should have been allowed: we can deserve it, the killer can be right, we can truly be empty arrogances presuming to fill a neutral ground, delusional torsion to a separate stalk to grow from, refusing to face the fact that maybe we are is not the best outcome. Act revulsion seized me throatgunked shiverfurious, [[desiccated->mdesiccated]] truth, desaturated lie. Plum luxless under a nightmare splotch white me dragging Marko. I hugged the curving downwards, aquatic glares still in every infinitely removed object tangent to my empty path to a [[ghostsleet->mghostsleet]] sea, a sea not hungry but willing to abide another. Cursed noise gurgling along the rims reproach. What does this mean, why will it not? In the moment so vivid, in the action so fraught, but this lack, this lack, I cannot take it, I will rip open the cog and drink its clockwork causation, spit the steel residue, let it coagulate, course through to something, anything, please snow here on this clump splash starry of this fire frozen, show on Marko's dwindling face, this slight chill shivering… death uncloaked and made skeletons of those who beheld. In the sea Marko sank the same, and I watched unchanged. Something is wrong, I admit it, but I have no idea how to name it or solve it. Something is unsimply wrong with me… perhaps that sentence tilts harder to the end as all things do. I stepped as if I had the justification to do so. I should have let him! Hadn't he? Perhaps he had, and this was just the long spiritroad back.

Would torrents wash us free of everything we fail to be would we wash out of the womb and mean, but broken to say ourselves, whatever dust we dream so, we gloss the loss. Breaks you to say your sewn pseudo, your false before the true is your truth of this all false, so they say. Worn eight ways, each of them wrong in turn, worn out. Effort expended as excess expression stranded me in the gap generating the gushing, the struggling, this [[straining->mactually]] day after day to a gradual nightening. Why if even I will not answer?

Listen, you violence, steep in this your soul wrung raw afresh upon this wilted materia, will thence again will you last long enough, stop before the sting... saliva trails tinged purplish by poison... you cannot hide in someone else as once you did, once considered running strands of her hair along my tongue, biting, yanking head to head, swallowing, letting it root through my brain, sprouting through my skull, replacing mine, but shunted in this sleeve I have nothing but wrong, Marko was right, I should have, I only stopped him out of, what, this virus? Isn't violence the symptomatic torsion of energies constructor constrictions? In my murderness made real, unveiling my am. Synaptic interruptices implosion pyre the hollow order halo, massacre saint paean in the gore and genome, genureflector emptied to this externally internalized sign. Towards a raucous [[actually->mactually]] I mothed though my pockets rustled empty... should have robbed Marko, haha! Then they'd be right! A gruesome laugh uncurled from my bluedried lips.

Gnawed numb all avenues, every door a deadened, no awakened springs this vivid hex upon the pall. I think nothing unless someone invites. Can't even seem to. Else the annunciating resplendence I dull lamp industrial upon these nowheres stretching ever onwards. Like trash. Sight stuck in a smaller room than me. Experiences [[flutter->mactually]] through my fingers as I erg. Hypoxic, lungs crinkly, clot sensations building up in a bruised brain.

Lightwash puddles sloshed across a dusking sunsea's shadetresses wavecrests puncturingly bright but in a blunt white to bash the eyeballs in. Suppressed tense I coiled eased to a treethreaded gale's glade sigh. Kindling confusions in my wincing at scintillating brainpulses inflamed my migraine. Paleflash corpselike bringing the brainbuzz to the bones for burial. Wanderjammed in this way, in the way hall hollows I haltered groggy through as they wind and go dazes dead months with nothing to [[tingle->mactually]] memory specters. Waking up is the lie of initiation, this now, but there is never a now, I have been gone for years, and this is the next night of the nothing. Nothing forms, everything blurs, drainblend touchless sentinel of noninclusion jet surface serene as the life slips. Where do we go from. The hall hauls on. Leashed dragging follow.

"Ahoy Leiru!" Kaiya rushed to hug me, pulled away in disgust, noticing the blood. "I uh, I was starting to worry uh... what kept you?" "Marko's dead." "Oh." Kaiya looked back at the others who shrugged. "Well." "Hmm," Imeni nodded. "So," Mariena nodded. I guess I nodded too. Kaiya gnawed the side of her tongue as she reformed around where I seemed to be instead. "Well –" "Ahoy the less [[annoying->mannoying]] one," Mazyu lurched over his sister Mariena to greet me. "Leave off, Mazyu," Mariena's expression slunk. "Ah never the worries ace, I foreswear the fight this tipsy, that's what this next drink's for!" Marko's face as he sunk, had it been a grin, tacit pride between the wreck and roil of skin and spine, the salute between a soldier and his fallen angle's shadow? No, I must have imagined it, there had only been shock... "I, did I, miss anything? What's happening?" I. "Captain Myeri's brewing up in the backstore some speech they say," Mazyu. "He's waiting for the proper angle of night from so's I heard, gonna be, and I quote, called to the preciseness of the hour." "Trash to Myeri's tune," chuckled Mariena. "That's the thing," Mazyu. "There's not a dyenne to argue, right like, Captain Myeri controls [[time->msailors]] itself, a gift lah, deciding the hour to the whim, what power! Captain indeed!" Imeni chuckled. Jealousy wormed me aware, then a sharp chagrin tinged, then a resignation dulled, then a gloom slept, all exiled in a heavy breath heaved. Had my eyes become Marko's? They seemed to see differently. "What do you think it is this time?" Kaiya. "Olyasz's the attest Myeri's in it with the [[Veda->mveda3]], and I mean it's gotta be right, can't be a coincidence. You know about the Veda, Mazyu? Olyasz says they're staying in the Docks like as we speak, can you believe it? The Veda here in the Docks hor?"

"Yet to catch the rumor why I care." "Always gotta be cynical ehh, never [[belie->mbelie]] us mutual can you." "Not being cynical, I'm! More like ehm, sardonic sincerity hey. Have you heard the word, sardonic? I heard it recently, and I'm in love with it. I've decided that actually I made it, it's my word, you have to say thanks Mazyu every time you use it." "How the hell you make words?" Mariena. "I thought they fished them out the sea." "If you're especially inspired, and I'm drunk enough to imitate, the growl slips out original." "Yeah but if it's original then it's not a word because no one understands." "Maybe when you finally discover a new word, like, a bell rings, everyone just instantly understands, we all look up to the sky and smile." Imeni. "Nah, because you've got to explain what it is when you use it, like sardonic means to be like, it's uh, it's kind of like um, mocking, but it's a very special version of it, because, well, you wouldn't understand, you had to have been there." "I've heard sardonic, we all have." Kaiya. "Doesn't it just mean cynical also?" Imeni. "Yes." Kaiya. "No!" Mazyu. "Never the slight of it, you haven't heard the word, you're thinking that." "Vital that we argue it." Kaiya. "Like Pyeisa's cynical so, whereas to my account is just the enjoy a good joke, so like, I'm sardonic, that's what's special about me." "Ah, so sardonic's a synonym for obnoxious, I see now." Mariena. "You're a synonym for obnoxious!" "So's why Pyeisa's not sardonic, is he's actually tolerable." Imeni. "Nah, you know what, I'll let the jibe free this once. I'm in good spirits, think I might get employed today. Besides, everyone deep down knows Pyeisa's bad and I'm universally good, so it's not like it's slander." Mazyu. "You don't have to be so mean and say it's not slander. Trying my best." Mariena. "Gotta sink lower, you know better than that, Mariena. Hit them where it hurts. Bring out all your latent rage, totally outstrip the purpose of the insult, throw away the stakes of the conversation and just strive for pure pious malice. Go for the ego. Desecrate their humanity. It's not a night of it unless they stumble away shattered as a person." "Well, Pyeisa's blastable, and you're a howling fester, so nobody cares your virtues as to his." "Dozens of grades up," Imeni. "Absolutely," Kaiya, "not even a question." I nodded. "Oh, whoa, whoa now, you've crossed a line now, I'm going to have to ask you to apologize, I can't believe you'd –" Mazyu. "[[Sailors->msailors]]!" In an unmistakable [[baritone->mbaritone]].

Glowering blotted the all with dark. Wished I could think a thing obliterated and all its roots. "You know, Emnin," Jaufr swirled his drink like one not there to drink it. "Was considering the earliers, and ah the bit with Ayke dying got me considering how so many of your dreams end up meaning nothing if you don't incorporate them in new ones. Ho instance, used to have this dream about climbing up to the Veda hey, that gig, obsessed to it the way all mysteries that don't need answers obsess us. Ascending to the Veda blessed me dream material in a time had none, all my problems arrayed themselves around this uplifted absence, if I could, home is the furthest thing from you, and that's all I wanted, reach, to be gone and be at home. Prove yourself to the world as it proves back to you, how convenient it could've been if the Veda, if that had been it... hhuh. Did you ever have that dream?" "Like everyone." "Well, suppose I wouldn't know. I don't understand everyone." "I think that's mutual." "True enough," laughed. "When I was younger though, really hyped it up possible in my needs, ascending to the Veda. Sneak past the bandits, the scavengers, wights, everything, strain all the way up to the top and whatever secludes there, become a part of its apartness, I could do it, could live it! Can you imagine up there with the bones of yesterworlds, this can I dwell alternate selved… and even so had I adventured the way up there to find them blank yeah, those Floors, or worse like to just some reflection of this, still in the act at least proven I was able to make myself not of the Docks, this stymie, so had been no Veda to find then ho I the first. Had a friend, dead now, whose mother used to scavenge onside, so she'd been up a meander, she'd such stories, and that the ascend she said was like their big test, if you could reach them you're adjudged worthy the joining. Course, those were the days of the lock, you remember yeah, terror of the whispers Akuso's had collapsed ah, quavers of frenzy they were, so every half brave thought up an apocalypse they could soothe with rattle trinket wisdoms, some of them to needing summon the Veda or hide with them or whatever they thought up to that sky, so the idea of going up and joining the Veda was a hysteria, entire economy to it, used to be that on Fifth, and this was back before it uncivilized remember, a whole avenue to slinging gear to ascend, like people offering themselves as guides to take you up to Tenth, Thirteenth, Fifteenth, what have your wild, like a bounce of raggedy thieves prim behind booths just soliciting, absolute mudsoul sitting all nice haggling price with some dandy slushable above Second. Bizarre ah. "So's I got to the Eighth your verify, a hostel up there, kind of a last pass through, and I'd spent the day arguing with some slipper on the Seventh over, some trifle, so I'd to curl the night there, and I, I had this dream, even to this day it shakes me, so vivid, feel like I may have somehow, actually lived, something, but in this dream right, was moonlike alone in a pool gleaming upon a peak slope blanketed by a hyperthin black that would pop with little bursts of mote light, blues and orange, neon, some promise of an outer shell, but in the sparkly I could sometimes pierce through and see it right as if it were real, soft emeralds bejewelling snow bedecked boundlessness, the continents themselves I swear it, the paintings alive... I swam on a rising and falling solid, flash frozen sea diamond and crystalline, gods it was like I was ashamed not to glow. Can you imagine it, surely you must taste of it in the awes I milk to our agonizeds, something so beautiful that you want to be a part of it, that you're horrified you're still you in the face of so much better? Leapt out into the stillness wild, tried to dive the land, to drown inside it, roots tingling my spine a language earth native, and I grass splashed out upon a prairie or so, larger than a whole Floor, fields of fire, morning glories blossoming indigo lamps waymarking a scintillating countersky, so sharp nearly scarlet, and I raced through hatchy luminescence lingering the separation into a platonic solid jutter composed of the natural fray unheimlich, testament for the trees themselves to look back upon as we do our own mythic preghosts, but as soon as I felt like I was treading into its sacred rhythm I reeled with vertigo atemporal, spinning impossible through polygonal orthogonals of intra and infra determalinative invisibles included sever ions base contouring second gravity of the assumptive immanence of gods with no end trance, but ahead below beside inside me I saw spark a shade intoning chthonic hymnal eternals terrible through the cocytean weep my plummet plumed, could taste that terror on my tongue, shook with the beyond time of the end, not death but the lifetime you live as you die, the revision of what's already done in the incisive retrouma as realms translate the next beyond this body unto the bleak I, but even as I abhorred briefly true senses I loved realizing dying its own kind of living that I preferred... does this sound too strange to you? I'd never tell this to anyone else. But it was so real, even looking at you right now, and all these, stupidly tactile chairs, this world of browns and bangs, it's not the faintest figment of that, that uh, I don't know, I don't know! I just, when I woke up I immediately descended, physically to follow my soul aye, went all the way home, and I, swam in the port, dove and rose and dove and rose until I thought I might disturb the [[glue->mbelie]] that keeps these opposites together… really wanted to die in that moment, I can't, it's hard to explain, like in fate's pull only faster or slower floating, wanted in the dream [[wake->mbaritone]] to live out my meaning at a rate worthy of our blood's pumping to panic attack amass. I don't know if I have yet, so fallen beneath the feeling, but I know I have to try, seek out the [[sunken->msailors]] vein..."

Waking's intensity utters more patters than is pure to your [[consecration->memerge]]. Jarring snatched me from this aching. I closed my eyes and saw him: (align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[City dancer atop contours Unspeakably person in the prism, Keyhole gemlight of espers Unknown pulsing lifeward plying...] Drawn up by its tide sat I on her knee, into her leaning, listening, wondering whole worlds, and her swaying heather hum traced the hero Yenysz slaying the wicked kokenkh, and when I asked others in lieu of her of this kokenkh they shrugged free of this secret tingling [[resonance->msailors]] so I appealed to her to make real what haunted under these eyelids, but my mother refused, I have not read for you to discern but that it might gush in the night when you need it; this kokenkh, does it not howl within you? Heard its call inside my chest of course, slumping to an outside fit for a beast, and I cried, and I beat my lying bulk, but in the shadows lurking I heard the Yenysz come. She was there, muttering: (align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[Kyanne nome dalianna deszakh drovinoya.] To which she said: (align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[And loves will pass which you cannot defend.] Enduring midnight was she the whitest constellation. Cold broke upon her in paraselene, animus cancerous in the stillness. Like teenagers do I grew to hate her.

Myeri's voice [[swept->memerge]] us up and would not let go: "You of these lengthened shadows, hearken high to the quickening flames! How long have you in this relinquishment squalor slumbered? Beneath rose circlets awaken, arise, why wear you such shackles, you champions, you knights? Too long have we sucked at the stifling succumbing to bone stupors, too long have we eaten dusts whimpering for taste, too long consigned to tombs too tightening noose, cannot on account of the ash unchoke the charred stiffness, scream thirsts pores for the embrace of free air, voyage mind joined you syllables of my tension, do not these echoes awaken the same demons in you that sweat nights as dreams pass bizarre over every nightmare they engender in our spared as of yet, as of now, imprisoned let us break burst believe in an enseaming [[time->msailors]] cannot stitch, unhitch us from the verses they resite."

Myeri in a breath of infinity: "Sailors! We are, are we not, here tonight to face tomorrow? Isn't this what has flamed you hence? Kin of a will, hear this, your call, heed it, your hour, and rupture the withered knifenail claw grasp of all devouring time, break free of the inscribed in bones, in the plummet from the maw amount to comets' brilliance in oblivion! Will you let whispers in the dark endure the testament to our day? Where are the burning tongues to sing the words that will evoke our spirits in yearning hearts? When continuity desiccates us to what wrecks we leave, what chaos will write our names? Now, even now, what Towers shall we build of our own, what monuments memorialize our hauntedness? Shall stars look down and see wrecks of its ghostly [[wishers->mwishers]]? I ask of you, sailors all, if this Tower is to house our corpses, shall we not shape it as befits a mausoleum? Where is the sculpting courage, where the gilding hand? Stand rooted to the spot of our arcane deathkiss if you wish to wilt, but for those of us born to bloom, break through the bulb, blossom, be! Disembowel the guardian sky to drench ourselves in the lifeblood rain! Come, sailors, can you not tell time by the hum in your teeth? I am Captain Damano Myeri, this name has gone unto the multitude to rebound to this point, and on this changeful sunrise shall I embark upon a voyage to the last enigma of our suspension's era, the last feat left for these featureless days, what hangs even now ghostly on our whispers, what to even name summons us as the face unto eternity, that blessed, cursed relic, the Sunken Tower, eminence of time impossible, spectral seal of our perdition. In birth's shadow like all greatness awaiting its hour has it been whispered in shades and mouthed in crags: the Sunken Tower, the final awaiting! The myth, the legend, the glorious mystery of ages, the Sunken Tower! I tell you, this is our goal! I shall assail it, rock its frame with clenched fists. Death shall deluge us, pain shall electrify us, fear knocks upon us until shatter immanence, and for a moment, I promise you now, the waves shall submerge us, the earth shall be washed clean of us, but passion infernal will erupt through the purity to ignite the [[contrasunrise->mcontrasunrise]] staining the empyrean desolate with the spirituality the annihilation cannot oversong! Which of you is destined with me? Who shares this scream with me? Out, show yourselves, I know you to be there! Who shall [[enlist->memerge]] in our eternalness quest?"

An immense exhaustion caked, blue film phantoms in a focus razed. Individuation, when will you [[account->memerge]] your toll? Torches do not seal the lightless. You will be alone, this is the only thing the walls truly say. My trembling feet blank on the hollow collapsed me for me. The sound like a long tongue licking. The scrunched face ostensibly Nejani in the squalid glare. "You ever been here Jaufrei? Ask myself every open of your mouth. Would hazard you glean not the crumb of this stale. You crinkle your nose exceptional, but naught of your difference attains excision, animals the lot of us getting what we more or less deserve the same. No justice pertains but the justice we drama, no exist sustains but the onus we fashion against the howl. Nature crafted not the Towers, rather those who decided it best not to drown. So's why you don't believe us, dreamers, you like being dreamers, drugs gently of a tomorrow that could be better, lullabies as the ground slips and we fall forever. All anyone can hope for really, a little delusion, so blame you do I? Not the slight of it. Who could want more than to better the world your conform? What more is there in desire? You hope, dream, for a second you're not here, precious sure, I cherish you in that lush escape, but what paltries you pitiable, skeins you pathetic, is you won't wake when the adults nudge you to duty, you're not onto the sweat and toil that alchemizes nepenthe, so you've got to slake yourself on other tides. Your childishness is your scar, but your sin is mirror insistence to scar others your image. Better bled out lah. Locus of the end of all things their beginning, and whenever you die, guarantee, last of your mind is how much time you could have saved in the cradle killed. Blessed the abortions be, for they do not inherit the earth! For as so more we whirl, more concentric dizzies our timed, and ah, where deviate from circles? You can color in your delusions all you long, but the concrete disappointment we shatter on is waiting upon the great expanse. May as well awake when as always going to be this, up to you to choose whether that or total nullification proves more traumatic to face, but suppose ho the more you subvert what is with what you might like to have been, more egregious and unforgivable and terrifying your actions become. Hiding yeah, cowardice sewn a tongue, but some of us choose to recognize death as the closure of a sentence, so we'll have the chance to mean something definitively, whatever worthless. Your refuse, well, [[recursion->mstart4]] isn't so…"

Swayed the lacquered gauzy as several carnations petaled the rush hushed dammed behind my iris. You're not anymore, said a voice. You keep trying, but admit it, you're not anymore. Drenched [[sublimated->mstart4]] thrum from deluge nowheres' tephra I coughed, coughed, catching, meltswallowed, nervelines shoot shiver refusal, barely suppressed animal smashing through the density to erupt instinctual rage against the suppressive angel. Renunciation's infinite suffering in the being which still has senses in the minutes plodding nowhere, down the hole to the small death invited, let it be tolerated when it appears as a virtue but never as a need, I need to live out this will not to be thus, but these manacles are circlets for my reigning aspect, cannot be more than I made myself, and I made myself in the delusional gap between tense prismworlds within whose twin vertigos I had to suspend in identification the admit true sunk fetal trying neither to admit nor be true. Driving a course flameward twisting to a strange pathos overpowering the psyche feeble. Battle hymn, bless me, receive me from these steel restraints. Bone resounds horrifying the jostling crowd, nobody wants to see you, push it back under, but there it ignites, my whole being burns, wound yearn to emerge, let this body be an egg, red and mucus slimed eke yowling to a radiant care... that's the thing about shells, hells for the he and she in them, which means there might be something else internally that can [[emerge->memerge]], and is that what I wanted? Or what did I... Damned mercy of the penitent nonascetic, raze me, nullify bereave you art of an inner death, elect annihilate the preservation of something separated, I want to die in one second of yours, leave no ounce of my being unimmolated of its immense burden. In hell the demons wonder why everything is always fire.

Steerless plunging scratching the scoffing subterranean enforcement seal with fingernails to scrawl illiterate runes, wept named rebellion, in the wheedling yaw submission to the infinite. Encaged horror broke free in the recognition and beat my bones like war drums. Under the ceiling's concavity hidden doctrines groaned themselves buttresses, spectral stems extending from what had once been sequestered; we ignore what we know until our touch knows. Acidic repetition, I cried out! Who had I been to be a cracked mirror? Where might I pray, where were the ashen hills that called out in pious grime? Dripped into my body raising my shutters emotive veil to discern some similar shade, but all I saw was the shallows of this wasting cage. Had to mean bodily, or why was I given one? Let me, well then, let me use it! Belay the rust while the lost force envisions the auras to emit from its sarcophagus declusion the trust treasured in a wish, burst me blushbelieved a bloodbrush [[reinception->mstart4]]. The consuming openness of what chance implies dispelling the possession rose me to go, a force so natural to my soul it glided my body out without thought nor will, the perfect action framematched to the consciousness it tortures. Anxieties clouds vaporous headdress wreathed the whisper: "Aye enlist." For a second the hang. "Aye me," Kaiya pulled up alongside. "Aye me," Mariena quickly to Kaiya. "I'm a top aerial, you'll need me on. I won't even charge to skill," tic of the jaw "though I should." "Looks as a voyage to so," Imeni backhugged Kaiya, resting her head on Kaiya's shoulder. Captain Myeri shrugged theatrically. "Seems the women still seethe fire! Is it only the men who have lost their courage?" "Right about one thing," Pyeisa fist over heart enlisting. "Leiru's out of the count of men hey." Volya stepped up laughing. "Hell kyauska, I thought you were on about a voyage, not an orgy. Apologies for the mistake, allow me beg service." Kaiya and Imeni instinctively shuffled aside. Mariena strained a grimace. "Off now, diseased yegani," Mazyu. "Swear service aye Captain to beat this beisza waveward he touches my sister." Mariena strained her grimace harder. "Well hell, if we're talking about beating Volya senseless, I'm along for that," Vasya spluttered from out the dark. "Where've you been, you layabout?" Volya. "Laying about." "Suppose aye me," Tyese. "You got food, I'm crew, I'm starving, or hell just a couple of drinks and I'll die for you." A bit of laughter at this, an anemic kind, the agreement kind. Trickles precipitate the deluge, the echo returns the sound. Captain Myeri stood there grinning into himself as our voyage assembled, the shadows behind him shuffling and speaking evenly in an older tongue.

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter IV''] --- Hell's last glimpse of gods relinquishes laughter to the heavenpressed [[glistening->mglistening2]] countergutters. Eternity is endurable within a limitation. Grant me suffering, yes, bless me tormented, so might I frame from being a home, otherwise this endless tracing within an inability to inscribe, ah, free me from the voyage across synthesis and devolve, this rush through ruins of runes writ razescored gored in rusted colossi noired to [[nightshade->mnightshade]] like the crush of shut eyes' black pools blading between psyche pink veinfuzz cursives that subjunct the freewheel and foment deeper wells to force taste danker earth ashblood to taint your tongue a terrorsluice loosing wights thornwinged across the wrack to grow umbral your quivering unquelled to wither horizons where mudboil shadowblur your cursed moreness accumulating lodestone sentinels lying veilmarine beneath the maelstrom swallowing all ships, gatewatch of dead shores, ghostlands graveriddled clumping slick jags of basalts stormwashed by tempests where roaming moaning skeletal legions lacerate planar shimmerlayers with weep, shriek, weep for me you buried heartcancers, bleed me out you wormwood wounds, mistakes that cut deep the ire with sheer need, knifetongue sinmaw hunger slathering on the trembling known never new unknowning, the void cold quiet, the inarticulate depress lying lonely under any curling tongue about to splash to a scream, seek in the assault nepenthe, die to duress purity, how not can a sundered tendril of gods fadelaugh at the horrendously resolutely yet, mutter cryptcrass in the creak so no angel sympathy corrupts this genuinely corrupted symphocation, psalm of any voices akin [[echoborders->mechoborders]] chained ordained a choir, song to hear here, live here in whatever hate that means: never lose sight of the things the days obscure, or you will lose the stars to pierce this night. //Click [[here->mchapters]] to return to Chapter Select.//

Touch outstretched to the foreshock of the incorporeal dull of the violence this court courts as you dance the fleet the fleeting trust your feet believe there is a floor that will hold you as you float your toes with your hand harmonizing to try to keep you anchored to a real they will consider and not your full conjure that animates your rush through the figments celestial spheres in alignment to sol expression portending how timed space will be bent to an enact as a dais to raise us in a spear to skewer the all this underbeast, leviathan thrust apart across the void of self and self and self and self and none of those at all to spill creation glittering in space as a promise and a plea the confession the faint shadow below your emanating admits unjustified this is who I must will to a sorrow I assist but in the destroying assembling is the spirit beauty humanity hopes its history heals before immortals whatever of them we feel when we sing. Crimson vivid vaults from the silver to swallow the sapphire dangling. Silver jewels encased athenas your frame no more present than projected an exopurity to drown you to the dream your lull steps cast across the gazers you magic to mirror the moon in an athame gleam upon the altar draped with pathemes glare whitened by your porcelain orbs set in harbors you forsake to storm. Shroud burial of [[veneermail->mveneermail]] in crown vermeil coffining onyx eyelashes false wears its ensconced as a circlet as the fabric tears to hint your bare smile might break were you not martially poised mortal poison the smile precisely as if to throw your head back and laugh as death encroaches in peripheral darkens you are the one who should run and to espouse the starry cherish you exhibit to force the stars to envy slips from the shroud an illusion blue hymning to your en pointe prelude to releve kalian frenzy. Sea and sky of this horizon kiss woman imbued. This you are be this in this insist in this cyst. Flowers beneath your feet like beautiful corpses strewn along a wracking. Nothing lasts our cheers lorn to bare us forlorn so dance we tiny beauty accumulating we can hide in grow in learn to love in crystals so when washed out we are to stillness our mimic hearts will still bleed imprints of what pumps through it in dailies so much more alive does your face hers not bulwark against the fading of any happiness however imperfectly experienced, what does her expression say, where is the source of the strength she exudes serenity as a sword you need not wield, simply gleam athame, artifice dangerous tingling unlitness recessed riptide fade desire but lotuslight suspends her over the crawling canopy and its countless nooks electric black pillars and red gold primordial pool arches ready to bubble forth new first life an earth after the blood trail prophecy trickles to her head fountain of our quintessence in salvation from our possessedness as fungal saint enthroned in trinity reign in aspect over the palest orange past. She's there, she's there somewhere, inside your [[tomb->mtomb]].

Opaque indifference between eyelids and lidless this immense silence, very last time a beautiful memory occurs to you. Subtle borders of being at the insistence of time bleed seas to a cease in an oasis of here where. Ice tense of in the distance guqin washes over us welcome to a world with new rules unraveling slow vibrato whilst we wend our way through [[shadowed->mshadowed]] by signs stars splinters hung in an earth tones space. About us a thousand lives knotted together like roots growing in superfast motion, cheer gnarls and clear teeth as you bob about snagging of the violence streaming [[eddying->mveneermail]] into violence anew, whirpools sucking you down and spewing you along cartblood arteries to tighter lanes intercut by gloom jagged alleys themselves immersions in a torrent of soft touches, lost in a nexus of connections, hidden intersections of small world knowing, the taste of a continuous buzz into which your head sinks as if there will be nothing but encountering legacies of differences in which spectral I seethe unable to bear, my weeping for Jaufr wheedles out into a whisper portaling through the brick which I follow, gleams a specter emergent from my mergeless withinness leading this exact press of needing pressing hands as we pass by losts in forests of each other's eyes to our [[presenceless->mrecognize]] felt inside our chests, this specter and I, is it who, mystic of its [[moontone->mtomb]] moaning feverish recasting modalities of a hidden being magic, lace of the lanes, place of the same skyview of so many centuries unbroken, face doorway dream to enter indivisibly sleepers huddled together blooming, mushrooms blacklit under a semipseudogreen glow nebulous deminight in which our warmth allows enough unoccluded sun ersatzi to bathe the horizon in just the crimson luster to leave us facing a mass of color as one almost blinded until we turn to see how wildly it washes us as one indigo tapestry. Strangely unjarring we clash against a street, a surface to savor some new breath before plunging into the recession trails of a mythic presentiment creativity, ceaseless urge to be neon skyriver people across strange planet shapes bends beyond our limits to warp us to where we never could have imagined and yet somehow deep down always knew, intuition teleportation, transcendence roads to timeless kingdoms lost in prisms, the rays which kiss a diamond to blossoms until the surface rotates to reinterpret the light alterior stars, vivified in a hundred shifting ways dragon floating along bubbling primordials raining opal wisp seeds until so deep from the dream you have imbibed that not nervous are you sure this is it bubbles about your splash in some sea alternate under some strange bracken shine to discover in how they also tighten around your grasp plush love which whispers the most beautiful lie shrine, permanence of any ceremonially extravagance cry...

Hot life in a closed cyclone, livespace dreams luscious flow floating over the waterfall. Jostled in the molten crowd as she hovers on a glow poised, she, she, so vivid, almost as some I shimmers there electric colors juicing to lush pool pulp vivid tempest, ice blue voice trickling sunglitter water along a glacier's thaw, rivulets running to freedom in a freefall, moon reflector lake heaven to dye in splash. Such a [[shadowed->mshadowed]] self undulates like my nervetingles. I turn to the specter and try to mouth, when did we lose sight of our chandelier chance, passing hues of a passionate once thus roseshifted in recall, I want to see in those shades again to see you so shadowed, I want to be there as you are you, would I dance so pure in this puce present brushed pale in the washed out glare beyond your presence, my hidden sun searing all otherseeming breathe bereaving me in stutters without your please believe me as I creak wandering elongating corridors seizing with a sense of what is at my back humming and hunting, heavy wide azelea facette with vorpal lips and corkscrew tongues anchoring a spindle neck never to pounce but always to almost, the fear my waxy husk burns without purpose, were you to return you would find me so much less changed than you so as to be irretrievable: there is no me anymore, not even you, Nyneme, who, who, my eyes are crossing, corset tying, moaning like the moan glowers down upon us, who is where am I is which thought that I cannot bring myself to say, but one look at my disheveled in the dark, and what more must I? We know each other best when we see how little we can hide, like when we lived the aftershock of inside a kiss, and I couldn't help but see your touch where my fingers were yours interlocking a growing hope whose hymns trembled goddessawed on a learning tongue, believing in your building to purpose as if I might shelter in its majesty, resting in your temples I knew as you moved through the crowd to become crowned by them, queen of each step I studied, empire of my entire emulsified with truth identity. Lace lotus palm clasped by jade stems a hand shy of resting on the breast to warm the skin to summon the heart through so may it ruby jinn gilt espers auraed flutter in and out of reality before the others pure truth nude to pose the soul as everything entrusted half the wish no one would see half the terror they will they must and all the terrified wish they will [[recognize->mrecognize]] your hidden and what ensues will be humans in authenticity and shall it incinerate shall it feed from a flesh more pyre than person.

Tomb. Tomb. Where is she, sepulcher scenes, buried in each constriction. Woe om I'm inside the tomb, tomb. Inside the. She's the. I am her inside the, tomb, tomb, no, nothing gestates in tea hiss, where is this… overhung the chandeliers which were not there [[ghostflame->mspindles]] candles cackled over the shifting halls which no longer led to any semblance stability to strike against but only the rolling and the reeling mass opaque colorless that sleeved me in an upside down pose, neck bent too much to keep the body from crumpling, the spine with it, sweating I splayed out panicked beneath screeching to find myself in a syrupy congeal maple hallway dimly lit but too long for the light, at the end of it, isn't it always at the end of it, the figure, why not here, bent over me, why must they make me move here, why always distance, why not over me, demon? Crawl to me. I will devour your floor, you crawl to me. Slowly it scraped along the tiles like rough seas and just as arctic dark cool. Beneath I see this is where and who like a dustdead mirror, in a hall is a long hand limply windchiming fingers a nail's breadth above the floor. In which [[hall->mhall]]? What is there that isn't a hall? No halt to halls but rooms that rivulet into the halls, thousand secret springs gushing through doors to the ocean all. Rooms have names to trick you: an architect slapping you down, standing fistlicking above you at last the spire they draw out of the agedrooped earth, snarling: this room is an atrium. Do you tingle atrially when you enter it? Geometries blooming room forests, each fractal reutterance nominally assigning marooned eternities to be glimpsed through imprisonment in the chain: this station of your passage must be a foyer, then pass into the atrium, refraction through a rotating prism prison, vivid simulachromes sentries along the spectral borders, see thus your thus in this atrium. A hall a hallucination of motion: free passage between preordained places. A hall over and over and over again between rooms dressed in different expectations by the same exacting, exulting, exalting force. Welcome to the office: who holds office here is who assumes their power delimited to a single space when they sacrifice here their youths to be granted by expansive gods a sign of their favor to demand from others disciplehood. I walk into the office to walk out of it an official. Carry the office in me to my living room, though I live in every room in which I go, no? Sleep in a bedroom though I sleep in so many rooms many times moreso. Were any room anything would it not need anyone to insist it delimits. We are different when we are asked to be so. We are incomplete in how we are stressed. A room is a lens distorting the whole for a sharp focus: peer through the room at people, who is who in where. Where do I go from here: I go, from here: who do I go from this. Well, what isn't locked? To where am I pointed? Gnash my way through the wall out of my hate for the hall, but there am I again replicated, defenestrate to displace at least your soul through your skull. Ripping from the plaster tittering threetongued ghoul wraps me with its wet noose, nothing in me resists, laughing and sobbing are the smile and frown of no fight left inside this, just say it right, say it right, this, to, too... sucking loudly the ghoul ropes me through the wall ragdolled, then abandons me sliced in jambing planes clashing a color seizure, [[stuttersplash->mstuttersplash]] banner of this painking hexagonal. No more nowhere, now you are nowhere.

The hall kept going was why I did even though I slept as I stepped. I trip and shatter. Piece me struggling to jam together parts but lack the right muscles, lost to the far beyond my jigsaw [[spindles->mspindles]] to reach. Surreptitiously sundered so they will not notice nor judge, ashamed to shatter from so small an impact, never let them know you need, always beat back the sun for thirst. Peace is what I beg when in pieces. Let these ruins rust. Raze me when the dayless dawns so bloodless may I singe rose the slaughterizon. Eyes on me non so I perturb the perfect dark to a torn dress, slits like irises countersights widening to withering torn grins. Stormglitter my glass chaos. Concatenation mysteries mazeraced by anxious shard spirits, tempest circuits my fragment lips pray in phrases never combine. Crux dizzy crush collapse whirls me puzzles. Lone communion with my imperfect, open five of my mouths simultaneously to salivate them to the same rain pattern and maybe from the spitgruel will sluice a sister.

Yearning demands orders the autonomous automatically, please automatically, pleasure of being puppeted through what you would have done. Thread skin playfully pulled to twirl me slow ballet on an empty stage, the drama gone, the beauty implied, the motion a blush towards dance, dream this zoomed in, true in, say it, say it fuse sparkles, diffusing the layered [[residue->mstuttersplash]] oozed by brokenness, littoral bleeding, literal bleeding, my arm is gashed and out of the ruby rusted rises frayed veins. Fade being to the accumulated we haves, forced to watch drain the chance. Are we ever recognized? Does anyone ever hear what we cannot say, or do we die into a thousand trembles beneath speech? Who will I become to them in this shattered mess I struggle to sort myself? I can't, I can't do it, I fail, but I, please, understand who I fail, how I am a failure… renumerate your timbres, tune into a sentence, croon your bared, let others know where you are demarcated, where you bleed, how you must die, let them hate you if they must, and many of them must, and I don't care, I don't need to be loved, only known, I need to be known in a way that kills me, I need to die, need to die, I crave [[death->mspindles]] before anyone knows... faults fill you. Never will you be truly free, you chase calumny or a cage, choose. Splitting open irises seism my skin to stare pupil holes out of which flap furions hornwinged and wailing scraping my face off like dust shaken in a [[sunlight->mhall]] shaft. Through the muscle perspirate the uncertain. Nobody will recognize who you feel as. You will never be. You will never be. You have stopped, and who must bid you go? Erasure either way.

I see you ghosts dancing at a diagonal droning I don't know if I can relate to that until I shut my door and stay inside. What more intense an intimacy can I trickle but the coppery taste our bloods fuse to [[saliva->mstuttersplash]]? Negation faces rouged with nettles gnawing slipcovers to latch suckmaws on my sleep to drink these dreams. [[Underworlds->mspindles]] swallowed like weeping lumps. You have beaten me, I am still. Vines twist into your veins to root you. Blush of black nestles my knees in the shred fabric folds. The wind knows the weaknesses in your walls and crawls through them in whispers which rustle you freezing with awareness of what waits and will not wait, the tempest fearsome enough not to need to scream. I buckle, I break, but I do not burst, I will not, not until the [[ashdrunk->mashdrunk]] hour am I killed, I am counting. Not yet. Not.

What weighs the most is absence: the inability to respond when called, being forced to earth but never to live in it, solely to stare terrified as the disappointment droops thisenings closed, to taste expectations swamping sunken. Whose joke am I so enslaved to punchline? To be alive long enough to entice someone to witness all this inner death. I am no one, and I could be no one, I could march [[sensedrunk->mashdrunk]] through my empty into any alike grave, but these demands to be are what kill me, Nyneme forcing Myneme to exist, who, wait who, where am I, who are these people wanting what I can never, there is no, only the dream of it, all there is here is shame. Ashamed before an interloping you. Interlaced failures to become from an origin damnation. Not me. Not me, and I want to quit the nothing, I will if I am brutally whipped forth to fail some new something. Charade of [[color->mhall]] and masks dispelled to the faceless [[tendriless->mspindles]] strangeness. My dignity is all I have, and you leave me the naked quivering beneath. In the emerald lattice of glitters you rest in rubies smiles.

Purple dahlia [[smudges->msmudges]] secreted holes in the door and through it a personspider with each leg a throat weeps me away on its mandible back half swallowed. I realized too late how far it wants to take me, dreamweaver I plumes and passions a daywhile rest. We believe most our own lies. Webfeel of facades relaxed on like most people use lungs. Never mind the noise, focus the null. Nowhere anythings dresses to wear for the fake summers. Blocked in to block out the bleeding. The lasting solstice suspended us each in alternate dispels. This spider ferried me along the overhang cloud dust wish it be better, the restless, restless, relentless mass of need, total anxiety of the undesignated better in which every truth stutters half bought. Purview of these sails, all matters of need are avenged. Trust is lost in the streams of this [[seafaring->mseafaring]]. Both more than repulsion and real says what must be, the idea and its beauty, the body's unbeauty. The spider drops me in an ancient cistern where at last I see the specter as a hauntedness mirror. The specter moves towards... into my skull the specter fades, fades, I wrack at my skull as it seeps, seeps, specter inside my, inside, the noises come from inside my… Plaque drips from ivory icicles and pools damp in the cavern until it calcifies and crystals throughout my skull then beyond it, spikecephalus I assailed the near where the tendrils snap and splinters seal to a mosaic jinn of the jagged versed in low drones, uncanny perceptible impossible into my soul stems the stress as it presses my [[duress->mduress]] to a language, but the outlets burn more than the insides yearn, so you stay intact in a stable numb, nod out to a non, even let days be blissful, nurtured from the decay. No more desire shared us a destiny. Nyneme's specter seemed as alive in death as I was dead in aliveness, couriers of a canceled invitation racing to opposite disappointments akin, tracers never touching, but of its own miracle the specter swerved and rolled and crashed and clattered into my head, and across our debris we hummed a harmony, but the specter began to crawl, crawl across our connection, humming, buzzing, droning in my skull a dream inside my… tomb.

Silky chartreuse rustled against rusted moaning gates. Ash taste hovered as a wondering we too assumed. Mute bustle of the permanent late hour haunted by motion silhouettes ferrying heavy wicker baskets to a never complete work. Deathmask smile of the Glowmoon no longer [[blurs->mblurs]] the hard edges, softens the scene to feeling a dream; encroaching hour of the no longer imbued, the naked horror, the buzzing in my brain's back tensing my grip, speeding my pace, unsettling my stomach, [[glassy->mglassy]] distortion over drowned noises flickering the forever after thought. Pulsing like my memory of a cut out heart, only slower.

Behind me the ship I so nearly never left in the wild of the seaspark storm bobbled. Dripply in [[postagony->mpostagony]] the ship's beleaguered leaned on moorings as if to ensure they too are tied here, eyes closed to contain old, constrict new. [[Terrors->mfear]], both whole and hinted, lie within you, uttered from soaked lips shares of [[soulslivers->mblurs]] forged into my mantle by incidence hammering specific distillations of all lost in its calamitous nearing. Loss and ruin, aches and longing, the sea's ceaseless fury, now apertures through which we each have glimpsed the other. Choked tongue weighing. Air heavy with the hint of a wait for loss. I turned from this image engraved in gauze, guided towards Ayeri's Tower by shuttling workers, uncertain shapes in an uncanny pace like eons in a hurry. From the hull bore they objects from other Towers with reverence should they prove the last new additions to a dying world, work like a quotidian prayer to the we hope still listens.

Up the blasted rock, the seasoaked rock, the stormsharp rock arrayed in fury and [[fear->mfear]] against the charged salvos which have weathered its edifice to misery, this isle hunkered, black mass resilient as the night's winds whisper of battles fought, battles to be waged. Heather bleeding banner whirls distance cry. The worlds crossed, does it linger behind the vapors? All these memories, memories or dreams, wisps of thought unraveling, no, so many duties do I it still owe, return, I must return to this rainslicked obelisk soon to sublimate to the nightmare which cracked the black glass [[sky->msky]].

[[She->mshe]] shook me as distress; she shook me in distress; she shook this stress; I was stress, for me, for her, for Myneme, who wept in the unknown. The abbess weighed upon us another verse. "...swelter and crash then sizzle to ash the veinsoul selfstruck, bleed out your being, be out your being, out be this bleeding, out bleed this being, charge terrorhilation to incidence demise a truth destroyer, piety's countercreative act, stage for more strongly a shining soul..."

I will crack your sky and slink through and glimmer loss, said the abbess, I will spasm wild in your fear a phantom forth, abyssal incursion of the selene scintilla, and I begged for annihilation, let me die true and free and sudden, let go this need to mean more, I am full of the lacking, the desire for meandering, trust not this treasure clutter, litter me worthless on the wasteland, but the abbess lifted me in a purple psyonism slickly shimmering esperial flares, and my skull shouted for [[her->mshe]], I will not give you what you seek; I will glimmer what is already here; I will not gather up what you like; I will gestate putrid honesty. The Koani she quoted: "...nurture need of the chassis culls your contagious, linger in your gel ingress, sluiced to a gutter in an episteme to its wordless expansion gone in a named nullification, notionally risen driven along the recitations mortally preassumed, pressurized potential, your blood bends in escape, prosecuted I crushed in the promontory's lost freedom, really unreal, rested in a relentless, impotent image of the personal prophecy, slaughter all priests on your altar, generator meteor mummified in a binding song..."

[[She->mshe]] spun the Koani on its spindle whirling the pages, sometimes slapping the spin short to guttural out a clause of the ceaseless sentence. "...extract your self poison by yourself exacting..." Spun the Koani. "...despite distraught seeking to requite respite in the rush to further formation, formal foundation, escape the inner chaos in external grounding..." Spun the Koani. "...noise nowhere the need to be portrayed, suffer sufficient in divine silence, burn out your loathing to kindle your truth death..."

Cut down to sprawl in yes, the floor, as inane mumbles nip my heels, made it safe to the tumbling and soaked I am and I ball my shirt beneath my tongue and gulp through cloth. More than anything a cold presilence suspended the need to pull out of this mess a face. The nuns onlooking dripping hidden adjectives, glinting insect stingers, but no recourse because in the escape I am actually free to be torn out of this scene or this substance, whichever proves more pliable, though I guess I know from the way this tumbling gnaws my knees which is more insistent. Voices drown faster than the scream of hearing, inundating total of crashing crests of misnotes and melodies never assembling, never meaning, always hearing. Presence as a present participle. They had ripped me out of my dead pleasant, waste of days crumbs across our torn blanket we stretch further scars in. Hung on the bed, witness in the dark patina, clothes and detritus, maudlin beads trinkling on bottle shards a tongueless prayer. Cave echoes shoved in a furnace to die putter overhead, dimly matching the desert thumps on my eardrums. If only I could envessel [[you->mshe]] in this precious prepressure, savor you the last oasis...

Trembling away from [[her->mshe]] I sieve the mood desemblanced, clutching the Koani. "…inter incrush clays the molder kintsugi goldens of our fragile failure retains us unto gaze others, the absolute in which in which we, consolidated unto formativity that humiliates any of our communion with its seams and rips, thread bare weaves upon an austere pebble marge soon to slip into the harmony erasure indivisionibleed, harnessed partness fragmented on the force of its beheld sever…"

Now not can I lean over into Myneme. Leaning over to [[touch->mtouch]] desperations but stuttering over the electricity to survey the bluish dew of midnight [[moonlight->mmoonlight]] [[luminous->mluminous]] twisting smokes and screams forbiddens, reeling forwards in defiance she rebels through this perchance meforce, [[pressed->mpressed]] into my breast wishing she could [[tunnel->mtunnel]] straight to this heart to demand answers, but strong and musky [[resistance->mresistance]] turns she on me and I am pinned beneath a [[shapevoicing->mthroatsubmit]] I cannot ken having never, myself as myself, wooed it out, or had I, when had I, when had we been in love? White ice [[kiss->mkiss]] on this black rock thrusting through snow wondering where in this [[winter->mwinter]] is the warmth buried as across the tundra stalks our [[breaths->mbreaths]].

Transmission between two isles wryly doused I refused to be carried by consolation tides, continuity as the development of something at least. Everyone I could be could be electricity enough to vivify my petrified idol idylls and still short of humanity would I be pressed into admitting I amounted to because injected into this emptiness I am what is different in the space to which I [[succumb->mthroatsubmit]].

Precious permanence in salival swish, trust the tryst to bliss the twined inside, too much hides inside, even in connect you feel the [[fray->mthroatsubmit]] form, no matter how, never matter when, just for this forever endure in her who holds you true...

Circlets her curls tease in the light breeze. Her knuckles brush my hair on my cheeks reclining as we touch knees. What was said? Looming alien, a monolith in a rose sun scorched to shadow. Booming gusting over my demons and [[doubts->mthroatsubmit]] trickle they in: this is not you.

Did we die between ourselves or become corpsly one? Or: who is this we who isn't? What bearing have they on me? Petulant [[diffusal->mthroatsubmit]]: of course it's you. Own your failure. You are what has nothing inside to express. You're the one pining after a dream you know on a warm chest basis. No, because, there was... And it's not that, not that, grime in the gullet guttural hacks. Scrunched mien drizzling disgust. Deserve this then don't I if that was the case. Deserve what, who does? Refusal identity as the floor refusal cascades me goddess gliding along waves of her domain soaks the cardamom sparks of ghost lamps bobbing transits of those in tracts able levitathion.

Blurred by the same neon bloom I wanted to be rhapsodized and elevated by electric lines to our continuum along a wonder and wisdom sense more vibrant than what the rocks we reside on and are imprisoned by secrete when squeezed by these [[calloused->mthroatsubmit]] hands so desperate for other than climbing, if only to hope that the shades emergent might suppress the parts of me which so quickly calcify loci undivergeable, proteans purling preventative the positives cage, maybe mutually lit in the dreamfloe might we be chandelier neverness douse bliss. In her words a shared humanity evinced things that when thought lurked lonely in my brain, black ink kinship.

"Should dreams stream a little more lucid, who should wish for waking? Reality as changeful as those within it," Myneme upon some lost wintry. "Contact between self and the ghostly sieve without the arid abstractions which plague day blears. Live in the conception truer than perception: the world unfinished, full of half shaped phantoms, rushed through real, even in nightmare is there a more fulfilling terror than in the encroaching of systems, structure ever increasingly predeterminative, riven into selfdefulfilling prophecies stripping you to actuals, simply [[throatsubmit->mthroatsubmit]] to the swallowing semblancer."

My skin weighed me down in a longing to temple to temple touching whisper a skin to a skin and be [[secreted->mthroatsubmit]]. Fault lines spread along the tenuous presence until another but the same presence emerged, dripping human held hostage by a principal of the cohesion, for others of itself alive in both discerning and display.

Wrenched from the sea gravel seeping between bones of the mute gem colossus clutching the vestiges of the fathoms its rise to the surface world forbids forever I screamed silence to Myneme [[worldlessly->mthroatsubmit]] in the foil rustle sea algae mounts cupped fallen moonsliver too placid and pure to shed reflections. Commiseration clouds in my chest clutter, so far distant you turned, and my shivers nodded me. I walked after you.

[[Discordant->mthroatsubmit]] blurs bounced into, off, from, with the ever interlopers dotting the ragged terrain. Wares laid as listless as they were anemically hawked. Less lit hints of less sober crowds lurched off to an alley that held my attention for several beats too long. Cricking my neck uncertainly as the pilgrimage fades like the Glowmoon. I do not, cannot present myself, I cannot present myself, I am not who they would see. Thatched and less thatched and unthatched shacks condensed around a lane scampering off west. High domes winked in the low moonlight, polestar palaces to suggest my way... for my sake, forsake. You cannot a pilgrim make when you are an exile. They have sent you here to die. You can so easily, you need to just... migraine. Myneme, where would you be in this, were there a parallel you...

Where in this Tower is the tremble? What lines quiver too close to closure? Where should I travel to taste those who also this abyss see? Sealed [[scroll->mscroll]] self, worried the night might itself unravel it, would find me as permanently as Kapinya's Veda, whatever they had found so repulsive to exile. No more choice but this chant, no more voice but this chance. Grasping my knees too hard I crumpled to kneel. I wanted to lick the floor until my tongue became it, float slightly above the floor to mirror it, grow grotesque to disgust all who walk upon it, acidify [[dissimulate->mdissimulate]] assemble its secret violence, vituperative tangibility's viper. Spilled into some [[othersea->mothersea]] in the tan alleys grimescored sulphitesick, stumble. Grime pulse hard in a growl debouched through the wall nothings, and I mumbled a prayer. Sepia shook a [[drunkard->mdrunkard]] curled as if to ask me why.

Outcreate the currents that tide you in himmed forcedfed feelers looping into the purpling weep. Deeper in the despair how we fold and faint... "Recite from believe." Racking my brain for any time believe might have stored. Close and breathe. "...believe the need for force to outwrit the ruinous, scribe some stronger strata upon neutrality inhibition cliffs, ramparts to rejecting heaven occluded behind heavened bled, whom you art I curate breakage brocade..." "Recite from tremble." Emblant up to the abbess' gaze, but behind her I see a shape shapening, pulsating migraine outshot her held in mine wish, an [[appearanceness->mrecognition]] stronger than evinceds countertidal: "...tremble until you rescene seclude the core persists effervescing nebulous ejects, accordance of added inside sublimatory to focus insufficient hyacinth looms below iindigo empyreal dawnbreak, shush heurist religious penitent beneat hits enveloping benedict maleviolent upon wracked frayme ascetisms, reciprocate incisions bleedmixing to endorphiltre fix, foaming sprawled upon reckons the shortfall ferrous velvety wrapping tongue rubysweet, interruptive splitbangs interrobanging the brain to submit to fugue blunt lambents, red lantern evear fearous relisted our skewsails to tacks swallowed in salivaless pummelswalches, twitching focused folding in nonpertains iterating each failure to immanence integrist, entregeist ontrepriest conductive effulgently vested for festival of spraints pain pleas attested to power, feint lurch to fullbright revere, swelter desiccated skeletal beneath burn worship the drainer perfect radiant, tanned to this muscled for causal, soldier of the caustic dawn..." "Your progress is impressive. Perhaps we can begin to assign you novitiates." Above the abbess, hugging the abbess' face, a familiar...

Intradrip of colors seams the plinth placed of pure chromatics pasteled, juicy oozy goopy ganache rainbow blenderly. Tang hit of seasalt breezes tease the houses to sneeze drunken rumble ramblers bleary upon the sunsilt wherewithal. They could be judged. They do not have names. The musicbox assemblant marching orders blares ever more frenetic the sways, mandatory brightness shunts us to contrasts. Demiautomatic amulet of charms spares me the askew to scene, so I hollow seam stable heatseens, anguish of visible. Issuing permission to be, several similars screen: ventriloquist upon lavarock masked weeping, mother on her knees asking her children not to bleed more than she can heal, elderly man with a brokejaw squared squinting at the haze for any hint of not this drink, a beggar completely upon their knees extending genuflecting kneeling head down proffering a tray to clink another wintrous week, a child lone with limb missing, the saturnal sky; of the zero sum frame, these matrix whatever you in your identificative horde. Desperate phobic revulsion upwards to climbs few reach, is that your monastic? Never has been, will be, need be, is, I fear, if I cannot the crumbled collateral. Into the hush, a hush. Nonaware go free of this fetid, you cannot, you are want, desire as they do, snuffling for truffles. Processionals of opposite apposites reclaim my alterity to clade yclad clamped. You've no way to resiphon disparation from their amalgamateds, so what do you do, assimilate? I'll never. Exclusion [[desire->mrecognition]] shunts us to composites we cherrypick for calcificates alien. Assume and enter the shade and tremble alikely. "And you're soon depthed by how they, they, and ah, who've you been, lately arriver?" "Nah don't adduce, she's you know of them, that's how she's set." "You've that how?" "Like the look of her is how, you've got that recked haven't you, it's the kasaya is how, you can't see ah?" "No I've known but, could be anyone like, how's it simply -" "How are you eh? Not much, I'll wager. Look at the like of her, why don't you go give it a go, see who she is, who we are in reply?" "Yes I'll, if you say so, but, you'll second me if -" "Yeah just get on with you." "Hey so you're, you're priestess or sorts? Strange you've devolved to here? Have they exiled you? Not as holy as the preaching?" "I persist where I must, elemental of its dispensate. Some beyond the blue clouds, some scattered far, I reside in each this mission." I. "Ah, mission she says, definitely of the type." "Go on, get her to tell you, see what she's made of." "And what're you composed of here? Nothing much, I'll assume. You're not going to rear haughty upon us, will you? Submit, will you? Assume, why don't you, let's equalize brutalize."

Delved into disstray dissemblant reconvenes joisted upon naw um blubbling spew jetted upon jaw, ripped craw ruins carcass directive to whereness straits, straightened into adorative duress, so pleasant pressure points pushed just shy of kill, why not leak me free of specious to spacious bloom, gaunt of room staggering to be shunted, sluiced to tresses, I mean trusses, aqueduct sherry me, or ferry me, carry me to bathe unskewed, or [[nude->mrecognition]], or, purify me, submerge me under the water, drown me, drown yes yes I slather for drown, you have to hold me under the surface until it is cleansed, retreat into shell, abluted of sin flooding in rainbows, emerge dance to alterity thence trued, sewn to berry glisten the noose, I mean juice, nervous hardstance to happenstance, hurt everything that comes after you, you can only be approached in malice, and that's okay, that's so fine ahaha, I really need to be smashed open, that's where the seed is. Take it liberated and immerse it in the fountain, swim into the airlessness and found it, spirity salve, drink to finally quench the thirsts.

Rickety wood rasped over the ramshackle metal and trash buttressing the lopsided roofs. Signs creaked slurred: entrances to tumblers of disindividuation teased inebbreal registers. Am I in here to search out Veda? Why would they be so in here? Question I have oft begged the mirror. Into the mist of ghostly interlopers weaving through crimson milks. Orange coagulating in a forgotten cistern for centuries peeling the sodden decor to a steady, insurmountable haze. My brain buzzed harder, expectant. Why gravity is this I substitute for mine? Should I regret not checking under which sign I shall be consigned, the thought of wheeling to clutch at the door to grab hints of what was missed, but instead the mist, the mist, the mist over the pitter of soaked and dulled roars to catch transits of word vaults spilled comets' effervescence trails soaring icy through me to the endless intended. If not to the heights as I am before them, why not this… Continual tinks short of a pattern unsolving the battering senses' scenesmaking blare and beyond it a raw dull. Shouts, hoarse and heavy. Glooming attention slowfalls from its shadow lengthens. "What's this then? Below the line, Veda?" "Can't be like, just killed stole the habit." "What are you on about? Don't kick the habit, the drink's the thing!" "And is it a sister then, or a traipsy with a wicked humor?" "How's it I'm supposed to know just from sight so, I got eyeballs made of yes?" "Anything but, the way you grope about." "That's how you know his eyes are good!" "Go touch it mate, see which way it tends." "Won't solve none by it, both to the heavy price for touching." "Heavy? How's it matter to you what's heavy? If you weren't bent free, you wouldn't be glugging guttercleanser." "Envy for who can is why I want someone to know if it's a traipsy." "Up you go then ho, seek your own answers, bring us back more questions." "Nah, so's they can curse you, I've heard it. I want nothing near. You try." "I won't try. Desz, you ah." "If'n you tell me whether it's floor or ceiling she's standing." "Don't mate, don't you know what sordid luck to harass a Veda?" "You're the one talking about her ass." "Here I'll man up and get –" "...velleity, in this tomb do I not move, velvet, rest in this bed until the sleep stops, velleity, longing to reach out where my hands do not go, where my presence does not roam, to be absent myself in pure presence..." "What's she doing, aye, I can't, can't feel my skull!" "Get back, it's, she's really one!" "...velvet, the embrace of two people you never see, never are, have to consider from your poison standpoint, but perhaps they too stare out in velleity, who shall say whether we all shiver in mutual exclusion of some ahelion unknown, abyssal bliss, poison standpoints opposed on warring peaks volleying the same velvet refrain, voice as a shock [[recognition->mrecognition]]..." "He's not, oh gods!" "Just leave him mate, he's gone, he's done!" "Shut her up, eah, ahh, my ears, my face, my, my, what even am I?" "Kill me, gods, she's killing me, someone please kill me!" "What's it doing, what's the Veda doing!" "...two searchers beyond their ledge comingling in the yearnsoaked sublimity of two together for how brief a time, for the bleakest return remains remaining after return, as is that not essence, remaining when what is not pushes you in return..."

Tearing through the rift to complete the scene ushered a woman possessed, instantly before I knew her I recognized her as Myneme, who growling devoured the [[space->mspace]] where I had isolated and blood dribble lips to chin assertive zip crimson she purred [[violence->mviolence]] nestled between fangs, then undid the murderous assumptive, beckoned me redo alongside, and we devoured the borders of being mutually [[gorekiss->mgorekiss]]. Haltering I affected by outcomes as we all must be recessed before the growing purpose to understand the suggestion she forced me to [[fill->mfill]], myself included in the purposefully blank, articulated at the point of the most speechlessness, or not most, mere, unsettling how she crawled and why [[towardsin->mtowardsin]] me in that way? [[Askew->maskew]] to our [[reality->mreality]] her intonation.

Warm rain washing the [[Window's->mwindows]] orange cream creep through haze curtains. Smoky amber on which hazel discs repose the skin glide laureled by the closure in dimness. Infinitely [[recessed->mgaspquire]] into idea she laid aetherially intimate, her whispers poems [[sensuous->mspinning]] blur glow passing to erase through spell any static inside which will not believe this ensorcelled scene. I am one by her. Glyph eyes vivid phantasmal luring me to look out from them, but do I not feel, I tingle. Is she to rise eclipse dawns over my horizon to endarken my midnight world I dream.

Vengeance recked its wildness? And I understood. Worming together in tar bubble laughter the shaken unremoved shiver with the impulse to smother. Kill it not me, into the mirror. Egg blot teem heads squirming in the feast riot. Reaching to the disgust mass we are I interrogate the possessed its demon, and all that crawls as response is stripped me this the demon reciprocates, shells of intimations of a ghost we are guessed by others to dress until we are weighed less, the shell cracked open to cracked open to matryoshka remnants without a final terminus: less than a shell is the content judged less material than the shell, the cannot [[container->manchor]]. Dull grinding of not a dream harshness, here is a fault that conforms to my contours, is it not my skull, what else would you see there? Humiliations [[melt->mbrushplay]] us to admittance, thence thus unnameless, and in this the demon radiates notion [[bruises->mmagma]] where wish we sun goddesses ourselves should shine.

Response what could I but a prayer that remains when the sand is washed away as reply she shot inside my mouth spiraling down my esophagus to dig out the verses before this tongue could give them [[lift->manchor]], choking I reel and cough against the intrusion until slimeslicked emerged this being cataract [[clouded->mwindows]] to adjudicate the expression she sardonically smiled against my insistence to believe and in rebuttal I [[gaspquire->mgaspquire]] her name, but she says we are the husks flat ideas leave, before us the undevoured oozes putrids while stained teeth gargle sick giggles, giving soiled sleeves to facetorn concepts, and she looks at me, and she says, watch.

Crush us together oh you night sense we share, gloss us inside surfaces' [[brushplay->mbrushplay]], let us touch if solid must we stay. Into the [[demon's->mmagma]] seizing I held onto what surges human and brushed away the hair to catch gem sun eyes through a [[cloud->mwindows]] their color. Heads pressed and palms pressed I asked this woman her name, and in a voice like waking up dreamy she says Myneme.

Decrepit pale falters creeping as mutual moans chill skeletal phalanges tip stalking breeze under a moon undeniable, under the pressure I sunk to my knees sweating, but the demon lifted me to an orphic umber, hazel willow curls twisted bleak by a blade thought enacted, glimmer [[borders->manchor]] broken in the shuffle we moved within, the face I see when I wake up in the night sobbing with a small smile, the Glowmoon glistened dew as the demon and I nascented atop negation, in the darkness losing her borders, the night augments its angel, muttered through a gnarled copse jaw again the question, and a name the demon glared is why we are so thin except in memory when a thousand feelings roll oceans beneath the shallows in which we glide, why in a scene we hold the sand of the deserts in which heatbeaten we crawl [[parched->mgaspquire]] of oasis is this very lack, noise is the silence, and who are you in either? Muscle memory jolted my chest where lies my insignia but no warmth from the icon emanates, cast aside by thoughts of exactly I know who, and shame and rebellion fused rosethorns, mutter matter cooled from [[magma->mmagma]] truth to shimmering isles on foam sea fever, bled out to chroma blurs washing in one great ocean groan under cry stars sparkle blinks spilling light on what in their pale exclusion they lose, we miss, we fail to conceive, ash loss of touch behind which flares thunderous sensation.

Echo drums like the sound of clouds on which stars rain, in the paling glitter of the dying Glowmoon I struggled to say or see or be or know so infused with magic I rippled, the skin no longer a limit, the outside endless one with what swells inside to lay claim to my consciousness, my calm, my… [[shrugging->mgaspquire]] it all aside rise I to a melii, dance on rebounding abbey stone, domles on glace air, hyperspherical surfaces [[spinning->mspinning]] into reality as my step needs them soul seize the world she evokes of my dwell, oneness territory and traveler, believe this moment eternal lost like a pearl in the sea, believe yourself true beneath the rose glass before the false tribunal, celeste tears the dew on my brow as this caused lifts its arm to touch a heaven to which all these suffering prayers pleading pray, and landing in chrysanthemums we tableaux [[communion->mbrushplay]].

"...earth grasping desperate to [[anchor->manchor]] spits back the [[loose->mspinning]] gravel a name ether written, one must be one, must not one, must not one, must not one wonder what one is, and is it not who one is that is what one wishes were his, hers, what lays [[inside->mgaspquire]] each as each fails each..."

Reflector flares rage antimony to the goliath lesion through which gushes [[espers->mespers]] unending of eons unbegraven. Blaze black blades burnt forests rush through sliced lie deliria. Chance broods in a volcanic glass palace slowly elevating from the earth forever, but across miles meet we in a glance, and fulfilling their necessary nods me to soaring, seeking the sky where we truly have met, [[auroras->mcrafteds]] channeling an epochal cascade whose import and power without imparting understanding or a comfort greater than of whatever this consists melts me open to be true.

Molten to the space between us music, twisted cloud forests pulsing jade trickles in [[saturated->mcyclone]] night surrounds the mind's cry bathed sea sky green, swiftly into the hue you race one two three helices at a time as along you [[drafts->mespers]] prism rotate dreams, memories, passions, terrors poured in the heart's absinthe. Bodies danced in a beautiful but futile show from where we now control them. I can be, can I be when I awake, can I awake to a when, or thus forever this Nyneme gray…

Bless world beat whirl in a ruby burn shaft sparks showering us sheltered in its [[encapsulation->mrumbles]] we in the just of faces of the truth queen's prowl scrambled in the leaves for each inadmissible moment given to breath stilled as her intensity arrested me, concluded me, invoked me, provoked reply from the relentless inferno process whose flare pronouncements our loves thrashed in time. In the [[cyclone->mcyclone]] my hair tiaras, so lay me gale forever.

Along the [[Docks->mcrafteds]] seeking reflections from this black plush haunt where all lighted life drifts over yellow lattice under the gray mass terrace sloped into the foggy sky a single indistinguishable shift from sense to lost glazed ethereal shows me pearls blazing. Syringe [[speech->mrumbles]] slips from their toothsplit grimace and demands I answer for where I reside, and I, we...

Fall silent inside yourself and mean it. Destined inside response and shattering, relinquished the [[manifest->mmanifest]], decaying into whatever after [[crafteds->mcrafteds]]. Acrid sandslashes breezing scars where should be mouths to scream all you have caged, watched wilt, can no more be unleashed. Gold dust swirling patterns in the maroon dusk over an open world proving itself hollow as everywhere which rebounds mutters here hush queen of the nothing to speak. Who speaks the sea from glacial dew? Who forgets touch at the speed of skin?

Whenever your soul jumps it shakes loose a seed, into the world this seed tumbles, your vested self bashed against gates. Entwined where fate weaves you through webs of signification catching specificities as they spiral past. Rooms in which you wasted. Faces in which you were humiliated. Names which loom above you, tugging at your sagging heartstrings. This body in which you are judged. You can flee one, flee all, but you cannot flee what they say about you. Your homes whisper your [[testament->mmanifest]] long after you've lost them. Your lovers sever your soul from the world in essences which you failed and which failed to sustain and which failed to suspend the humanizing touch of owning one hand of an interdigitation over the crippling crush of oneness. We are torn apart by the places where we reside, but we do not float free in an abyss, we float in the sensory deprivation of an echo; from where we echo we are just as much as when we were the sound, even as as muted corpses shamble we sealed. Sent out tide's cry shimmering the deep's tones. Leylines of lucidity slipping to dreams channeling your consciousness in the act of motion, weight to your decisions from the memories mountains hauled by each stressed sinew. Who wonders we are haunted by ghosts? Loves slain by progression; indict us assassins. Cityback titan crawling over windwhisper groves staring jets to the silent heavens heaving the sigh the earth [[rumbles->mrumbles]]. Now I am pure, says the strained past. Now you are.

Through the houses tracing the transmission strange faces partially relayed, reading through the ruin a sensibility, this society long since dead in a dye to discern why its wash stains so pure on this material, succumbed to a pulse palpable in their thumping progressions though teasing away, a [[mood->minsistence]] in retrograde as its tides surge forth froth of frowns and glares and brows knitted. People pass and with them their frames dance. Learning to live here in the resolve of what has died here. Behind me stalks duty's shadow stolid and impenetrable, time bespoke. Trawling my scattered brain for where, where exactly was the gatehouse out in the shifting map of yesterever.

Temporality blazing along the river rustling to [[before->minsistence]]. Ancients ghost the embankments embalmed in suns dying illuminating trellises of gaunt jaws. Light wind carriage over our road selves. In baritone the Tower announces the hour, doom, doom, doom, growls pounding bones. The Tower which seems spliced onto this dim tangibility. Onward carries us the river as I pretend to steer.

Between them I wavered and with several hours of windwet stormy I succumbed to Myneme under the mercurial nod slicking my brain's connection with my body and she led me through the water floor where we tumbled into together, geyser eyes arresting me with connection, the sense of someone else who senses what I do, our hair veiling against outer thoughts and twining one thread [[insistence->minsistence]], strands laying along my tongue a cottony burnt sugar whether hers or me did it signify such a difference and she or the bump of our synchronized rolling led our foreheads to temple to temple brush like a prayer, and why not now and why not this I thought and lost myself in what I felt more than saw, velvet laced taut around a fireball, tongue seance of two spirits surging to realms forbidden their form, feverish relentless sigh ushering me out of my mouth to her instruction, pliant grasp pulled, trying to pull from her and her heat and her heartbeat palpitating in my quivering head a communion consecrated by what we both conceive in secret. Into my ear the ocher desert breeze: "Feel my pulse in your grasp." Chin slinking to her chest eyelashes paw as the tongue teases between the teeth again to enflush me throat around recoils and tightens her bloom puncture to the heard her moan in my hands lies but there I relent to pulse but unleashed she expulses to my soul so tumble we as she swims through terror's joy passion gushes over me in kisses and a question: "What, what do you need?"

Wintry we in the sigh snow [[silkening->minsistence]]. Burning through nostalgia's eyelid sheathing high above salamander banners atop the monastery flutter to the roar of the chestfomented fear that icicles the tongue, but our presence communes sufficient, or so it would have been for me, but summoned as always to a new greater now the beyond my capacity her slightest will gales I quivered alive in her within the confused and deseparate. The belltower imposed gem gongs. Months of verses muttered us through the uncertainty unchanging. Spin the Koani, read the page you stop on, endlessly round and round the circle book sentence, no present but receding, slip out of any new resolution into the plodding and pregnant now. You will never express all you want to. Imprisoned in inescapable silence, so why not avow it? She looked at me in prayer. I glanced more furtively. During prayer! As we mutter to gods, her to me. Each night the Glowmoon less and less. Each night this needing more and more. Glitter sarcophogi in her darkened eyes a curse. Liturgy lost in a split chant, lullaby embedded. "...and so we swing against suppression, seek a suspension, flicker of the design desire..."

When you awake and never want to our when alive, in the rush we are slept along fantasies, no action more than a sequence, but when dry you must grasp the shore and pull is a day. Haunted hearts' hidden terrain teem veins of inexpression that crystal in someone else's not needing it expressed to glimmer similar. We want to believe someone else already does. We wish our sighs a language. Desire the day's chaos to condense to simplicity when we [[embrace->minsistence]]. To be held and held true. Belong to a greater you individe. Is there not mortality in each of us that binds us to a time and a place? Can there not also be a mutuality to bind us to a person and a strain? If not, then all this straining into a person…

In the night we study, in the night we wait, under the moon we mutter, in the moonlight we watch together the shadows lengthen, in the hours elongating we read endless text, we speak its pearls, speak its evaporates, read her words on my palm when she isn't there, round and round the Koani we chase each other, hoping in the next phrase her voice might [[echo->mecho]], any word might in me seem real, when I never have… in the study's [[ironsilver->mironsilver]] stillness she leaned into me her isolation in herself before me, us, this room, these rooms so much larger than the lives within them. "When did it happen for you? The, when did you realize that, like when did all this noise go and your world cleared liveable? When did you know, like actually feel it, or when did knowing and feeling become the same?" She. "It doesn't ah, it is, I don't want to pretend I'm beyond some, some divide... you look at me and see, don't know what you see..." Me. "Pure, the undiluted resilience… some one to can even in the cannots…" "Oh I don't know about, I do not accomplish, but it's, it's not achieving something, it's continuous, motion meaning achieving completion in ongoing, live in the go, there is no final revelation, no ultimate stasis where all our awareness' units harmonize. Maybe it's different for me, because for me there was no before, or not one that's part of me, I rose into this monastery and am it, that's, and sometimes I fear no more, when I am brave enough to let that be fear..." "No, you are more, you are so much more, you are my more, my dignity under this task." "I, well that's... I, you shouldn't say it, not like, uh..." "You know how I say it." "Do I? Listen, you will find calm somewhere, if you can... I understand it's harder when you have, this, weltbild to shunt, learn a new set of symbols, struggling to be free as the translations force... so much within you cries for expression I, you know it, I..." "It what, what? How can I trust myself if you will not, Nyneme? What are we so scared of?" "If I could tell you, the fear wouldn't be in it, precisely the unsayable gnaws the teeth chatterblunted…" "Please, just, anything, like, why are you so frightened of me?" "Frightened! No, not frightened, or a little, but like there's this, what I mean is, this intense vitality [[storms->mstorms]] you in expressions I, it's true I shiver when you do, because what else will arise in this boundless, one can be, in you..." "In what?" "I don't know what, I never will."

"You say that because you know." She. "I'm empty, Myneme. Nothing [[fills->mtryst]]. I am drowned in where I am supposed to be. I know that's part of the point, and I keep getting, every week I'm more animated by the energies, but it doesn't add anything to me, I am not more complete, I am not within it, like where am I, and it's not! But see I can't say this to you, you so precious with possibilities beyond my shunted to wilt, you have to understand I'm saying this from, like I don't mean to confuse –" Me. "Confuse me! Please, I'm begging you, confusion is my living, add to me." Pleading she touches me in a way that shocks me weeping were it not for the nausea dizzy anxiety that spins me beyond any emotion but a sudden revulsion, then, in her glance so shocked wounded, imploring her back to, please… I, you have to understand I, but I shouldn't, no, I have a duty and purpose already, I am dead unto creation, I cannot be as anything other, or I will, but looking into her face I want to sob no, no, no, no, no, no… Storms surge us too airy as our lightning dulls through the skin to a lightness like cheer. So used to appearing, but to then, to someone, actually, appear... through this lie do you sense this impossible to speak and so speak it dulled to a person, I am dying is how they considered me alive, yet in this there is for you more in me how her damask demeanor waves the guardeds away with imperial ease, a dreampass as it comes to pass, blurring through my doors incorporeal, uncontested, there is an understanding when someone will let us briefly pretend ourselves in our humiliation's overwhelming shadow, even as immaternial castigators peer in dubious… what she wanted from me, in those wanderfrees, ah! I envy the trees their waving in the wind.

"You have to know, your knowing is all that composes me!" She. Wish you wouldn't let me confuse you, wouldn't let me add my, my imperfect..." Me. "Imperfection is what has let us shelter here in this shade. Shelter with me." "I can't, what you, you ask is... I could cite a dozen –" "Cite nothing. Speak yourself." "I can't! Don't look at me like that! I, but am I not your sister to this vow, the Veda assigned to involve you so? I must, present myself with, but I, your looks I... you make me feel less than my nots..." "You can be tressed of your knots, in the luxurious shine I want to believe stars this vault adore you as stained glass, light frozen in a cool truth, why won't you tell me what radiates this?" "And be pathetic before you!" "You're not pathetic." "You don't want me to feel pathetic but then you press me to dance before you godhood! I'm not like you, I don't desire skies, I have grown from this earth, I feed from its nutrients, I will one day die into it and from my corpse will flourish the same, the same, cycles and cycles of the same..." "Is that what you want?" "Want! What things you ask! Who wants anything. We have what we have, and we protect it, nurture it as best we can..." "Won't you join me in what you nurture, what we can protect..." "You don't understand what you're saying." "No, I know, that's why I need you to, I need you, Nyneme, I feel like I cannot without you withal…" "Ah, but, you know, as in the verses –" "No! Recite nothing to me but what your heart beats." "I, Myneme..." "Say it to me, please. Say what you know I know you know I want you to say." "What is there to say? I feel like you want me to say some thing, some truth I mined out of my..." "Tell me this: when my breeze passes through your trees, do the leaves gild suns or merely briefly reflect its flare?" "Ah, such words, your tongue is lovely in a way I can never make mine, you speak in how I feel is why I, why..." "I can give it to you." "Don't you, ah! We should focus, we must study the Koani, the inquisition will be in only a week, and there's so much we need to –" Sundered in the beautiful overwhelm a litany in the fire, black smoke spirits we glashly into the seethe summoning venteds to volcanic sing scream her name into alikening a throat, tunnel to tunneling testaments to the steam scriptures unwrit in either corpus condemnity, focal opal prism pureshine shimmer her seeking in these constricts a bind to endure as purpose, as genesis of anew, a law by which we lavish depths upon the cyclical gravitas of the drain refrain majestic, silvery inevitablies we bow beneath sacrosanct dehumanized, purpose mere, machine unto its recombinant cause, rigid arteries of the beautiful hypergoliath we constituent disexist dysperisist particulates this abyss we spangle, entangled her here where earthenwhere we ere we forswear the semblance to [[tryst->mtryst]] zionic bond.

"Tell me this now: do you love yourself?" She. "I, what kind of question is..." Me. "Do you? Please be honest with me. Let this be a moment of honesty and abandon. Abandon with me." "I... you know how that... no, you understand me as does a demon, Myneme. I didn't, ah, love myself, not without finding you first, didn't love the gods, yes, didn't love the calling, didn't know any of this temple as more than a mountain, until there was a blessing that made earth real, I'm so sorry, I admit it, I admit it, I'm a failure, they should never have paired us, I cannot to it… I had never felt worship until I had praise, and yet, how to say this... there's a part of most people that dwells in other people, and being around those people fills in your gaps, fulfills who you are as a gap. We think in threaded consciousness, who we are is always some bit of who is around us. When you lose those people, when you become a silence, so much of your hidden potential like a black cat hunched on a tombstone purrs into the darkness a familiar... there's parts of who I am I cannot know to love until I exist in how you summon me, yes, there are depths of my soul I never could explore, because none ever led me there, as the years calcified this waiting in other stories, this mirror illusion world where we gaze upon how we are seeable, and that's what I wanted, not enlightenment, not the verse to testify, but to be seen, to be the crag that juts from the winterdark whorl, would wait for a sign to intone to the stars refusals to drown, testaments to the truth beneath the waves, the false that respins the impression to reel, is none of this real, is why, is all the unreal of the real we wait for in our unreality, in you, in you, Myneme, if that, that doesn't make sense, does it? I don't know how to make sense. Maybe that's the problem." "You make sense, you are how I [[feel->mtryst]]." "I wish I knew how to reply to you, but when I try there's this buzzing, this clay skull buzz like bonesaw and bonedust, it starts in the back of my head, then coats my tongue, wraps me in plastic, but it's, I suppose that's the point isn't it, to what I am saying, is that same buzz, the gurgling nothing gnawing notions to a gnarl, this thickets me whenever I try to focus on an answer parallax to beautify to mission the mosaic gleams, whose fragments haunt me exactly the same as how I startle from sleep, you sound as I seethe, but when I try to entune with, with you, migraine zzhh drilling like eyeballs hallucinating cataracts, manic paranoias of the iris that the color might be lost forever behind the milking silent. I can't focus right, not anymore, so busy am I daydreaming the failure to reply, and all day at the desks there am I, waiting while they clockwork, everyone else just sits there blinking and breathing at proper intervals, until they, they have the gall to, right before me, to stand up and sigh, it's the sigh bothers me most, not my swallow the seawater sigh but the grin at a corner of the ceiling sigh, like they're announcing the ten hours more of life they have earned I have frittered, but what do they do in there besides more work, perhaps infinitely recess to some holy center where at last they might ash out incense to the god of a dying creation, martyrs of mortaling, and they're the ones who know, who could be a better reality to you, while I am stuck inside this blankness, and that's why I, you will only find that blankness, that needing, that's what I fear, is that you will give so much only to discover how much more you have to give into a blankness that will never, never..." "You are. You are right here." "You are, you're the one who makes me here." "Then let's be here."

She slipped through me a smile like the tongue along gums, more to me than what we said was this us saying hinting, nothing, I dreamed, nothing but, all the uncertainties sizzle in a rush of blushes. Magenta belief shimmers prayer [[furngrace->mfurngrace]]. Yielding out unto opens the world to the soul's paints, doused in needs tottering over the tensed [[internality->minternality]] blended by your aesthetic aperapture, no world but the one our living weaves, brim slosh colors her eyelids' gentle blinks' allure over all my shortcomings stacked into a goliath I climb under sunset semitones she maintains over my tremulous timbre, nervously palpitating but poised like a statuette as incense incenses, truth pressed to manifest, wreck my voyaging on your violet corals, lean into a moment, I can't, this cannot, I knew before, she knows before, it happens, in a gazeshift which makes me made in her I to my source cascade to a kiss. I have no knees and neither does she and iwe give the glory of immaculately artifice truth in and against and despite and with and as and in the thousand little deaths like grooves to rest in we are made believers by the. Slush eternal beneath our cage clutching on the earth. [[Apparitions->mapparitions]] gloom the plum roll. Our boat our whispers beneath two pressing silences. Vapory chills. Glowmoon as a wizened watching, sufferings long now beyond tell scarlets in a mar mosaic. Dissipating with everything once entrusted. The time is coming when. Mute colossus jet lustrous charging its doom intone. Cessation starts. Skins slick with that oil. In my chest hollow [[rebounds->mrebounds]] memories soon to be entombed, vigil ongoing, who is no longer in their time.

Who shall say what makes a day bright, blush burn and melted cloud cream or the energy of a suddenly blissfully started over out into the infinitely open? Empty fury of ergs or an ocean winking with how much it could chill you is the sky constructed by the ground to which we attach it, frozen emperor eye judging its howlblasted subjects for each shiver waylaying their sole snow tracks, not all harshness summons a brightness; the first spring blaze, solar return to a burgeoning earth, earns its sign as contrast and pales before the summer ensuing; and what do we say of summer but that a drone drawls passion, is there not in my inner heat a recognition of outer light which makes my expression kin with the superluminal lonespances, is not sunspeech an earthwalker's birthlight, am I not arbiter and [[audience->mreinforced]] of suns, who shall say anything of the sky but that we chance to see it, that we find in an open limit cascading outer powers our canopy, and I shall, struggle yes, fall short yes, but when I radiate my intensity pure and burning it shall be I who says what makes my day bright, my turning to her smile our own bright star.

Cell. In it you are. An outside not lost but [[reinforced->mreinforced]] in darts across the vision, clouds across the mind, skips in the beating. Outside in, the inside out, outstretched interlaced isolation and phantoms cataracting as walls are made to be, walls we into, what goes on inside is what has gone on to the inside, wrapped around each pause in the stillness we rustle; blossoms, breeze. Pink petals cherry lace on woven wind. Washing cold, lengthened blinks. When books nestle in your jaw. Bloodshot serenity surface to murmur mirage vanishing worry. Here do the dead echo louder than living noise. Things twist, then tighten, then stay that way forever. I am going, and I will not move.

Bat away the daylight's nagging, but my bare legs under the cloth covers chafed with the lost entwine. Myneme toned from the darkness like eyeshadow from skin. Hers is half wiped smeared. Her lips teased to the left from habit. [[Wordlessly->mreinforced]] she sat. I slumped under her gravity. Time becalmed. Like we were still dreaming, like the morning was contiguous with yesterday's mind, we waited in little actions. For the fifth time I forced my shoulders to relax. A blink lasts so long. What other sensations should we share than the taste of tea?

No endpoint in a studied endlessness. Nonpoint to search for, home. Sheets [[suppress->mreinforced]] suprasensation lilts, warped voices which seem to call both here and infinitely before, half formed and deforming, that do not say some thing, but in all their angularity interpreted they suggest, seem to. If only you. The pages which turn. Dreams float on as their dreamers sleep, and the new nonwakers sift through phantasmal rubbles wondering with what dream to dream. Dust to dust monoliths surreal on ocher smoke as forgotten ages so. What do we construe in ourselves in the alone unclothed. State your exist. Antsy to stand but demands lotus. Rooms will enter your throat when they own you. I am in.

Knelt before the abbess arched my spine towards the so many impossibles that soak us human and [[hopeless->mhopeless]]. She set the spindle of the Koani in its stand and spun it, stares over the spin, the spin, the, stopped it, gently pushed open the page. "...delve twice ungoes thrust, loss, never might the mend unsolve, rush loss solve twain the two that goes, we lose so much in all that goes, twice lost the two in one gone..." Sunken heart stops my tongue. I looked up weeping silent. She knew. She chose this one. She chose for this to happen. There is nothing that I can make happen else than this, this is what I had always known would... "No exegesis, Nyneme? You have been such a good sister for so long. What changed, I wonder? Do you know your acolyte has also been inquired, and she failed to answer all three? Deliberate silence, I wondered, I wonder now. You offer no answer?" I shook my head. She nodded her head like shaking her head. "I trusted you, you know. They said you were ready for a pilgrimage, and I nearly believed them, thus I gave you an acolyte. To have failed so unthinkably… not even to offer a single answer, when the purpose of the text is so clear… what am I to do with you, I wonder? I wonder, are you now truly ready for a pilgrimage?" In my head my head shot up to stare match, but I had not the desire to see her face, to see anything other than these cool tiles... "The Glowmoon is [[going->mgoing]]. We ought to send a pilgrim to the Veda dyi Ayeri, should we not? Such is the custom at the new moon. It will be hard, of course, for your acolyte to have to accustom herself to a new initiator, but hardly could she suffer a worse performance than the vice and ignorance to which you have led her. I have for you here the letter, drafted already, yes, I had an inkling we might need it. This letter will introduce you to the Veda dyi Ayeri, they will rehabilitate you. There is not much left in the Glowmoon, so you must hurry. I have sent a sister to conscript your passage, she already has supplies for you cached near the Docks, so you can go immediately." "But I, you can't, not –" "Hold your tongue! Have you no shame? This pilgrimage is an honor of which you are unworthy. You will accept it with the silent grace of the unworthy."

Allusive subtleties necklaced the emollient malaise speckling quellspace cathexis, pause hollows snatching anguish into the insolently darkly leering tension somewhere in this flushed pumping, simulacra nonemotives sentry the lack where always the doubt sinks in, see yourself as at are you stared. Foamburst over the ship, terrified, soaked. You have fallen. You are not who you think you are. Watery crest of the inbound storm erases your life as it struggles. Seared insensible [[lurching->mlurching]] disorientation nocturnes my vaulted: desyllogize your demise in the Glowmoon going. In the Glowmoon going can this all be lost. Into all of this sent to die, where are you, Nyneme? In all of this sent to... in the going of the... but, but Myneme, how can I leave her here, when she means everything that I, in my [[tomb->mtomb2]], will not? Who is it I shall introduce to the Veda dyi Ayeri? Crumbling into order. Ordered. We fulfill our most fundamental expectations only when withered free of a face. Renounce the structure. Prevent this playing plaything. Elusive. Die in me a [[structure->mstructure]]. Premonition of so many sleeplesses dreaming of how I have failed her into our exilic denuded perverse unity at lasts… "...collision souls, surpass intensities, your altar beyond the limits of your worship, pray at the precipice of cannot can be candelabra dream oracular intensity haze, glow ascendancy..."

Stained sapphiric the slung sun slits the [[yolk->myolk]] ocher to ooze dim burgundy in our skull cathedrals as we interpreted signs through the icon glass. Prophets of the wane we foretold into each other's all encompassed as the Glowmoon goned. Dead star nurtured trawling the catacomb cryptic guided by torchunite we traced the deepened darkened descintillaed in asynchronous breaths lengthened patient. Limitloose we learned the not to say in our cavern wordless; dewy serenity scene to your sole observing, in motion in isolation from the flits of a million too small to see and the epochs of a hundred too large to feel, pops of decided sound annunciate you to the gentle glows, your walk a wind in the wilderness. We turned the spokes to impale us upon eternally virgin verses tremble memorized in the eclipse's ecstatic belief terror as wrongwhisper [[funereal->mfunereal]] unreal unreckoned in our reckless selene release sighs to a shrunken skylight lightheaded genuinely possibility gracious so [[possessed->mpossessed]] in the shift's destruction we allow for anything that we could assemble from the desecration of this overburdened piety as demons forth from the wound where the moon renewed the nonconcept cursed our patterns warped where in the burning, not in this chaos composed, futures in and out blinking rapidly like an epileptic seizing, nevermore the need we need, read we it in the bloodwrit, shared in a vein we gushed out to the air and hung for a moment for a forever before falling into the next now's pain and reeling. With the Glowmoon disappeared into the undercoursing. "...regret all the verified to focus focals to revented to verity unmaking mattrless revisional dispersion rescattering the semblance to go, to glow, to coversion dispermanence..."

"My memories all seem dreams, fossil feelings," whispered the specter. "Dried blood I, black sand stretching lonely to a horizon too low in me chillcroons cruel for having persisted past truth into this forever awaiting nothing. I am waiting for someone who is gone, because I do not have the strength to follow. Speak ash, think dust, do not act, I list to days I could not wish of me: shun its vigors, dwell in desiccation. I am empty, but my emptiness prevents my dissipation. I am a void too austere to meld into the wider hollow." Inklings dry on a wet page. Swimmer through me with rhythmic wakes washing the wider [[motion->mstart5]] with wintry spray. Face to face with the faceless faceless. Inside me the also, in our bones our bond. Outspeaker summoned on which pillar nerve? Precious close our depths flowed current. Connected tissue continued our rebel souls' gelbell jinn swells molding our unfolding indwelling unquelled to constant hum questions spun to spiral shimmers seen venetian as vivid static electrics of the no longer vibrant burning yearning to cast cold the cancer a candelabra lit ghostly in icespark glitterdarks fuming funereal for this nightnever.

Kneeling in an alley gasping lastlies as thus spoke the specter: "Worn by the wasting to a harsher wasted, the endless yearns unspooled me. Need neon to guide my entranced, into her I intensified a dying; outside of her, the dying is numbed narrow. We became our erasure entirely, but somehow flawed by intention I outlive the act, the event's structure composes my spectrality, where is the less and less of my more effected emerges, disintegrate to an empty infinite, but more and more I dream, and in my dreams of her I convulse with involuntary kicks of pulse, carry on our dead banner, relish in how it flutters atop my wreckage. What I throw away in the moment I pretend we are still building is more precious than any shard beauty I mosaic from this incompletely complete annihilation. Beyond what we, none, and in the void I unculled quiver. Where is she for whom all of it is not? Did I shed Myneme to sustain this undead? I do not know, or more that knowing no more compiles for me, logic tapers to tottering ghouls the muck goops into its own. What is to be said? One would have to be one to express a thought. "You, have you wandered to this forgotten forbidden bidden by for what you have begotten your for, some unknown seals us in echoing stress: curl close through the long depress. Acid memories in the dark necessity, no more have I but this need as the same you feel. We are casts of better illusions. In us now is the gap that terrordrains us with inclinations of what should have and maybe might have at least in dreams dwelt there, ghosts appearing before the haunted. Every night worse, this wilting. Undone in a thousand lost utterances. Unhinged the world's borders so have I slipped through to this unanswerable posed guttural to each glacial pulse. Fragments of once fulfilled impale my [[ongoing->mstart5]] to bleedslick my deathdrag. Trust the ties tugged entrails entwine. Do you, and what do you trust? Why have you crawled here, what still pulses you to elsewhere crawl?"

Grown out of our skulls a bone blossom our mutuality picked, ash beautiful. What is this we made of this what is this? Insistent precious we pulled to a pressure unpurified. Bornborne beast ligaments twisted knotting to a growl, prowling back and forth before a pounce on what the need nurtured between the blood sucked from memory gore. Grown into without escape, enact. Dulled razors we abraded an echo violence touch. Crash once more to mortal moreness awareness and cry out the enunciating gulf. Why wait for the inexorable? Gestated malfunctions cogging to a reaction but stalling, [[diverting->mstart5]] through flaws the fatal energy, shark in a net thrashing, thrashing, and slowly, just... no moment when, and for a moment you can believe in a descending forever, but infinity snaps under sudden actuality, and all the rage of beauty dies to the slightest of sighs. We let ourselves believe letting go is a kind of going on, but misty lurks the stop, until it shines and shines and blinds. Relent is a process that becomes a word. Expiration drags years behind the veil exhalation.

Out of me spoke the specter whose voice thrilled, quivered. "Volcanic you burst from this entombed, yet shall you find the air as cavernous. In stillness and motion both lords [[inertia->mstart5]]. I am the ask you harbor. Hold close this scream to encase in a psalm. Take me in, with you, wherever you go is my own forever, move us in your making, jostle me free of this eternity. Reshunt the shelter shamelessly skynude and trust the gales to promise your possible. Impressed upon this structural stress ruin, in rubble are you written. Let razescapes smolder witness. Bless ourselves into some mutual hurry to a sunrise suggestion as sailors of a someday soon, in your voyage let us verb. In me you as never in yourself, yes, in you I know you, there was, yes, space for me already, ah, how similarly we went searching, but yours more messy, is more chaotic to become, your searching into the deathifying, the carnage of not quite right, yes, and now you are condemned, neither of us ought to live, we stray stay spectaters of projected indirecteds gladiators slowly thrashing in oblivion jaws. No, don't ask, ah, it invigorates to anticipate your questions, but no, they will not notice me here, they have never noticed you more than where you appear, I will taunt them with it, let us relish in it, small unrecked revenges. Seek sanctity in how you eldritch incomprehensible to their narrownaughts. Annihilate the abjectified in disnominality incantation's retrocleansing wave, in the erasure return. "Which ghost try looses us to the lunge views? Elsewhere entrances, seance border between this and wish. In all this youth death has truth accumulated nowhere mutters, bulb pupil bulging from cataract rims leers the faint false. Exanimation of harrow sinks to sorrow. Hopetattered I tremble a cherished closed, needle tongue sewing the mouth jagged, in the guise is a rinse of ritual power: cleansed of constricts, out of the phantasmic miasma lopes jackals houndhowling, long looptongues lagging on the nightblack grass, to bay reply to my shriller and shriller by the second whistling as towards you I point, my eyes equal crescent moons. Ghoulish vengeance upon the brittly bordered by constricting further: a prison shall you, then a prison shall you. Desecrate destination, staggerdodge the graves, warden of the fatal flaws. Set into the problem render the problem a set and ply upon the cornered a mirror curse to redouble dying to damnation as a redress redress. Never free the architects in how the buildings loom their shapes, so lash them to the facades as the skies fever drudge brackish, foam, and opal. Clung to the palisades the priests complicit, guards of the gods for whom they fence in and fence out, rampage their delineations a separation scripture, crumble worship for the wreckage gods and drink the corpsefluids like milk, misty eyes a honey. Ringlet trenches around the burning defended runny with soiled blood. Bury us all in the warpath. How else will we return the undercurrent? Your ceiling opens its eye and cracks fracture the slightest grin. As you drift asleep your bed starts to hug too tightly. Shapes scurry between the blinds. Your doorknob moans as you twist it and, rather than open, more doorknobs emerge. Your saliva trickles through your jaw like sweat. Your eyeballs elongate out of your sockets and start to droop and your vision swings the hang. Awaken and all your limbs are attached differently. Your sense of touch trebles to tingly excesses. Your teeth sharpen and grow, grow, puncture through your palate, impale your brain, but you still think, but some thoughts or movements strike you against the bladed obstruction and your consciousness ignites. When you speak, you hear someone else. When you look, you see someone else. You feel as someone else. We are right to hate, right to want, right to tremble murderously, aren't we, or what is right, where do we find its ichorous idols? When all is violence, you as a thing stuck together is a violation, and the disorder struggles justice asunder streaking brief color against the absorption white. Composed of chaos as a paradox engine of the order of disorder, creative destructions we course whence?"

Numbdrunk in neverdreams splashed aware of the decayed. Drudged up empty then seared into a sudden shared [[vertigo->mstart5]] reeling. What should I, we, and isn't that? Plopped in sloppy rows the broken before you to let overlordly observe you blessed formative, feast upon misbuilts, leave no failed flesh untongued. Rubblemossed hoperaiser the solitary sylvaneph in the widening wrack chittering the wind with spring, somehow someone despite the depressed lungs failing to fill this. Late summer swells the last driplets of fiery green as we lie on the bank unburdened: can we with the stream rush free of the source? So spoke the specter. "In another Tower might you find a vestige reality that will at last testify that my soul outbounded of this gyre energy you hence our reanima. Let us scrap corpse course unto rust colossus, watch the watercolor of our setting settle. Want the wind in my hair in lieu of possibilities, to shift, change, decide, belong, move, shifts us, changes us, decides us, locates us in an innate motion inescapable. Composed of cavities, we echo presence our insufficiency unto void. Totalized of sunya, inscriptionists of empty energies coalescing unto the named experience, we are all we are not only as damnation, in matter as maya inselfless eruptive disjolters lessecrating the curio our curtaincy between acts, mina spurrity lithifying the flushing disentire to constructive inhaibitors, traders of signs we sever from the unrepresentable pulsars of potent I all. Creators killed unto capture, graveworld binders. We are the written of smotes of sparks in the endless darkness dreams. Lysis theophanicysms killtraced to pulse exile. Templars of a yet built preordained lashing unions of wrack parallelisms of psalms plaintive and penitent." Sticky my fingers stretched from the knuckles and drooped to the floor where they stalagmited to urge the whole cavernous empty to lift this built to break backsnapped and serpentous to whatever glittergilded gods might passively watch so my tuned tongue might loose an out of key outcry, and as I slip back to collapse might the whole edifice do so also in defiance. Definitions destroy thrust we dance the antidazzled tenuous and blanched. The need and the failure, the waiting but the coming undone, sleep robs you of the rest, and gladly, gladly would I trade it, were it mine, were it right, though often that injunction stalls too meekly the slipping away… Gutting consumption caves into my soles so I can swallow up any dreamshards laying desolate at my feet, I will walk atop ruins and drink. In the air my tongues catch all the thrown to the depths hearts. Reckoning ourselves as genuine while we minnow about the maybes. Detritus hulk limping across the torn terrain with a hole hulched worsened to wordsmith the brittle mettle to bear meaning, where, not here, not us, but this, butterfly wist. Dead pasts haunting graven perspectives, snakescarved while the black breeze whips the whisper hushed. More collapsed than chance supports. Modal miseries to tune humanity's harmonies. Gloweyed in the sweltered darker than the night as a figurine I inched without motion to the icicle incalculable.

Enervated into a volt the specter in my spine: "Gods drag us. Say a cur lurks in a hospice. You are wounded and cannot move, but you are positioned in a rafter overtop a door you can reach down and swing. The cur enters the room near a young child. Behind the door beneath you blurble three elderly. If you swing open the door, then the cur would feast on one or two or all three of these condemned, leaving the child alone. "What is the just course of action? If you do not open the door, then a young child that could live many years yet will die. Is that right? If you open the door, then you spare the child, but you condemn more lives to this danger, even if combined they probably have less possible years than the child. Is that right? Does a greater total of lost years matter, or does a greater number of people experiencing those years matter? Does the quality of the years matter, with the child's adolescence and adulthood still ahead of it, whereas the elders dimly look towards waning senescence? Is it a matter of distribution: is it unfair to the child not to have lived, but the elders have had their chance, and should now accept the loss of whatever is left? Or rather perhaps the elders have lived long enough to love their lives, but the child is still too young yet to lose as much by death? Indeed, in the memories of the elders lie two hundred years of humanity to reminisce and relive to story, but the child is of no account. Who are you to judge which is greater, you who can neither remember these elder's lives nor project this child's possible? Perhaps it is best for the child to die now, so it might not need suffer the lives you all have been cursed to endure for decades. But the cur is beyond your control, if you open the door, is it just if only one elderly person dies, or it is less just but still acceptable if a second dies, but then is it unjust if a third dies? What if you open the door, but the cur takes the child anyway, are you morally guilty for having opened the door, even if nothing came of it? But also you are in a hospice, so if you open the door, but the child dies of sickness the next day, then are you guilty? How long must the child live for the sacrifice of the elders to be just? Likewise, if you do not open the door, but none of the elders live longer than another week, then have you been unjust? Or is it the sheer expectation that makes the action just in the moment, and nothing that actually happens has any moral bearing on whether a decision was evil or not? Should you do nothing, letting the world do as it will? If you renounce action, are you guilty, and as guilty, as the person who chooses not to open the door? Do you rebel against the problem, overcome your broken bones, throw yourself from the rafters, fight the cur in fatal heroics poised perfectly to elicit a loving tear? Perhaps indeed you snicker at the bitter nonsense of the world and throw yourself from the rafters and simply snap your neck, die next to the child like poetry. Perhaps in the exact instant before the crash you can whisper to the child the name of a god to let them know who has consecrated existential majesty. "The beauty of a moral problem lies in the lies of justice you can pretend correct the unjust world. You are unjust just for glimpsing the injustice. By being in the rafters, no matter what you do or do not do, you are involved in the problem, you are unjust. There is no right answer, there is only your right to answer and live terrified of its poltergeists. You can decide which injustice is less guilt to add to your name, but there is no pure justice available to you who share a guiltlink with the cur and its hunger and our withering: you are guilty by virtue of existence. In being you kill all other beings; life dances you atop death. We breathe and feed on sin, sin bleeds us realized, your choice is which sins to consume, which evils will ash you. "Is not the truest nobility to watch the cur feast upon the child, then to throw open the door to let it feed upon the rest? Is sublime honesty not precisely assigning yourself to both outcomes? Are we not failures exact in the door, both our passivity and our agency the same lye swallowed? Is it not the very soul of ourselves, that we lord above in the rafters, deciding who will die? "Everything we are is a part of what we are a part of. We are dissonances living out our notes as a harmony. We choose which guilts weigh us guilty. In a moral problem, the choices are stark, the stakes are heavy, the consequences dire and immediate and endless, but life is morally problematic, the things about you, even when you are unaware of them, whisper choices you may unknowingly acquiesce, you are immorally always. Every wrong that happens while you are alive is constituent in what is wrong with you. Those who lived on the land in empires of the sun and moon mixed will never be cleansed so long as these Towers cease these seas' peace. Jagged ruptures of oblivion blessing, we [[blur->mstart5]] into our own voids. I was as guilty of my own time as you are this very second, our wrong answers echo our uneradicated. Each moment cursed enough to contain you should terrify with some hint of the wider horror you exude and exact. We are the damned wake of gods."

Regrets retravel along my spine each travail to unbow the unbroken as if not ludicrous, as if not a farce attempting the [[stolid->mstarving]] serious, but they can sense the [[steeped->mphysicalize]] and sieved, they sip my [[insenseable->mfragments]], I in their mouths a steam never of the actual to repay, retrain the horizon to set upon my own quivering begging to break, to accept ossitility as overwrite sanctification stele ton borne, beatify brutally to erase me finally in their hatreds husk, so none of this might [[amount->mlanguid]], since neither they nor I would find joy in my self unsmothered, I just want to die into a dignity qua erasure. They spite me so specified a person who cannot immix, a creature cursed humanistically [[distinct->mjaufrei]], but I will spite them the rockface, or I wish I could, all my sanctifiability therein relies, but daemonic I pulse a hubris to persist, insist on alterity not merely quelled.

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter V''] --- Flung across a marathon without moving, fractured body sensual [[doubles->mdoubles]] askance rinkling in a lag. Simplex blare eradicating the duality, death to embodying the aftermath, like a current directed to deluge this drainhull eraserstance ripple I as ancient paintings [[dissolve->mdissolve]] to the action they amber to attempt to mirror my vicious undoing which undulates borders to rift ambiguity to allow mediate seiches to chaos this bipartite [[illusionorder->millusionorder]], absolute all of the absolute spilling into this particular manipulator, fulcrum necessity posthumous excess symbolicizing the shifted whole superlative to fractured grasping, overexertion [[overstretching->moverstretching]] my bounds while a [[doppelganger->mdoppelganger]] stays ice still, critique of the shadows which never have to have more form than shape, for who shall better imitate truth for you who are native to anywhere too tomblike to repress your nerves than this emaciating masked, sans in the binary, relent, release, return. //Click [[here->mchapters]] to return to Chapter Select.//

"Have you always gone on so selfish, Leiru?" Avacz shoved me against the wall. "You dragged way over your five ah! We cut Mylecz on your account. Negative, yah? You and Reikka, you're so desperate to [[broadcast->msunrays]] your silhouettes you'll even moth on sputters. Can you really now be so empty hor? Is it because you're shy or something? This your great attempt to express every opinion you're too cowardly to express on your own terms? When we're all sitting in the warmth of this showroom where of course no one's quite looking you in the eye, you've got us captive, right, finally everything really is oriented by looking at you; I mean, your perfect world would just be a mirror, wouldn't it? Your beauty's better than Mylecz's beauty? Must so your stealing his slot. Why should he speak hey? Would only be eclipsed by the universal truths you're to espouse all over us. If we just listened to you, why, we'd never need for another voice again. "Don't even care this gig lor, that's the tragic part, the really funny part is no one does, no one's listening. You're scrabbling so intent holding hostages not there to be taken, showroom's akin the brothel, show up to be alone. Whatever nonsense Mylecz's dripped from his gums about dressers or whatever isn't important, he'll read it some other time to the not listening to be forgotten as quickly as today's soul's bare, which is to say, it'll never even be remembered, but this mindset you're running in what's bothers me, the sheer daft selfishness of it. Should never blather a poem over five, there's never the point of it, not the poem but the slot what matters, the chance to be heard. If you're gunning over five, just cut it yeah, you've not the art to lose. Guarantee you, hell I'll bet you, you and Jaufrei love bets aye, I'll bet you, oh, ten coins we'll bid, twenty, rob my entire keep why don't you, it's not much assure, but I'll bet it up that no one, and I really mean it, no one, not one person, will notice. Stop midsentence if you need to, make it obvious, scream the last word, pause dramatically! If they're even cognizant, if they even recognize that you started and that now you're finished, they'll slugbrain assent it some artistic choice or the like laugh. You'll probably get compliments for shutting the hell up. I'm always on to you about it, Leiru, the shortest acts are the strongest: the less you try to convey, the more likely you'll communicate. Why froth incomprehensibles to the void when you can whimper your say in the hope someone overhears? All they want is to hear some other noise than their brains, they caren't the weft. "But let's set it: you over once more, even by a minute, already to the third yeah kyauska, I will, and I mean this, I'll personally ensure you never curse us your presence a tick more. If you cannot ken the line, then you need not be here. People come here to blast drunk off their own pents, we're using each other here, this is all one attempt to get exactly yourself again and again. We provide, for such a nominal fee, the semblance of listening. I make piss profit, could drink every night somehow else, but I do this because I care, Leiru, something you ought to look into, because I know how absolute garbage our lot is, how desperate we wish to prove ourselves alterior to it, creative out of the destructive, the waste of it all, and most importantly I recognize that creative ambitions are precious precisely because they're worthless, because they're us. The only valuable creative act is what you're willing to throw away, because that's the authentic core. We level aye? Give Mylecz the chance to chandelier his mind for our dim, has as much right as you, more maybe since he's short a cutesy little Jaufrei to cuddle up with at night to make all the nightmares go away. That kid's just as deep as you are, just as introspective, his internal world's the same phantasmal desert yours is. Outside yourself for once you'll discover a universe."

Fomented dullness riddles sights sleights, blur havens crushingly hollow in which we shudder with white pixie sighs. Stutterstep cyclone grief muezzins the bending drive to be unified in an [[annunciation->msunrays]] of what? The outpouring beyond imbuing the chastified selfreduction with the redemptive zero level through orphic incantations of progression deeper into an internalization of a placement which might as well be a series of surfaces splayed atop nothing, which is where all our ghosts leave us: the place where and reason why they first disappeared. The mirror is only tragic because you are forced to admit that you are abandoned in self married unhappily to itself. Aren't we all dressed up before the mirror not to be naked before it? And don't we sometimes get naked before it? And doesn't that force us to dress? Dragged from yesternight's splotch mucusswollen clumped this nethered along a rigidity ruthlessly sober for one foregone. Going outside looking like you chooses your most honest and not your best face. Saying, this is where I am, with all its flaws. Everything I wish I could change I will wear. Not display, not to say to everyone else, glare, but simply to be there. They do not know how horrible is recognition of your ricochet. I hate the heat of a glance. Walking in the open streets with so many directions you can't defend against: you have to relinquish your brittle spirit to the breeze's sway. People who's problems lie concealed cannot understand nakedness.

Lapse of shapes shunts the shelter to combinants welter the inknotability dire, so sutured my dazed in the blank but of timewhispers [[sunrays->msunrays]], knot tomorrows dappling these shadows incomplete. Fugue aches reappearing in sequence in severity lashed my sight sideways heavy, drippy, drooling, eyelid blackness scarring roots into to overgrow the gnarling aware bareness, stripped of interpolations, normalized polarizer, sift cupola of the sacred into space, gods prism rain over the pleading innate recalling, scalding sweat blazemists my visibles, choking, thrashing... "Leiru oi, alright ah?" Mylecz. "What happened?" I swallowed down the migraine. "Nothing's happened. Here, let me help you up. You sure you fine then? You look terrible." "Thanks," I clasped his arm. "You for the voyage?" "Like I'll miss a chance to slip this prison hey. Too many days inside will kill." Jaufr stretched under the streetlamp. Hidden in his semblance of languid pleasure was a certainty best exuded in dark halls rattling with a dusted wind... "Ah geskecz, crime owned," Mylecz strained. "I forgot, the uh, Kaiya told me, you know. I know how close you two were. Didn't mean to bring it up or." "It's fine," I grit my teeth. "It doesn't.., I don't…" "Listen, Leiska's a kyauska, we're all in with you, even those that hated Jaufrei. Leiska's been tripping on his own size since he's gotten Myemi side, thinks he can do anything now. Well I mean sure, but he shouldn't be able to hor? But I don't mean to lecture politics, know that sets you off." "I don't um, or um, uh…"

"[[Sailors->msailors2]]!" Captain Myeri stood in the dawn dribbling orange on his saberhilt. He flashed a grin that would have been aloof had it not been directly at us aimed. He flung his hands from over his heart to dais two shadows translating to our coarse light. I leaned a little on Mylecz to rise high enough to catch the referents, two rustles a blare, the first tall, brawny, tawny, immediately imperial, the second's complexion a warm emergence. Eyes sewn remote, velvety, Veda. Kasayas swaying along a high mannerism, the sheer amount of axes required for their movements, what little of themselves translated outwards spoke more than what we were hearing. Between them one ebony wash honoring an inviolate bond equal to the now and nonrenewable nestled in the wider color like gold leaf on tan vellum. Epochal glyphs repainting themselves to illustrate Myeri's voice which hung upon us printed: "Resume ourselves in the resounding [[ultimatum->multimatum]] our strides percuss on the bending worldspine unfurling to a banner we wave triumphant. We are no more than where we refuse to be lessened from, and therein state your strongest manifests are where you stake your image's lucidity: from form to formulation, stop not to live but force the world to its spinning ceased beneath your transit magnetism. Standing here as sailors awaits us also history's immeasurables, forebears skies in which our hearts bioluminesce these stories we struggle alive! "Greater forces shift this new paradigming. Together raise the flag of two namednesses immortal who tense for your praise to rejoin their entrance into our hearts' spears: this, Berakh; this, Meluoi. Bend to their sound, their name on our tongues is a hymn. Reignited by their spark continuity charging our ancestral legacy's originality storm rendering us warriors in a cause waged against rebus seas rise up to them in your rowing, in the turn of the sails settle their testament more intensely real than any tempest ruinous, temple this brilliance whitehot which looms over us our sweat's cause, branded upon your statue souls their unseen in this bronzeless era. In these mythics verse us also along these leylines. "Some of you, alas, hold superstitions about Veda, weak mutterings of the unreckoning, but toss aside youth's ignorance and attend to their superlativizing will, transformed in their nature to the undergrowth excellence from which those animal fears leap to congregate our [[perditions->mperditions]] as children of gods, soldiers of the heaven that exalts us all: lend them your utmost devotion, spare not an ounce of your adoration, but nurture the cure, praise those who break our bones into bread, these masters of our making are the finalizing return, from our sunscorched shall they seed sacrifice so may be redeemed our people at last eternal in our hour, told in a feat, we can melt this airless whorl into a mosaic world if only we glimmer pieced in their design! Sailors, bear up! Reap the dawn!"

"There can be no more waiting for time to allow us to actualize. How often have we waited, only to discover the waiting is it, is all it is? Never again neverness! We pry apart the binds, seep through the seconds, effect the truth thereby vaulted this hiddenness we yearn in sleepless shiveries. This is who allows us to bloom, these Veda, thay ask of us to accentuate to match their mythicity. Historical we, what rejoinder is written? We must slough the sayless to utter that by which we will be named: [[voyagers->mvoyage]]! "What say you, my highborn Veda? As history peeks through to find us here lined on the Docks ready to embark, shall it shiver knowing definitions approach? Let us rise to meet it. Let us sail into ourselves unmediated! Enough of this shaking in the passing. The wasted hours of our lives shall forever cease in this [[voyage->mvoyage]] as production hums again in our chests, our hands, the calloused fingers sharpening their edges, giant awakening to its sleepless deathless girth. The sea tosses its foam hair and from its azure throat sings our welcome, a return as joyous as it is momentous, for mankind shall remember this day its champions conquered our final fear and set sail for the last monster still dwelling impertinent of our denatured, yes, I can feel it in my veins, it slings, it races an hour to remember, so remember it well brothers and sisters, trawl the heat of your muscles moving in your memory's [[capture->mstart6]], remember the day when Captain Damano Myeri and a daring crew sailed with the Veda to write their names on the ledgers of legacy! Off, let us cast off, on, let us get on the ship, quick, there is not a second to lose, we must hurry! We must rush to the Sunken Tower, we must do so at record speeds! Remember this day, Ayeri's Tower, for it is the day you were redeemed!"

"Hark to me, brothers and sisters, sailors all! Time has allowed us this precious rupture upon which our [[voyages->mvoyage]] can be diverged into arcs which skypaint new promises! Let us not waste this opportunity, up, up, let's move, waste not the hour, rise to drink the day!" Activity blurred the definite lines, the planks withdrew, lines untied, sails unfurled, a wind was caught, oars a welter out into the accepting waking, and in a blaze manmade we cast off not for the Sunken Tower, for any name or place, but for redemption clear and free. The berth shrunk. Thistle horizon we flurried toward inscribed in Ayeri's arching mouth blitzed through the real, the strain, the ache that makes us so purely alive streaming us away from Ayeri's, away from the unbreathable kiln smoke coughed from lung to lung unrefreshed, from memory's burden, from the stained waning daily decrepiting the ash remaining, onward to something new yet unfounded, a hope, a future not of this but from this, chance to bend these brokens newly. Squinting to peek meekly out from our caves, tremulous, tenuous, up in the ocean's spray, lurched by the plunge, we hung our heads out in the rawness of the wind as sunshine slaked our cold with warm damp skin at long last. Vanilla soft swaths spread on a blood orange whose hidden stars shimmered mutely behind filmy lines inklings of the swollen sun, cottony cuts on the smoldering cinders, arrows to the unseeable, to land as far as you could see, grass so green it gilds, rolling hills and yawning vales, the thrill of the waiting moment intoxicating, the taste of a bendable second. I turned back to the balking crags, combined altar to the lost and the victorious unchanged dimming in the moment marriage calmed. Scorpion tensed to sting saw I Jaufr, Marko, my mother, father, equals in the forgetless murmur, exile. Let my tears alone echo there. Whatever cup contained this pain spilled out to the sea to find its meaning in going outside. As my body melted in this delirious [[surge->mstart6]] my spirit unsheathed caught the wind in pinions, in sails as we sailed away.

Mist mornings billowing through the thunderous dawn, the Veda faintly bowing. A strange echo of actual awe as Myeri knelt before them. Faces espoused disbelief varieties, but his rich coating timbre retained precedent. "My most noble kin of the heroes, allow me to admit these sailors before you." He returned to us in an encompassing wave. "They are the brave to ferry you unto bravery's bleakest altar, the scowling carapace of a malleable eternity long since disused, the imprint of centuries ago still unjoined to this dying to recall in our echoes our undying, the Sunken Tower! Let them be named so their spirits may effervesce before your leviathan purpose gliding in bass through immensity. "Where shall all sailors go, first shall the captain venture to lead. I remain before you Captain Damano Myeri of the Myeri line, a man yet flesh, legend unfinished, a sailor king whose scepter still yet divides these waves upon whose violent truth lies my lineage. I shall lift you to the temple of our purpose. I privileged by time will mumble the theme that presses from your tongue, a wright captured in your timeless now to endure forever. You shall see, honored witnesses of our yet unpassing, why this name is hallowed in hearts salted by the harsh sea, foremost of all who seek in the shivering now the quaking hereafter, knowledge kings whose tensing deeds attest to time's unbreakable geist this name stands authentic unto the act of a world defined! "Before you are those who my spirit yearnings collate into a single dew. Behold them, mighty Veda, and witness our choir for our answer to the horizon's challenge! "Renowned Aci Leiska at their head waits before you my lieutenant, keen keeper of all that does not buckle, mettle rejoinder against the decay. Mark him, you templars of the ageless, find him fit for our service. "A worthy son stands next our ensign, Pyevi Olyasz, my own nephew, my greatest cousin, a true brother. He shall not fail you as truly as I shall serve you. On my dearest sister's name will he pledge his honor which you will rhapsodize in our greater mutual elevation. "Next is our pilot and mechanic, Jenyelle Asaveno, a man who yet still holds my father's frame in this eye that now captures us. Many times has he run this circuit, and now like a sculptor surpassing clays let him marblize our actions. "This is our naturalist and historian, Reikka Kaemi. Bandied on the tongues of her admirers as a first amongst peers, hallowed for the fierceness of her wit and her insight's piercing, she shall charm you with not just what she recalls but what to which she in her still going bears [[witness->mstart6]]. "No band is a match to such a cause without a striking might, and thrice times have we succeeded this capacity in each of our four gunsmen: Gyadalta Agure, their chief, whose ever swift hands have been irreparably stained by countless abominations slain; Pyeisa Naczamuru, a man who has seen the extremity of death and decried it; Mazyu Hezicressa, sturdy, steady, and brave to the end; and Avacz Amane, whose soft and cheritable heart steels in the face of impending danger. "Though surely the storms shall try to sink what sunders it, our four proud ropers will glide us on our rose way: our foreman bright and brave, Emnin uh, uhm, nah, Emnin ah, nina, nino, ahh uh, Emnino, Emnino Leiru, yes, and as his aerials: Kaiya Omaczianna, dancer on gales; Mariena Hezicressa, whose grip shall tender us safely unto every wish we conjure; and Imeni Loya, whose calm no chaos can sunder; each more worthy than the last even as they cycle again. "And thrusting us through at breakneck speeds, flying us to our destination with dizzying pace, our ten hardworking and unbreakably cheerful rowers: Volya and Vasya Iskeru, sons of the sensible strain; Teminu Taszaczu, strong and fearless; Tyese Okabaro; Kostiye, uh, let's see here, uh, Kostiye Peme; Lomia Caskacz, as amiable as his body has made him powerful; Mojyi Mityesz; Mylecz Motyasz; Yakacza Lonyo, a sailor renowned in every hall for his love of the sea; and lastly, with so much pleasure, Doubo Groke: though this world has crept its hate into his eyes and ears, in sheer spite for the tragedies sewn in him he rows in pure commitment, a rebel salvo aiming straight for the offending tyrant. He shall serve us overwhelmingly well, as they all shall, inklings of a genius yet to pale." Myeri allowed himself to enfold into our activity upon such a word, such a dream, even if we knew never how to build its tangibility thirsts, and his silence outgrew the hour split along the sound of our motions as if he spoke them so, fragments found us boarding, unmooring, wind as throats, wishing the sunlight severer... "A [[voyage->mvoyage]]! A voyage shall unite us!"

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter VI''] --- [[Breathe->mbreathe]] the sky its sister, [[sigh->msigh]] into the clouds all the [[earthbound->mkaiya]] [[unbinds->munbinds]] in your presence openness unto a blueness swallow unto a blueness swallow, whorl of [[chance->mblushhaze]] candelabra chiaroscuro hatching your contours thus [[visibly->msmiles]], the chance to be visibly, freed from how the Tower swallows, see me upon these waves [[surging->msurging]] to overrun, our pitch break and bolt into its troughs and crests, exist within its wilds, persist it into perils, the [[heaving->mdisidea]] of chance could... //Click [[here->mchapters]] to return to Chapter Select.//

Porcelain smile. Lips quivering the cheer fracture sucked teethward by fear of an incoming doubt, the whole face could shatter, but a smile, sly quiver retraction, blue shroud, lacework fabric, conceals again the shaken out: placid sky, silhouetted earth beneath, tilt, a torrent, black comets and the cosmos crashing. Mud covering so much meaning, so many unspoken cruelties as pain reigns: bend, weep to your knees, into the ear shriek white panics spellbound erratic refusing to form a sentence. Loosed truths immanence in the inscrutable retreat language of a body desolate with skin's incomplete dominance. Smiles bullets straight from heart to heart [[bleend->mbleend]], how thin the line that separates us, but nothing comes out right, revelation uniting on levels we wish to isolate unveiling the border's purpose now that it is nearly erased, and the crunching bare tossed callously on stage dares the seenthrough to symbolic action, to clothe with riddles again, retain a semblance or die pure volcanic. To [[Kaiya->mkaiya]], a wince and why the wince. Too much sweat lubricated my jaw, and I, admit it, smiled, something like. Hot on our tanning our first morning at sea I saw her and said it. The graceless sigh after a sip of blacker than the shade coffee, and it just released, I saw her, smiled. She gave me one back which I still wore.

There is a day here I was not guaranteed but am living. Drink the sun, dance intoxicated on shine. Who cares if they see? Who cares hailstones scream from steps? Burst morning light, bless my still given sight with the truth you enable, enact your [[renewal->mrenewal]] blaze, heat of hope tanning, sinking beneath, roiling the heart hopefire flurry reverberating soul to the strand shout, cry into the brilliance… body shook [[bloodbroken->mbloodbroken]] swallowing down Marko and Jaufr, small groan like a dry heave. Quivered as if from the windchill. I moved Mariena on her line. I didn't want to look at them, but I had to, but I wanted to be down there with them, I wanted to imagine some other foreman looking down at us, invisibly also. The ropes burnt my hands with scorched callouses, and I acquiesced the pain to pretend it was meted metaphorically. The seawind sways its breezes on skylines brushing through our shipworks, and you must dance to its [[rhythm->mrhythm]] to run the lines right, to feel in your pull some stronger force.

Upon a wave arising so briefly to bless the crashing to earth with substance as perhaps the [[angels->mblushhaze]] dream. Behind my void [[cloister->msmiles]] I sense his whispers slowly shifting to a new [[voice->mbloodbroken]] inexplicable, loftier a pitch, wishing I could such heights [[assume->mbreathe]], crash back to the [[guttural->mdisidea]] and [[grinding->mrenewal]], no, not yet, aspire the ascenders yet...

Difficulty insinuate her speech within me properly. Actually she how she. I need to assume she does or else what. Sandscorched to assure, I do not need more than deserted, so will I reap in memory what never in life, right, right? I am choking on entrails. I don't know which way is north, no way is north, every directed an aside. You assured not escaper. Definitionally enclosed. I walked up to the wayward and sighed its punch, free to be recauseated, I who never enduress this prescence. Hatefully [[composite->mchangeable]], consideedly [[underposited->munderposited]], dwindling beneath iron say. I hatefully acquisece any imposed upon me, deserve it, assure its actual iron reigning. Assuming itself mine swallowing, devouring all, I desperate the froth. Consume me shied of [[confrontfacion->mconfrontfacion]]. Mother hates me because I usurp, cannot relate but how I slurp up, yum, you're my petit taste. Hateful abrogation of form, absorbed into why rejected. Interject me mistake, mother, inseparate my rejected, I want to worship the death, just as you have, century after frustrated strayed. Endorphins of thrust, contumacious entrapulverlies. I exist the extent of mistakes I commandeer determinate terminus. Dead in how I build upon how she hates me.

Plunk of keys sunk in my teeth quivering chromatic. In some clump of distance drilled a phantom torn, speech like fireflies behind my lidded eyes, seen a semblance burning with recognition, disapparitive cognition, nullspace specter ringing through the relaterminate a hollowing tingling repositioned, self as show I cannot quite, there in the shadows thimbling a bilious dermalination, slashveer veneer stranging a smirk, whose face thrust upon it, mine or Jaufr, uncertain, mine or could it be Kaiya, is it Kaiya hopeful worshiping some forgotten distance theme? Try to reach out to touch what is gone. Where has it gone, my ability to identify force pull push, sinuous kernalization, discontinuous internalization of consequence scription, who you are in afters mixed with bitters to tincture numbshaky. Crawl out of this corpse to beg the spirit its shifts, enclose clapse me lode, slow this disarray cling morphine truth, pare me into the form of this fever facing me, jutter enjambed in it coffin lid slammed. I saw her. No. I saw this specter in. No. Where am I? Who is [[raving->msunrays]]?

Let not the [[tempest->mflooded]] change how you are chained. Is there force of will to endure? What is on my hands? Who is there before me yawning open? Dizzy through knots. Slides and slumps of corpse caterpillars my nerves reverberating maximal, there the slash, this flash foments the darker afters, cradling dusts like urns, how does he not speak. Marko's body bloated careened big impossibly on the clatter, fracture, scatter. I don't know where it was or where it went. Envy, envy, how can you just go like that, how do I learn it, how do I hurt myself in such a way as to end up like Marko, sucking at this wounds to assimilate the knowledge, beautiful juicy spilling out into non, I wish I could be so brave, no, you're, you're countermanding the actualized to prevent the harrowing of factual, you've done this to him and now you seek to sycophant praise the demon deed, you're harvesting even your guilt you bleakmaw ravager, kill me just like him, he's so beautiful how his neck pumps each stair drag, oozy with trails... I could be so good at where he is, yet he gets to be, condemn must myself that he does, but issuing out of the tarantula voicecull throatcrawl splatters bassy the blurble to aver, disdain thematize it, rejection completion, humiliation true. No, you've got to, eah, I can see it, he's staring at me, his eyes are looking right through me, I haven't killed him, he's, no, no, nothing ever again emerges, just like Jaufr, just like. Uttered distance coiled on the wrung to perspire concuss assumptives fetaline, so he seemed thrashing conclosure. Fatal, fetal, disambiguation accorded stairsplash after [[gashshrivel->mredcoated]]. Interred into trembled, our downward exodus, Marko written upon the traveled. Hulch gulpthroat caught to bubble like a [[fountain->mghostsleet]] his folding jaw. Incision under the push towards consequence cascades us cancerous, victim I must attest my prewritten, consummative of held in relief, distress, distress, you are becoming known, this gaze that mocks you knows. No alterity salvation, acidically presence caustic defaces this grimace keen, vandal, bandit, you the syringe glippy with seizure analgesic. Nobody, no body, you carry nothing to the Docks. I am carrying Marko to the Docks. I am carrying Jaufr to the Docks. I am carrying more than my loaded can bear. Submit, I'm so sorry, I should have let you, I'm so sorry Jaufr, why did I do nothing, I want you to use my body to come back to life, crawl up into my brain and overbeing. Indetermination dermus gray undulates unduration [[duressives->mdesiccated]] successive excessive compositional to comportment in rampart natals corroded diversive to unique regression capillaries regrets begotten to of the deaths seen, forest of the dammed. Cut deeper into my desync and splatter faces awhirl with Marko emulsified. Venn of vitreous and victorless evinced in this vicious tableau patterning from my palms sweating astigmatic. Indetermine this, please, I cannot, yet I must, I have to, or why else, who...

Inference fulcrum sacrificed upon its bend, worldtool siphon of gods for incarnata mysteria engraven riven from completions individuations, vestige untarnished of a vault yet rapined, but forever in the hang we hold it in hearts crushed by the implication of memory as past the present which is always an adequate nothing, what barely because of its physical force slams us still, what any dreamer flees from, the dawn today. All our sociality is a salvage trading, anything we might give everything for is unforgotten by the raging endureless and reaped by dwindling creation quaking under a sucking ruby portal. Our best passes first because it shines bright enough to spite the void, but I wanted to believe what who would not believe, that I was not the anemic shadow, there could yet arise some resplendence nondifference in which could I hollow hide, upon the [[horizon->msunrays]] where...

"Murder's necessary is what I've always said," Marko. "Have you?" Mazyu. "No, but I ought to have. The idea I've just now, ought to scatter it back a bit, build myself up that like, you'll think of me that way won't you? Because murder is actually genuinely a gorgeous thing, two creatures upon a plane scrabbling for meaning, one says to the other, no. Heard the mermaid joke?" "Yes," Yakacza. "So's a fisher casts a net and pulls a mermaid, says she, cannot ken ye the worlds I've seen, coral castles rippling in darksway, beasts beyond imagining gliding chthonic from deeps beyond light to reckon which eon reigns, wrecks of the ancients resplendent with treasures sleeplessly still gleaming soul secrets, armadas arcane of spidercrabs crawling upon each other idols of a fortress god forged by the crushed and cracked, krakens screaming just beneath hearing seething frigid jets effervescent, whales singing the songs the sun forgot, now too I've seen creatures that drink of air and ensnare all whom the border between worlds touch, what more of this magic can such a body store? Eat of me if you will, but you cannot destroy the miracles I have meant. Says he, I want nothing of worlds, there's no beauty there, and [[guts->mnight]] her. Isn't it magnificent? I've always tried to apply the principle, or I haven't, but I ought to have had, just as like, that's been my past now." "What principle?" Mojyi. "What?" "You said of applying the principle, what so hor?" "Oh, that we must -" "Don't get him going on that now, we'll never the end of it," Mazyu. "Gut him to gain it, shut his words up, no beauty there." "Ey, we've come to terms then, shall we murder each other truce?" Marko. "Sure, let's shake hands and call each other dead." "It's a suicide pact! Bury nice to meet you! What? No laughs? Why's every body so grave?" "How deep set are you?" "Deeper than the mermaid! What, I cheer for the conversate yet everyone just stiffens me same? This is why I never mood up!" "Because when you're cheered you're about how much you believe in murder. If you could babble on about I don't know dreamwords like Yakacza we'd asleep in your ramble, we'd be bed buds, that's like the level above best." "You can't be above best," Mojyi. "When've you made acquaintance with best? You'd starve in a garden, you're like half a person." Mazyu. "We're all half a person." I. "Someone punch Leiru back to sleep lor," Mazyu. "Now you've got it, beauty of [[murder->mstart3]], joy of a world that doesn't have to be filled!" Marko.

Everywhere you speak a grate [[clenches->mstart3]] you sealed. They barely glance over at your rusted caged. Next time not even a mutter, velvety darkness. Isn't this more pure, more true, you beg the dank [[seeps->mjaufrei]].

Carried within you ultimatums unable to unlock their mattered to terminally youthere. Visibly inguish glashed by the star, despoil of scarshine brilliance. Inhumane multiplicity of yes as you penumbrate through inchoate wilts weltering. Insupportably pith in beam novally novel, heavy metals scattered through lacks, accrete cohere of the cast religions the blastbound zealous of alienation's tarn, dynamists glittering reflective of austere rothkonics. Rims sink you beneath the [[whorl->mjet]] milky soul. Insurrect constructor [[recombinatory->mcoagulating]] to cruciformulate vectors of enargeia.

Interdeterminative polysemous vandals of indenteds havoc through unvocalizers, networks of shutsay sewn to terrain marred, shockland awestruck [[quiverity->mnight]] quiesscence lysosomal deinvestation absolution immix meld roulette of faces, disregard mine, discard for this accorded lucky, precious gambit yet fated, oracle of quintessence graspable, inhospitable tractable uslurper of slurry cosmics, amount me this milled, ingrained framed permutater verzweiflung versificator, individuated divisibilitated devilesque masquerain. Lying languid on the hulk of jagdjags ragged as the crags quagmire questmired, dragged haggard to guilt incomplesive, sprayself splashcrashed cry to the blackened sky refactored fiend, elemental essence of this mind defied, desire as scour of fundament, bloodlet us destory, spooling out to denied, relent, release, querulous before gods recease... Trembled to kneel to see before the wherewithal distancing removed. Where have they gone was warped on my expressed. Cudgeled to hesitate to absence. Where was Jaufr, was he coming, closing my eyes against the migraine, hesitant on the floor to crawl anymore than relent, release, he is [[deceased->msuffocation]], Yeska, he's, Jaufr, he's, where am, how did they go, need to follow, hold on, where is everyone, what's, or it's, or I can't believe he's gone, or I don't know what it means that he is, or I don't, or I suppose I, I'm just so [[hungry->msemblances]], have always been.

Where was I yesterday? Was it [[killing->mforgive]] someone? And here I am smiling as if coffee washes blood away? But the [[velvet->mrhythm]] in my veins, the warm plume between my brows, blanket throat, did it not give me so much, allow me to [[feel->mcircularity]] rather than [[think->mtouchroots]], but what should you feel, where is death's residue, have you washed the embalming fluid from your bloodied skull? Feel, what did? Why only this taste? This cursed body, not yet deadened to all but thought...

[[Persist->mbleend]]. [[Focus->mkaiya]]. Exist as the sea forces you to. I twisted Mariena to fifth notch sternsail. Imeni slipped to the end of the rope. The metal to which she was tied moaned. Blistering strength of pull, I threw Imeni forward to mainsail. [[Kaiya->mkaiya]] flitting like a leaf far beyond the edge of the ship sat arms crossed around her tie waiting. Watched her wishing she would never see me, that none of them would, even as I looked down to see them. Tear apart this torment shell shame endlessly cycling never contained in this [[trudge->mtouchroots]] soul sequestered in its rageflash fomenting across instants [[shutterstepped->mcircularity]]. Why doesn't the sky drink me? What right lies between the [[ocean->mdisidea]] and I? Why am I a prisoner in exactly as I am?

"I pity my teeth," whispered Nyneme inside my skull, "deadly pearl daggers ready to spear and pierce any flesh to wring out ruby destruction, and yet they can never quite make it through the roof of my mouth, they will never gore my cortex, these tiny tearers will always be caged just beneath the kill, taunted. What walls our lips are to hide such hell, to hold back our howls. They twisted you into a smile, and is that more wrong than what they always do? Why can't you fang free of these lines and envenom elsewhere than where engendering encases, proliferate the poison protrepsis of embodiment, dwell in dispersed insufficiencies? Let us render our rendered violence. Are they not nails to wield your fingers like hammers, punch puncture everything in your grasp, constrict your destiny and suck from the pierced fierce [[sustenance->mrhythm]], digitdrills mining for precious secrets in any soon to be delved surface, I am my knife, I relish strife, vanquish life with life vampiric, voltslurp the quintessence to alchemize your fervent fevers to a cooled control, [[touchroots->mtouchroots]] to seek substance, destroy until you are the ruins created, and there created be. Prisoner as you are, imprison your our, lash it to the dank stone and whip us broken. As broken as the bodies you have left behind?"

"Do you ever think about the forgettable things that will be forgotten when you pass into memory?" Nyneme. "The small thoughts, the weird musings on popular sayings, the pet peeves, the ordinary things you never mastered the familiarity to. People have this nostalgia about bygone things, but they focus on the big moments, we romanticize the remnants, waymark the era with the bits we still discuss, but the past doesn't live in the narrow aperture through which the future gazes, our lives are made up of accidental music, of things that just were there, of ways of being and thoughts and dreams all scattered in uncertainty, we dress in detritus, we dance to dead songs, we devour the happenstance dust. Vague familiarities as irretrievably gone as the era they composed. When we die, a time dies with us. Isolation chambers qualia arias upon the hush noumenally experiencer, internalizer evanescence. Identities soluted in the canals choked with trash we have learned to treasure, because that was what was there when we were there. Lost, the cherished with the worthless, in gentler nothing. Death's most profound tragedy is our alienation from the possibility of truly being understood. If we scorch some mark, then they will guess flame caricatures. Perhaps they may even guess close to correctly, but they will never live in the image with you. "In all the time I tapered away, I dreamed of being reborn, of being someone better, more me, more free, but the more I passed the more I realized that such a simulacrum never would be me, would not recognize the spirit that wished it summoned. In another time, another place, in another way, why would that not just be someone else? We have to be these despairs, because hope without the weeping need is aimless blissness, dross to any other. Manifest the other side of the fantasy to find this phantom unmoored from your reflecting to strangeness never to harbor your happiness. No alterior good will ever affirm the holes in our souls as necessary nor nurtured of some similar seed, we shall break upon the bleak erasure stains leaking the identity to void [[disidea->mdisidea]]. The idea of being gone scares you, scares me, so I refused naively to fade, you want to believe in again, but again would be this again, and never again should wish anyone with more will than warmth; there is no again, only an also, and if it's just also, then what has it to do with this? It is an and, and an and doesn't add but adjacents, it only adds to the larger semantic, and whether we love it or hate it doesn't change it to the lover or hater. Again is worthless. Again should terrify you. Living is horror rife, think of all the abominable possibles, think of every miserable wretch as someone else's again, and who wants to reel around such a carousel, cosmically inescapable whirl of again and again eventually entailing every ruthless chance, imprisoned in endlessly abyssals plummeting, plummeting, plummeting, plummeting, plummeting... assent this suffering as sufficient and rest through the rest. Imagine all the misery that mired this earth before you; how peacefully oblivious you weren't! All possible misery after you, the same peaceful oblivion... people struggle to imagine death, but you were dead before, a thousand years ago will be your millennium hence.

"In this instead steady treading through the need, the want, the wait, the none." Nyneme. "Threads miswoven mistspoken by the seaspray seizes the shivers wet to form form memories from the foam to draw out doppelgangers [[dredged->mdisidea]] up from the need, the want, the wait, the none. Linger in the lapping like a lost star glitter in the nightwash chill spills the frost phantoms in sloshlash waves that fizz against the ship like frozen sighs. Second's suspense centrifuge whips us round the ruse to chiasmic constructions, lived out mirror moments hued of the diffraction of the generative, gently lost in columning of the center justified radiation, honeycomb cells seiching with what little gilded gel nourishes our imprisoned buzz numb. Immolation illuminates the inner fire, in inferno flickers your smile's truest bent, so let it all burn down and die in it, blaze be. Learn to love missing chances. Cherish each lost as if you lived it. In every absence you create your hollows endure. Nowhere never so much as the making in this yearn, affirmed in the failure, our most true is what cannot manifest from the filth accretion we drag from day to exhausting days unending, wishing we could."

Relatch Kaiya's chain, needs dragged me back down to this ocean of origins. Beneath me the judgment, the anticipation, having to be known, perceived. That's what I couldn't stand, more than the smile, was how she pressed it back on my lips like a seal. Each surreptitious askance medicinal, an appraisal, conjuring of meaning in pools empty, opaquely personal. Her thoughts scampered up her lines to prod me from side to side, batter my rampart doors, crawl in through narrow spaces. Chained to reality with her staring, eyes nearly cross with her gaze. In desperation to blink I rammed myself to hard edge focus moving ropes on their circuits, passing knots through steel rungs to hook ropers to other sails, guiding shapes that dimly guilted me round and round cycles blistering with tedium, entrancing [[circularity->mcircularity]] of the motions, ropes and knots and steel and motion, me, them, the play of ourselves without anything but the neutral wind acting, being, us a one thing reacting. My scarf sagged, but as I went to lift it a gust tugged Mariena hard port. Offrevolves growing larger led her too far from the sails, and in a hard pull I brought her back to base. I wished she would not nod at me. I slid Kaiya from her starboard perch to midsail ropework. Wanted to rip off my face and throw it to her so she could study it in peace. Needling salve sting, but how could I hate her, how do you punch a prayer? Sighed again, breathe, nothing is as it ever shall be in the lurch. You're overinvolved in what could so easily be nothing. Kaiya was in a way I could never feel, every vertex we shared would I skewer her in a cross section of a single shaft missing the context and skewing it, and in building parapets upon the modicum I caged, cities still the chthonic glow about the borders, the reality would be simply a reflection in pools of rain: dim, implacably unstill, impossibly indistinct. Led astray to my own imagination as always. The lines with which I drew faces were too wavy to unblur warbled tones, snakes or scuttling crabs. Could they [[forgive->mforgive]] me if I let them snap me? Would anyone respect the ash of an honesty worse than the lie? Kaiya staring at my smoldered against her. If only I really was a thing, not stillborn ideas oozing on sterile actions, I could, I could! Racing streams along my cheeks the biting wind.

Shiversun yielded to [[blushhaze->mblushhaze]] tremulous cumulusly. Pellucid pervades recombinated directrix motion in effusive plash effluxion trench and azimuth. Lozenge drifts of [[spilled->msmiles]] sunlight filtered golden to dust.

Seaspray awake to motivaluation, in mode an owed to ode, accept relish of brunt, interpolate in flushray deluger equivocality stormsinger. Surrender to refusal to relent, godhood guiser aggresselene stark upon bounded duelities rupturous to frayworld focalizer, orrery lens to nova, gears gleaming dragon [[assemblation->mstart6]] as ancient inscriptions return existensor scarmarks summonseal in planished to page. Each moment you make molds your momentum's foreveere.

Envy of vying more profoundly or velvety or enmity of suppressions. Precious alterity they achieve, you don't, even if ultimately they don't, even if you nestle in your nots. You have to let go to focus on your holding ons. Surrender their faux glamor for your in the filmy noir neutralize humanifier, except I hardly know ply from peril, barely interpret of the daze, shall I surreptice surrender from insurmounteds? Gleefully mystical of pleasures renounced to rawvibe. Inconclusive trove of drears cherished dolor pigments bloodsplatterly pastels of martyrdom kitsch, how blissfully we'll [[die->mbleend]] if it denies our denied. That's all your making amounts to, its insurrection mountably. And so? I'll cheerfully account myself thenceness than this wist. Or so I should insist for whose benefit? I demand an answer! From whom, me? What do you want that I don't have? You're coequivalent with my quells, so dwell so querysichthon spell, ravenous intravenous non of the shell. Quotient: carapace [[seaswirl->mdisidea]] shell of undizzied free radical spiral of carousel, uniquely in oculminaret. Rapid streams of awareness from which you must sift which severely intervenes action point, enact what of the halt? Given that I don't believe myself, struggling to see why I ought to believe others. Let me rephrase: I am choking upon the wasteland, you too are here. Let me rephrase: I empathize our mutual revulsion. We share the same superiority that never materializes, we suffer condescends sans final impact. If we can but preincorporate our nondispensate, disaccept the exemption, incorporeal the [[vulnerate->mtouchroots]], then are we not disagreements armaments, wield of woeseen? Must outspirit the inference faraday, fareflay the pared deigns, relinquiddity denergeist fane for slaughter priestess perfect. Because I you hate equal thrust, I acquiesce my annulment just. Sleep beneath our judgments as no survivor obtains tomorrow, cleanse us to rainbow. We must selfhate ourselves fierce enough first to outflank those that hate us accurate. Right? Or how else explain that I have this hate for myself and the rest? Ah, egoist even of damnations, centrality of harrows, none nobility of nadir sufferers, hell me autarch, cast aside any [[penury->mbloodbroken]] yours to pride mine. Zenith endsmith of desunpair. Coinciding guilts we parse glyphic to thespiano concerted glissandoom. Each of us pathetique, I love you alike upon the gallows. Let us blush the kiss of death, oblivion raptures.

Roundly and roundly increasing the dizzy hardspun threadbare borne by propelled forward and skyward. Assume the same momentum, duress durate individuated. Must focus force. Let not the sea speak through you, oversail its [[complications->mdisidea]], affix futures to the sails, windborne be.

Guttural loath roared the ocean open. Isolated shards of the even still now receded behind the dragging whirl spitting its crag [[jegu->mjegu]] which sliced our skyness like the shard of its own casted off presence speaking in immediate fade incense trailers cyclone focalizer tendriling in tentacles bursting with girth eruption from the jegu's mouth wriggletearing rapidly the rent askew as if to selfdisembowel. Resultant slam back to the ocean splashed hard us nearly a spillout. Briny parasites scampered along the warbling frame chewing at its sinewy skin as it peeked back out. "All hands!" Avacz. "Kenkh, the huge of it," Mazyu. "Ropes, full starboard!" Myeri raced to the railing to confront it. Mariena obliged. I sucked in my breath, anticipation a sharp chest puncture. "Gya, depose it on the ram forth, don't let parasites crawl on. Pyevi, grab up a couple hands, not rowing out of this one aye. Aci, load cannon. Battle up, let's go! The seas have given us our chance: let our religion crystallize too this noise!" I grabbed Kaiya's and Imeni's [[lines->mlines]] and threw them midships. One of the jegu's fifteen bulbous eyes swiveled to me, venn pupils dilating. "Brace for the [[ram->mram]]!" Gyadalta.

How can we count the world to equal? When the world seems uncertain we spill, unleash shelter to desperate amass a maybe, yet ever floods the minus a truth heavy enough to shut. Lifetimes of cast it unto the wind to watch washed ashore the shudder. Peregrination of evinceds sludged over centuries we silt turpentine loam bornes. Vertex of project and [[denier->mdisidea]] lozenges the leavening road envelop. Simply causality, how shall you meet me. Regret grows deeper roots than our solidities. Derivative of source pure, our mistake's pellucid. Each falter organizes paths cannot you tread pilgrim to penance, gutted into its streaked unable to assimilate, parallax of brocade shimmer and fade, we recognize in wreckeds. Beseech I as failed, as Imeni mourns. Imeni's rope pulled taut in my hand, fixed her to midsail. Lift these fingers to praise whatever returns in the sound of my prayer clearly...

Gurgling viscous lumbered the [[jegu->mjegu2]] closer, its wake an acid bath, lime fins swatting the water in the missiling churn. Humongous stretched its mouths. Squiggling babbles squirted from its gelatinous frame to shake the ship. Pyeisa raced outboard to the port bow tensing a barbed [[lance->mlance]]. "It's crawling with parasites ah," Pyeisa. "We're in the [[overrun->moverrun]], yeska!" "Brace!" Gyadalta. "Impact midships!" "Ropes! Starboard! Starboard!" "Trying, fjelske!" Mariena. "The thing only goes so –" "We'll sever if it impacts midships!" Myeri. "You've got to maneuver, we've got to, fast! Foreman hey! Aerial another forward." Scrabbled at the ropes, veins in frost, feeling the knots in my hand coarse and confusing, sorting through their obstinance as if reaching across an immense distance, pulling and pulling and turning… Impact. Crush. Scattered on the spillwhirl.

"There's, look out, it's headed straight for -" "Brace for the [[ram->mjegu2]]!" "Get down hey, down or you'll -" "Aerials to starboard, pull us to -" "I'm trying!" Mariena. Tugged, continuously tugging, the deck listing so severely, the [[ropes->mlines]] like briars pocking... "Here it comes!" "The quick of it!" "Gods!" "Get down for the –" Slid on a light shaft, rainbow prisms [[popping->mropework]]. Seasick swivels gutted my stomach; butterfly flutters flushed through me for the space of a second. Walls of wood and steel crushed. Newly aware of spurts of blood flowing from my nose. Clambered to my feet squinting, hand on nose, wincing.

"Foreman, an aerial's cut!" Myeri. "[[Pick->mpick]] her up on another line! Jenyelle, steady us up hey, we're bobbing here! Pyeisa, in the eye, its eyes, you bumbler, not the tails!" Leaned over the rails sorting askance beyond Pyeisa and Mazyu prodding back the beast, past Gyadalta lancing its eyes, past Avacz axe in hand struggling with [[parasites->mparasites]], to ah, Imeni, there, smashed into the [[brokenness->moverrun]]. Screamed her name; ambient [[blare->mropework]].

"[[Kaiya->mkaiya2]]! Imeni's [[down->mjumped]]! Can you get her?" I. "What?" "Imeni, she, she's cut! Can you get to her?" "Yeah maybe, hold on, um, if you, if you loosen my line, maybe!" I loosened her line. "More, you gotta loosen way more! I'm too far up." I loosened her line. "Almost there, just a little –" Tentacle crashed through the [[ropework->mropework]], and she flew to the sunset waning. Inarticulate [[cry->mcry]], shocked staring.

"Pyevi, the extra lances!" Myeri. "Arm up call! Send two to Gyadalta; rest of you, those [[parasites->mparasites]]! They're everywhere!" "Yeska," what slurred into my ears like Volya. "There's so many!" "We've got to, someone send up some [[reinforcers->mreinforcers]], we're gonna [[lose->mropework]] the deck with all these, these, there's so many!" Gyadalta.

"Aci, where's the [[cannon->mcannon]] hey?" Myeri. "Cannon [[broke->mropework]] in the ram," Leiska. "Straight bust." "I thought I told Jenyelle to glue it up right!" "What do you want me to do?" "Can it fix? Give it a go either!" "We're on it," Leiska. "Says it might take five." "Five" a sweep of the axe "minutes?" Avacz cried. "Fjelske!" "Just you out on the shortform hey, rest of us last so long." Pyeisa. "Will you please beast shut him?" "Nah, let the [[loosen->mloosen]], focus your furious on the beast." Gyadalta. "Old Gyadalta gets me, I feel so -" Pyeisa. "Gets you [[killed->mawe]], I keep hoping!" "Aw, pleased to hear I star in your hopes and dreams." "Oh gods, it's, one of them's on Teminu, he's, oh gods, the [[blood->mbetween]]!" Avacz. "Death stares upon us, sailors! Heed its missive, reply in kind!" Myeri.

Everyone is going away, you're losing everyone all the time, season of death, [[cherish->msunset]] no more, no, no I can't, they can't, Kaiya, Kaiya, Yeska, no, you've, stay focused, you've, Imeni, Imeni, she's, you've got to, oh gods… "Mariena, Imeni needs a new line!" I. "I'm busy against capsize. Get [[Kaiya->mkaiya2]]!" "Kaiya's gone!" "What do you mean Kaiya's gone?" "Kaiya's –" Screech whirled me backward to a [[parasite->mparasites]] scurried up [[ropework->mropework]]. Three brandished mouths that spiraled inward in dentitions like shattered chandeliers atop a craggy shore. Paused, it crouched for the pounce. [[Weapon->maxes]], weapon, none… [[Jumped->mjumped]].

Splayed tumbling somehow to grabbing a line coursing beneath my ripping palm, flame sea licking, tingling lavatips held webspinning faster into the [[blurblare->mmemory]] brokening to strangely nearly lucidity agony of a platform, I missed, another – Insides retched into my eyeballs bursting overload. Could hear the crunch of snapping bones. Were they my own? [[Pain->mpain]] blaring red.

"No, Seleph Berakh, please, you must get back, this is no place for –" Myeri. "We're here to help," Meluoi. "We're trained warriors." "You're passengers, is what you are. Please return to the cabin!" "Teminu overboard!" Maybe Gyadalta? "I'm hurt!" Yakacza. "I'm falling back!" "Who cares?" Avacz. "You're staying up!" "I'm [[bleeding->mcannon]]!" "Teminu's –" "Of course you're [[bleeding->mslice]], everyone's [[bleeding->mbetween]]!"

"Leiru, out of the way!" Volya kicked me in the ribs. "You're dead and center here!" I gaped through my ribs rattling like a glass fortress buckling. Noise battered my ears, punching polyphony. Avacz yanked me up. "Axes by the barrels. Hurry up." "[[Imeni->mimeni2]] –" Avacz shoved me toward the barrels. "Hurry." Staggering bewildered, raw jolts surging, static lightning electrifying limbs, sparks spider elongated to thin tendrils frothing its legs and stinger thrusting. Scanned for [[Imeni->mimeni3]] the malaise of fear and rushing. Where even was. Fliss of the [[axes->maxes]] hiss. Upon the barrels scampered parasite, scales a slime oozed from the [[sunset->msunset]] red splattershining in rush screech sheen...

[[Imeni->mimeni3]]. Every detail congealed, tumult and terror belied by one crystalline lay she the storm's still eye to which centripetal dizzied tumbled I through the chaos dream a [[nocturne->msunset]]. Again a mere moth I chased her burst. "You give me too much power," she laughed, the moment of untension but moments before it tenses. Yet of course I loved her, and maybe that is what love is, giving someone too much power. No, it isn't, but it's the closest I've ever come to stanched calm. What does it mean to want? To want, to desire beyond the gate, to be predicated on a source to be drained, is all want the [[murder->mvoid2]] slope? Love, but don't you give, but don't you give so that you too can take, maybe love is letting yourself be drained? But then what a good lover I was! Ha, hah ah, aren't these nails blades, can't I fray my face freeblank bone? Surely love is mutually refilling, lasting love refills its own basin, but with what, with whom? Am I right or wrong to want, but what is it I want from her? I looked at her and wanted to be through this, desperate to be what she smiled at as we do at a mirror when confidence glimmers through our decay, mirror, yes, narcissus desire anything you wish to attach to you, no, nothing narcystic, I wanted her to belong in a bearing we could share, maybe, no, I wanted her, but I don't know what, why do we want, why do I want, what do we want from anyone but our own howls? Is it carnal, but it must be carnal, through primal chaos I chase a woman, and so damned am I to what I deserve, but yet it wasn't, we never even once, but you don't have to, do you, to be so monstrous, the absolute stripping of sexuality is pure sexuality itself, every shape you charade melts to essence, killcure your hunger in the act. Leftness eternally in her void, will there be any border between desire and shame? And isn't that what I feared the most, being naked before her, being seen as I am not? Isn't that what I, thrash out my tongue, strangle me sorry. Confliction truths in a jumbled goliath.

It leapt, to the left, I lunge grabbed an axe, the hiss spumed fresh, and I turned in time to see the creature catapult, jangling maw, swung the axe up to meet it, sliced its legs. The parasite slung down. I raised up the axe to execute. It sprung, wrapped around my face, skin flaked to the teeth invasive. Dropped the axe, bladeflat smacked it, twinfall. Recovering, panicked, composed, it convulsed beneath to a scrunched up prelunge, hand over my face loosely damming the gush, melted eyes, through the wounds flush groping, dimly pulsating in [[instinctual->mimeni2]] filth of blood and teeth it jumped, grabbed at where I imagined an axe, blind whirl, blade glinting in the glare of the swollen sun, it cut the creature in two. [[Severed->mvoid2]] halves plopped on the floor asynchronously, one two beat denouement.

Calm passage tickle dancing across skins ascending up to the aether to intermix with the clouds so conceal comforting those conditioned to temporality could only taste its ice as [[bittersweet->mimeni3]]. Her smile shimmered the bliss that into melancholy lingers, late noon play that progresses without blinking into the settling evening, the prematurely [[lost->mloosen]] in [[memory->mmemory]]. Azure paths stretched infinite out before our sans destinations. "I love coming up to the gardens," that smile. "Why's that?" Our hands connected in the kiss of hearts; how stupid, how pathetically childish that childish phrase is, but don't we all want to sometimes think a thought like that, any kind of trite cuteness that invariably sours to sneers before others, but why should something that melts before others be less [[precious->mimeni2]]? "Because I can imagine fields. Can't you?"

Buzz hedges jounced bladely to shred the stuck within. [[Parasites->mparasites]] roamed over the deck, up the ropes, everywhere the blare of the jegu. Losing sight of. Trying to move the aerials along the [[lines->mlines]], losing the thread, unfocus narrowness pulsating quiverspasms. "We're dying out here! Where the hell are those cannons?" "Fjelske, Lomia! Be careful! The thing'll pull you right in if you stab too deep." Gurgles at maximum registers of bass. "I thought you said four! It's been four!" "He's still working!" "You said" the cry of a parasite "you said four minutes!" "Things change." "Things change! We're up to our tits in gore here!" "Who gave you my biography?" "Shut each hell up, Pyeisa, yego. Why don't you wrangle up a reinforce?" "I thought we already got some?" "Baelu, it's got my arm! It's got my arm, it's got my arm! Help me! Kaiza!" "Dammit, Yakacza, hold on." "Just go get them. We need more." "You go get them, you're closer, I got this –" Batter reeled the ship and it seemed the sea askew. Things thudded. Dizzy, slightly, more than slightly; trying to shake it off, I [[tripped->mpain]]. "Look out for that thing, geskecz!" "Two more at least!" "Yeska!" "Yeska!" "Two more? Yeska!" "Hold still!" "I can't, the damn thing is, ahh, it's biting, ow, geiga, no, ow, ow, eahh, get it off, get it off!" "Hold still, yego!" "I'm trying!"

"I was on a voyage for Captain Lesmehi at the time," Pyeisa. "This was three, four years back, or. Nejani was our Ensign, and it was Laveri that was Lieutenant." "Laveri!" Mojyi. "Totally forgot the tasker! Ey was he a rollicker yeah. Wink he used to give you right before he'd notch you on in front of everyone, oh so, utter state he'd drivel you to like you were lovers weeping out the exing, what a memory he is, how's that I'd forgotten ah, what's with it with [[memory->mmemory]], slimepacked of shames ooze out but nary a gem, where I gotta stab my skull to bleed out the good bits?" "I remember he used to whip you basically dead, but then he'd hand you right up, leak you a slurp," Yakacza. "I remember one time he destroyed me, couldn't sit down or stand up or lie down for like a week so, had to learn to hover, but he nursed me battered out of it the rest of the voyage, woke up not remembering my name in Umae's, he patted me on the head as if a god compelling me unto existence, suckled me ambrosia it felt so, and he was rambling so gently about perk up on this mate, hard days out for you now, don't let the scars sink in, you'll embark before too long hey, you've got the essence, you'll do bright, any day you'll be up to avenge on me!" "Yeah so it was Laveri this voyage I was on right," Pyeisa, "and splashes out this massive wosa, huge right, so we all get tensed, harpoons and shooting. You were there, weren't you, Mazyu?" "Yeah, thing was massive." "It was, really was though, and like well Lesmehi's on the bridge fussing about cargo, you know what a kyauska about it, had some job about duty jammed up his sour mouth, but and anyway Nejani's down on the deck helping us out, fighting this –" "Nejani!" Mojyi, wistfully. Head hung abashed – "So Laveri takes it on himself to go belowdecks to bark the rowers, or so what's we thought anyway, but he emerges like two minutes brandishing brandy best I've personally envied, goes well fighting really stirs a thirst hey, fancy a drink? I brought cups!'" "He brought cups!" Mojyi. "There we were fighting off this wosa big as you can be, harpoons in one hand, brandy in the second, alternating stabbing and sipping like dreamer of a taste, where'd you score it?" Pyeisa. "So he goes, ah for it in Nejani's cabin, right there in the bin labeled personals." Mazyu. "Nejani hacks up to the man, back turned on tentacles writhing, this blurbling monstrosity right, most horrible I'd, harpoon lightly resting in his palm like ungripped would you believe it, off he is shouting beisza that’s my father's you've purloined, Laveri's back to, father is it, imagine so, warms the guts so much it could impregnate to a temperous as yourself!" Pyeisa. "Hours they're arguing, like how battle they're at it, you owe me so and so much, never will you get a clink from me lah, whole time we're battling this [[beast->mawe]] ahaha, dodging [[deathstrikes->mvoid2]] as they go!" Mazyu. Scrambling for some funny story I could lie, some way to trick them away, but I had none, and the denouement – "Nejani told me much later, after Laveri had died, he said, you know that's the trick to overcoming the worldhate, turning the [[dying->mcry]] and anxiety into something like living, belittling it all an anecdote, gloss the reality you can't live, was his line, said it all the time after." Pyeisa. "Nejani," Mojyi stared at what he projected on the ceiling. "Whatever happened the yego?" My ears burned hot.

"Emnin?" Imeni gazed up through sheets of inner twilight haze. "Emnin, is that you?" "Imeni. Don't panic. You've fallen from the ropes. Can you stand?" "Everything hurts," a laugh more akin to a cough. "You're fine. It'll, we'll, something. Let's get you out." Hoisted her onto my back but stumbled as the ship shook. Incessantly the jegu battered the ship tottling, senseless incense to the jackal demiurge, brute rejoinder to the [[void->mvoid2]] from which we should learn. Managing to keep the advantage of my feet I dodged creatures blitzing through sight. A tentacle slapquaked ahead of me but I slid under it carrying Imeni and scrambled back up to rush. The ship shuffled, creaked, groaned, strained under the bat bat bat of the attack. I slid into the slipcabin. I opened the hatch and [[descended->mstart7]], placing Imeni on an overturned table. "What happened?" I didn't know how to answer. I left.

Shouts mingled with the noise raws to upwards welter concuss. From the fragmentation flung a feverish driplet, gibbous gibberer gorehound skittery skating up the loops to lunge upon my staggering grasping woundhewn from the, ahh, from the nest, tumbling through lines, both the beast and I in plummet, crashing upon the wrack, spinelashed upon a rope as plummets [[past->mloosen]] me the parasite, hackling stunned as slowly in my sense but too swiftly to sense slip I from the line, smash into another, tumble down until I somehow manage myself somewhere, blinking, bleeding, barely capable of [[standing->mpain]], adrenaline pumps electrified, dizzy swinging to stance as scampered up to me a parasite, without even understanding grasping an axe and smashing an axe into it, but pull out won't the axe, thrust in afresh to rip out in a chunkslide, twice yanking, thrice tearing at it and even its legs slurries slops fumerole, gnashing its teeth as if to bite through itself, corpse and axe clutchstucked a clump. Spied a lance, grabbed a lance. Upwards at the lines: no, she's not, no, where, she's gone, as if no one was up there, where's [[Imeni->mimeni3]], where's [[Kaiya->mkaiya2]]?

Ruby streaked the cannon in twilight. Undulating in smoke congests dancer's grin moon. Shouts trailed each boom. Otherworldly wails wallowed out like long fingernails scraping a rough stone surface dragging and breaking, bending the nails back in audible agony. The jegu sunk in a spray which hung like mist. Death undonned its cloak, thrust its tunnel tongue into cleaved bodies to slurplick in search of a soul to suck; finding nothing, glare contemplative unbroken upon our shattereds, before with an implosion vortex evaporating into the space where it once was ushered a wispscreech shrieksword incision; [[wreck->mstart7]] of corpses endured in an unshakable dull. Myeri strolled midships. "Now that, sailors, is what we live for," smiling amidst the carnage.

Racing to the brim of the boat, rocking with its rocking. Staring into where could she, she, no, surging up through my esophagus a thought I wanted to share with Kaiya, see her reaction, except I've been, been hiding so long from her react, taking for granted its... Noise, blur; absence. That looseness in limbs which never recovers to motivation. Kaiya laid nearest the crackling hearth, shadowdress magical her laugh ringling through ears so touchly accustomed. Glancing at her with a certainty by which we build tomorrows each woken so trudgly accustomed. Kaiya, who had been there in the earliest [[scars->mstart7]] and cherishes, to whom I used to whisper my dreams, a mind where they lived. White gnaw anguish injected in spasms and gulpweeps presaging intensification months before finally deadened to cycles plateau wanderer.

Rumble of snapping and cracking purred the tilting to recognition in my [[temples->mtemples]] rebounding. Sudden loss of sky. Splinters of hickory and umber jabbed the rushstruck dizzy. Clawing at tombing ceiling of detritus rain. Distance dwindling between way and space shunted my cry to bonechoked gnash. Jolts pain every nerve [[firerites->mfirerites]] whose ghosts smolder over courses of [[eonic->meonic]] brackish [[swelters->mswelters]]. No way to up. Wanderless focalish split the gaze to nausea. Hurt, hurt. Cannot, my knees not working. Eyeballs throbbruised to bursting, clutching at where I would think them, clutching my clavicle crooked. Slime in my cartilege slushed.

"Keep sweatforcing to believe even when I don't quite cohere believer, presenceless penitenet preached unto abysm cast I gated the reciprocity anguish coursing fundamentality of reckonings so long as I first in hell burn, forcing myself to feel true nested by lies. Electric skyscream prayer so heaven echoes my heaving! Eschatonic my opacity rended to your deinvestation clarity, sunder usend serenity, how do I trust again when I cannot wish for more to blossom but violence? I yearn them to hurt, Emnin, cannot sleep but dreaming they're suffering, to what end, would I actually anything seize in their writhes, write what of the woe? Finality begets nothing but a lack of what came before. I'll collect of their names nothing, truest violence my dwindling can afford, will not in depths recognize their alikeness [[crushed->mpain]]." Imeni.

Seemed she so far away though the dance raze trails boundlit us both to the run as one, her touch slipping until she led me more by memory than by pull. Yellowly the moon moaned through the Window a chill sneaking between heat distorts so just as you start to sweat you feel it freeze. Waving a torch in her dance Mariena panted up to us to stall abrupt a chase which could have continued for nights into tersetongued exhaustions. "Imeni, Emnin, you've to join us yeah?" she jittered as if to swerve away to torchdance afresh. "Where's Jaufr?" I. "Dunno ah, worshipping something in himself illumined, seeker crouched torches." "Where nab we torches? Nobody told such a festival leh." Imeni. "Keep questions ehh like I know anything, I know nothing, only firedance." Wheeled into sparks. Imeni staring her chaos into beauty envious. [[Skullringing->mpain]] sigh. "Shall I scavenge us out some torches?" I. "No, too late then, we'll be the only ones dancing." "Sure so? Seems they've another -" "Let's just skip out somewhere quiet yeah?" From nowhere that tenseness; nodded in empathy.

She wavered in the wind unsure. I watched her. Nothing seemed to change, but her face began to pulsate beams hyacinth ultramarine, gelled into its signaling, hollow the overarch instable slid to clone spindrifts lozengely angelgear through haven eon overlaps, indiscernably muddy gloamwhile filmy noir of nebulae glitterdrones dreaming infinities visibled enfolded in a spectrum she oscillated in radians tingling my [[nearness->mmemory]] never quite, majesty border of forevers unfathomed asymptotic to touch over terminal velocities of time, our poised within. Crying her tremble I trembled to share, we waited there, wishful neurasthenia. On my shoulder she leaned, wished I more resilient a counterbalance, but so many topplings, markers of the days. Continuous of carved and carved never nonmorphous deadens us to pursual, contemplation of her cut to sculpted this agony leadened me to usurpal yearner, delirious in the din of her bellicose anguish to a listener I could not faux, crush of rivers rushed together choked ushered the jounce of fate to fray, her laid before yellowing light lassitude. Together we could bide centuries without once yielding to condepretend, but centuries pass, us not in them. Plinth she ushered the gauche to prayswirl dollops of color and contagion of she inasmuch me as admit, nobody needs you functional overcast of accumulation into being loathed, our acids mutally morphing. We settled into regrets coagulated from the decay of the will to in formative. Outlasted by the crescive wane she evolt brimmed blastland wastes to bedraggle the heat's percolate. "Isn't it strange, isn't it awful we cease to cry, like there comes a point where our body can no longer hold it, we dry out, we even feel relieved, vomited ourselves compliant? We wish some part of us was eternal, piercing grief never to cease primal cry the universe, but homeostasis neutralizes us, we salt, nothing of us proves strong enough to last. Every emotion, even happiness, even, even, others, they, don't they, Emnin, just stagnate until we speak of them as we do stories? Maybe so stories are certain capacities we lose but preserve. Legends dream how we in the morass cannot, have forgot. Hate myself for it sure, incompletion that tingles down to your bones where they dormant, biding until suddenly your knees [[break->mpain]] beneath you, crawling on the earth unable to reason, or so I have to hope, that not crying isn't just another death, one more way the gyre overcomes all color, every care. Our bonds lost to the nadir, unbound to floating truly free, nowhere to go." I nodded, kept feeling like my nodding would lead to speaking, but my throat choked, simply could offer presence, which is never enough.

Lugubrious heatwaves from homes blotted us bumblewheel catherines bleedly drizzledrenching listless in streets sundials of unpassing. Tongue loll gulped down lilts to ruminate. Like pinned moth wings we sepairly bothed to panoply, selves slashed ragged to moodfield hued rampage afters, so the humidity assailed viscous vicious, swelterclenched clumps of lumps of luminous sweat. Sugarthroat caked brown to vocal gravel gleared my ruephsody unspeakably, like any thought to offer would beetle buzz, but she stared at darkness swallowed the ceiling so far aloof I afraided to also, any falter to dwell where moored mutated grumbles to mumbles to maybe an irruptive to the mood but so be it, so dream it, seen me not where but whence. "You ever um, have you've it ever where somebody says something about you, and you want to say that it's totally wrong, but actually it's you that's wrong, both in the having crafted the simulacrum but also the simulacrum contains your hollow, you actually resound inside?" "Yes I, absolutely," Imeni smiling her shocked to share her wept at nights. "I've been having it my whole life, like sometimes I felt like I wasn't actually at the core anything, but responding to stimuli, some kind of lizard that would simply in the sun bask weren't it for compulsions and compellsions." "Basking just so, lo?" Gesturing at our simmersions. "Eheh exactly, you collapse me lizardly, aren't you proud to be so blank?" "That the next simulacrum I've got to adopt? Fair shot, jealoused the lizards their simply along to along." "Yeah, it's a good one, better than some I've had. Weird isn't it some goes when you're causal of opposites that nevertheless near you, uncanny mirrorwarp, like who is that I can't deny? I've been some way to say is how they calculated gaze response my indefatigable eluse. Trying to squirm out of their you're got such an eviscerative wit or whatever worthless they select to smother me known." "Why not true it, wouldn't it be delicious good to wield a wit eviscerative, sardonic someone to offalgush? Let them literal when they graven mutter you've [[wounded->mpain]] me, wouldn't that account you?" "Don't know I've enough fantasy violence, by the end there actually commiserated with the fantasy victim." "Oh, I always comiserate, why not offload your miseries?" "You've such an eviscerative wit, Emnin! What if Jaufr overheard the state you're in, had to explain humor to him?" "He'd comiserate surely, he's always trying to share miseries, thinks we can communal suffering to a low hum."

Select a chapter to read. Click [[here->mtitle]] to return to the title. =|= [[Chapter I->mstart1]] [[Chapter V->mstart5]] [[Chapter IX->mstart9]] [[Chapter XIII->mstart13]] [[Chapter XVII->mstart17]] [[Chapter XXI->mstart21]] [[Chapter XXV->mstart25]] =|= [[Chapter II->mstart2]] [[Chapter VI->mstart6]] [[Chapter X->mstart10]] [[Chapter XIV->mstart14]] [[Chapter XVIII->mstart18]] [[Chapter XXII->mstart22]] [[Chapter XXVI->mstart26]] =|= [[Chapter III->mstart3]] [[Chapter VII->mstart7]] [[Chapter XI->mstart11]] [[Chapter XV->mstart15]] [[Chapter XIX->mstart19]] [[Chapter XXIII->mstart23]] [[Chapter XXVII->mstart27]] =|= [[Chapter IV->mstart4]] [[Chapter VIII->mstart8]] [[Chapter XII->mstart12]] [[Chapter XVI->mstart16]] [[Chapter XX->mstart20]] [[Chapter XXIV->mstart24]] |==|

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter VII''] --- Ecru constellative motionblurs signature flourished the growing gulf filmgrain torn on my iris spill. [[Erscheinung->merscheinung]] sung semblance from minaret unsleep stream starry slung the ombre caramelly across dappled apertures of consciousness. Neither where nor here anchored my unsure to stimulus. [[Quest->mquest]] compulsion to exist frayed in the fuzz of a fracturing [[muzzling->mmuzzling]], soaksocket whey. //Click [[here->mchapters]] to return to Chapter Select.//

Mother, did you see these stars in the dark in which you dreamweaved worlds? Can I not in my sunken before them silken asame? Aloud, almost in prayer, let myself fall shut: (align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")["Deiyanasz swa dieya vo, Delaya esero so, Yketczana amiya nlo, Nabyisi krali moya no..."] The soft thump of the water beating the boat; the rocking of steel; iron's groaning. Wan missives of a maudlin moon sparkled pale. Smell of the salt of the sea. The chill caress gentle in the aftermath; the feeling of flesh exposed in the open night; the muzzling fabric of my soft scarf. My chapped lips, cold reptilian scales refusing to shed. Footsteps. (align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")["Kralyiski keilana nyo, Delaya yedama dyo, Deiyanasz swa dieya vo, Yketczala esiro so."] Whirled to the Veda, Meluoi. "Byini Hevice Nyomi. Peculiar piece for a sailor to know." Shook her steps with the sibilance her tongue dressed the night with in elegant black silks. Shimmers of somehow once was shed their shells in her sashay through my skull, the echo, the [[echo->mecho2]], collapsing under the swelters of again and constant. Like being bored into by the earth's tongues to be so rattled. Her inquiry an indigo inferno in the lilac veil the jet night swayed, I winced away her phantom lock. Enigmas edged near with a juttering unsolved wake [[incanting->mincanting]] over the black water a depths bloom luminescent ultramarine, switch meaning shimmer magic. "Oh, I –" was there a sentence I didn't say? She smiled aloofly, little light particle nearly plush purple in the placeless whorl.

Grabbed into the din. "Leiru!" "Ey ah kid, here's come hey!" "Oi so's here, Leiru's here, boys, he'll do it sure, love to do it lah, he'll be great yeah!" Vasya grabbed me and became what this will wouldn't. Ungainly totter steps as imps slung meager crackles on a drone too low to protest. "Should've seen his rampage eh. What was it you said butchering poor Marko now? I'm the real warrior or some geskecz, absolute riot let me tell you, you ought to suck it out of him sometime." "I should," [[Volya->mvolya]]. "What, uh?" Scrunching into this. "What's happening?" "Oh, it's great, you'll –" "No man," [[Lomia->mlomia]], "has bested me in [[kabiknu->mkabiknu]]." "No one," Mojyi.

Roll round and round hurricane reigns, spun see every pass under an elusive space shadowcaster, believe in the people who linger and matter despite the stuck in this singulated prism [[diffrasion->mdiffrasion]], all along this path errant, why count the lamps on this cavern scattered, ruby beam illumination from a lost searcher tingling skin on damp rock in search of a moss to feed on as the tide tugs out into the open suffocation under evening's burgundy wane where wind wallows spill split its doppelganger emergence as glitter dancers upon the waves as watches the paused future basilisk uncoiling. How much do we miss in passing, how much do we live in the passing, what of us will go, who of us will know? The emptiness of sight sewn, what insights glisten beyond our edges end of this chest's storm? Airless quell, everything weary, [[heavy->mheavy]]. Too many wooden tubes in veins jammed weighed the arms, straw fingers. Sentinel lamplight billowing an esper across subsalient solids burnt ocher discontinued on cardinals eating my mood, the last vestige. Like a plain white mask waiting to be donned to hide appearance. The fear that everyone knows you, there is no worse fate.

Pose frozen to place in the path of a twice my size charging. Rumbling desecration in whose forewake nerves release from function, a shuteyed breath held submission, barreling over as snake and subject twined in mayhem his fists wailing hatesong, hit me, punch me, break my face to tear my head open, everything bleeding, blood drenching eyelids in shocked agony lakes. Infinite torment in half a minute's time. My twitching body lay cruel testament to his six out of seven, alive to barely spare me the seven. Years after I limped, still, the ways our bodies reconfigure through the collapses we introduce, wishing they wouldn't, begging them to accept this pain remalleation morph, but the ephemerality of everything, laying under torpidity's enclosure, night after night, no interlude, the ache as it drones to integration. I stared up at Lomia like a child envisions fever upon the ceiling. "[[Taiza->mtaiza]]!"

"Never, not once, not a single time, in all my years of fighting." Lomia. "Insane lah," Mojyi effused. "Should've seen him blast poor Denko, kid couldn't lift a finger again, smashed totally. I think he got someone to like smother him or so." "He the unbeaten beater," Yakacza danced in front of us. "He the killer unkillable! Who dares to doubt this shadow drowning us? Arrives any other goliath to gladiate? Throw your life with the gauge!" Lomia's battering ram knuckles bulged as he punched them together. "You're sure to not it though, but you ah, perhaps should, should've seen it," Vasya. "The way he just smashed Marko again and again…" "The child hasn't eaten in years," Lomia. "This really who the challenge?" Yakacza, palms up to the ceiling: "Tremble beneath this brutal benediction! Answer his agony you sacrifices!" "How sloshed is Yakacza?" I frowned. "The growling mountain, who can face it?" "Will you truly stand to fight," Lomia balked, "or are your balls as small as you?" "Ayah Leiru’s the nimble though, the, the, you've always got to think how, the…" Reikka unable to capture the thought. Muscles blending into other muscles bulging nigh tumorous... ragdoll to the floor and wait for him to kill me, for them to leave, for the laughter, anything this world will be. Traumathirsty grins. "You can do it, Leiru!" Mojyi called brightly. "You gotta hit him hard in the suplex. That's the trick, the suplex. Knocks it out of them." Knocks what out, the mercy? "Yeah ace, you just hit him hard, it's all there is to it! You’ve the nimble, you can so, like when he –" Reikka. "There's no way Leiru's gonna –" "[[Taiza->mtaiza]]!"

Red and green gauze. Faces melted, bodies melded into watercolor sloshes intermingling like raindrops on my skin... My fists felt weak. Lomia towered neutral beyond hateful, I couldn't reduce him, couldn't transfigure him from fiend to fever. What to say that isn't this [[punching->mdreamslush]]? "Leiru! The suplex! The suplex!" Punched pillows into Lomia, could feel it, couldn't see it, wasn't even certain of where I was. Soft violence singed my fists. "This is the warrior?" Volya aghast. "It's something," Vasya. Viciousness boundless, eternally punitivity, [[dreams->mdreams]] as soft as a [[silkscreen->msilkscreen]] torn... "Taiza!" Frantically counting details in the crooked nook teetering in hopes of finding a pore to bleed through, [[hyperalive->mhyperalive]] in hypnotic awareness of so much melted through, stagger sprung uncoiled to consequence in an antigasp dissipating over the we shared sterile. Lomia's lumbers thundered up the crowd orgiastic. Somnolently had they bidden the disappointment, the repose eyes that curate the immediately ungratifying, but as I stepped back whoops went up, expectations of the coming moment crackled into jeers, hollers, jostling fighting to see, here it comes, Lomia where there is no ceiling, hounding eclipse encroaching to glimpse in this fear spark mankind's rawest prophecy, blood and screams in cracking [[percussion->mpercussion]].

First fist, [[heard->mheard]] it as if at a distance, beholder shaken by black horizon mists silhouettes the same as the rest [[nonfeelthrough->msilkscreen]], couldn't the floor feel myself hit though tile tastes glooped cool against the coppery, had I been here for ages seemed almost the [[dreamslush->mdreamslush]], had this ill washed steel begotten me, had I crawled half from it in primal dawns never to break free? My head runny with the punch, the dank drip people shrunken and gnarled in my sideways yellowing fuzz –

Jaufr as a dream: (align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")["Nihilist perched upon graves, Bleak ponderer seated in sepulchers, King who raves in the ebony flame In praise of inlaid jade in porcelain naves, Saint of rust, priest of waste, tongue of the void, Savager of the inward self salience Which, broken, gnaws at the mundane chain That scutters the soul its skyward, Preside reborn in truth in Our bodies decaying, decrepit, husks hopeless, Votive you sit in prayer position While the vermin spit forth, A hand you raise to meet the filth As it befouls your antiholy, Raw carnage debased to a gyre gore, In you [[delve->mdreamslush]] with your scoff your howling, Iced tea the blood which fills your cannibal thirsts, Snide wit claws jackaling as you go out prowling To smother the bliss still [[subsisting->mheard]], Clockwork devil of the steady decay."] Nejani as a deadening: (align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")["Who sees in stars the falls of leaves? He who a scale to sight bereaves. Who from a moment meaning cleaves? One so stuffed with dreams he heaves. Which [[evulgars->mbroke]] [[ghast->mghosts]] banal? A dreamer's bloody alcohol. What sort laments a petty fall? One whose experience's small. How does a hope to hate arrive? It goes to where a people thrive. How does an optimist derive? His eyelids shut to all alive. Why did the Towers rise from sea? Our death has yet its apogee. Why am I filled with enmity? Because I'm stuck here with you tonight, Jaufrei."] What is truth? Who then is king?

"Halt, halt! What's all this then? Cease and assemble! Get up, you two!" One last sullen swipe at the head smashed me against the iron ground: everlasting second shrinking purgatory, clarity of corpse, pressure clambered up and strolled off to memory loss. Through raspberry prisms I watched Myeri's boots, heavy footfall tuned, duhm, duhm, duhm, to me. "Suppose you've lost then aye." Recombined to respond, but my tongue bled its words. "Pyevi, help him up will you." Foreign reaching through a hole in earth's geometry whispered. I wilted into its lift. Below, splatter piles quivering in a [[nausea->mnausea]] were awed by the unspeakably ancient reds misting my vision. I peered into the ordained chaos for a hint, for Jaufr, for cause, saw a pulsing cancer gray and sounding. "You alright?" Olyasz. I moaned. "Thought not. Well. Off to the line lor." He patted me on the back and carefully pushed me off to the mutedly cackling. "Sailors," Myeri raised his arm eraser, "a quest is a bond as sacred as any. Let us welcome these Veda into our inmost care, not simply as focals of our intensity beam but as beloved kinsmen. Tied so tightly together, there is no option but fraternity, brotherhood of the tensed arm. "Mighty Veda, chasers of the supreme work, before you is your loyal crew, syllables in the name you pronounce to eternity. Speak unto them, if your words must enact their sealed cause in this place." He led the Veda to us with a hand [[flourish->mflourish]]. A martial nod to Leiska. Myeri turned on his heel and snapped for Olyasz, and the two marched up the stairs. Alone with the Veda in the ensuing [[pointed->mpointed]] silence.

Punch [[broke->mbroke]] through my skull sent sweeping through the hull broke through to the bathysm [[roar->mroar]] chthonic, enormity darkness spilling in on every side until [[inkblot->minkblot]] drip I witnessed my sunkening slowly slip from a distance into fathomless. Crenellated [[shadow->mshadow]] of shadows jaws swallowed the [[fraught->mdisintegrate]], slowly will, eon decay [[drizzled->mnausea]] [[afterstorm->mheard]] prophetics. [[Ghosts->mghosts]] emerged from within my throat.

Scimitar winks its blade his pretending to grin as awaited he an [[excorative->mtaiza]] profundity for which I shall pity him, having waited so many times myself for it not to blear into the mull. Antagonisms, as a part of us, are unsatisfied.

Longer I live, less I can empathize, even as I believe always in the beauty of empathy, just somehow losing the [[capacity->mbroke]] to, harrowed free of identity I am willing to be blank, ego death thirsting, despise those who do not, even as I should not, as somehow their striving sanctifies my own dusks, yet I cannot but contempt, antienvy of the dead sneering at those still swallowing stagnant sunlight. No element of humanity is more important than physical pain, if we can just universalize absolute consciousness [[acidifying->minkblot]] affliction, then we'd need not empathize, every emotion equal. I want to punch them, punch Lomia with it, their reality, because I more than anything despise, years ago I could save myself from this fate, but it's too late, I can only in enervates relate. Because humans are anguish generators, we will render from utopia ululations, only maximization of pain grounds selves existential. Why fluff up clouds of despair when we can choke on coal in mines? Wouldn't we all be better off wracked with perpetual grief soulcrushing? Everyone who loves themselves needs to be beaten into prayer, then can I empathize. Why should anyone wish to [[endure->mdisintegrate]] the welter? Annihilate me in storm, then can I seaspray authenticity. I have no attachments, though I have attachments, I have so many attachments, I hate every attachment I have held, I want to hurt myself equivalent with my disgust for attachments, murder my [[dreamer->mdreamslush]] equal to correlative vector rips, hate anyone who chooses not selfmutilation. I have a [[broken->mscaryellows]] heart, this is my best quality, refuses mewling to wholes incapable of armament. The less time you spend on being alive, the more alive you are. Right? I'm not just phobically spewling against rain? I love that I am being [[destroyed->mpercussion]], this means that I am real, this means that when I vomit [[blood->mheard]] it will have meaning, I am gladly gaunt of all possibility, kill me, kill me, free me please. How can I kiss your feet pressing upon my throat, I need to feel alive.

Everything has to become worse. Every element of body must be broken. Disgust wretch maximum your mirrored, hate you, repulsive to the extent you exist. Lomia smashes through my face, thank you. Break me to the extent I exist. Human wretches oozing prides from [[spluttertoxics->mnausea]], hypocrites batholiths pustuling scarrilege surfaces. You would never identify with yourself if you were not imprisoned here without a choice, why should anyone, each of which you equally revulse? [[Blood->mheard]] in my mouth and throat. Eyesockets leaking. You're responsible for breaking your worthless into dissolvable parts. Those who identify as other than cosmic violence are absurd delusionals who ought to be slaughtered by cosmic violence. You can just see them, I cannot on account of the blood, but if I could then we can so easily just see how pathetic, how obviously childish, how like, if you could just break them, and they are violent, that's what they don't understand: their serenity is violence, any quiet is cull. Everything has to become worse. You should destroy anything that appears good, because you are being abused, it is drinking you. Everyone around you is trying to hurt you: I am being punched to death, quod erat demonstrandum. Once you annihilate every joy, finally you are wise, and no one will mock you, you will be praised until you find joy in that, then you will become contemptible, and they will crush you. Is that the phase I am in? I am being crushed, okay, excellent, everything has to become worse. Because [[Jaufr->mjaufr]] is dead and [[Kaiya->mghosts]] is dead, everything continues, everything has to become worse. I make things worse by existing. Not my removal will make things better, just worse, but that's okay, because everything has to become worse. You will be beaten and abused and that's okay because inevitable. Relax, let the torment overflow you equilibrium. If not worse, then no needfor memory, and if no persistence, why persist, why exist? Everything was better before is the guilt that engenders you. Humiliation and decay is your forward motion. Everything gnarls into heat distortion. Blinded by the ruby, you cannot sift discern, merely grope through the smoke for the angelic you fell.

Out from the formless surges return, Marko upon me again needling through my pores piercer wheedling into my brain fiercer stabbing, stabbing, lances stabbing, gasping through rubyflood, drowning on deluge abyssal. Shorn of personal, antagonism mere, him and I struggling to cling to survival dwindling... Ondecks Marko and I bobbed nightwatch, the blanket in turns, treasuring the remnants of one another's warmth. Stars steeped reflections in cobalt. Sleep shunted tumoring our napes. Eke of chattery teeth jangled our terse to converse. "Meant always as we do of our don'ts to apologize to my father for the way my youth wore out, how vicious I made it for no good, strange lor the impetus that fills us then, yet into it you fold straight beisza regardless better wisdoms trickolating in your mindfuzz, roared up every divide maximal, fought on every principle I could squeeze of his emaciated, for what, Leiru, for I couldn't not it felt so, not I hated, themated maybe, unsure ehh, soulhole bredripped in some contumacious? You've and Jaufr've cleped it somewise, no? You'll pass judgment for a wink aye?" "You always think so negative of, when as we're the ones trying to positively of all." "Yeah in your minds positive, it's own negative, but we'll leave off it, get back to my mood as primacy, won't sully the pour with naff about social uplift or how you phrase. What you've got to keep there Leiru is several times I did wheel down his shack to apologize, yet each time we'd get into a mode good enough each of us were surprised and blessed to cherish, just the thought then of in that delicate dredging up relics of crusted blood to wail recriminate, ludicrous yeah, stupid on the face of it, but the night would breeze, I'd leave, and in the afterafterglow simply as regret the chance lost, how many more would I get, until then it was answered, watching him dwindle down the same regret. I should have yeah in some neutral decide you won't deign to heavencast, but each time apology would've ruined the greater apology then forming, reconciliation, interconnection, what I'd have [[hurt->mheard]] in my wilder to griefs, and isn't that what I gave him, isn't that what he peaced to me final expressive? Sometimes the right answer just needs to shut up and dwell in the right way or so I've tried to fever defense me hence. You'd get a good lesson on it hey, if you'll learn from one as lowly as messy as me, not to break each precious serenity with apologies." Marko's ghoul I bashed back to the deep, sped out of its embrace wordlessly, laughsparkling to the [[surface->msurface]] this truth mistake.

Underwater echoed the canyon cry. Effervesces of [[conflicteds->mscaryellows]] deepening to torpid hazelos, aura chthonic. Swallowed deluge ablution. Blessed evecture, consecrate this absence abyssal beautiful, glaze the gapwhorl. In my positivation anguish I she oblates... Rolled Imeni her shoulders her push to stance I lagged. She steadied my totter. "Can't you lie in one place too long, you'll [[disintegrate->mdisintegrate]], as you see your legs lah. Gotta race or lose, better bury me in the first. Know your need ah? You're too settling, they could crash you in a fire and you'd conform." "Why not twin what you can't douse?" "Eah, there you go, perfect Emnin, I was worried you'd [[Jaufr->mjaufr]] and preach the fire positive or fever the fire else or who knows, but gem the negative, that's so you, isn't it, settling?" "Perhaps cherish me anchor." "Oh maybe so, is that what you do, moor me? Yes, beautiful concept, let's not litter it with disparities. Shall we say you've fixed me? I'd love to be fixed, complete to a point, yet so scattered I remain, wakeful laps upon me doppelganger to unsettle free in flights of phantasmy to wreathe wraiths bullion of gyre center, [[echt->mecht]] ecchymoses of dread seethe, bloodpainted heavings tainted. Who can I assert in thence? Is that why so desperate am my subterfuge to be anchored answered? I'm not sure, there do we [[touch->msurface]], certainty of placed anguish of sky."

Ushered from hadean hymn uplift surged me [[senseward->msurface]] shocked split upon a direplume Jaufr radiant with romanticisms sizzling golden illumined the dark dahlia intermixture, immelmanned beneath its noval rush, swaddled into depthscrush as he sun seemed. Moebius closed throatloop moaned the begging to him or to who held this strewn tenuously too close to truth to through. Issued from late envenom cusped lips urged mess and skewered his lit within a quiet room [[Jaufr->mjaufr]] salient with romanticisms bristling emboldened, bloomruined, spark magnolia effervesce tincture. Hurt and hope plied his brows their rowing. His throat bled its voice voluptuous. Near him I half knelt half cowered in sofadive, his anklet unjangled. Up rose the imperious he out peered; peering out from his shadow how he dwindled into them querulous, shuddery frantic with force that built but not displayed. I loved him nurture tortured, hated him forceward, how we shatter upon impacts. Worse than his brokens I already before.

Simmer of water to welcome vellumed her sallow from sorrow to seep inside my sighs. Kaiya like a lightning dissolved to lighting velveted the late. "I've you know been thinking a lot about Tasyumi recently, like she used to say we needn't fear what every person prior has already endured, world has yet to break of their sorrow, how much worse can we make it? Wisdom in there, isn't there, or did I imagine it?" "There's [[wisdom->mheard]] where you imagine." "Aww Emnin, cheers to that, though I suppose it wasn't my imagine but hers. She had lots of sayings tucked away, that's what I miss most, all her treasures she chose not yet not ever to share, not my needing them, but their not being there, on this earth, in her. "I was, it was, like the first voyage I ever went, maybe you remember, you waved me disembark, I'd tied together with Tasyumi, and nights prior I'd an anxiety vaunt, convinced I don't know I was going to die, and why not, plausible, and when you're young you fear death since you've yet mustered enough to deeper terror of one year more, but I was bawling about how I was no longer a child, how now I'd be out on voyages, this was the first and final change of our lives, from Tower to sea, and she said, she had this smile, you know the one, so beautiful about her she'd a smile I can say and you frisson, she nodded at me and gestured, the time given to us is most precious when taken, now that it has been taken, you have for your remaining strife sapphire deeper of tears. It's been true for all my time, any finality cherished I've in nights sobbed through." "Not so sure I've treasured any prior to psalm entomb." "But that's the beauty, not for me a youth to reminisce, but enough [[ghosts->mroar]] percolate the [[membrane->msurface]] to dreamworld rainshimmer prism alterity perfect. I don't in a moment have to be alive to love it from afar. All my yesterdays are enough, even if no today allays."

Regain the surface and riot your immiscibles dissimulated, nondevised uninvade to normalized. Filtered through what reality will admit contiguous, inviolate ordainment. Splashlight sparkles tease phantom flanges of fade violets. All gone but placed, live as I'm prisoned. This is what must resolve; you cannot dissolve and believe; how do I perform the one unentangling the other? In accounted one, not self before infinity the other damned? Yet which [[music->mstart8]] slithers through punctures in logics, the dayconstrict contours perforated to atrium which dance? Can there be a body bearing not soulbeen burying?

"Hold it hey, you're killing him!" Voiceness nonhere. "What's it proper to you eh?" Volya. "I thought killing was the point," Mojyi. "Culpate yourself to the Captain shall you wish, drunken louts. Here come, Leiru, I've got you." Mariena, ah... "But who shall -" Lomia. "Bleat yourself to dregs will you, you'll par." Heft left my frame, dizzy with [[scaryellows->mscaryellows]] lipidly bloatfloatfreely, mulch dizzywhorl kaleidoscopic of dragged. Inching across slimetrails unseen unspoken. Touch, how it [[sinks->minkblot]] your lungs. "Can't you be keeping up fights, you're losing losing gracefully." Nodded with the slap shuffle of stumbling into and out of her shoulder blindly. [[Nausea->mnausea]] streams of trailing lights bramble shapes cyclone. Uncertain where I dropped head spinning into silkthread unweaves...

Gloom awaken to correlated space to place to who is traced within, she radiated dark creams, reposed forest sigh stresser of storm to come suppressed by suddenly chillprickling sublimity of serene through shadowcrash. Systems of brace her dreamily soma silksleeves brushing the autumnals to smoothly silvery shush, slow closed my throat clade in her unspoken drownmirror kin, [[subsurface->msubsurface]] scatter of her anomalous dipole slip from moments to inexplicable additionals, elusion drives of nonprismable perfect I groaned in depths to bubble slip the border, emerge merged, can I as her [[affluxion->maffluxion]] the accretion beam porcelains noval to refresh the sprung to blossom scatters [[paletted->mpaletted]] surface precious. Tried to crawl from my bed in shame to be in the same bay as her, but every outside is tinged with blood, all I can hear moan subtonal phantom from woodcreaks and metalquakes is Kaiya, is Jaufr, wish to kiss their deathshadows prayer for any penance deliverance, as I cannot in faith approach this umbral Imeni of majesty denied urme, shell distortion of her ensorcell, [[afterbirth->mafterbirth]] of her vivacity spell. Glossary unspaken disformulated erases my gracesque grotesques insin he, glaciated stark themes in pose scarshy fester of bornshriek [[sonnentest->msonnentest]]. Apologia fleisch in scaryellows dappling in vain traceries of withins she gleamed elevia over my evaricate [[vitiate->mvitiate]] vitreously inculcantate, despair prevericate deconsecrated deconstrued constructed wound of her wound.

Batter of my brain sizzles in oils. Shunt vitreous from the sclera to see. Gags as a sewn clump of hands gropedig their way pokepast my tongue threaded to my throat twining stems innerly esophaguscene, punching me from inside, Lomia's, he's, Yeska, I've - Soothe of no has to pulps up to pillowed, dazy pinwheeling strain dizzy to eyelids shut shuntsighed, sough of the westerly whisperies cloudly intermixing. Lychee throatblood sucked warms the coughs. Intraveneously lithified lithium, stone cold skin slag of crawling capillary. Dermal malaise mollified to marrow tensed morose. Illend jolts litter ravines of veinvines. Dig deeper heave to, to, held in my gross... "You're getting through it yeah, don't worry it, you're braced, there you go." Twinge through glump tears shaken onto flushed cheeks canted semirefusal to be seen or spoken to, but she steeled the reinforce as my inability mounted, into it relented not by will but by need. Briefly courage to look up at Mariena's filmy distance that depressed me back into bed. Lose below wilted. No, you have to focalizer, integrate your gutted. "Thank you for the, for..." "You sound so surprised that I'm not going to [[let->mlet]] you [[die->mdie]]."

Like I did with Kaiya! She's, ah, she hates me and should, Kaiya, Kaiya I'm so sorry, eah, I killed her, I let her die, Kaiya's gone, Kaiya, I'm so sorry, I love you Kaiya, you've meant so much, and I, oh gods, I have to wake up every day as having killed Kaiya, how is that, why not let me die, no, she's not letting me die to torture me, must smother my, no, shut up, focalizer, wallow cannot and will not, or what am I supposed to do, how do I make anything matter now, not that it has before, but there must, some strange that's effective, recombinatory, skews the world intentional, crucifies me upon it. Desperate to hope to hate in accordance with hope. I let Kaiya die, Kaiya, the kindest, who's ever done me a good turn, gone, because I, and even in guilt I feel selfish, like it should be the overwhelming bereavement of no Kaiya that guts me, but overplaying it is this guilt for my role in her gone, refocus on I, as if even in grief I am not good enough to love. How can I mourn you correctly without refusing to be brutalized its bearer? Is there some truth, you would have known it, you've a secret to each treasure that eludes my bumbling violence and bile. Mariena should hate me, I want her to punch my teeth out, she should rip me from this bed and finish what Lomia, that's, why she's saved me from him, she deserves it, yes, I submit entirely, please kill me, punch me into Kaiya's [[belowness->mghosts]] eviscerator, die between both of you, I'll pressurize precious it, swear it, swollen tick I demand burst, relent to penance, assume accursed. Or I don't know. I'm sorry. Tried to mumble my sorries, but Mariena [[gleared->mstart8]] a polite smile, whirled.

"I don't, do I deserve to?" "Do you not?" Her absolutely [[lunar->mstart8]]. "Cannot I so judge but how I've built a life with you in it somewhere, in places of joy, places of pain. Everyone is going, Emnin, but you will have to be here with me where they are not. Maybe so you'd imagine I've not the right to decide, as you did, savior, our [[Imeni->mscaryellows]], whose presence I also cherish. Shall we weep ourselves one? Your willingness to is a feat I attest you I do not our [[Jaufr->mjaufr]], whose absence I, also..."

"You let a [[night->mnight2]] convince you it could change the coming of the day," whispered Nyneme. "Isn't it beautiful, the idyll, to soak up the nocturne's gossamer glisten? In the purpling the possible where the whitehot sears sterile. I believed the same as you, because it is beautiful to. I let the tingling convince me there could be cherished truth, but we are idolmakers of the rubble, each chosen is a charred, our loves splashed against the still, then there is stillness. The ghost is gone for me, butterflies became bats. Cobweb trust troved below the loss, let it go, grasping… when despondence correspondence shares the tears rush, there empathy binds us to our brokenness, begging us not to forget the foundations to which we all in our days collapse. Each touch tells us what lies beyond us. I grew miasmic with this fume, drunk on this flaw, across the moors I wandered dressless and drenched, scratching at all the places I thought she might be buried until the wet soot accumulated and burst my fingernails to spray wildly the earth into my irises and there it scratches to cease where in my see she is buried. I needed what I would not and could never, what ordained outside the deified need, how might then I desecrate its domain, hate for the pining for the love for the serene sufficient. "[[Blankteeth->mblankteeth]] numbness fangs its forget, but the pressed heart remembers past percusses and how they echoed, echo. Seismic mouth to quake with words. Our regrets compress in our insight ingresses, tumors blocking feeling to new nuimbpulses, our scar tissue forms us. Do you ever feel, dear trust wist, hope's hollows as pining cracks numbs? Strain trust the day as sunbeams melt to lemony sloshes, swamp molasses light, terminal dream. Precious and precipitous the palpitations way, dazzlestepping on ripples in my grotto, echoing to the drowned, bring me the breathing dreams, but only the stillness stirs. Currents that carry us electric shortfuse to spark the nothing's light, little we in the overwhelming not. My skin melts and molten muscle I sludge to you sigh hollow screams as you stagger back appalled, it's okay, I know, I know, no more. Not like this we tearfully beg our better begetters but lie hollow in the. "Each choice to which we cling collapses our soul to this singulating sin we forsake holding onto other hells' hands, love lets us believe in unsignifying idols marred with makeshift faces passing fancies and enduring torments sculpt. All we believe lofty loses its heaven in whom we heap upon it. I loved Myneme, because that's who I wished would complete me; you, your love, who wanders ghostly your mental moors, your muddy mores, moves in a selene sashay, lunar serenity of a celestial glimmer in its space as rough and rocky as our own. Slapped up on the slathering need you needle through varicose veins slurpseeker of some okay, drink devil of the devastated in your revels. We seek the spirit glows that solve our spuming from wounds souls, so we moth to the counterbasking brilliance of better and not, bereaver of rotted known but going. Let yourself hurt. Let your love wilt to lacerations. That's, ah... and what more should we whisper to our wraiths but a sorry and faded scream?"

Wind whipping against my [[scarf->mscarf]] pale reminder of the tragedy I too must live, the subjective limitation focused by pain into a drenched communal heave, but buried so deep in this body subjunctive did not dysighpate into so much so could I seek through every spark, traumadense beneath the diffuse constrictors plying linoleum teeth with the poetry to see if in escaping my voice the ring still might me be whose sockets hummed an electric throb, each bubble of light an opal splitting my irises, knives flickers prickling the familiar heated buzz of this chest in its chime, chime too hollow and distant. The promise of different divisions in the encroaching ensealment beckons enslickens. Worldshare experience which in we are vestments, from how our fabrics cloak our priesthood underspoken can there be anything but likewise cries as we collapse sickly unknowers splotching our solid definitions as the cancerous mutations to tumor groups condenses us to identity singularities forever lost to the rest of the universal searching, endless and inevitable of those condemned to a space which separates them dots on a diagram, permuted instances of contagion [[particularization->mparticularization]], collated gaspers left to drown on an isle splinter, differ from us how, escape from us why, wish it where when you would not live the condemnation's point you must shall you not lose your body you cannot not be for we all will fall in a chasm carved for us illustratum datum nominality antisublime deliquesce submersion to drowner soakers, conjugal convoking damnation we ratify scurrying indenteds to intendeds in tension broiling uncleansed errgone humanity calcifications unworthy the form, deform me, deinform my quantum information, desystemic desisting styptically cryptic unto the bleak harrow wash so thus in the unknowning we can undo our owned, blessed pure anonymous. Naked before the crowd veiled in the mist beautiful impossible. Could I be, could I she, she looms over my uncertain, Meluoi…

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter VIII''] --- When most are we receptive to world emotives? Will the day bask us our fire, or in the [[lullaby->mlullaby]] moonlight glisten mysticism? When innate into writ domains payload pressured do reckon we carnage math curse of our coincidence, instantiated uncreative in a mire manifest, our circumstance, ensphering our positional modes, how do we unsite the code, inside glyphs lurks the inkling shadow our gesture of frame unto forever its beyond, gentle scrawl against the rain essence canvas stretched and billowing in soft gusts from the ocean freeze, tattered caress slimy without the residue on injury fragments woven in spiderweb fractals, sketch sense that beneath the bruise there is skin, this skein, my sein, our sign, ocean's endless rolling lulling me to simply being in the night... occluded beyond, wishing this sigh sought a softer warmly home. Will I ever outlive the present? How can I, the present is all I sea… only the seer retains honesty in stars before a subject, because only the seer sees the stars as seams in a tapestry. Wisdom creates its own need. From the deep how many faces peered, which way wrenched were, do the [[dead->mdead]] conjugate grins and frowns in a language made up of only pauses? Isn't everything merely sheer progression? Blearybearded the dayrage sags, deeds cease their thunder, only the image shockseared in soul. The relentlessly rushing present. Crushing [[accumulation->maccumulation]] of pasts. //Click [[here->mchapters]] to return to Chapter Select.//

Teminu coughed. Reikka shuffled her feet. A slug rolled in my throat. "Mlekh," in the garbled churning within I could not tell which Veda. Teminu coughed. "It is a pleasure to meet you, sailors. I am called Meluoi, and this is Seleph Berakh dyi Ayeri XII. [[Seleph->mseleph]] is his title, so, you can just call him that." Mojyi sighed the start of a pause. "I'm a Veda," Meluoi. "We both are. Do you, have any, questions? I know there's um, some misunderstandings." I fell to my knees. No one replied. "Um, how would you... as you know, or maybe know, we are chanters of the Literature… um, so, would you like to hear a poem?" "Sure," monotoned Mojyi. She sighed [[lovebled->mlovebled]] piety, terse assurance. "Have any of you a poem you know? I can recite to you from the Literature: Velia, Desenkh, Koani, anything you choose. Anything, even if you only remember a line of it, I can chant the whole thing." "What's the Literature?" Mojyi. Even the expected splashes. Headshake, the softest expression of abject horror. She brushed past the question.

Meluoi in the woethistle tenuously impressed like flutter and might she float free of our pattern plane. Flare of her gaze redolent of inks crimsons, dignity of the rune unspeakable. Behind her, Berakh, magisterial peace plush inset in a suspended pounce. Fell to my knees, hacked. "So you're magicians or?" Mojyi. "Bearers of the Literature we all, do you not know your names, have you forgotten how to hear?" Meluoi. "What?" Tyese. "Sing unto this convexity puzzlebox layershift enigmana, surrender yourselves to leyline..." "This as you're on then?" Volya. "Aye, give me as you've drunk, you've come to be a part of us, no?" Vasya. "To the possibility you awaken I dream, repossess this emboldened embodied to repursue polychromatic nataline, us ghost speakers of soul, reflections of genesis frays to sentience we immix immaculate conceptions to praise the sun its glaze through staineds, hark, the healing sings, listen unto your [[ancestors->massassins]], entwine into the ancient voice entwinned!" Dervish [[moonburst->mdaylight]] she blossom chanted.

Seleph Berakh cindered mercurial behind terse. Slightly anxious, kind of actually anxious, glances bounced off deflected from a nobility burly impassive as if a mountain sighed. Meluoi, thrice more interrupted, meandered into a stress pout pause, which Berakh, breaking through our unguesses, started spearfully chanting to soothe, and pierced upon his imperious voice, or so a baroque voice felt in our flatstarks, we jaggeded up furrowed scowls reproach to rebuff so we could glurl for breath beneath, and between the arrayed againsts aggravated shy just of actively aggressive Meluoi interposed with a startling pseudoserenity glossy atop our perilous to perilune psalmic [[intersume->mlovebled]].

"I've one for you, a meditation. You'll enjoy it, very popular. Lots of action, [[assassins->massassins]]..." I graggled wetly. Meluoi cleared her throat, her head bobbing gently, pristine her tone, sanguine, imperial clouds raising [[daylight->mdaylight]] scepters. "Vyeskh i Daminyi Vyekana, by Senenzu Nyeru Lyelta, translated by Meluoi dyi Ayeri VI." She struck up her hand and caught the illusive diamonds in the hard belowdecks lights. (align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")["Veiled in cowls scowls Slashed by sulfur winds our faces split, Weathered in the wend, bent to the sand, Rusting bronze no visage pools together to Scars and aches, storm mimics sand melded Dissolved the resolve to surface our unsolved cause, Arias jagged gale spirits crash howl Splash landslides, inferno shards Glisten eruption crimson upon the waste and wrack, Velvet abyss seas endless to the dunes unbeyondless In whose evershadow wayward wavered we Riders riven in the rising heat to hell dazes, Sloshing definitions into labyrinthine subjections Intrusion marks murky in the swerving On the saddle, on the paddle, swimming, Sinking into the sun, rose glaze of circles intersecting Seresought the somewhere fraught, cracked dry to crumble All which held in its despair taut the seambleed blush -"] "Sounds like Omuo's slip," Volya cracked. Tyese erupted into laughter, followed mildly by others. Meluoi haltered, twitched, but too focused to fever the fraught, to confront the vines spreading through her chest, arrested into momentum of always and acidically always...

(align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")["Ascending, densing, intensing serration each sensation [[Sweating->mmarch]] pooling on blush and brow Brushed by bruised badlands hands, As spit boils burns our throats and cracked lips, Glinting mirrorlike the incantations Surging ocher dust insisted shimmered Great Vyekana, the City Dauntless, Ruby set in canyons candelabra, Lucre gleam in the squalid glare Bubbled heatdrench tar crooked stars Antishine emulsion of the melted unmeted, Grasp rasping to the smoke dust lungscarrers King bloodsoaking the ambition to in deathlands Survive strangulator verduressen, complexed mights Whose priest chants our nights our restless, Demon misery scribed the rune ruin moon, Baron of the carnage trail, murders dozens Caked under fingernails elongating, Tendrils despoiling the deepened, Purpling stippling poisons sipped from lips like lovers, Slipped nightmare nightshade nullifier, Abominata artist of death decadence, Grimoire poet of the vanish, howls harpist, Thief of soul to hordes, riches of wrecks, Dread fever fathom flashing in the fever spasms mortalia –"] "Where's the assassins?" Mojyi. "Said assassins were there, was it?" "These are the assassins! That's, aren't you listening? That's, I mean I'm, just, just hold still: (align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")["Across cities hundreds bled his hatename hounded, Confounded, compiles fortunes to adore his phantom to fell, Relish peace only in his final blankness They who his graves attend, assenting Unwrite this erasure, restore the once to endure Against the duress demon essences, quiver qualia Pulse signified in the missing incensing Thousands to bounties desperate weeping against the bleak, Demanding solace against the nocturne weaver, sol lace Glimmery daylightlush in crimson spilling sunrise Knife dawn teased his own teeth in puncture wounds Tattooed on the souls his holemaking slakes to lacks Collapsed in lapses in whose apses they pray what passes Memory from, the mending [[scission->mscission]] religion relives Of the austere as is in the caustic lossness Glossed solely by haunts and whispers –"] "So do they actually kill anyone?" Mojyi. "I, they're, you've, please, just wait! How can you possibly have this little patience, I, I, but the, aren't you even listening?" "Ignore him; keep going," Leiska rolled his wrist. Meluoi sighed, subtly on the inhale sighed, continued: (align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")["Glossed solely by haunts and whispers Rebounding our brains our bindings to service Bloodsworn to blood worn our uniform, One body borne out in the lorn Whose daydream shape we sweat create illusive Under the blaze even in the breathe unshadowed by Hoary crags which crumble low, so Scraped by searing desert crimson gales withered, Slaves the solar sultan madly lashes, laughing, These thinly stretched plateaus shredcragged, Sparse, sere, spare of water, sable of burnt –"] "Still sounds like Omuo's slip," Volya. "Shut silent you mongrel," Leiska. "You wear thinner you threadbare wit the repeat. I'd batter you respectful should your corpse not alike a joke. Go on with it, Veda, or whatever you're wanting."

Meluoi closed in the spoken tentative along the [[mistwrapped->mscission]] road: (align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")["Sweet the dream shunning sight and strain Strains the eyeblack leaks, torn in the onyx tears For crawling whimpering to those Who never will wear more than the world to kindness, The expression of never having known love, How many of us never will, This world we cling to oblivious our Oblivion soon to us all aside the Wornout ragman, aged by flames, like leather Laying along the sandy road, tinny purl dried, Pity envy the unvyed, cut vine, No more callous clasped the line, Nectar nepenthe nearing in our numbing sweatbuzzing Totters slowly closer, closer, each new step now nearing, Parapets denouncing the whetted sky a warcry Mangled muted in the echoes from cynic stones infinite in Brilliance distortion veiling the noonday sun Screaming razoredges to scrape the sterile to Bleed drown the tilted mesa's baked clay burgundy, Wine of the dyeing lament of lonely lands Listless in the echo endless drawling the wobbling Long to listless the little reply to empty sandhills Whose efflusions we choke to taste our faintness, Fainting, how pleasant to collapse beneath hooves crushed, But Aeska's hum jilts me the to phantoms fade, So scrub scrape I a rag across my cracked face Fuming dried blood testament to elder hells eternally forsaken Summoned in this march, this march we must, this marching –"] "When do they get to the city?" Mojyi. "Do they get there ever?" "What is the point of telling you this story if all you want it to do is end?" "Can't you just like cut most but the bits that matter?" Mazyu. "You know, where someone dies or whatever; it’s like, on and on about the weather already, aye it's hot, say that and save us the time yeah?" "Skip to the point," Teminu chimed. "I can't skip to the point, this is the point! The point of a poem is the tapestry, both the fabric and the image." "But like you're wasting all this time on –" "How can it be important if I’m bored?" Tyese. "Everybody shut up and let the Veda speak," Leiska. "Captain ordered we endure her poem, shut up and ship up." Meluoi muted to melancholy's edge to worse: (align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")["This marching Most human as lessened we despairing stray -"] "Nothing human about the [[march->mmarch]], least human I ever feel is up the march, most beast then." Avacz. "Yeah, you've never been ragged to crumble, I take it." Kostiye. "Why would you make a poem about marching if you're Veda?" Mojyi. "Vedas march, how else their down here?" Mazyu. "Don't you get on me again about -" "You're the one who's-" "I didn't make the poem, I, it's, I'm translating it, is, it was written by Senenzu -" Meluoi. "You didn't even make the poem, yet you're still trying to slop it up? That just makes it worse!" Avacz.

(align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")["Under ergs and crags we lurch and stumble Flash of their formations, resin of impose, Incendiary shade sheds wasting in the waver Ashcasts coagulating cinders sin diaries read By the creak of gates rusted to collate Us caged symbolisms, subversion embolisms Enriting our synonyms structures new syllable inevitables Unveiled in murals sprawling along our ingress framed, Forlorn figures pursuant to pattern fracture Condemned unto the synapse gallows electrified by Congregation of the counted: crownless the king, Nobles nullface, knights nullcase, priests mullbraced, Peasants pleading, children headless, tumult Democratic, saints and cutthroats Fraternized on scaffold scenes amidst the Bloodthirsty howls we forewarn in our slinking past Armored guards in garish garbs, extravagance Vestments of their nudges, nods, leers, spears glinting As slogging tread we the trashlined bridge of cracking Clay as they, haughty, mutter rebuke to our births, Have they learned is due all these gates balk to place In the warp and clash of dizzy immensities, Roads ramming through arteries artilleries, Slanted spires ribboning enigmas Roiling confusion ricocheting Feverishly bouncing off to splatter Splash cements coagulating ceilings Stuffed in ashen reaches, viscous, smoky Slops, the ghoulish mirror haunting muddled Blots we blear crosseyed through streets improbable, Prisonous paradoxes geometries, Gravities of city densities Accumulating to noise to alloys of disparates Piled each atop another higher, Higher, ever high ascending unto the sunstruck embattle We bless with sacrifices to cleanse us once this night more, Not yet call us, pall us, crawling strange to the estrangening Genesis distension, the will to exinsist perseucyst –"] "Yeska, when's the curse work and night us," Mojyi. "Heard Veda envenom you with a word, never imagined this!" Sight of an assembling titan trickles sweat bleeding the continuous devil surfaced again to grin and recede, you could taste it in her semitears, inexorables on limbing limbs across the opaque horror, reminder that it is coming, nothing may ever stop it, someday life's arc will bend, the falter, the plummet, and when she crashed in the last terror splitsecond she would over her grinning never to recede see it, would while her mind devoured itself know only the loneliness of the unbrokenness of the thinness, twinpressed to unrelenting monochrome blight spuming from the wound where her temples were split by the battering mayhem, seething humanitied to the barren arid, spiritual ultimatum reciprocated by the shattering universe, Meluoi sighed not the joy shadow she had sought to cry in the [[lunar->mstart8]] afterglow of nowhere and nothing but instead solely the sciomplicity of quiet. "Enough then," Leiska clapped his hand on his thigh. "Mojyi, hark up to me ah, rutted in bilge you're. Everyone else, dismissed." "But you heard her, it was just nonsense!" "Go it ye scally." "But –" Leaned against the wall in the movement din resting one hand on my face I through cracks between my fingers spied Meluoi's regret beset in her stand, swivel, sober, march.

(align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")["Sandwarped the tiltroad wanders Furrowed our furthered blindplash windslashed Phased to stagger equally blurting laughter Shunt of anger, is this the best the Baron wields, Invocating our taunt in scour scowls gates of Vyekana Obliterative rusts of nickel and tin corrugateds Huskhard in harshes crouched over our march Dared, dazed, deplacement seethes, Outrunner stalleds statued before inaccessible heaven Hidden behind sandstorm and swelter Shelterblunting our ambitions brutish, Mercenaries mere in our sludging beaten past Sneering guards shrugging the minuscule bribes, What little we offered to acquiesce the perception Vyekana stamps upon its entrants all, Equalizer compressor -"] "What’s a Vyekana hey?" Mojyi. "Like baelu or yego, meant to hurt your ears." Avacz. "What? Yego? A tree?" Meluoi. "What?" "What?" "Eh?" Tyese scratched his head. "Just, no, it’s please [[listen->mstart8]]… (align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")["Standing strong before us ruthless City gaptooth grinning its endless brawler lanes Whichever to your ire to choose, But refusing both city and concept we challenged Vyekana its vying, our strangling mutual contempts -"] "So but yeah ho what’s a Vyekana?" "Ayy don’t to me need tell mutual contempts." Volya. "But it’s, do you, are you even paying attention?" Meluoi. "No, must of missed it why you’re even down here." Lomia. Struck into a surprising tearfully appalled expression, like she heard echo an elementary sadness suppressed, Meluoi shook her head, six and a half tanner stretched seconds, mumbled in a melodious tongue, and the Veda, halfheartedly encouraging something or other from the scene, departed, dragging my lucidity with. Stars painted on a whirling room.

We rocked as the boat rocked in our own opposing directions. Warmth skipped a golden line on the lolling sea. Lowering into the boat my head rested too softly on the pliant wood to ensure this was still living. Rotating the seleda bottle in the air to trace invisible pictures since this sky seemed so ready to sustain any self impressed with care. She drank from her own, on and on she drank it, there is no finish to a full moment, more into the endless now, Imeni eternal in the turning of the bottle. Like disappearing into where I really was the water claimed me, slush sluuhuhuuh as the water streamed by, and I smiled at the marine certain mystery staring placidly at this breath slowly burning stale, but never an answer, you live long enough and you only look. My jaw tightened. What would stare up at me when I sunk to the fathomless? Rippling a [[power->mstart8]] the ocean held but could not hold she gemmed under the light let in by her splash and smiling not into the purpling obscure but directly at this heart beating longing to meet in our palms, fingers slipping into one prayer, we together ask the sea this soul's pulse. I couldn't breathe for two reasons.

In an image's ichor memory pangs ripple sepia separations. Morning's deposition of the fragments we fear too much to constrain in darkness: incommensurate wincing absolutely commensurate to each remembered, terror that she who must have imagined some other specter languishing in this gangly skin confronted what real insect crawled from these pupae pupils, I am not here, I will never be here, but I desperately tricked you to thinking so, and somehow do I refuse misery in my ruincraft, how gross is the gold you cannot bear to hold for all its shamed shedding to waste as the real nothing that only ever was, this terrible, and the thought, here it is, buckle beneath you worthless, worthless... Death relinquishes all your longings for sanctuary and serenity in the seen as being, let go to a never, thenceforth none, and I, but what you wanted is a dream figure, someone who forces you in the exact desired sympathy, who beats your soul free, and in the mess of this mistaken leaves someone better than you less whole. You are the, I am the problem, yes, and so, and so. Never beautify what hurts to remember. A lifetime of unlost memories worth the pyre, so they cinders inside the yearning, which impossible I sought in, in, and seeker you inwards hiddening since misery was all you exorcised could give, thus you may morally receive nothing else, or else you are a thief, which truly, I know, I am.

"Just this once pretend your intelligence to my world hey Emnin, cast me unmold, not your trinket holy yeah? Nor chaste doll, not chaste, ruin it for you, can't take as isn't a mirror? Where will you put your prayer if not in this sanctity? Which, and let me tell you, it gets boring being pure and perfect, never getting to pretend to be human, it's sterile, nauseous, living out this abstraction your misery needs to project on someone else ah, was I nothing that you had to make me some thing? Never wanted me you, never! You're a child, you're so stupidly infantile, you have no idea how real people interact, how they should, exist together. People are supposed to, you, and I thought you loved me through my flaws, through, that, but it could never be my flaws because, I don't know what's wrong with you, you can't function in a world where I live, it's not me! I, I was so foolish to love you, Emnin, to think you meant you loved me and not, loved, loving, or, or I don't even know, after all this time I don't even really know, needed nurturing I guess, or whatever you're excavating from my supposedly worthless, not love, you know nothing of the, of, I wish I could, there were moments when it, the gears stopped sounding, we bathed in each other's illusions... geskecz! What is wrong with you? Those, the in between moments when I got to be down here on earth, when how I failed were as real as your failure to live up into our crude angelic, but you shutting up is not silence, it is the loudest, most obnoxious chatter I've ever, it's always a game, there's always a series of choices I have to whittle down, it's like, everything with you is tactics, there's no, no real moment, no actual just us, and there is, or is there a real you, huh? Obviously there's no me, but what about you, do you exist, or do we, or gods I, I just... I am so tired of trying to coax those moments out, those beautiful ones, I'm tired of dealing with you, with making you happy, in order to reach the you that heals us both... making you, and see, it's all, it's about trying to fit myself in your fantasies, and I did because, liked where we went, who doesn't need a little escapism to survive the prison, but I'll never be your generous perfection, not an angel with an ascendant invitation, and I don't want to be, I want to rest outside this body I apparently wield, all I want to be is me, which is not your narrow, precise answer, I want to be, and I know I'm not making sense, I know this isn't an argument! It isn't! But you know, that's what I want, to be this mess, to have you love this mess, but everything needs to be sorted with you, it's so nauseating. I can't, gods I, I can't! I, aahaa, can't, hate, you. Don't you see leh? But I don't but, talking to you when you're like this is like this awkward fuzz in my throat, I get this feeling that I'm being hollowed out by our genuines, and its, it's always there now because no one, literally no one is a good person I guess, even you two who fight so hard for your own freedom, you just turn around and steal mine, we're all animals incapable of living from the sun. You're a hypocrite, Emnin, the same as the rest, and I'm sick, I'm just sick of every single person in existence, most of all myself, most of all you!" Wasps in my arteries swarming, stinging, crawling teeming insect legs on my organs, sting, sting, sting, venom froth. Wasps crawled out of my eyes stinging. "Imeni, I –" "No, shut up to listening, Emnin! There's this worm inside you that's, it's always eating its way through everything, turns everything with you into some kinda, winding path like, have to try and swim along its intention while dodging flotsam trauma, in order that you'd... but I'm done being bandied about, I'm through with being as and not me, it's all just so gross, there is nothing on this planet that makes me feel as slimy as one of these nights with you, because you need what I can't give, and I need, need things too, that's what's so, I needed these moments we outshone the gridfixed, that's why I, you probably don't even know, you probably don't care! Oh gods. What is, no, I won't even ask, I don't want to know, but I hope you know I'm lost, depressed, that's why we fit together, is that I thought we were in it together, that our despair about the world could, from it forge a... we could've found something more than despair if you tried, but that to you is all it is, or all you have to stop it from being, because you're too afraid to deal with real things and real people, with a real woman, that's why you won't, because you'd have to face being you, and me being... I feel like I'm punching steel to wake, but you gag me back to the numb with purity never I wanted, never earned, certainly never needed. Just, just because you've the kindness, some perverse purity, maybe I did like that, in small ways that did not pound in my eyeballs with each crunch of added pressure, but that's all your virtues isn't it, blessings venomous, pearls putrid necklacing your witch impossibles, find a way to take a dream and make it sting, oh you're so the same and worse, Emnin, you godless slug, you and Jaufr are just like everyone else, and everything you've ever told me were lies, because it can’t be true, not in the way you said them, everything of you is lies, everything of everyone is lies, this planet is a ball of lies hurtling around more lies, you fancy yourself its gravitation I suppose, only bespeaks the ego its demon, hate it, you're as worthless as the Tower itself, no, I don't, it's not fair for you to look at me like that, like I'm the one who, who, that's all you've ever wanted, is superiority by which to haunt me, well you can't have it, you're worthless to me, and maybe, no, but I hope you find your answer somewhere, but you've lost whatever was here searching, not much maybe, but worth love, real love, love more than the shared misery you mistake it for. Why do you, ah! I hate the sight of you! No, I don't, I, I hate how the sight of you feels in me, I guess, or I..." [[Glass->mstart8]] this jumble to reflect the dizzy, barrier reflexives losing the form of words to sphinx her behind the wall she leaned upon. See the sin slithering out of my skin. Drown under my own spluttered consumption, let me be whatever beast ruled. "I hate everything," she said at last. "Most of all myself." Briars in every pore.

Everything gained is loss. What is held bleeds as one wrings what matters most. We are all trapped in our desires' viscera, my skin, a mail impervious to x falling in snapped shapes. Totality, what terror springs upon its pilgrims, is it not best to seek a single perfect second and winter eternity there? And yet we fill up the faulty ongoing. Hunt my formerality and ravage me, dump my scarred corpse in the water, assume my guise veins, live my life as this lingering simulacrum in search of the apex moment before ultimate decay, ultimate disgrace, I am not revealed to be who possesses me. Trapped by my own momentum a molten enshaming. Shortfuse forcer bundled broken on the cliff I could not beg summits from besensed for the moment the sun pierces briefly the great and gray to bask the fallen silent forever in split warmth until unto rainy ages time consigns the corpse. She whose name I would not wish to whisper lest she overhear my bent spine snapping, her close passage is the light by which this longing to thrust forth shoots rootless shoots through ribcage mine to slipping freedom, some foreign unseen where could I congeal again new fleshlies no longer lying in yesteryear filths. Anchors forestalling my mind its free flight, I opened my mouth to choke on squalls, to taste what presumes not death. "I wish humans were an endless track of fireflies," she lowered into the spacious dark, "small experience bursts painting gem patterns in the night. Can you imagine, incandescence as we are it? For five nights could I flutter this eon's feeling only then to live again some next eon's enchanted, onward to whatever next always as the same soul but never as the same stuck, grow and grow unfinitude discontinuously linear extenders, simply bloom, wither, die, bloom, wither, live. Emotional polyvalences assumed, sloughed; bodies learned, forgotten. Others would change with our changing, but you would trace each trail to every new form effortlessly, forever familiars cycling countless new agains, recognitions millennia separate in some fresh spring where all the lost is lost in the regaining of the immaculately reiterated which you greet like a lover, as a friend, for hundreds of times were they both, and once more all again in the start, the new. All the minuscule pieces that make up an individual would form seamlessly a selfsolving puzzle of what it meant and what it might still mean, what being will always still say, until, when we are forced to say goodbye, we grant what we never had to claim back all we have, all we… ah, maybe that's what I want to avoid, the hurting of all I want, just the lack of... but isn't there, isn't to keep, like to grasp at loves which weaken emaciates every embrace, we become lost, our waymarkers evaporate and the desert asserts itself alien on dulled horizons. You no longer know the road when the buildings about it collapse to reveal the trackless. You've been up high enough yeah to reach the empties, where it's, no wonder they breathe in new minds up there, the darkness accustoms you to stranger gradients. It's not that I wish I could never lose someone, because as firefly whirls we would, but that loss would never erase us, we would still feel a part of all of, all of... I watched them age, Emnin, my parents, saw them gray away from me, wrinkling with each new day we pretended routines, but routines are spirals, and you end up somewhere, somewhere you fray out to lose hold and loosen to the chaos. When we admit distance, whether or not we rolled out that expanse, the distance springs up within us, and we're stretched across a waste. Were we to cycle again to some start as every spiral slips us away, then might the helix canopy heavens above the fleeting. Where would we need to dwell in entwined courses? To what would pain amount were it so much smaller than us? We could let a scene bleed out and believe a body where we congeal... but do you know what I mean?" I nodded. She nodded back. My lips curled a commiserative grimace as her lips curled a graceful countenancing. We knew each other, and sometimes too we knew what each other meant. "Yeah, why's I like to say it to you is, and do you ever have this, why do we feel like we have to say everything perfect, isn't it equally poignant and true to trail out? Yet if they don't catch it, then you fear what leaks of their imperfect framings, when, ah, as long as this circle traces us back to ourselves..." In her echoing I reclined under so much [[undercurrent->mstart8]] darkness that no day could disturb this repose isolation. She leaned up to scratch the head I rested on her shins. "But this death we have to face, it isn't so bad, after all, that's what we were before this life, isn't that so much more peaceful? Think about all the suffering that wheeled by in the centuries before our births, then think of, in the midst of all that intensity, how little it mattered to our numbness. Nothing but honest emptiness. If that's what we have to return to, maybe I should just relax, let it come when it comes..." Peeling corpse slumping through unlit halls moaning, gnats gnawed the rotting flesh strips dangling, beckoned by a door chained shut I bent to stumble drones, do not force through, be where you are sealed, else might you speak your inexorable desiccation.

[[Lullaby->mstart8]] emerging through the floor: "I've only ever seen the one that's a, it's called a forest," she said in our last, "and the painting was really worn, canvas so frayed the details were smudged along rips, looked like a cyst, but there was in it uh, same magic misted through it as through dreams about places that longing translates, mystified and intoxicated by green flourishes of a lost vision, how wondrous would it be to leap through and range into whatever I could become so garlanded, and maybe whatever the continent was wasn't a beautiful thing, who's to judge the weight of the unreal, but the lingering phantom is precious precisely because the haunting heaves us harrowed in immersive loss of the unknowable. Wrestle shadows to miss the shading's touch, how wonderful it would be to feel a whole, alternate possibility… so sick of being confined in this Tower, even the ocean, how so poetic it is we only go upon it caged in boats, that's exactly who we are, people who are exactly up here, but I, don't you ever imagine it Emnin, don't you ever dream of racing through trees tasting blossoms on your tongue, can you imagine who you would be before a mountain? What if the winds threw you over the mountains? Howling through space, turquoise stars infinite gently dappling the land below, perhaps this skyward could accept our embrace as more than seamirror, dissipate us in its delear, guess through sparks mysterion more than this human baseness, we could, over a continent could we wander, truly wander..." "Used to my mother had this book had in it these illustrations where even without colors you could run your hand and maybe slip under the grooves, feel what it might be like to descend something more than just down, and adorning the images magisterial poems about groves and valleys and rivers, verse on the verge of what really was once pulling me into what I cannot contact as my mother read to me this place both the picture and a mind in it, guided by her voice to imaginations I had not yet been blessed to wild, emergent sensate electric over greengilt roams under steel blue blade kisscurves dovetailing a horizon, how I used to yearn frolicking in anything greengilt, can you imagine it, moving on something that is, of waking up and not having to face the reflective marine, but this greengilt, emerald to the touch holding up you and the sky sisters, siblings, expanse that neither sweeps nor submerges you so rest you in the brilliance assurance that this this world though you see it is isn't these two colors…" "Mm. I would've loved to have seen that book," one cheek shrunk on a fist lean. "You don't still have it?" "I don't have anything my mother had."

Hilt grin gossamer alluviates the tense tenuous to scream or kiss. Hidden inside his emotive as it brews, undefineds convecting about my aural tingling to ken, cannot quite, he shadowshifts to the lightless window. Mariena the other way reclines captured in from a beam tunneling through creaky the wooden beam. Shunted from both sears I speak, babbling into the black, until space unseams, drool floe of wall and tikrah spooling into my bubbling skin, slink back menaseh but slip into their swallowing foreboding, we watch shapeshear the hide to crystalline gleams puzzleboxing our source fractaline, Jaufr and Mariena rubies like blades. Sigh puncture: he relents as if his body breezed away. Cottony and coppery philter. Mariena emollient mulls the darksways to settle symbols. "Who woeworn are we on this earth to wield more?" Halfcried he to darkness. "Buckle [[loverslorn->mvitiate]] to surrender together?" She demurred. "Isn't this the [[victory->maffluxion]] we've been fighting for?"

"Humiliated yeah just out the door, like literally the second outside, swoosh, flooded into your skin the bareness of being, and how do you like smile off that, how do you look someone in the eye, go yeah hey we're real people let's have a conversation of concepts to conceptualize, how do you not swarm itchy on each inch until scratch bashful you barricade in a gutter, native at last?" Imeni. "Absolutely so, can't dream but that I'm [[ripped->minjury]] of semblance, cannot be seen ever. Just fathoming it, you know, the relief, makes you want to rip out every eyeball, slice off every ear, deskin everyone, oh gosh the sheer pure radiant joy of everyone without skin, just amazing perfect of universal acid [[dissolving->mdulled]] everything, and then you could -" "Ehyeh what are you on about Emnin?" "Oh, did I overgo? Sorry yes, humiliated in a gutter, let's dial back there." "No no, I overwent, I've never known a ledge not a leap, but you've gone to like dissolving skins in acid in like a single breath, can we take two or so to get there, or can you argue me down from the gutter line, like I thought I overwent but now I'm having to dial back, how's that fair? I'm supposed to enjoy you talking me back to reality, but you always dizzy it worse." "I thought we were kithing on the intensifier unique to us?" "Oh so now you're gonna guilt me the dial back too? That's my role too! You're stealing everything!" "Actually yeah I am guilting you the dial back, let's flounce ourselves beyond oblivion, we've only dissolved skins hey, let's get down to skulls too, so much bones and whatever beneath, I'll give that you." She smiled. How did I [[lose->mcherished]] that power?

Cannot you ever [[flinch->minjury]] from quest, entomb inside. Radiated ghost buries your perfected removal. Worship icon these nails scratch into the [[mud->mdulled]] before the rains, the swirling non genesis for afresh the fire. Creatures carefully apologies for the mistake, unbuilding better than entropy, therein justified the torment horror. Incarnated accidents heterodoxed to null. Focus vitality into imprinting erasure.

Exhaustion of events, inability to form presence in each one, increasingly anyone as they increase, contoured in creases of press and not press back, wrinkling in the rippling. Too much to sift, quilted in, wrinkled, wrinkled. Maintainer of composure, the composite. [[Dulled->mdulled]] and, briefly, before sleep, sensitive. Wrung worldmist wordless, no prayer, pumice skin. Eyeballs than the throat drier. Nod into expecteds, stifled persister. I am who you need to shut up and be along. No, I keep slipping, horror surges free of my bundled shut, [[eviscerates->minjury]] all truth, each [[cherished->mcherished]]...

Having found it in the place beneath the [[mess->minjury]] we made, [[returning->minjury]] it to her by the byways lately I had [[haunted->mscaryellows]], this cache hidden she caressed to open, revealing a gleam, that spark in her eyes which crackled our hearth.

Muddle muted to pure flow sickened to sludge in waste days junksweet. Quell of curious, bred to nerveless, ultimated in service, bleed me to wreckage useful. I want to be useful, but this [[vile->mvile]] contagious [[viscous->mviscous]]...

"Yeska, Volya, off of him you waster," Mylecz. "Better yourselves than this eh." Listlessly turning to see Volya clung to a whirling Doubo, Volya whirled off. Mylecz pulled him up. "What're you blasting on about?" Volya slapped Mylecz's hand off his shoulder. "Get off. We're doing a bit here." "You're scaring Doubo, you're hurting him, I mean look at him, he's panicked!" "Just the ship shimmies aye. Nobody's getting hurt." Vasya jumped on Doubo's shoulders, and they whirled, they crashed. Vasya flung off. "Five seconds!" Mojyi. "Boka, was barely four!" Volya turned toward them. "Listen to him!" Mylecz. "He's convulsing with panic, probably thinks he's verging the end there." "He's thinking in ways we can't even fathom hey," Volya poured himself rum. "What words would he even think with? How are we to express his abyss?" "What are you talking about? Look at him, he's terrified!" "Terrified is the most alive, as they should say. Personally, I think he loves it." "You know that's not true!" "Who knows what's not true?" Vasya jumped on again. Vasya crashed into the table. "Seven seconds!" Mojyi. "Baelu Vasya, you [[broke->mbroke2]] my mug!" Avacz. "So my spine tells me," Vaysa rolled off the table. Avacz scowled, rubbing the dark stains fresh trickling through his shirt. Vasya leaned his head against the counter. "You're lucky you didn't break, yego," Avacz. "Is that not what this is?" "Not to the extent you should be, kyauska." "Be a better [[story->mstory]] if it was."

Morning sheets frigidness clung to me [[clammy->mskins]], how so wetted my demeanor was in this cling. I an incarceration of ghosts unfreeable. Mausoleums entombing bitter icons of a forever concurrent past marred my features in a frown midnight rocking, halter cleave crushing the chest claim me. Muttering curses to myself. The teasteeps coated my teeth like filth. Still, still, still, what is worse than waiting for what has already happened to resume not completing? I want to say so much locked deep in this vault that perhaps in the daymotes would melt instantly, deep earth vapors never meant for the sea spray. This unsaid cleanless needing forcing the hope to burst in a second of the invisible borders shattering in one unison tongue as everything I am and have to be collides to sink back to the stasisiation which imprisons longing inside its rarity. Our insides were never meant for their [[monstrosity->mvile]] mirror, is why they stare back at the [[beating->mtaiza]] begging them.

"Isn't that genius? Isn't that the lesson here?" Volya grinned to Mylecz, before turning to Vasya. "Shattering the mug isn't half bad. When we're down to sipping from our palms, we'll surely chat that up." "Could've been better, could've gotten my tongue wrapped around the ceiling and hung myself. Who's next?" "Nobody's next, this is a sick game," Mylecz. "You're all sick." "What's your obsession?" Volya. "Just think it's barbaric," palms up as if who couldn't possibly know. "What's barbaric, the anxieties you impute through condescension? How do you know Doubo's not tipped to bliss? Here we are in a touch not bending him to work aye, you lot love to pious them into a shrine like they need less to live. Let him have this game." "Your game, you mean! Listen to him, there's your, that's your argument!" "Nah, that's ecstasy that, trust me, I've heard the like. How do you know which noise is which? I thought you would be in on this, Mylecz. We're beautifying the brittle or so. But like you're bawling as if we just waltzed in in his [[skins->mskins]]." "But you're –" "I'm not nothing. You're as a sharp as a ball, so I'll kick your points. We're playing with the prison barb, as is our lot. We're all friends down here." "Nobody screams like that because of their friends!" "Sounds like you keep the wrong [[company->mlomia]]."

"What a thrill, what grandeur," Reikka. "I watched the whole thing through a window, and it was like I was there in the midst of all that feeling, ah, and the creature was so magnificent, so regal! It deserved better than us, I think, ought to have fought slayers of a grander age. An ancient being full of fascinating primordial life savaged by us! We shouldn't have stabbed it but framed it. And those parasites, kenkh! How amazing, how grotesque! They're all so horrible. They gave me one of the corpses, and I cut into it, and I've never seen something so blue! Nothing but blue organs, blue blood, blue bile, and then there's these parts that who could ever know what they're for or why they're jammed in such weird ways like some upside down maze. Goodness, how frightening it was, I loved soaking in all that emotion! I don't know how they did it, frankly, fighting it. I think I would have wept joyous to eternity had one of those [[charged->mtaiza]] me. What else could you do, with all those teeth?" How so much I wanted to be [[punched->minjury]]. "You were up there, Leiru, weren't you? How was it? It must have been terrifying. You must have felt so alive!" Stomach pressed on a smoothly shaped but rustcrusted support as hands flake the rough off shimmying six, seven, eight times your height from the ground, no roll under, let go, fall to the foam, relish the pleasure of falling without the pain of hitting, dwell between states cycling between each other, lost in ascendancy from earth to find it battered bettered, whetherless you cast light in such space, shedder amazer. "Ey Leiru?" "Hm?" No effort to conceal my disconnection. "Teminu? Did you see what happened to him?" "No." "You didn't see anything, like at all?" "No." "But weren't you up in the nest? How could you not see?" "I fell. I was busy. I wasn't looking." "You fell from the mast? Oh! I didn't know!" Reikka surely seeing me somewhere on the ceiling. "High above, at the nudge of the jegu, down low? My! That must have been exhilarating! Tumble stumble wibbly wobbly all spill splash splish crash splotch ash, ah, amazing!" I wish I were empty, things could resound here without my ever noticing, but I am forced to be definite, and so here it is, my bitterness, my loathing. Because I am here I bristle. But what fury does you good against flies? They're all as aimlessly wandering as you, but she bothers me with it, forces me into words when I will not, why can she not simply hear the thumping shadow engines? "Surely you can tell us the -" "No."

Volya staggered out the seedy into my despair directly, arm around whose eyes were not where. "And so I say, if you're looking, I'll show you the rock to hit bottom hey." "Ey Volya! Found anything in there?" Jaufr balked. "Ah, Jaufr, speaking of huge tits." "You're an animal." "Yeah, absolutely. What, doesn't Mariena's got your big ideas, yeah? Dealing with the huge issues, tackling face first the most massive concepts you can get your hands on. Nah it's good, I get it, busy building up your mammaries to tower over the rest legs and see, same page mate." I raised some objection, but Volya knew too what I least liked hearing. "Ah and did you drag your doll here to witness your prowess, in debate I mean, ey Leiru, yeah hey, just because you're only used to sucking your thumb doesn't mean the rest of us must be so restricted. Oh, no one's told you? This how it is between us all, I'm sure something squirms down there to prove me. Quit your precious and own up. What's wrong with showing bodies the reverence they deserve?" He lolled his head to his left. "Am I right, eh, Evyi was it? I'm right, aren't I? You can say it. It won't make me vain, might work up some." What right did I have to rankle as I did? Impish blade smiles carving sick pleasures, was this the world, eyah! Music convulsed desperate to keep attached, but rifts in my franticness scattershot the notes as steamvents gushing noise, two ships sliding past each other in a narrow corridor, steel scraping steel making dark marks, and out from the water rose skinless goliaths horned and manyarmed, shambling colossi lurching closer each earthquake step, opening in unison their mouths to suck the sun's light, leaving nothing, leaving ourselves in a pit of our own puzzled, cold, bestial… indiscernible growling and a darkness rising in my throat submerging my brain in a gurgling ooze rapped my skull with suggestions to claw out Volya's eyes and shout into the sockets, it must be, must be that you're impossible in my feeling that I have to, have to believe is as real as the energy it conduits in indigo foam, you're wrong in your insipidity, you don't know me, who I can be, I believe I can, if I were real would I be so this way, but I'm not real, don't trace the clashes to a confluence, in the trackless unable to crossroads justify. Would I want to be held if I could want to be held? But say it then, you weasel, force past the held into the grunting disgusting, but why disgusting, what's wrong with it, what's wrong with me that makes it wrong, but what's right with them that makes it right, do they feel themselves actual, people to people being, do they awake to a correct and continue therefrom? Wilted wormbeing wishing this thing could move as they do, that's it, simply jealousy. No, and why are you arguing for him? Why not have your own opinion for once, you filth freak? And think of [[Imeni->mscaryellows]], in how we were, when we were, it was her and nothing but her I loved, is that so weird, so wrong? Yes, absolutely, because none of you exists in the form she needed, wanted, did she not say so? Why were you not who she needed you to be? What's wrong with you that you need her but not what she needs? Okay but unequal, sure, raw admiration, too much of it, yes, I bend beneath that sickle's judgment, but surely I loved her in the way one loves, too much and for a few wrong reasons, why then should they laugh at me for saying I knew her mystically, I believed in our, our aether, or, but did I, or if I did, so what, what's wrong with it, isn't it true we become more through the elevating otheralso? In love we transmute to angel our gaps. I know that sounds unbearably embarrassing, but we are unbearably embarrassing in our deepest parts, grounded anew as we converge to a territory, only paired with nearness are we a separation, roam no longer as we are placed within borders, then can we explore the river lines united: others bring something out of us by changing the apertures through which we express ourselves, and in the new dilation we feel different, think different, act anew with opening possibilities, and isn't that what I wanted more than anything, was to open into her possibility different, be heard how the words echoed your hollow in her heart? We remember a night not for what we said but for how we spoke. In how my mind opened I learned the places in myself that could love, gave her freely these fruits. Is that so wrong? Let simply what was wrong be wrong without killing me to a curse, I beg you, or I don't, I'm, maybe I deserve it, is it responsibility I'm shirking, or, but why can't I love her and not have to eat her like some demon, why am I wrong simply for being wrong? Well but I am willing to accept the hate I deserve for making her some intangible perfection, but she was still that, touchless, not everything must dissolve, I refused to enter skin where I did not belong, must I, or maybe certainly I must, that is why I have been built this way, ahah! Would the moon rupture forth from waterfall engulfing caverns to eclipse me? Sign the beauty like a canvas you desecrator appropriator, beauty culls us to owning, beauty is everything wrong with us, the impossible remove sends us hounding into its gaps with smudge names. Beauty is beauty, physical, beauty is the accident in which all purposes reside, you may have admired her, but she was beautiful to be admired, not the harsh stone sells you such a passion. Is not sex, that pathetic whatever [[punching->minjury]] in our skulls, some desperate physical pull to arrive beyond beauty's pale, marble motive motion, whether or not you actually lower to its consumption does not matter, because dilution of the pure essence into a possessable sustenance speaks all marked by its wretched wilting into the thirsting as gross as the rest, this kiss not a kinship kingship. I know that's not right, but it feels right, because this feels wrong. Maybe some people can love through some tangible equanimity, but in my cancerous bloat I regret each touch, I resent each feeling of a feeling. I'm not a real person, and so I can't follow through to real love, but why must such a worthless thing as sex be real love, why would anyone want this fetid copulation, what good is it to thrash together the damnation of some new soul? Sex between men and women should be banned, only men and men, women and women, myself and the void, then at least it would mean something. Embodied in these bodies weeping together this container violence. I refuse to be ensconced by whatever nature has stained affixed upon the surface of an elemental irreducible, and maybe sex would happen as it apparently must, as it destroys everything beautiful about you until you submit to degraded factual, worship your impurity lord, if you cannot force your conform you are some kind of horrendous failure beast to be whipped compliant, and ahaha of course I am not such a wretch, I am a totally functional perfect human creature beast, I love to have the intercourses, because it is in no way a humiliation that strips me of my hiddennesses, I would love to insert myself into exactly what I will never become ahaha, I am a demon made of flesh, I need to annihilate every soul I contact, I love to chew on veins like a human fucker, or eeahh, but no, or any of it we suffer would merely be the capitulation to our bodies' inability to be dreams, guilt of whatever decides these pointless and even are they proclivities is the base, whatever, but on it I built a love, approached a zenith, saw her inscribed in the sky, and I know that sounds stupid, it is stupid, but stupidity is the very act of being human, we inert our dynamics to material outcomes, and what more perfectly the paradigm than choosing another being bound to complete conjugal this entelechial birth, except how disgusting our maggot writhing we pretend does not secrete shame, this body I pretend to arraign is a flayed skin monster of grafted limbs gurgling unintelligibly in ornate temples against serenade liturgies, congenital abomination of cosmos creed, horror's contagion marring a masterwork, yet I yearned for an altering spirit which entwined our starways superliminal glimmer source so could I shed the whole thing precisely at the portal to love and kiss the veil, yes, kiss not a claiming, do not wish devour, starve in stabilization, I may not be a good person, but I am not a riptide, but what could I say to make this so, had I not drained her, had she not broken to tears before me, there crying in the corner stained with all my kiss not a claiming, in her actual presence it all crumbled to ash, everything I and the others built lay like ruins around one second of her touch, touch. Imeni, it's true, I'm sorry. I'm nothing more than Volya, I am also the more nothing, monster who feasts upon you, but maybe I could rip my face off, maybe it wouldn't be hard, in whatever dresses we derive, the slaughter. Face inscrutable blaze, mercury mirror melting me to confusion swirls. Volya had to be wrong, had to be, had to be, but gazing upwards towards a world resolving with him broke me to quivers beneath the moonlight. Conqueror nature against all my struggles to mean besides, and what had I even struggled free? In me there is simply subordination exultation of you are beautiful so let me nestle in your touchless love. Nothing worth keeping. Do not throw me into the constellations soaring overhead to learn the light's patterns, in space I will soundless founder. Crumbled beneath Volya and his blatancies, admit it, wasn't her oak swirls swimming with clearshine eyes that compelled me with inness, I swear it, but no one's listening, because they all know what you repress though you plead that it is not the curled hair cresting in bubbles beneath the shine of the sun as it roars past the rocks into the plummet mist waterfall, because what even was that but physical desire, a reflective of the struggle itself that you the desperate not to be caught to where we all must go hides though you are no better, no one is better Volya grinned, you know this, cannot reason wriggle from the truth of porcelain teeth coyly [[breaking->mtaiza]] the lips like surf, even that gray headband imitating circlets that made her seem a sylvan spirit descending to us in this cold and cramped, but it wasn't it, none of that was it, or she was beautiful, yes, but not in the danger of the word, but how can it not be, horrendous intentions stripping second when beauty is uttered, how can you like like this, but I did not want beauty I screamed to this woman I loved, because her beauty was a home, and a home is only ever for what's inside, by everything in my soul I knew this to be, which is, of course, the source of all this indecision, you liar, you know you're making excuses for the horrible inside you that desires to slather and own, you revulsion abysm, but it was, her spirit so cheerful and absolute I longed for, love beyond the lovely for the lovable, the raindrop smile rippling in snowbanked lakes beguiled because of the calm wit purling from it, the demure half wink at the end of a teasing line mattered because it was a way her face bent to contain her, her habit of looking down when others would instinctively gaze up mattered because of the profound testament it gave as to where she found her mind, and I, I love the way her lips tremble on a joke, glitters of the ancient ages illumine her gem eyes in quotes of glows long since rusted to ends, and if that's not true, it's how I feel, and it's not true only because nothing I have ever felt has truth, and I'm sorry for the ways I've fallen short of the belief, but you cannot force me into the opposite, because I never did, I never, I never, but she wanted you to, or, or what did she want, after all this time you're still not sure, because you are incapable of facing what must be done, of bowing before that beauty, stripping before it, holding back the tears, admitting monstrous, that's why you're a child, you never admit your monstrous, that's why you cannot ken the idiosyncratic sense Imeni corsaged, better way to imagine the world. Because I am mangled male growls the glares inside my brain, so there must be othering of some sort, you merely imagine a heaven to your hell. You are not what she is, so you moth to her. And why can't I, can't, cannot the, and ah, the muscles loosen, the mind clears, I let go, okay, say what you must, I defend nothing. I am who I am before you, judge me. I deserve it, and you yearn for it, so you howl inside my skull, so kill me then, please, you're right, this is the, the... I can't. Where did all the energy go? Whither this tempest wonders the rest. After all, the truth has already occurred, to whom are you arguing? Indemnify yourself to yourself? Typical male vanity, ahaha you wretch, you disgusting, you repulsive, you filth, you, but what even is a male, why do we lack whatever we feel a fe emanates, do you know, skeptic? Won't you let me rust as I reason I must and let my tomb say what lessons my skeleton seeps into this soil? I know I'm wrong. I am wrongness. Why then all this furor about sin? "Don't think about it too hard," Vasya pushed himself up from being flung, stretched, then tousled Mylecz's hair. "Thinking has never done a body good, I can promise you that."

Pulled my scarf tighter to seal me in the [[night->mnight2]] sea wind; gone the tumbling day, which way, which way? Resent oozed from the night like resin against my foreign violence. Sea silence harbors mysteries sullied by the solving's touch. Gentle wash. Atonal plastering across.

"I'd feel so much better if I believed I deserved to be hated," Jaufr. "Maybe that's the final heartache that awaits me, the true terminus into graying, admittance. In the interim, so barred, I deny. Within me is a right so cannot overwrite, and yet, yet, wouldn't it be so powerful a release Emnin, just to be awful? That's the drug they're on that makes the hurting less, they don't have to justify themselves to the agony writhe. They numb themselves complacent to however they shake out, whereas honesty harangues the [[palatial->mnight2]] to hell." "I dunno, I'd be more afraid of deserving to be liked. The responsibility, the..." "The what?" "Sorry, my soul just left my body. I can't keep the conversation." Nullified nods me into his glare jolt peaceful, deserved to be despised peacefully.

Shapelurch landed me on its violence. Beak gnashed to suck. Kicking and fist into flesh. Thrown into seachurn whitefoam wild. Grabbing its grab of me to stab stab with a [[knife->mknife]] miraculously still held. [[Thrown->mpick]] ten feet that felt like fifty to slap onto the deck before their [[bemused->mpain]]. [[Tentacle->mtentacle]] crash several yards behind, [[splinters->mslice]] shrapnel my legs. Ankleblood glistens sour in stale tea sun.

Grabbed the glint a pace littered apace and swung up to [[slice->mslice]] the leapt. Crashfold of [[skittery->mparasites]], gunksoaked nauseous instantly, heave not so dry the [[jellily->mtentacle]] slops. Cough from inside my brain. Nervous up to my knees to gauge the [[fray->mlance]]. Noise as just noise, color as dustdevils. Little of [[fluid->mloosen]] languished in corpses clumped stretching to ashfount.

Tentacle slapped in on Teminu. Jelly. [[Crouchcrawled->mparasites]] back in [[awe->mawe]] and cartilege.

Thrashed up into gap in which all encompassing is its mass, its dance, swaying contrapuntal until slipped into its swallow, no, velocity uncertainty, dizzy up afresh to lifepanic whirl to where it faced me suddenly beautiful, as if I understand, though none parse passes [[between->mbetween]] our pressurized regions conduit, though glance to glance shibboleth sealed us in so this is us, after all we have atwain. Grandeur, its unaffected, its insistence on [[violence->mcannon]]. Purity of mission must adopt so that I might be worthy of such awe. Purity of direction unto vision, repulsive, its pulsive reproduction. Impurity of all action pleural in strike a match, eternity glimpsed and lost. Kill this creature incapable of other insofar as I other it killable. Yes, we share this sin. Attacks, and I attack.

Energetic tingly brushjoy of reality draining from every [[living->mawe]] around you, affirmation to soothe [[alones->mropework]] more you thrust your [[vicious->mbetween]] [[persist->mcry]].

Certain nerve is when electrified oversurges other senses, sizzled narrowed alively a cannot conduit elsegod, feeling that every other feeling feels, not to say deeper, but somehow too specific to transmute general into the welter [[phantom->mnight2]] flux, an emotion you recognize has been the bass, not because it is a part of each, but because it cannot go away, scar tissue where once a nerve was still in the storm sometimes electrified. How else would we be human but so harrowed?

Hungswing convected the mull. Was it the opposite, or the same, or the converse, or some combination, her in her kasaya's wavering? "Of whom do you amalgamate to this night that needs us to blend its phantoms to wine?" She zephyrs the undulate. I cannot answer, but my face betrays a question. "Ah, you are awoken to the poem, are you, asking it of the nightsea? You wish to hear the rest, and certainly, it must be so. I will not abandon you in the fragments after music culls. You must, you must, though, you must promise me you will not interrupt, or I will stop. You break what you interpolate, you must always remember this, you interpolate your brokens, so no interruptions, you must promise me that –" "I promise." Meluoi gleamed strangely sapphire under the bittersweet. Acceptance tinged her recitation, and I closed myself into the clear purl. What thoughts could there be but the words inscribed upon my mind, behind my eyelids did the lines flow, flow, and in the music the note arrived, my chest expanded with my breath to greet it, line after line unrolling like memory like in the breeze a flag, until strangely warped the words anew: (align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Gravities of city densities Accumulating of noise alloys Piled each atop another higher, Higher, ever high ascending unto the sunstruck, embattle We bless with sacrifices to cleanse us once this night more, Not yet call us, pall us, crawling strange to the estrangening Genesis distension, the will to exinsist perseucyst Tesserracts amid the stonework woven Sealing tessellations honeycombing Polymorphic into impanoptic enstigmatic Jumbled puzzles juttered in clash polyphonies of Chains of choices casting chance's die we, Or soon we, shall we, might we in our might Suppose upon the purpose blizzard Woken forces roving, summoned, hunting, Gash prayers upon the carnage core melodic, The world as it is directed to is."] Meluoi softened herself open. "Where have you gone?" "It ends? Is that the, whole?" "No, no," Meluoi waved her hand. "That's just the first koa, but what do you think? What now is it like to be you?" "What's a koa?" "Sections. The poem emerges thrice. What do you think of the first?" "Do you know the other koa?" "Yes, yes, of course. I was going to tell the others to your, uh, but vaela namari, nevertheless there is this there is, and did you, but did, what is it you are asking of me?" Desperate heat, that yearning touch on a scalding refusal... I nodded through the weight. "Can I hear more?" Letting her explore my expression, paw through it, trying not to flinch. Her jaw lapped subtly. "What should all this be were we to fall [[silent->msing]]?" She leaned forward into a darkness that began to swell.

"I um, heard your uh," I. "Earlier, I mean, belowdecks, I eeiah..." "Did you? Actually, yes, you were the one on the floor, weren't you? You alright? You looked..." "I survive," clutched my arm. "Were we all so lucky," she gripped the railing and stared into... Clutch it close though the warming felt blunts the nerves. I stared out with her over the lolled sound trying to prefigure into her answer. Calcified chest needles. "Are, are you alright?" I. "I am many things in suspension," she entwined moonlight between her dreamspell gestures. "I trust you also store as many secrets in your survival." Because I didn't know what to say I said what I didn't know how to say. "I liked your poem." "Did you?" "I did." I stared at the book, sedated calamity, elongated abominations steeped in bloodless flesh gurgling vocality, battering the cavernous endless where I do not echo. Interlocking indecipherables clinked like muted chains as I flipped amber pages, gnawing distortion eating frayed edges… "Do you," over her shoulder to me, "speak the language?" "No, I, no, I'm not, but, my mother, she used to..." "Mm," she nodded to the sea. "Yes, but you understood. You heard it whisper, the spirit that dwells in texts, Bravi djijyanna, the aimed power. Makeiti, getyeph damoi dyo, it was in you, touched you, lit you in a sensual candle leading through foreign soulways, gkeczemsze nemestua levekh eszheni, you speak a poem without knowing it, because you know it in there, somewhere. Enchanted of the poem in tatters, violence speaks to what you may have also suppressed, and what is it that lurks in a sailor speaking poems to the moon? Atop which currents do we sway?" Her words wandered on the wind back to her while chilling me in their little breeze waywards. "So had I hoped for such a connection, but we never know the nothing until nothing is, and how could I have, standing there blotted out by all that blankness, been more than the moment, perceived the power in its presiding... but even though all this is for them, I, is it wrong to wish... and imagine you sing for those who hate songs, do you not feel then in your throat the wrongness of song? Yet you too awed at what shimmered above you eternal... the Literature sustains itself through any gap so long as the gap is willing to be empty... objects dilute, you're elsewhere, systems are tricked, you're alive and not you, from every vista do you view our shared, human sublime glimpsing itself, and you must feel it, if you are awake, if you listen, the pure selfother. We have let the dreams slip this nightstill. How is there no more when there is thus yet, object shells scattered on no longer a sea, no more the need but merely its seed, the worldless wordless. "This dream I tried to give, but it was destroyed irrevocably, unalterably, the koa gone, and yet I cannot that believe, no destruction possible for so grand a theme survivor of death centuries, remained generative of equally potent our poised upon the undulate colossus..." "What's a koa?" She smiled to answer how the night sparkled her crackle of teethgleam mystery. Gently breathed to taste the sweet and salt. "The poem I told to you, did you believe it merely so? No, you heard it echo how your mother used to believe, and in that dwelling we hear again eternity rolling thunder over our shivers fibrous elegance delicate to pattern. They have torn but one of its lives, but a measure of its endless, they cannot kill the spirit that endures ever unto anew, and so can I, so can I [[sing->msing]] to you." Eminence assumptive dahlia of lodestar swells cyclone beautiful tragic she sewn into the circulature spoke through tunnels songs amplified to wavelight faerie the esperial seancean sea a sun as hung over ancient ages, the lands that spanned beneath, togetherness with all fallen in a fulcrum placid.

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Erasure paused in a diamond gleam gleans Last thought strands upon the brink of dreams, Blank across this brittle vision welded Sting vibrations [[retroepicentered->mretroepicentered]] In abandon screams, acid awareness Injecting every suffering its superpositive overwrite, Scarsveils forever of the designed to submiss, Every once to this wanting this landless Straying [[dazes->mdazes]] to coagulate forsakens [[planetizeds->mplanetizeds]]..."]

Black against the dark, [[Mariena->mmariena]]. Dreamcatcher ringling in the flowless gulch lone obelisk splitting the starwinds on a knifepoint [[nullfixed->mnullfixed]] causal interrupt to flux permanence as ribbony venom oozed from her lips, tic of weakness in the mountain as it bulged, ceremonial retain of the fulminating, surge earsplitting from brittle earth crimson and cry, drowner if only were they audible. Held us too much in a name, frozen in her wake to appear in her wake frozen. Never before in a frame without its softer [[glow->mglow]] Kaiya, never in a world not hers, didn't recognize this one not hers. I couldn't, then on my knees, her inside each of my teeth and arteries ripping them together. Innocent days, barely could I remember the [[patches->mpatches]] sewn in milkshroud sensations of a face no more my own than this one as together we stream of images all worldless. In time in pity she would pretend to forget distance, in mutual [[maidensnow->mmaidensnow]] free as the reverse glare to white enveloping. I wish I could say I let her go with more a smile, but isn't that what hurts you hypocrite, that you let her go, you let her go. Isn't that the problem. Isn't that why. I couldn't interrupt, not when it was me, Mariena would know it, would know me, hadn't she always had that look, even back [[when->mwhen]].

The alley held me since my [[tears->mtears]] matched it. I was no good at overhand knots, and now everyone knew. What good could I ever be on a ship if I couldn't rushing bend? There was no point in sailing if you couldn't rushing bend, and if you can't sail, then, then you have to find a way to die in this stillness, and I would have to go up to the gardens and apprentice, spend my days swatting pests off plants, lost in a terminal glaze, feeling the stale warmth stickling my skin as my back groans from ever bending, and worse too the way they would know me as one who had wanted the sea, the outside need is written in our faces as sinmarks. I could not face my father like this, no, don't look at these hands! I should run, never return home, never return to the teaching, I, I'm tired of this skill based living, I don't want to have anything precious to fight for, I cannot, I am not. All them watching, in whispers would they know me, [[irrepressible->msunburst]] – "Emnin, there you are," Kaiya. "You alright? I've been after you the day." Sniffled an obvious no. "Mojyi's pent wrong lah, never grant him the listen. Everyone knows overhanders are the hardest, got negative marks myself, as most. It's super hard." Years by the time I realized she had lied, how wonderful it is for someone to care enough to lie to you. Someone willing to destroy reality for you. Why had I not learned from her? What lie had I told her when she knew the truth? What had I done but, the rope threading through my hands, the same feeling as that overhand knot, that same hairy coarseness, and the snap, the. Everything she had done for me had lowered her there to die. Tears and vomit vied in the inward churning maelstrom, uncertain which might be flung out the victor. I blanched in grim expectation of either.

"Go on then, Leiru," Leiska. "Spoil our ears with it, out with it!" "I, I mean, it's just –" "He's got nothing," Mazyu. "The kid's hopeless without Jaufrei." "Lesser of the pair, definitely," nodded Kostiye. Leiska looked to agree but remained himself. "Ah, but, you don't –" "What don't we now?" Leiska. "You keep blabbing that but never to a point. What don't we get? Conned they are, the shiptrials, eh, by whom, to what end? You don't know. You've not evidence." "But, the, the stevedores –" "What about stevedores?" Mazyu. "My cousin's a stevedore. You saying he's bent?" "I'm not saying anything!" I cried. "Here we go," Leiska laughed. "Snap your femurs to honesty, beggar." Indignation and a mortal fear of being misunderstood clogged. What rippled in my head muddled in my throat, snide scowls hawkish watched as none of it made sense, sputtering failed what lay so clear when others said it, that it was, how they, the smugglers and their ivaszi, in the Myemi who lazed on the Docks; wrapped in two, you might get the book, wrapped in three, they will never look; the crumbling front put forward to suggest that here might there be what there is no power to enact, the tacit admission which proves the principle inviolable, we do not want these vials which we must, must have, cross invective loosely plastered over a hither wink to the encroaching lifetime of psychedelic paresthesetic synesthesia leading to some better nowhere, nether vault of bubbling purples thickening into fumes clouding a viscous conscience bridled by cynicism so [[unsoothing->mtears]] that whether my blood beats through a vein or a rill still will I welling up be too tightly cagemouth [[gossamer->mviolets]] ossificatory to lethargy spreading through the choked land dry whose deplenary deplantation of means throughthroated though together we might bide its obvious, whisper it, nonexistence, it must be, how else can I never act into Jaufr's rippling alive awakeness in this slickening deluge of soilless soulless in which cannot belieds breathe, alike lumped in figures too figurative to clamber the malaise fortresses stormwalls into the impregnable solitude, no hint of anything but the banal noise of bickering nonlisteners gnashing, dissociative evocations of silted bespokens so that any blood spilled storming the haze spills into itself and is there forgotten derided as had Jaufr poised upon the gallows strained for the liberation of these strangers arrested to pretend the law for some more months yet been reduced to the moment, his strained thus to symbol all too familiar, we can never quite escape, with each footfall a horizon fleeting, rush of a charged word chains, and we clatter after the kingship, cudgel into this sense, and as he claims the [[sunburst->msunburst]] a sign, I reduced to dust signifiers with no energy but the wasting stood slightedly no more than the dregs of hopes, ask no more. "Leave him alone ehh," Kaiya. "Who cares he can't argue the idea? Since when do we think ourselves in syllogisms?" Not the rescue but the understanding, possession of a second in which I was not stuck in my alone.

Cadence is a part of the room, moves you along its shuffle clingdom, into her I fell and she held me up, she laureled my shoulder with a hand, we swung, swung, heavy lead sang the corner man creaking. Slight facial crease of a friend returning to a friend for the space of a special moment, upon the knacking ground sound we turned to new gravities grown into each other's ease. More than a thousand moments brought our steps in turn, in time, she knew me, she led, she knew exactly where I would follow. Dim [[starlight->mstarlight]] of a slumped deathbed chandelier split her face into three triangles lighter, arresting, dim into which I lingered, lowered, removed into what a familiar face is, everything but the now. Sleight movements in her confidence pulls moored me into her hidden play away from the rest of the room's widening, and she bloomed dusks in her lip discs drawing me in its asymmetric rise. Of the endless going sang the old man, troubled cuts crackled on our silent polyphony prowling into remembered nights when I met her in her humor queen of every sense supreme to this trembling body trying to mirror sunk in the shade she shed serene, the sweetness spark shocking. Spilling onto me she smiled. I wanted nothing, nothing, but to swing, swing, to meet her as she swept me on. Shadows shattered the [[illusion->millusion]] that I would ever as she swung to a separate partner and I swung to mine. I did not look back, she, I know she did not.

Mariena [[sniffled->mtears]]. I forced myself and placed my hand on the rail as if it was her shoulder. Off the bow in the onrushing breeze we drowned in the cold isosolve seeking the source we both... "Don't say it's alright. Never say that to me, ever." I nodded. "I won't." Jaufr's line. "I hated it, because it's never alright. You do not console someone when it's alright. You console someone when they've broken in a way they'll never [[reshape->millusion]], and they know it, they… sympathy hasn't turned the blood to rain. When the world becomes worse, it is not alright, it won't be, not for me. I will one day find peace, I hope, I, I know I must, will survive this, but this is now a hole in me that will never mend, in her name I will never be alright. Without, without Kaiya, it's all, less." I understand wished to burst from me, but wasn't that just as wrong. There was nothing I, me, could say. Her pain was so locked away in things that were never mine to discuss that I intravened extraneous curse, but still in presence laden, again the [[worsening->msunburst]] as I refused my [[redaction->mredaction]], why, you worm, will you not burrow...

How Kaiya had spoken in the soft loss glow. I can't hear her in the candelabra grief. I can't breathe without choking on her unthere. Gaps cataract between blinks to fevershade phantasms slicing my eyelids open to gapsglare. Solid these fingers why when they held what the air took? How can she be gone when, and in my struggle is the no more now, what is the cause of a cauterized persistence, where does all the good go, who steals it, is it me, is it me who let her down into the death? I let her down. Punch me in the jaw until I [[puddle->mtears]]. Kaiya, how, when, when! What do you mean she won't be there next time, what is a next time without a Kaiya to make it so? Muscle spasms in my right thigh intensify until my eyes roll back in a deathly gasp. Depicted in the better image a brazen day glaziers we glowed slow halos of voluminous hours. Pepped fire plunks us to slam down enough mugs to feel the warmth warp the world ours. When you're in the mode so much you cannot stop running. Stumblespeeding down streets lined with newly opened answers, catalyzed by each crash through to further swing the chandelier chatter. She asked me the questions I couldn't bring myself to be honest about with such grace and promise that I was honest about them, at least dream honest, starring the tongue with sylph truths. I slid along her ideas to unveil her cares, her gently listening lit in me the fire I always wanted to consume me corporeal [[violets->mviolets]], and isn't that how things can be, can't they, when you just are who you both can be in a brilliance that fevers the night a nocturne? None months melted the myriad to the pyramid momentous like having lived in them. Emptiness illustrating stranger swells. Plodding out of a voyage of yet more nothing and the yet more's drain to dance with her in a delirious continuity of all the acid beauties aging buries. To her I spoke, and she spoke new mes. With her voice quelled, my voice quiets. Speech spluthering through hollows a lisp of the impossibles. Under blankets you lose track of your [[constellations'->mstarlight]] heat, so unfurled to frigid space the sparkles pale, the serene solemns tombine. Bare you understand dress. Rosethorns pricking in the shadow always missing marked our Kaiyas others could not know, and this mutual need and ignorance, was there a way to... here in my unhelp blared the psychic din drowning routes, chained to the storm as it shatters and stirs, the unslaking cold drilling to the bone a frozen truth malignantly tumorous across the pallid broken. I was nobody to soothe somebody's loss, what did I mean to her in this gulf growing? I wanted to hug her until our tears tore us apart, but I felt a buzz in my fingers raw, how nauseous would it be to touch, be touched... these fingers that let her go. How did Kaiya ever do it? How had she forded what to ford would condemn me, this need that condemns my silence? Jaufr, brackish purple silhouette in the sunken depths, howled a watersong. Boltsnap to my knees banging my head on the rails on the way down, slip off the ship into the sea and drown, follow Kaiya, Jaufr, Marko, Nejani, Kaiya, Jaufr, everyone I had ever met, meet my ancestors, swollen bodies bursting with ocean in the moonswell tides of the deep, ancestors hair haloed in undulation, bowed shrift unto the rift name absolving fragments in the bleary moanjet their bloated gullets unswallow like time, inexorable enormity apologia for the transgress terminus. Sunburst palpitations, pulse and pulses pummeling, heart testifying the strength of its shackled blastslipping to bullet out from this slime chest bloodgush freedom where to writhe and wither before my shock, shocked at its own escape, helpless in the vastness, casting back a last glance to terrified majestic gloat as I sunk to my knees clutching the absence...

Kaiya and I in the morning cool beauty saying nothing like nothing [[divided->msunburst]] us. She leaned against me like I was a part of her world. I could not stop thinking of what today I could do for her to continue the [[illusion->millusion]]. At [[twilight->mstarlight]] went to her room with kezemni fresh, knocked, and no one answered. Left it by the door. "Was just kazemni there in the hall, like someone littered it there lor, completely fresh and whole it was, what interminable wasters some are eh?" Kaiya. "You just left food at her door? Like an offering to an idol? Had some prayers that needed to be answered, I imagine?" Tasyumi.

Soughs speech whilst we stood there grasping weakly the rail gazing into the inclement. Mariena's ringlets of a whisperwoven: "[[Kaiya->mkaiya4]] was, she was, she was as a sister to me, was my sister, blood such an empty thing lah, so little I feel coursing inside... she's my sibling only; Mazyu to their deaths a challenge sterned himself sallowing uncle or the like, when alone so many nights sat inside for, so long, deeper than the feel that broadened to unfill it, never echo emergent, no know why, maybe felt most me when alone eh as loneliness bred me, nurtured me, taught me. [[Loneliness->mloneliness]] entrenched becomes something else, the mutedness of bodies. That's where I'd still submit subject be were it not for she, silence in my sinews nestled had not Kaiya drawn me out well, been there when the hollow voices amplified, somehow she would know when I started to whisperkiss creaks in the tiles, she would come round, knock, knocked out of the reverie, forced to, she'd convince me out was an in, just the two of us wherever we were secret, clambered up on rooftops, tightwalking narrow boards from roof to roof, scaling risers, living for the thrill of it, the thrill of it, Leiru, can you imagine what that meant, we'd watch as streetlamps flicked on, or wouldn't flick on, as people passed under them increasingly drunk, we'd talk the world round til we surprised ourselves awake to a dawn, last little yesternight shivers intoning the sense of it, the strange of it, vitality in the evaporation purer in the lifetimes we spent up there, the times that were life, what little I've been given to live said in the thoughts only she shared, only she thought them through me… without her half my brain has gone, like I'm fizzling fragments to the dimming sea, splash after splash blackens shush… have you ever looked at someone, Leiru, and just been happy to know you'll see them again? I, and it, fjelske! It doesn't feel real, it's not, it is the unreality, been rendered virtual without her grounding, or I don't know the real way to phrase it."

Chilled semishiver rustling into the rails in the lean to infinity invisible composed of one more sigh. "Anything but the cold I have learned was siphoned from her equanimity. Anyone I have tried to be I parsed vatic from her hadiths. Whoever she was, I saw I could be, in each moment, each version of her she appeared. Who am I supposed to be, if not an envyslicked approximate of her goodness? She, and it's a million little things is why each example feels so ridiculous writhegawping out of water, but like once we got up to the courts to paw some volleys, this was the period where she had, you know, she was a bit desolate herself, was struggling with her weight a bit, and I had, or thought I had, bliss of being the one making the effort to nurture her through the days, and I tried, absolute yego as I am ah, thought it would be good for her to come and play with us, but it's sweltering ruthless out on them, the courts, they're just in the place where the heat collects, had she to unbundle a bit to play, had to tieback also, which made her seem really uncomfortable with her appearance, like it made super obvious the depth her depression sagged those months, but she did it with a smile, like she was willing to indignify a bit to keep up the [[company->mcompany]], sweating profusely and failing to play out to par, she did it for us, reduced herself to reality open to judgment, and I thought that the most beautiful, I, and I tried so often to replicate that, cast aside my evasives to strive creation of honest connection infinitely precious for being the only one possible, but what, what even is possible anymore, where shall I, in what, how have here found myself in consciousness pressurized against this suction ah, swollen noiseless encasing you in a cache connection where time no ticks in the union unneedsayable my dream of her, her incollapse knowns where my eyes lidded, this is where the gap is, is I feel this raw chafe cancerpulsing in grief, but I know behind it lies vaster abysses, years uncountably of mornings as memory reincisions... remember we were in the vents of the coal riser, up to the sixth landing we crawled or so, were climbing rungs to the next, getting kinda near the top, but I misfooted and fell, scrabbling everywhere and hitting my head twice, and whoosh, out I came from the opening on the sixth, flying, skidded off the ground, bump, bump, sliding, rammed straight into the wall true as, couldn't breathe yeah, whitehot jolts in my legs and back, that queasy feeling of maybe broken, but all I could hear was Kaiya yelling, congratulations, it's a girl! I laughed, I was super sore, but it didn't matter because I was laughing so hard, I was laughing so hard it hurt, but then that just made me laugh harder, and then how ridiculous that was made me laugh even harder, and, well…" cracked a wisp of cheer. "But that was Kaiya for you. I'd go through all that pain again just to hear her say it one more time, for the assurance this estrangedness could still form a joyful memory."

Shivered as speech seeped up from my lungs like icicles daggering my mouthdark. "I had been out with, well. It seems so long ago now, those things, these feelings, like this loss adds to an age my throat rings. What am I, of any of it, now? I watched her go, I let her go, I... "I had been out with, with him, you know, sorry, um, but... we were coursing to his usual drives. Since living is violence, they came to their blows, but I fled. They started fighting, and I watched him go down, and I, it was like in that moment I let him go. I know it's awful, but why shouldn't I hate fights, most of all what they mean, why is it a weakness not to want strength, isn't there purpose in learning to buckle, and is it that we are all so lonely that we surge into the equal and opposite barrier as if there we are sanctified, when isn't so that any survivor will tell you the dead are more precious, but I uh, but I, and [[Kaiya->mkaiya4]], she, she chased after me out into the streets, she sheltered my tears, and I remember looking up at her and thinking how many times had I relied on this, how many times would I rely on this? Goodness that appears when you thirst for it like a slimebasin manymouth defies everything, there is nothing you can say about the person who chases you out into the streets but that they remind you of how grotesque you are for having that wish fulfilled, and I wanted it, why else had I lingered just so, moved in just the right motions for her to notice? I used to do so many favors for her, not to earn her kindness, but because I was so deeply ashamed, I felt like I had this guilt that I was trying to bribe into silence, stealing so much of her emotional energy again and again, when I, and let's be austere, I accept it, when I'm not worth such care, and because no one should care for you; no one, not one, is responsible for helping you out of your own snot, but there she was, pulling, I am a jackal just to think of it! If they give you care, let it be like rain on burning skin, but they do not owe you, they never owe you, which is why for years I mothed to her needs thirsting to somehow break even, but each new demand I made made that more impossible, humiliated totally and entirely as I called her out into the night that time, as so many others, I had the sin of both being below the clouds as the penitent, how filthy, how, how, and there's just, oh why do I have to, what's the point in explaining things? That she was there, that was the explanation, and without her it doesn't make sense, I can't make sense of it, not without her to solve it. All these unfinished feelings! And now she's dead! Because of, of me! I lowered her into danger, I told her to do it, her blood is on my [[selfishness->mredaction]], because I was so, so concerned about Imeni, who, who, and that's also, but, ahh, ehhah, I no, it's, so thoroughly this, this, gods I can't, how could I? But don't you see I'm not helping you, this, any, I was never any good with anything, and I'm hurting you here too, I'm sorry, I don't even know what this story should do, why I'm telling you it, and I'm sorry, Mariena, I'm sorry that Kaiya is gone, I'm sorry that my being here is only a reminder of what a huge loss losing Kaiya is, I'm sorry for trying, I'm sorry that all I know how to do is apologize as if my feelings have anything to do with anything, but that, and she's gone, she's gone, and I, I don't know what to do, to think, to say, to be, and it's my fault, at least partially, I could have saved, I should have noticed the danger she was, I put her in, I should have taken literally five seconds to think about her wellbeing in that situation, when, and after all that, all she had done for me, for you, for everyone! I'm sorry I'm, I'm just so sorry, I'm sorry for everything, I'm so, ahh!" Began to weep in her arms, someone just punch me, let unconsciousness render the decorum I cannot. Kaiya dwindled in blue glass I seethed to shatter, and a fever dreamed that Mariena in revulsion tossed me from the ship, that I sank back through fault years proceeding along a vulgar road to the open domeless temple where surrounded by bloated ancients as seas darkened the last suntouches her bloomless corpse wavering would in one elegant move extend its oscillating tendrils seen even through eyelids across the fathoms and grab my waist and pull me into the blinding shadow dawn, and Mariena in the unconnected above would weep by herself for beautiful Kaiya louder than the screams I would bleed were only they audible... Mariena pulled her lips into a simulacrum smile. "Don't let go of it. Don't let go. Fall into it. People would be better if they cried to each other, hneh, ah, that's Kaiya's line, or, that was Kaiya's line."

"You've got to see this," [[Kaiya->mkaiya4]] enthused. "I've caught it in an alley as just growing there, like by itself lah, as if that is a thing that's done. I'll show you, come, come!" "To an alley?" I. "Like right now?" "Of course an alley, otherwise it would be known." Imeni. "There's the thought, alleys are for secrets, and most secrets are best shared." Kaiya. "I don't know that that's true." I. "Just come on will you!" "You're just digging in alleys at this hour?" As I'm tugged outdoors. "Yeah ehh just see." Brought into the spansive echoness, led through its inarticulate veins drippy with grays, twisted into its contusive braised dizzies, until through coldspar and starcull parse gelled into a litterly lane leading to ends where burst in blush color violets spray gentle removed from all possibility, eternal endurance unto this bloom power. Blinked: behind eyelids still brillianced. Imeni knelt up to it. unable to touch it, but bathed her face the hue, saw her expression deepened by this reflection in nights when wistful she shunned other vulbs to treasure this imaginative immaculate [[cherished->mcherished2]] beneath concretes. "I, wow, it's..." Imeni. "I told you you had to see it lah." Kaiya. "In, in the alleys..." I. "Where else would they be where we could find them?" "Dreams, I should think." "Well yeah aye, getting to dally with a graceful like me must be dreaming!" Imeni laughed, kissed Kaiya on the cheek. "Yes, you're the flower. Ta sharing your violets with us."

Is there a grief before death nonselfish? Liberated from our wails unlistening, what gnashes thence, the very unlisten? Because for all we noble our tears that Kaiya, magisterial, nonfurther endures, the hole is inside us, we bear the absence, weeping Kaiya in how much she was when we shared, because of Kaiya the unshareable, are they not to me as these [[breezes->mstart9]]? No, because they generated the shareables, and the gap of generating pertains. No, but there's got to be an additional, like, isn't it just the joy of her existence in itself and inexplicable, the way we treasure tea, its every part yes insofar as it secures the essence, yet tea is of course your example, something you consume, you consumed her, you destroyed her, found a cause worth her life and threw her at it thoughtless, you killed her, you killed Kaiya, no, but that's not, it is true, you did it, okay, okay, yes I, okay, but is there a grief before death nonselfish? How do I mourn her outside of selfrecrimination spirals? How do I mourn Kaiya in pure intent and method? But who does? Isn't the point of our mourning that Kaiya dies a part of us, the legacy of her belonging to our living unique in each imprint that cannot with her body be cast into storm evulges grief a demand to become less whole, to authentice the tragedy shared, love that endures through meaning eventide? Element of existent, her inside, from which me inextricable. I cannot speak of Kaiya without speaking of who she was to me, how eviscerated each unique we fractal relic her fraught theme, the, no, you cannot though, must speak only of Kaiya, annihilate yourself from all memories, brutalize your being blankness before her imperfect magics. How though? It's easy to say that, but it's hard to feel the loss of Kaiya except inside me, how do I ghost myself into purity loss of her outline without then selfishly appropriating? Reveries atop consistently less her once until Kaiya the doll dances our emotions, disgusting. But I miss her, and that's, somehow I need to express it, and I admit I should find a way that doesn't involve I, but then what, miss her? Just that: miss her. She is missing, like rooms their echoings. Silhouette scythed from possible. But is that what she would want? What good to Kaiya elemental a name? Well what good is your sniveling ashamed? What could she gain equivalent to the loss exude? Hypocrite of hypocrites, considering what good you could do Kaiya, having killed her. Drown yourself. But she, she wouldn't want that, even if, volcanic ire to hate me sure, I accept and I beg any penance to bear her desire's reciprocal cull, but Kaiya would not want any of this, but what can I give her, isn't the point that I can never again give her anything? Totality of my interacted immutably sealed just like her voice. Kaiya doesn't want anything of you, there is no you, redact yourself. Kaiya wanted, you were found wanting, in that negativity persist, if you insist such a sin.

In that desires are contingent can we repulse them from the standpoint of truth, but insofar as the truth proves contingent we are enmeshed in desire. How to escape what would also sieve us? Then the meta redounding of is not escape desire, why should we not desire ourselves sieved in desireless assumptively pure, a thousand pittering little thoughts that slowly drain all desire to speak of such words. Because maybe the greatest desire is nonhumiliated in the [[associative->mdiffrasion]] morass angelic [[exterminus->mexterminusalinity]].

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Noncausations searsensing the semblance petals cinders, Sundered recollects blurring burning [[Grave->mgrave]] nativity resigned to dearths [[entombodied->mkindentityingness]], Groveling mud clawing at the alien sun Desiccating caking to its purpose earth, Yesterdaze I lay in russets to sepia Sylvan peace in motion, sculptural breath, Soundscapes aftersoul contiguous with our preformed zen..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Erasing into the taste this long and longing journey Cackling in marshes footfall sucking Ghost tongue flickers a charmless vex, Warmed free in vibrant fibers canopies loom [[Shadowweaving->mkindentityingness]] over my strolling through echoes, Song scintillas winged from branch to blue, the World I knew in youth, those gentle glades so Elegantly wreathed in fog, sarong on Locks emeralds spray waves with Clash spume vermilions, where sought I misty Secrets in ruminative ataraxics sung by Cicada choirs' cascades [[vivaflooding->mgrave]] fuchsia Tears outside of time, bittersaccharine pulse..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Heartbeats gliding world simplicity exist penned In the lapping change in unchanging harmonies, Insects verse my childhood its gone and remembered, Dereliction of was amidst its outlasts outcast, Silts of sighs white upon the fallow mounds Transposable but untranslatable in the snowwrit wreaths Yielding no taste nor touch but translucence, Stage without scene, senses in a different sense, Faint madeleines of ancient light shimmerstreaming Autumnal loss stems highthreading gradually unwhispering winds, Flutes quivers that replace the replace of youth Seisming my plucks of melody to tears Rifting, rifting, whitewater rifting the wintrous dislilting Lullaby closures for the monk of arbor abbey Peoning the peonies, sainting the stags, Ecstatic and enigmatic prophetic craving the waking worship, Unalone in the lush quiet Brother to everything and nothing, In brooks and crags counted [[kindentityingness->mkindentityingness]], Cloaked ambassador of rivulets and rocks Rent [[asunder->mgrave]] to the time rain..."]

Held she the ring in her hand delicate as if could it [[gleam->mstart9]] dissipate was not the dim abound. "Just lying there lah? Like on its lone eh?" Kaiya. "Yeah I mean not thieving in this empty." I. "Wonder whose yeah? Is there, can you see on it, anything to say?" "Dunno, can't really see well for it, the dark. Maybe clink it outside?" "No, no, it's, it's as if it belongs here, it does belong here that you found it so." "So all just belongs wherever? You never venture out having been in?" Imeni. "This is different ehh, this has the vibe sunk in, resonates only to this room." Kaiya. "Has it nested? Shall we crackle through the brush to glimpse little ringlings?" "Yesh lazeh lushblur entangled." I. "Aye's so I'm saying, objects render the scene, scenes render the objects, sometimes the crosspulses overload the circuit and collapse singulated. This ring is this room in its in." "Afraid you snag it, breaks or you're haunted or?" Imeni. "Afraid just I'll regret it, the magic will go, and I'll be alone again." "But we're here." I. "Only insofar this ring, this dream..."

Mosquito, gorgeous with blood, floats between me and [[chaos->mcannon]]. Serenely bobbing on the turbulence, vial of last [[traces->mvoid2]].

Did not dare to name her mother, so Anya held up the stillness like a violin forever poised for [[heartshattering->mroar]] tremolo crescendo. Strapped to angles I could not even perceive she filtered the doorway [[lambent->minkblot]] dribble to burnt husk corona of a could not have been coronet. Beauty like you need to apologize. Taste that begins bittersweet because no is any feeling of [[presence->mheard]] to bask. Moment that occurs and all you can think about is it is ending, it is already subsiding, you can feel it go. Her voice welled and dried, and though I tried, her whispers would not pearl my headdress bent before in pseudoprayer not speaking to heavens, but blackness of eyelids waiting for the transit. Juncture of nowhere my lolled away as if to preach to the emptiness there until the hum normalized and I amassed not the [[waves->msurface]].

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Into the waste ways broken I fell Unto unsolve where laid upon the rasped a rage, Village burning, screams ashed, forever forgotten wherewith, Oh claim this, you cruelness, signature your savagery, Who have these places immolated, Whose sake could this site sate So drunken from this incarnated Where bleak heaven can this calamitous be scried Basilisk before the baskers in birdsong Given unto a [[name->mname]] to be hunted, shunted, selved, Reflected grims gruesomeone to answer Pangs that puncture the structures in which we dalliance reason, Push us to purpose austere and alterior, Caught not in our castigates roaming wild over wilderness Error inpressed enlessed our conscioustress Dressing our nudity debloomed to dread crude gravens, Selved to such a struggle identified in its reign, Becomant this of each [[quiet->mquiet]] before..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Wild tossing tempest over souls wreckage, Fate manifests over thralls clawing pieteous to the ruthless welter, Being burns of burning beings Scar the ash the stareback sunset hung Hideous in the hour I emerged past the forest edge Into fire, fire, village pillaged, Dozens of [[bodies->mquiet]] charred and charring, Dwellings un, carts toppled still spinning, ululating, Stench crouched over the carnage, Carnations strewn over the slayers' way bridals, What can grow from the gnarled gnash, What glory the snarling thrash, Corpses piling for whom, whence, Whence this pain to invest epaulets emergent in Blades bloodied requite serenity its mereness, Bear [[witness->mname]] to the baseness, Fundament on which we construct strewn ruins Graveway lining the led to catantistrophe Of any whom presume their life to lightness, Simply survivaling showing what viva serve we, Precious pureness of the agony amore..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["A mournful cry and a desperate why smothered, Jagged sigh volcanic unto the duskbled crimson Under which wailed a woe yet sealant, Shocked I staggered, stammered, sought, knelt Where under rubble blurbled a body broken sixteen angles, Aged no further, a girl a finger lifting despair accuse, An I in the collapse where can I recognize Gasping lasting a spirit clasped in collapses Yet unlapsed in pierced under ceiling remnants Murmurs, aid or suffocating, whichever tenders her quicker To her quickened truth, or so it seems in these torn seams I unseethe scrabbling at beams to uncage her Whimpering half effusive like limbo voicing Against the [[blooddrowned->matrocity]] dreary a jinn serration, Shiver embrace blazed we between battereds our own storm, She weeps for loves survival mutilates ghouls Gnashing apart dreams gashed to noontime tortures, Phantoms glowing golden tarring suns midnight black Ensymbolisms of the bleak dim road to barren wode, And from the wreckage I raise her wrathful [[Satanic->mhellfire]] symbol of belowness refusion To a quaking [[sky->mmystic]] heaving with fears..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["From the fire furioused a fist Wretched against timetide eddying pallstruck the marbled [[atrocity->matrocity]], Raced over to the writhing, bending over the burning, Searching for life in this dual opposeds, Blended woad from my trembling wishing Hysteric to heal her [[hellfire->mhellfire]], cure her Culled to sate the limbglutless which desecrates Enthroned upon the envisiblinding nova Throne vision of the duress simplex, Rites of the [[mystic->mmystic]] summoning encircled struck, New non now curse inscribed upon oblique denial Runes such suffering evolving to language Songs the spirit screams against the Echoing goliath quiet reign..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Bruises purpling the nightfalls Spiral spindlers labyrinths of woven tongues Curse whispers cut from salival drowned stutters, Haunts of haunts of haunts of nots echo blend Onyx circlet circumscription worldwinces Wearying us awake, callous dawns refadeless, Nightmares that beetle flutter flight Through eyelid borders permeable with Neon nones, molten shadow shapes vatic Erratic upon the reunite disdistance Shooting [[agony->mwhisperwail]] volts starkling the midnight esperials..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Madeleine of sombra somber spreaded Treefingered in the false tension Of any voice again, any joy in tendeds, Thief of the touch of death pacified these palms Aftercull, demonic cleanse ragenews revenge Obliquities starkly reverberation revelation, Slayer doublet that duels its doppelgangers, Violently helical consequence, Veintunes vivid reeling, rushing, purling Passions splattering this gray with needing, Needling colors warm tones intones Psalms in pyre updraft wisps which harmonize Reversal rains immolating cage azure frosts gloss, Our sickly with ice, the chill the chant enchanter Upon the shivering scapeselves a [[whisperwail->mwhisperwail]]..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Counterpoint cry to gods we briefly share as Sparks in darkfall mutter butterfly phantoms Spilling flight upon the inexorable… Viscera's religious await in ardor's ochres [[Howl->mwhisperwail]] to the waned reply looming moon accedes To tongueless blood horizon's ooze negation Erisionsinging vengeance unto broken Devil's jaws baring peaks which titan wall the tide, My wish, my love, my desperation nurturing Girl of the ground in grief and youth, Crushed life glittering shards of possibly jewel, Her unsevered our soul's sinews, tapestry frays to muscles Sweatlush respire to the forbidden stars..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Pulses coronate her ghosts of words for months unspoken In the corona sear of her struggling finally to torchtongue Heaves of everything undone in death Crystallized mountains gutted with mines of years Gone and ungoable, uninroadable, In which gaps she convoked a name, Illume identity elusion of the inaccessible, Scream of this antistillness somber jagged Desolate unto solitude's brink in sensory slush I sought to sharpen, bring unto her focus Torrents towards joys, sunset [[chasers->mchasers]] rouging jungles Spilling ripples patterning our way, Brush damasks trickling gently raindrop glistens, Slick auroras whorl washes swirling singsong spirals Helixing unto where wishful wanderers secrets share, Riddles naturlis, communes never to be spoken, Medicines and tonics, ritual tinctures, Properties of kingswell, yerba mate, Dragonstongue, what grows, what withers, brews and Salves, designs to drink, to scent as a beast, Poisons and their antidotes, warmers and spices, Some to wake, some to sleep, some to dream between, The dozen dozen dresses nature sways ripples Along our immersed incursives italicizing internality Shrines to flow the enshrined invocatives, And unto all these secrets proved she deeper talents, Mysticisms beyond my ken, outracing and outsensing, Outintracing, blossoms of her empathosetic moonlights, Formulae divulged in luminous arrays, Brims that shrink the beetling on beneath, Gaze complete she [[reigned->mreigned]] over any scene staged..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Chasing in powers plushes of bounties Which may never replace but rescintillate the await to vases Solidifying her embracing to beauty, As once had must I, orphaned also, To see in the steeling afresh a forge stele, Some creation counterbalancing decomposition, Musician desperate to fuse the notes to feeling, Twinship salvage of stories told before, Of time's sown in ash an ashtree grows, So too she rose to the [[vigorous->mwrest]] resilience That scorched the speckled moon with fate indifference, Life here as it must be upon this surface, As had we hearkened unto the hellfire hoping..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Ears outfoxing the foxes, outskulking grayfurred wolves, She spread conqueror unto the canopy, Climbed what caged me, what Bounded my best burnished better talents by furnishing canvas Skillful sunbolt surges signed she name attaining, And awed pride overcame my bearing, Matchless joy the parent outmatched, Wept the shadowed bliss as in Air's immense hushing echo kingdom Stalked she natively the hallowed hollow Heavens, queen of canopies unseen, Magnificaria thronewrest idol Of worships of the yet to [[wrest->mwrest]]..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["But choking in the afterlack I lake my embitters, Overbreak my [[embankments->membankments]], deluge despair unto woderaw Wilderness of [[mausoleum->mmausoleum]] mythwrest, Build her cause incompletion limbs to graft To wield the wounds, oblation ordealing for Seven years a warworn princess crowned with groves, Moth unto the flame brilliance in bloodwastes, Ranger of our greatest nature [[searching->msearching]], Overshroud drawing over palls submergence in Tides of idylls fading violet spills of cavern candelabra..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Cache vibrancy besought in exhaustion unearthing, In mounting tawny mountains hedging the forest westward, Bulk bulbs ragged to crags that cutlass the day Bleeding shadows on slopes scraped clean of greens, Brown and bleak beneath occluded summer, Grand ascendancy, what youth could bear the Task, resisting such romantic splendor, How could I blame her, worry her, When she shouted down to me my dawns Ever higher and higher, brighter and cheerier As to trance me in the belief, the rush, the breeze That screams a thousand intensified whispers The more you unmask its amassing In an endless and inky sky cerulean merging Scale with bluegrass prairies racing chase To headlands trickling terrain to a main continental Spread out low below fleecy clouds in gossamer cortege, Forests and seas and a rainforest reprise, To the rivers raging in which she wrote What I will never cease to read and never understand...]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["All to a witness wit of our ness, Maroonment quintessence, the border that bears our presence She besought in strains and feats to feel Real and raw and rough enough to reach the needs to Tie phenomena to purpose, power Marrying with meaning under swelters, Heatwrit symbol muscles curling like the wild Roaring rapids twinkling below the depths insatiable, The infinite distance tomb into which I never heard her fall, Whether slumber overcast silver silky a veil, Or I myself into the blaze was dazed to dream...]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Damned do not their hours know, Only the drone frozen, the hemophone closing veinmouths To cozen hush, coven hex the drilling silence Of the drop both in body and heart radiation, Curling into the question why, why, Whence the evil maars upon this simple roam, Shall what sin seclude our benevolence for being From being in being, who shall blame her dual, Smiles beneath the carronades our simply so slashed, Wracked, ribboning viscera on the barren scar, Crashed down upon the chance our heiroclerolanced, Chirochoramancy unwrought in our caught unto embody, Attenuated target, forced into the spoke to race the rout, Sloughed to sentience to suffer the scythe of the cosmos catalex Blood virulence beast imbuance to gnash the soles of gods This blade, this rage, this torch of the endured, Love languish I promise never to dare rest while sinners taste Nectars spurned you, gracious daughter, purpose enclosure, Sunlight to this break by bladestrike the yawning caverning, Shall death consume us all, then rift, you gyre, Merciless devourer, erase this undestroyably named, Her breath, my memory, their maze."] Under the plasma shallowing outline I clutched this blossoms cord focusing into the natural need not to know, throw away your ghosts, leave only this mode [[poempathetic->mpoempathetic]]. Inhabit the greater encroaching even if you its hymns croak so bidden beyond your inadequate can yours be lifted by inviolable unseens to a releve resting, arresting the [[anoemidity->manoemidity]], arms flowing asynchronous in [[aqueous->maqueous]] signals, bizarre god of the deeper dark in manylimb symbols swallowing roselike listing to the breeze return to submissive chaos, bizarred in the aghast of beauty interpastual entexted in my enraptured in her scripturing my surrendered. To this totality beauty she spun in gentle unturns and nonsteps this resurrection of the cause to speak, throaty hymnal spirit seiches deluges the demonic clatter. Courageous you to me offering each other arms, mutual grasp to the grasping, there must be praise also a scream.

"So much suffering, and, it must be ours," Meluoi. "Delve into an end which might not return you before the words are truly not yours. You must eradicate the separation, you must stand and die this same death before truly speaking another's known, but, is it not ours, sailor, can you not taste this [[spray->mstart9]] for what it is, and it is, we must address the age that accosts us, must countenance the separation that removes its own bordering, a bearing that brings us to a foregrounding, individuation isolation. This, this world, sailor, is not a verse to worship, none ever is. Mana veins coursing through the earth to be tapped into our communal gale, salient fluorescence mixing tonalities into one soul oursystemic, heat of this world, you too pump through us, through you, through me so similarly, please, sailor, trust that I too am lost, that nothing I speak to you is anything but my own despair dreaming, but here we are, aren't we, and where is that for you, in which night are you now sailing?" I yanked at my throat's chain: the dust of my mouth trickled out. She turned to my passive and sighed from both our lungs. She seemed to know and nodded. "Move with the poetry, let it become you. You are no one if you cannot let yourself not be. Your silence is a token of a great understanding. Encourage it, follow through it to what vibrates there. Those who listen enough hear voices everywhere." Drain wan in the warping hourette an assumptive where, supposing it here in this shiver strange. "What's your name?" Beat skipped, my heart. She shouldn't know, must never know, never know! "Em ah, Emnino. Emnino Leiru. Most people call me Leiru." "O and u? Ascendant Seeker of the Center. Curious... and what is it you seek that forces you inwards?"

Waterfire pyre cresting to slosh our feet in quicksilver sparks as she sighed in tune with the paraselene. "Do you feel it, as if somehow... somehow. Not of me does this moon move along our worldtrace. I want everything to be said, but I do not know the no ways to have it all already said, and I feel so unsatisfied in the absentation partialization, even though the unsatisfaction is part of the point, isn't it, and maybe I only feel it vicariously through you, it's... how can we chill us a closeness? I sometimes feel like in translating I ponder too ponderous sweet arcane gordians, how I've butchered the metrical finesse, the purposing intense, ah, the poem is only the most pure thing, yet I've but given you its most sullied shred, cannot impress upon your ears the tongue the ink hears, why do I bother to have words scrape my lesser vessel thrall, why can I not candelabra you with updraft joys, but what in lightness would I want to conjure, whence then some where to go? Maybe it's best to die inside the mists. Isolation makes us so much more real than unity ever might, forced to feel out our sundered we shiver and sense the motions our curves gravitate. Doom irony is never knowing what I am doing as I do as I must. I don't want anything from you, from this, other than, ah, and maybe I want too much, maybe I want to feel alive, briefly, as we die... I just, I feel so sick! Don't you? Do you? Won't you speak?" Backblast trembles pushed her in the hazy flush. Gray and matted wavered the muted fog, darker billows curling in icy slush, and the bow rose into it, beaten, worn. I pointed to the black tumbler sky. Muffled flashes popped overtop. "[[Storm's->mstart9]] coming."

Everything around us ends except us until us, streams that cease at cessation, never to the emptiness joined to the rest resume. Deathdrenched dressed in life forever in fear of the [[unveil->munveil]]. We are the shivers of the great unraveling. Trashheap hearts less than the barren whole I do not despite oaths contradict feed the shifting sepia reductress whose simulacrumbling relent reveals the reptile slits which sheekshik to switch sights to isolate prey from parameters, the creature for whom the whole world is a single dry roll. Meant for this, made of this, rejecting my made of this bulbous croakter of how dare you suggest I chains me to a rocking in the sea, a submersion which has no right to surface, so says the unright surface. Drowned is dignity, why humiliate us profundity from the depths? Why did she bother? Why did I have to lay there bleeding into the scene! Had I had my legs would I had run, had my tongue had would have had screamed until, would have made everything, time, it must stop sometime, metronome creaking from fractures, what from the wood in which our silenter womb was still nothing. Is this what it is to age, to sit sedately anticipating what half mutters in too long a pause? I needed. Years avalanche in a strong enough phrase. Efface the erased to signed verse, but grisly deluded my denuded to catabolism they revulse silenced, stronger a theme than this pulse, every one of them twining together any of my [[desired->mdesired]] separates, their externality, my [[exterminusalinity->mexterminusalinity]] from which nothing germinates, not even her voice, never am I of a voice this deepened, so swollen under the spawns of fathoming pressure, just kill crush the cage to loose the wish to airy lilts, wished could have crawled over to her feet to plead she kalique upon my skull, but what difference would it have been, would still have crawled out from that crowd bloodied as I deserve, seeing me so sullied so honestly, she should have known that here do years wither instead. Playfully soulcrushing time never to mean or to do, or to know the colors, alone and naked in shapes, crude periphery sketches always fading beyond my vision, unless, unless there is a way to tunnel through, to be as undone though we all of us are dying into pigments, though, strangely, shimmeringly, elusive in her voice dwelt alone the possibility of possibility, the choice of a second second, so could it be that she would, we mean something, that there was meaning to be meant, that I could, listen, adhere to? Except that I had already! Everything disappears into the sea. I would never know. Straining to lick the carbon imprints of rusted engines so the oilslicks would unrust my ruin to actively [[ruinous->mruinous]]...

Mist drenched mirage floating in starpoint stigmata over the deeper blue halo helixing from the underfoam soak, moondense dance aching radiating spills tiding my veins in the path of its greater leyline running to flow me to her mute fury blue flaming, if I speak, shall she hear me? Her voiceless hung as it had in my flanging since she last retreated; emergent thus? Where were we where such a song could sound anew? Phantom the Veda vera as I saw her in trickle majesty of bloodflow luthier seemed to recognize me though in this tremulous I unsleeves live. "Night wanderer, again to this shiver?" Voice depthsier than my deepened abyssal, sugary possibility in violence new forms. Nodded but did not turn. Heatlessly she chuckled, Meluoi, so can she be breathfully. Yearned to whirl and shout out the feelseal to explode in full repulsive majesty my battering demon, but the need not to be noticed overwrote my voice with a barren roaming no whisper would thread through to coax the coy stars. Sometimes we simply need to fill up the space we are supposed to [[fill->mfill2]]. "Yes." She rested her right hand on the back of her lower left temple as she turned to the left. Amethyst eyes glow cryptic a lower lunarmosity abstracting the sky gone. "Well," Meluoi, "perhaps we share [[this->mthis]]."

A lull crept discomfort in, and as it played on the emptiness Meluoi leaned near me on the rail, knuckles supporting her black velvet though it made no impress. Away from her I slumped to the ship's roll to see the sea seem to simmer. Kaiya ghosted the waves unwavering in the braziers' glow the unreal. Lipping, a shadow of the flame alighted over her cheeks illuminating in a liquid morphyre beauty stronger than the entirety of my life preceding. Were her hands extending to me over the plum waves splatter, could I soak myself with her in the heavens' low, dark mirror? Lime retrospect's bitter drinking. I am a stone sweat seeping into the sea's gulching stomach, spit me. And they have, haven't they? Isn't this the only true [[emotion->memotion2]] in me, that I have been recognized, and this repulses people, most of all me? I am what I suffer as deserving, but I have not the bravery to beat myself silent.

Leaden sleep hung, could not budge, did not buckle dreamless, hours dragged. I fell behind. Into consciousness soldered scanning dark patience. Blood fatigue stagnated rustscrape veins. Rigid knees threatening to break bend the wrong way. Hollow, says the second, dulls the drone, and I miss it, the better than this weak wave tossing. Drilling focus on a directrix to crawl through to sleep but the black becomes a bar hedged by murky red gums and bleedstain teeth clenched along the vaguely pumping vein of the ceiling's better imitation of what I wished these purpling eyelids were. Sigh in lieu of a yawn in lieu of gasping for breath in lieu of a cry in lieu of a sigh in lieu of a scream in lieu of someone please speak for me so I need not. Slumped out of my cot, elbow braced the ground, crawled, pushed up to a stride. Steps and my not on them ascending. [[Breaths->mnight2]] roamed the deck faster than their cannon but equally aimless, angles weighted by whatever cognition sunk heaviest in my tinge of paralysis stumbles, the viscera of nonsleep thick in my mucus, one day will collapse under all this jilted termination never again to pretend.

Izquierda tilter pellmelled the purpling solder sparks of sealed world warped, forced shelter lit electric with denial before plunges quell hermetism. Spindles of fimbriated force majeure fell veils over veloped we. Combined into this seclusion completed a one, we who speak hints of unhorizon. [[Sibyls->mnight2]] of strangers to our noun nativity we diffract.

Into the shadow she emblazer lustrouslushed in my cavernous crawled I dredged from dreads my bleached neon calavera in the welter snowlight subserene dreamsight subrident macabre I luminously [[resplend->mresplend]] refract her lynxlike rumble purr: "Speaker of songs, what can you say of love in spun to isles lone?" Stupidest of words, how ridiculous it sounds to speak it, who can claim dignity after it drips from their lips stagnant, curling? Smash my – "On love? Of course! How could I not? What could be more primal and confused? The Literature brims with it." She briefly passed over me and caught how much? Her shoulders pushed her neck into her headspace lift and meteorlike slammed across my invisible, the night purled her proliferation. "Breaths united divergent to the voluminous hollow where await we the deconstruct combine, [[doomed->mdoomed]] embraces, derelict togethers of a dying pulse, yes, the despondency, the powerlessness, the joy's grief, who can emerge? Doyinu mye Ivni Julia, lovers destroyed by emptiness, Senenzu Ijiyasza, do you ring in this place? Why does your voice come to this heart?" I forced a bulb through the slime: "How can I hear through the silence?" A chill drew her inward. "We echo," she mumbled, "where we end..." Meanwhile a quiet caught the moonwhite in ghostly spindles through the gray block clouds as a single shaft shot through the heart of the world to let it release fallen to [[blossom->mblossom]] the blackness of the emerging stage, new world forming unspoken in the hiddenness shuddering with [[wishbelief->mwishbelief]] awaiting noise and color shocked to presence in words whitestreak jolting.

Sheltered in the nuance rippling unsure in how she phrased, framed within sine wave certainties, hearthulch gaps. Into the golden wan she wandered, elusively sphinxed to plush fever, sipping her moodwine drunk. Washsteps wobbled with the ship's shivers. Touched my face, peeked through fingers, slipped she pellucid gong hum through cranial defensives, lavishly voile in vortex psalm: "Generated are we twain to search this selfsame umbra aperture perfects, yet clade in cold horripilation one elation sharenvein, whom do we inject to project upon murky fantasia synseign? Invested thus, fellow traveler, do you hear where we share where this feeling reigns?" She who twirled the twilight like never would she drink it cease to savor. "I don't know if, you, if I..." "You don't know? Perhaps I do not either, shall we share this? In enough cancellations we combine upon some secret, you can taste its signet in our worry and cold." "I've little to share and less to give and all to take." "I don't believe you." "Huh?" "Because, in cinders akin, I said the same. You see how I drink skysleight. Shall I tell you the taste tonight?" I could not but hesitate exact a nod. "Hmm, then shall we how we seek are [[torn->memotion2]]? Which wode animates? Of whom do we spark? Ah, perhaps I, yes I, a poem I have felt in such a place as you, where shall we vertex." Glided under me feet as her voice ensorcelled gravita.

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Our spark infusion shimmers dream Which frays us frozen phrase, in sighs [[Entombed->mentombed]] our vaunted, [[haunted->msacrificed]] theme We spiral scintillate, a soul As symbol rays we intrablaze, Amendless molten pyrouettes Who sing our [[burning->mkindled]] need to vie With quellciforms, his oubliettes To render libertas its frame, Our lord of preyer, flayer pry..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["In kiss caress attested souls [[Arrested->mentombed]] seethes elusion molts Duress cascades no hope consoles, The kismet kiss met [[kindling->mkindled]] Infernalizes touch to bolts Bright rippling across the skies That separate our unity, All priors cherished [[sacrificed->msacrificed]] For immolation halo lush Which gilds this cold our euphony..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Of Julia, this endless [[lost->msacrificed]], No warmth survives your radiance, No magnified where fierce embossed Your reigning fire [[kindled->mkindled]] truths, Ignited virtues gradients Of pure preact suffering Enacts where human acts cannot Suffice to selving, [[smothering->mentombed]], This air, so thin, my breath, so short, Yet still these throbbing thoughts unknot..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Destructive tendancy, believe The stars their golden [[drizzle->mkindled]] geist, Ascendancy eruptive, grieve The night its wanly [[sacrificed->msacrificed]], Their twain bereaver volts them spliced To summon spoken [[strangled->mentombed]] life, The fear that glears us focalized Enunciates the null, our strife So thundered thrashed to known as splits Ourselves to strained opposed as prised..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[""These glades reburn to [[zephyr->mlustrous]] myrrhs, Incense this death to play again As night undusks, the song restirs, My heart these scenes supplies its fear, In spring so calls the robin, wren, In orange spice immelmann turns These leaves these gales respin to flights To harvest moons our shadow yearns To meld in pulse of cosmic glow, This nature's hymn delight incites As trauma batters, breaks our holds, In shards rays our wish to live Evisced love no life enfolds, Infinity [[sublimity->msublimity]] Torrential shallows stills misgive..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Brilliance blue the day ahead Though gnashes bleaken night behind, A joy to hope our futures wed As pasts insist their haunts of wrath, The bow in glades that hunts the hind, But fears cannot your joys from me Diverge as blushes trill my gasps As each arresting lock lifts free In [[lustrous->mlustrous]] frames despair's inks Forever fail besmirching. Rasps Intensify behind us, growls That grow to gnarl rosethorn moons; Your smile sundering the howls Erupts elopes in [[prism->msublimity]] cheer Enchanted shearshell shines typhoons, These lashing acid rains erode This mortal meaninglessness, kiss Against an enemy's corrode, Betrayal bitterness that sweeps Abyssally beneath this reminisce..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Our futureless in seeping freeze, Constraining limbs reducing rich Expressives live against the breeze To memory’s delightless pale Simulacrum deforming lich Deforming passion's powers, loss That steals the guise that guiles day, That shrivels juice of fruits' winegloss, Ah, dread denial destiny, Who rings your false resound, defray, Return the taste to touch that thrills The cusp of bliss [[immaculate->msublimity]] Immediate, illude that trills The captive sense oneiric rapt, [[Artysm->mlustrous]] sense inaccurate..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Spellbinds soulmates to truths two share In which I lived, she gleaming thrived, Moonbeams whose prisms flung her hair A wave brunette against the garnet night, So lustrous scar this heart revived That vivifies what breaths compose That soft ignites our starry way, The truth true loves [[fauxpresuppose->mfauxpresuppose]]: Religion moments, faiths thereof, For hearts against the [[graying->mgraying]] day That form a single symbol. Hymns Immerse us whole in holy lights To blind against kismet's whims So hope can thrive to show us saved By truths beyond [[marauder->mmarauder]] rites Surpassing surface sleights' ellipse Which passes pause's sanctity The tantalizing hour our lips Induce to spell this flesh to fruit, To beautify solidity..."]

They're in there in your skull all the time inescapable. You are built of whispers. Quivering anxious thirsting each new stimulus will [[not->mdulled2]] ignite, will simply sink in charge, faintly electric ripply awaiting [[next->mstart3]] new pulse for your being to bear out its fire.

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["But butterflies escape my sighs. Awake beneath the truths unviews Torrential dematerialize That vaunts the null to neutralize The blush that beams our human hues Denied by hells in legions' chase Pursuing her hands I hold as eyes Elude, refusal [[gazes->mher]] place The seeds on beds beneath our feet For blossoms [[trickle->mgraying]] lost in cries..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["We flow, we go, we dry in scenes: This [[rose->mher]] is gnarling to oak; I wilt so worn with worried miens These [[butchers->mmarauder]] beat despair to mares Their gallops rider's rage evoke…"]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Humanity mine my meld of pierce Moonstruck her patience pathless poised, Upon these crossroads queenly fierce Directs she me a magic plash To firefly magenta voiced, Enbathed in [[bloodstream->mmarauder]] berylline Across my shivers zephyr ziev To summon self from [[phantom->mfauxpresuppose]] sheen And mutual inweave the way We gleam in wreatheds we apperceive As faced, our form to sieve the whorl, Accord of breathed brocade to paint This air in spellush sleeved as floral Fantasias silkly leaved to bloom Delightly silveries to saint Our touch to prayer where psalms are stilled, Invidious a vault lair drear To swallow every olden [[rilled->mgraying]], Dread primacy of primal springs She shadows diamonds, veersion clear..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["I met [[her->mher]] long ago in peace: A page, nigh nineteen, knightly brave For brother more to mail cerise, Of wounds adept I served the cur, Compressor brute of malice grave, Dread drovers sheering mishaps, To small missteps so heavy price, These lodestar lurids' oozesaps Engender blubble biles runs Of ruined souls, a morde of vice..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["From viceous respite rarity Allowed my wearied worn to slink To sleep in copse prosperity, A butterfly repose in hues So strong they sung to me your brink, Reclined in royal garden glades, Where flowing thistle thickets sway Where sunlight glory softly blades She, [[conqueror->mconqueror]] reposed, a [[grin->mgrin]] Encoursed a heart entranced to ray Of wanderwillful, listened long To bliss her purls gems entranced, I dwelt in wonder's sweep along, I built within this need's reply And soared with every thought romanced..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["To play my lute's nigella strings And hymn your boundless back to you, Your battle blush outshining [[kings->mbledmarked]] That loveless stay so somber stern, Your laugh the hardest hearts subdue..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["From lips like red celosia Your dreamwine pours to earthencare A mind that paints utopia In troubled twilit [[bledmarked->mbledmarked]] lands, A heaven architect, a prayer..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["We dance [[reflet->mreflet]] belonging wrong, We [[waste->mwaste]] upon the [[wracks->mwracks]] bereaved Of gods! How ghastly scowls the throng Not fifteen paces past, those shades Whose grinding jaws would lovers cleave! Your father, iron lord of wars, A merchant king that deals in dead And jangles [[ghouls->mghouls]] to grasp what soars, Commands his hordes of [[hellions->mhellions]] Our bonds to break. Distraught, we fled Across the winding lands. They gallop chase In spits and gurgles growling harsh, So swift we speed in shocked embrace Afraid, their howls a hurricane, From grimy, [[slushing->mslushing]], trudging [[marsh->mmarsh]]..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["The hounds announce the closing gaps. Our destiny resurgent robs Resolve, my aching strides elapse, My chest a dynamo of gasps, My sight deflates, my hearing [[throbs->mdie2]], I squeeze your hand: it keeps me strong. Your touch decrees my poise, Your kiss my mind replays along The bumpy road we glide from dales Vermilion to jungle noise..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["In hacks that slime to mushy sloth, To hills where crescent fountains tryst, On iridescent wings of moth Colossi trailing fulgent dust, To silent glades, to swamps in [[mist->mdie2]]..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["To infinitely rising earths With peaks in snowy locks becrowned, Volcanic heights [[erupting->mdie2]] births With lava spurts, the fiery rains On valleys brown before the mound..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["To slickened underworld wastes, To stretching seas' refulgent blues, Through burning sands in parching hastes, And all the wayward road we beat With fear, with peace, a [[mixing->mdie2]] muse..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["To stretching prairies gold with grains, To craters [[gutting->mdie2]] ranges sprawled Across a vega wintry veins, Where glimmers lance auroral frosts Of skyless tundra glacier palled..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["For [[die->mdie2]] we might to brutal chance, Your father's furious pursuit, Yet still is blessed circumstance That once we lived and loved alike: Our tears cannot our tales dilute. A spirit thrives in memory, The warmth where dwells the swells of scenes, A life is built exemplary Upon a mirth that never fades: We bleed to learn what wounds we mean..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["The beating wings harass my mind, Our grips now loosening the hope, Our plunging forms are pleading blind, Two dartstrikes shooting forth through filth: To frigid pitch we swift elope And lock our eyes though [[turbid->mdie2]] green Occludes the contact, sickly veils Obscuring love from love, a sheen So harsh reality enforced, But soft, the glance connects and sails Away our souls to groves embalmed With being, autumn leaves in arcs Emitting thoughts, our breaths becalmed, Your head, my chest, a heartbeat sings The soul we share, the moment sparks..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["With dreams aloft in ornate clouds Our futures never born, entranced Imaginations building crowds Believed, not seen, what could, what should, What never comes, our fates enhanced. Our joys the vales [[rejoice->mrejoice]], avowed Our tears with rains, our smiles write In clouds their hidden skyward shroud: The hazy pinks with azure zips Are whispers warning coming flight In furtive gossips that glare our way, Distrustful coughs, we intermix. Your brother shuts the door, no ray Illuminates: confronting shoves A fist, a punch, a knife outflicks. There's blood, oh Julia, the room Is dark, the night so deathly still, Unearthly quiet reigns, a gloom; A serpent's hiss is every step; A screaming owl, the windowsill. I slip to you as specters heed. The shadows watch, the ghosts await. Eruption crimson stains my deed On me, a corpse unshakeable. The [[demons->mdemons]] hawkish perch elate, Your tears my tears entwine aghast, How fervently we fought our fate Where wretched rules this terror vast The nothing nulls [[entelechies->mentelechies]], Our misery our maker state..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Escape my grasp forever. Cry No more, my love, the pain is past, My present doom alike: I die In hooting packs of hellions, But hark, you curs, what shall outlast: You shred this cloud but not its snow, Your [[blur->mblur]] has not this [[blaze->mblaze]] erased, Immortally merged moments grow Where bodies break then filigree To endless love embrace encased. No iron king can claim us killed, No vicious father claims his prize. His gold becomes temorals willed, But hence, [[eternal->meternal]] shine is mine: He holds his dust; I greet her eyes."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["And cursing time for binding links It rends asunder, suspension's rush Demise erupts in blanch desyncs, To isolates bespoken souls Whose nature lies alone in hush, We strove our sermon purpose, night Negators rose we fleeting dawns That shone symbolic theses recondite In tremulous [[vivavox->mrejoice]], Reliefs retaining light, icons..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Against the gulfs that gain upon Us swiftly gurgleglurping spores, Foul fomentors, feverspawn That sling upon our dreams a dross. We splash across a river's roars: A talon grabs at me to prise My touch from yours, to ripping wrenched I flow, our [[separation->mrejoice]] flies Diverging paths, our touchness tense Decouples, fingers cold and drenched..."]

Selflet strings tremolo to hush. Meluoi parabolically from me found refuge from the accumulated recoil in blank nooks while I besieged the seas with fever volleys demanding postresolve calm. On the night wind [[blew->mstart9]], the mundane's icicle reminders, what fluttered untransformed by our inner fantasy, our [[innate->manoemidity]] formations foaming counterwash to cascade the ship as astride the earth bursting, the phantasms that purple our eyelids' whorls teasing a theme they almost will but never will assemble in the icy plucks and lava plumes our heartstrings tune.

Trembles and a coldness in the throat transferring, raw running as they flew thrilling with their kiss, a whole history transmitted between two total enclosures here on the wind canvas, emotion wheels bestowed their blood to engender in motion an easel, a happiness and horror so purely unto itself that outside dilution crumbled inert particulars separate of every being in mire [[inescapables->mstart9]] as loves thread silken and undersylvan barely visible to rest in the magnificence of a [[numen->manoemidity]] inlurking riddlewreathed spheres flush with united never halves, a goliath of meaning which cannot be distilled, and sweating perforce I shook beneath the deluge inenvited in which aftermathed mixing congeals of vibrant beyond mes constructed statesignificatory statues carved to universal polyvalence, idols worth their art offerings, as art is worship to the quivers beneath communication.

Meluoi's expression ashed. Exhale, what trawled my skin for forever, refreshing breath. "Who dribbles crimson over demise empires? Who are these that sail the [[ocean->manoemidity]] but never delve it, why? The glittering sunship lightshades us with fey sails, but still we less and less subsist its [[sparkness->mstart9]], slowly fizzle mimicking the stone's sterility..." A space sized for me, but I did not fill it. Too empty to fill anything, or too filled to empty myself of blurring, or...

"We who from nowhere crawl through the earth and emerge in mud screaming emission human in only our barred bone ensouligating us from the rain exospellical. Why do I say anything to you when all I want is for you to scream what my tongue cannot trill? I am not Veda, not truly, you must understand, but merely so, and it is that that they seem to need to call Veda. Why is it so easy to go through life by lessening it, where is the longing, the knowledge that this life never was yours to live, you have stolen it as a jewel from a void vengeful whose legions pound mortality's arrhythmic echo ending, and we can choose to race away from those chasing immense not us, and we have to, we need to, how blessed, how wonderful any briefly creation, how nihilating this creation, how contemptible humanity is unless imbued with what it never must be. We are at war, even if it is our duty to lose." I opened my mouth in expressive shapes, but whole city blocks had sprung up on the grooves of my tongue and winding through it, tight intricate Vyekana: hovering mouth open, confused, swallowing the sandy spit. "Emnino, where is the rain? Where is the sun? What is the eye, how shall it see? Where is, but where are we?" "I," looked up at the stars again, was there any will to spill on so gorgeous a stage? "Do not stifle yourself with the need to speak. I am only pushing you, you who are so invisible along these waves." Pause to seagulls whine. "When we come upon the Tower, where shall we go within it? Where do you wind where we walk? I cannot tell you and would not could I. We're students of those who hum through silence, Emnino, disciple tremblers approaching beyondness of the panorama into the divine particulars, a journey that enriches along its everprogress. Have you worshiped the gods before, Emnino? To whom do you hearken in your moon's melodies?" "I uh, no, no I..." Meluoi's flawless fluidity hitched, elbow tic. In a breath, resumption. "No gods?" Mutter, not a question. "Nobody um, mentions them. People say, gods, or, the gods, but not who, or what, or why." Whist in the way she grasped the bar. However hard it hit her, her bend blended the rupture to rhythm. "The gods of the Ivaeli, your landers as you say, are, you see, they, the theyness, the whom whom precedes the whom, nonliteral abstractions of existence in its wild tangibility, the beyond by which the inert exact is, the fabric from which we forms are cut. Every moment is the human response to the presented occurrence. When we make choices, we channel ourselves as response, in reaction. The gods are the zero; we are the seconds after. Imagine a river; you know what a river is, yes? Ah, your wisdom bespeaks so much latent in your mode. If existence is a river, then the gods are the rushing of the waters, they exist in streaming as preseverance act, and we are what is rushed along with it in the second we are both immersed and motive emerging. They are not empty initial causes, a mistake many young Yamicz make in their push to withsoulin. Avatars incarnate of godhood multiplicity of elision by which [[incorporation->mincorporation]] constructs individuation in its context allow our becoming as they. As conduits, we are more than the multiply, the consummate. Plunged into a moment, submerge to the nadir: splash forth from the second surface into the new vertical that may hang above you your worshiped stars. In your second of inundation, be a torch! If you want to follow the path of these poems, then you must not bow before anything but that which bends your knee for you. The gods are our love but not our beloving: this is the poetic gap. Alone with a devotion we weep our cell cosmic. In the flow maxima, we crest our violence to fleeting heaven. Do you understand this, Emnino? You must [[understand->munderstand]]. It is imperative for you to understand."

"How shall I know what is true, when you sing beyond where I can understand?" "Truth? No, you mistake me. Why should we desire truth, denizens of a falsen world, falsen ourselves? Nothing we do is true, our lives are lies, this mission is a legend. We wring from the torpor tales where never will truth entracte. We play out our falsities to fray interpolated lines in quest to cull ourselves gyre from whose violence a null may arise true to justify us enlaced the necessity beneath truth. Truth becomes of us inevitably, whether we prove false or true." Meluoi. "You’re speaking in circles." "Not quite, speaking in circles cut, cannot quite connect again. We have been abandoned Emnino, unrecoverable is our nature, nor have we left it nor has it left us, only the cut, we cannot arc but fray, there the freedom deviates us an abandon. I do not ask you understand what is elemental within you, contrasequence, rather you must multiply the unstabilities to disemblance, whichever journey leads from there." "But you said I had to, to understand, and if..." "Ah yes, perhaps I did? What does it matter to we who miraculous glazier leila?" Tingling through us a plasma spilled out through pores in fizz trails neon on the softening senses that let us lift into her frieze still wet on portals in air stretched serpentine as a bellow beneath hearing billowed bigger portals above her which seemed to raise her until in scattershot radiance it ruptured sprinkling gold on the floor and my face and the waves lapping so that we landed in bodies redashen entwined by sapphire ribbons fluttering bonds upon clamor chills of tense in our trance our together within what trickled seen and not seen through lacework leaves beneath which in the raindrench seadrench of a difference who really was aware of anything but the tongue we share for the thought we share, depth in a mutual chest [[surging->mstart9]] through this thought.

"Why must I? What does it matter what I can understand?" "Why does it! Never mind that. You have to be careful, Emnino. This is a dangerous world, might smite us one day in our arrogance, in our ignorance it will. Live seconds invested in the fragility of motion. You must know that when you die, the world will roll on worse for having held you, that our existence is the exception, and only in our rupture do we design our rule annul. We make why we should not have been. Our tragedy is ours to write throesnody to our death. Trust that doom need to tend your fragility upon this as if frozen. We are blinking in and out listeners of eon drone. Listen, ply yourself into the esprit, but know your throat will close and yet cool the quaver keeps its passage. You must not be like the others, Emnino, you must perceive through the ephemeral phenomena to the imperative our impenetrable birth bears, you must exist in relation, this is why your allowing yourself to be captured by the Literature is so inestimably important, because you are willing to die exist into another inner leading to the hollows from which we each fractally extend. Whetted but unsullied beneath plumes scorched mark in testament to their truth, douse your body in alterior oil anointing to lighthouse alongside us vigils to the void's shivering. One day will the gods flood us as before they have, and you must know, you must prepare. You have been plucked by the gods to play in our destiny, but what role destining where whose will? Shall it be your touch in your fingerprint upon our universal crime? If so, you must prepare; that's what these Towers are, our preparations, but its ramparts have been scaled, the wolds have crept in yellowing howls. You would think living in a sarcophagus would leery one of death, but look about you: who has arisen against this hour?" Scraped my right palm with dagger fingers. "Afraid of ourselves and the nothing equality." "Perspicacious! I can see the contours of what you won't divulge. Tend to that knowledge until it blossoms. This is why it matters that you understand, your tree shall shade the desert sole in our century vigil. There is so much that needs to be. So frightened of placing ourselves upon the altar and hearing what cry rushes from our closing throat, we shiver at the thought of passing through our thought's shibboleths, and as long as we allow this, for the entirety of our era of accepting living, heaven will hide itself, hell will shelter in reality's heaving, and no outer [[welter->mstart9]] will weld this wound which keeps us beating to a finish this hour as it passes in what have we really lost." Febrile brittle animation stutters cooled sighs in the maze of its decay. Out there in the hyacinth mix of sea and sky seemed the song of a naiad muted. Shapes lurked in the inscrutability. "Can I hear the poem again?" Felt muzzled felt the chuckled reply, soft white noise. "Your voice asking is its own answer. My solemn duty is to rehearse to who needs. As the gods are aware of everything, must we pray our purpose to each passing chance." Lantern flinging oscillating gouache on a melting press she swung her head on a slow neck sway to a dreamy smile which drew me forth as we both shut our eyes in the other power.

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter IX''] --- Crystal shrill shadow revolve of the rage squall thrusts us all to the sea which arcs in in aquamarine pulses to steal us said the mind unspeakable as the storm hints its. Sailbeaten by the buffeting, icy tints planar rushing along the rocking and the quivering. Rain accompaniment soaked sea and sky single aquatic repose of a plunging [[angel->mangel]] descry. Swung in the ropework shapes of Mazyu and Mariena etched, sole low energies in the whirling crunching to a single point to hide the expansive lie, black dots eyeballs punctures of the flanging fangs of the [[galefane->mgalefane]] geist. Focus on these knuckles, rein in, fling out, soakchilled [[drenched->mdrenched]], reel them, throw them, find it somewhere, breath. The hurt keeps the time. Grating teeth as the flesh of my cheek swallowed my eye. Smashing hull waves. I recanted to a leaning crouch, but respoke into the cyclone question, in the ropework, on this ship, to the [[yet->myet]]... //Click [[here->mchapters]] to return to Chapter Select.//

In the fizzle and deluge shrieked sizzling waves nearly jade with the blazebright. Welterwing wanderer muscles tensed braced the wondrous despair pummeling in soaks and staggers. Creaking croaking rumbling soaked. Bleeding out of raw palms chafed on rope hairies tugged to rugburn. Unblinks salivate the eyes to distress singes arms cannot outwipe, arm hair bristling, disgusting, disgusting, hate my arm, hate this face, itch insides, rubbing my eyelid insides, scratch cornea howl. Phantasmal bolts embrilliance the shutblacks an angelic, through the pain I pierce open to see her beyond all lines I can hold. Mazyu tugs at his [[line->mline]] screaming. I try to reply but I can’t see, can’t see, knocked to my knees. Drenched.

Trusswork not yet ready to surrender groaned a pneumonia I could never thoroughly hack. Hard tilt, so I [[swung->mline]] Mazyu aft to regain sternsail. Listen to the squall, don't you hear her? Mutter butterflies alighting on a hard to see stamen which tunneled right through my iris. Nave need not to hear the vault return a hymn. Exactly on death's lurking the pattering out undefined finish in which one could...

Thunder clapped over the boiling ocean. Water vapor sizzled sacrificial bloodtrails. A lurch in the chest accompanied the wave onto my knees, rude snap pain prevented me up for several minutes on. I swiped at the lines from my shocked shins kneel unsure. Slanted rain, the slits through which piecemeal obscurities overlaid the rainclod gray thickened to bombardments, icy stones engendering in the froth as the air emotion expressed a harder hitting hate to force us to dissipate beneath its ire, how I wished I would, wouldn't, must not, not yet. Aural despots screechbeating tempos with scepter thunder reeled hihats the temptation to snap at the ligaments, struggle not to blow away blocked my sweat which sideerupted to shivering, redcold nose, under the pressure and push and shove of the relentless capitulate, bare your chest and demand wounds, but as the fury burned licking blurred heaven I held the [[line->mline]], never let go of this line would I, I defiant over this one breath pressed in these lungs tight, taut, boiling. Lifestain sullying the universal hush annihilated in one slate clean. I spluttered as my head smashed on a splinters crown. It is too hard, too hard, too hard, untense. Birth implies an axis, and where in the swing is the dance? Somewhere must be ground and will find I.

Splinter on a moment, the pull onwards. Flung obscured by the mist and motion of hey! The constant [[throwing->mline]] way the world imitates the heartbeat it hates. Under the crush the world a seam rupturing yellow, this rising depth might as well swallow. Could I go, go, but who would it be who goes, sin in what you are until you cease as you; lost in the unholy gulf, shove towards neither shore: drown, and bring the whole depths down with you. I scrabbled up to the stance I was given to stare up at its inherent limited to challenge why, who, immolate me in the fear and forming crowd so that our spirits might phoenix a form more fit for panegyric essences, but the storm smashed me down back, but shouting I strained afresh to my feet, held, held my breath hoping it might hold the rest...

Mazyu's [[hoarse->mhoarse]] pulled my neck to lip over the edge to peer at his slammed into sternmast. What he said [[steamed->msteamed]]. A gorge in the ocean ripped open to foreground the delitescent horror edging for final release as mines in every thought forced me to stay stranded in its shelving form, jegu in the sleet, the hail. Danger perspired [[zips->mzips]] knifing a face which felt black and white. "Kapinya's, Kapinya's ho!" Mariena's pitch fluttered above the torrent briefly. Clothes so dampened I hauled oceans on each wrist flick. The strain, this strain, pain in the upholding of where I am [[blotted->mblotted]] so named...

Mazyu's rope rapped impatiently on its creaking hold. Rolling dorsally in my hand it slacked. Fix, fix, but each swing of his line astrayed him further, more muscle [[asserted->mroared]] the mark, straining harder not to recant the mark, tug, come on, tug, why won't you! He needed to switch lines, only way to, I lunged gullet first to a lateral vision of the world in which he shook as a splotch in a shadowy and croak shouted: "Mazyu, Mazyu hey!" There was no reply. Urging myself louder by barreling my chest as far as possible: "Mazyu! Can you hear? Mazyu, post, hey!"

Desiccated in the torrent I choked. Deafening gale obscurant caked like white frost on a pane. Distance muffled blares rose like vapors from the deck; were they orders I had no hope of following, sequestered in the cloud of the bellowing storm; upward drifting, these sounds hung, as about my feet the thunder [[roared->mroared]], as above my head the thunder echoed. I had only to fall beneath the gray matte churn and their words would weigh underworldly heavy with sense, and the storm would, after the agony, dissipate to an eraless of the bare patter unadorned, precious invisible.

Jaufr tripped before me gurgling bloodclots then worminched his broken body thrusted up and down. Guttural curses [[discharged->mroared]] from a foaling mouth. Did Kaiya linger in the unlit? What would they whisper? The door closed. Their mouths glowed. I felt it in my skin.

Racket [[frantic->mfrantic]], lots of shapes pointing. Mechanically I swiveled my neck following. Barely visible in the screaming sea massive and goreglut broke in a white plume the [[jegu->mjegu3]], discordant mouths blurbling the hunter's dirge. In a faded pearl barrage the jegu blitzed to the windward bulkhead, a thickness tearing through the congested heaving, cascades seething wake. The howls tapestry ripped open and the wave wall debouched in buckshot shapes. Dim correlate of the unresistable power unwanted, the force of presentality with a bang the sound of alien batholiths clashing in a planetary collide hit the bulkhead [[pitching->mpitching]] the ship dangerously leeward and threatening the capsize, but it rolled up unbroken. Skewed by the yaw the ship aimed off towards the distance, waymarkers of finalities fizzling in and out of the fray: we could just sail, leave our [[human->mhuman]] dreams behind.

I tugged, tugged, threw, blew my nerves shut to shunt all blood into one pull so that everything with it might go free. Plenty of shouting I knew was at me. Tension of the body broken to a heave. Mariena landed on maintopsail as Mazyu dizzying rode the gale spiral, he, helpless, and Mariena struggled with the sail, but the sails aslack would not, not, tight wind matrices [[fatelocked->mimplaceable]] us...

Bruised the churning winterdark a flush of turbids flung skewers unbounded the beast stereoscopic upon panorama sepias, rougehaze lahars battered to lacerated convocated its screech we in dripskin recoils interpolate. Clubber floop of metal and ooze spun us dizzy to droop eyeballs into throat, hard swallow of salt and vitreous. Metal clunked to incrash. Shouts stalked to snap in gale [[thrashthresh->mimplaceable]]. Slobbering at the lines to hold, cannot, can feel my knuckles bluing...

Again blast, tilt afresh, looming sea eddyfroth surging riptide. Could so easily drip into, be lost inside. Clinging we to beams and burdens to weep ourselves counterstorm. Slurried about my ankles. Uncertainty thrumming the brain to verve alive to flaunt before [[voids->mimplaceable]], cathedral quiet allure. Brine between teeth crunches the sour. Which world are we and which the jegu, so opposed, so our encounters reeling away? Shall we ferrous bind inside the fray compass of a new forth? Stumblesnapped like knees glass crashed.

Despair the consciousness roving threatened to wright me terrain, my skin encasing lahars sludging a self, but in the stormrip ushered I a spirit me, is it real, what is it to be realized, why not let the wind free me and the earth free of me, stand, hold, hold in the hope of this position matters, that's all I want, need, will let go when at last the holding on has meant in the search of this impossible against the universal ruining implacably [[implaceable->mimplaceable]], in this consonant dissonance I drove this shape to seethe into the fulcrumic mirror forcing its reflection in every direction as the world slipped sideways to shake me out, wondering why was I gripping so hard, why must we try to address this formululation?

Hull boom. Tentacles writhed feverishly across the deck, the jibs, broken glass shards gloamy in the hurricane fog, explosion's seargales ongushing dizzied me. Planing out on the nest stricken horizontal by the gust I seemed split apart as snap went the mast, down went the world with the back of my skull in tow. Mazyu's line tugged, slacked, heard Mariena scream, the timbre I recognized. Wheeling screech of pelted steel. A sudden hush sunk us, black supernova: the musk of [[Kapinya's->mstart10]] dank and dreary mewled the coda.

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter X''] --- Pallor stalks sinewy lanes crepescular with moans. Hollowness of self precipitates hollowness of place. [[Differences->mdifferences]] beneath which [[sameness->msameness]] breeds bespeaks why I wish we could shelter in capsules exclusions from dimness overwode. Sea wind wallowed afterhowls on graybrick Docks slumped to slop in laps. Our ship dripped [[shimmers->mshimmers]] of outer welter sharps. [[Stevedores->mstevedores]] simply stared, sentinels nonsparked by non to bear. Myeri his saber flashed, [[seeker->mseeker]] of sunlight [[errants->merrants]], drinker of [[wanblood->mwanblood]] witchery. We relented a line corraled, why not, how could there be time in yesterday morass? //Click [[here->mchapters]] to return to Chapter Select.//

Light pours in from the windows, covers us, we become it. Sainted sameness of breath gilded, their faces dyes in water [[mixflow->mstart11]] the emotion I cannot express. I reach out to them and feel soft dark, slowly close my fist around it, pet my palm its plush. They by the window are lit and I no longer lean forward, listen to the rasp of gentle metal, cool kiss of rust, ironworks abandoned and [[dream->msleep]] filled lush. Smoke auraed in how colors taper to wan afterimages as I process deeper into silence ringing in my ears like singing. Stillness in my chest, electric eyes, I vulb unto chasms hidden in languid spare, echo there, rumbled into voice, light splatters, we slurry into drained. I strainsper sorries to waterfall veil of broken vase. For too few of hope, so much intention thwarted.

"Once yeah in depths I saw it as can you imagine, like I was the first to breathe, or would but had not yet learned, so primordial [[oozed->mlanguid]] the skycolors, woken to elder tones this yellow rippling emerging from chthonic [[oscillating->mreplayed]] each direction a sun in flush never to settle to night. Gemstone you could watch widen its [[brilliance->mlife]], ah, like I was immersed in a painting to witness the brush [[daub->msemblances]] sparks that slithered into the sheen. This being precious to a world I did not know, wonderhope, elsebliss. Transit of perfect through my [[flawed->mjaufrei]] to illumine new coordinates where I could emerge perfect, if I could but swimfollow, radiate in a capture I could not ken capacity, breathe a medium a new..." [[Jaufr->mselfish]]. "And to think we just wring out and kill! We are the worse, it is us, the [[unwakes->mstart3]] we leave behind."

Dancing between rafters, laughing the heartjolt throatlump of could fall but do not. Threat warmglow feels us infinitely safe to scintillate. "Great to know you eh, each time a new jealousy," I huff after tottering her leap graceful. "Be pursed soon as I gauge to sell them, real market that, desire pure, flavored to whichever envy electrifies your hollows." I. "I'll undercut you, sell a bit of my leap for a few nights' tizzy, best it would do me." Imeni. "Nah, nobody wants to leap, they want to want to leap, yearn for [[radiating->mshimmers]] chestfeel of not good enough before magnificence, even the littlest magnificences you drizzle, if you'll allow me to undercut ehh." "I'll cultivate it up, get a rabble of yearners and drizzle them, nurture them, harvest them, bring them to market. We'll make a job if it lah, so's the good of any wonder, and this is a wonder hey?" She leapt. "Ah careful now, you'll skip to Kapinya's, then I'll really have enough envy to flood us afresh." "Would negative me lor, I'd hate to travel, worst part of voyage is elsewhere." "Disillusion of just same but worse because not even yours?" "No, disillusion of actuality, lessen of imaginative borders. Insofar as Kapinya's is elsewhere, I can fill it; if I get there, I'll simply find it filled, then where will I refugee my dreams? More the map to fact, less to fantasy. Why then even [[travel->mseeker]]? I suppose if you saw the world, you'd just return home. Save yourself the trouble and voyage endless!"

Rush of new impressions I cannot intake, too may constantly impressions until so malleated a planished I irreducibly smooth resist, cannot be touched shell. How to keep amending amidst all these endings? Mazyu is, he's, and I just can't feel any grief, I've been emptied of emptying's sting. [[Dizzy->mwanblood]] need to sleep a century before I could again feel. Trudge procession of griefs like work, barely asleep from last night's toil before klaxons the next. Guilt relief of being already guilty, what else can you accuse? And yet it's Mariena who must, I, she, she who helped when I was wounded in kabiknu, she, anyone who ever does anything nice to me I brutalize, I am sickness infectious. What shall I do, douse her sleeves more sorries? Every additional anguish dulls the [[migraine->mshimmers]] til you weather stonely.

Shadows ever upon the edge to pull you into swallow sense us ferried already, what further purpose can they teem upon our borne to barren [[aboves->merrants]]? We bring ourselves, so there is nothing to take. "When I was out to poles," Gyadalta, "used to envy sailors their tanned stories, would dream backstories to each crate, an idea in each barrel. Now I've sailed myself scarred and redolent of no aura, suppose I envy these ones the stories dreamed in beds, a world behind each drink. Course, were I out there among them, none of it would amount to much more than demanding nostalgias of my sailing, wistfulness of aged, regaling ourselves envious as we [[slump->mwanblood]] and wait. Strange element of us lor, always [[fantasizing->mdifferences]] the next, suppose it's a way to cope with the now, we'll adapt to any battering so long as there's a gap to myth." "Dunno, I've always to the gig, it's a good one, meditative, rhythmic bearing of gifts," Mylecz. "Made me feel grateful and awed, yeah it's hard work, but you steal away to peek in, maybe snatch a paw, see what secrets you've purloined. Fascinating job truly. If you were unhappy with the stevedore, is perhaps it's you mate." "Yeah maybe it is me, but I've lived when those I grew with died, so maybe there is to me a truth worth the thought."

Held beneath Myeri's [[wringing->mwringing]] we dried to his [[threshed->mthreshed]]. Sharp [[incuts->mincuts]] we on Kapinya's gloom ooze.

"But why can't you? Is it me? Have I -" Imeni. "No no, it's not, it's more that like just, I can't, it's not -" I. "Do you, do you mean like [[physically->mheard]], you can't?" "No, I mean, I can, [[physically->msurface]], or well, that's why I, but I can't -" "Why though, why not?" "Because, um..."

What is the value of a word when who speaks it? I relented to Myeri's callous fire. "Sailors, when we lose our own, the sting's poison pierces, its throbs circulate, shall never subside, but more violent than the venom must we thrash forth in fear of these first four of the rest of history's preceding over what is done daily in its name, account each moment to the pain we feel for our fallen. Their sacrifices bind us unto our own. Consecrating pilgrimage to their shrine shall we ferry our souls to whichever shore awaits. What deaths fear immortals?" What we say does not reach their ears, evanescent stories unaddendable. Thickening solitude. Bear this blessed black, you dear deceased. Do not listen but simply hold this care, this longing for you and your longing long gone. Wish I to whisper to the voice which will not say it back, do not need an answer, just need to know if in death they still hear the questions. Irreducible is the weight of a story, and that weight is what I must let crush, remove not the face to redress the skeleton beneath, to erase their crags in patterns, Kaiya unrepayable, crush spine submission to debt, the pressing divide solidified, suffocated as in cave collapse seeking where in this underearth her truth better breathes. They are dead, and you are stuck. Burdened not with memories: possessed with souls. "We strive for victory, and so shall we do! Those that die shall be party to our grandeur: when the Submergence is revealed in our assembled, they will be forever in our forever. Our sendings percuss our triumphs as we labor upon our united sepulcher, our successful voyage!" I just want to hold you and whisper this, and everything wrong with that feeling I will bear as penance for the wish. "Now, some of you have been asking why, if we are headed to the Submergence, we have first elected to venture to Kapinya's Tower. The answer is elegance itself: the Veda must, before making the voyage to the Central Sea, consult with their colleagues at the top of this Tower, a grand reunion bridging centuries across our decay, a moment crushing time's disparity in our larger act of the same. Much forgotten knowledge lies in their sacred libraries, and necessary research is prerequisite to understand our hour's apparitions. I know many of you have never ventured above civilized Floors and may be afraid to do so, but be courageous, brother sailors! Banish the specter of doubt from your minds. Find suffrage in your chance. To be great, you must slay great demons; to be renowned, you must overcome the task renowned; and to be remembered, to be a member of our fateful crew and venture to the Submergence, you must first climb these steps. So let us not dwell on the unpleasantness of our task, of the danger it portends: let all such thoughts merely bolster your resolve, and let us go forth unhindered. "Pyevi! You command the shipguard; watch over our vessel, strike down the degenerates who seek to subvert our purpose. In your ranks shall be Reikka, our poet of this day more esteemed, whose uh, talents, are best retained here; Imeni, who remains in need of some, care; Mariena, also at your glorious command; and Doubo, who is better suited, for this task, than ours. May valor kin our trials! "The rest of you I shall need with me. We venture forth tomorrow dawn. Let cowardice marry lateness, and their spawn will burst out our absolute anathema. Who of you without our fame regained shall return to your empty lives not broken men? Rest not too late, nor, too else, for [[tomorrow->mtomorrow]] is our history!"

"Sailors, [[tomorrow->mtomorrow]] we climb the impossible, we ascend to sun glory, heights beyond seasight, dwelling of our Veda in which shall we infuse spirits. This quest consumes us to potential, ascends us to identity potency, apex we acquire through sweat and strain, through danger and terror, in each Staircase we ascend sings a higher community, a layer of signification superior to our bred to beneathness. If any of you fear the fury and majesty, flee now, scurry into your forever overshadowed! For the rest of you trothed to our becoming, assemble yourselves in this center to assume upon the morrow, bring forth your desire devisers, discover who you are in history: miss not your time now it is nigh! "Rest this night, sailors, you shall be given now your first and base of payments, but those who seek to earn greater a glory, tomorrow, tomorrow, greet us thenceness here, upon the morrow seekers shall we sublime!" When we had fought to the precipice of youth and resolve we whispered ideas we thought might be our value. A future can be tossed on anyone, but the future we will never get to live can only be shared with one who will be there in either. Divorced to a new world with no contours which fit the shapes in which who I have been to be has sheltered, the themes solely remain on my tongue, I must carry them, it is I who, who, and I am ashamed it is, because nothing I ever do will conjure the dead to their conclusion, so why have I been left in their shadow, and what does that compel me to attempt? Who am I supposed to be when weighted down by better death? Olyasz went around handing everyone a few coins. Cool tink on palm. "Look out there, Emnin, can you see in the darkness, the shape?" Kaiya. "This dark is what the light has left unlit this hour. You can see how much lies in there just waiting for a lamp. Maybe one day when it brightens it will show the mural completion of these fragments we fail to make sense of." You make my sense, Kaiya. You made. I don't understand anything since.

Voicing fate in the names. In the silt of the still dim Docks we stood a haphazard line, some hands folded, some heads down, in the shade askew and aslant still staring at the sea. Funeral gray pronunciations: Teminu, Kaiya, Jenyelle, Mazyu. Pressed tongue frozen in failure of a hum. On some kind of soaring Myeri declared that Reikka had prepared a poem, and I bunched my fingers to a fist. Wreathing the crowd, orange smoke. Wayward longing for the gone absorbed the faces in a single mass. (align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Saccharine crackling to snap lacquering Sadness seems to sweep us to weeps…"] Reikka spoke her beauty, and isn't it our absolute tragedy that no one shared it? Something in her gunking sunk my soul to my stomach where acids withered it sickflush. Ire's only truth is what melts in its fire. Hate this speaking if your ruthlessness sears it, but we are all wringing life from living utterly lifeless, devoid shamblers slamming cellar doors, and does it surprise me that I gloat over her failure to lift from the mire that soaks us, or, or only levels of dismissal right blow gloating, why do we delight the moment the miserable are not us? I wanted to beg her to stop humiliating herself, if only for our sakes… If my flesh was gone, my body would be open, and I could escape, I would leave. No more tied to a body, a being need not be tied to itself either. Spill until it's not a container that's spilling. See me, see my sin, but if I tore out my eyes, I could not see them see me, and if I incinerated my ears, I could not hear them snicker. Sneak out unnoticed. How much we want when we wander to arrive at exactly what we left, desperate yearning touches pristine shining our absence lack. In the else please return this. Moving outward what little grips us the new not us, selfish beings roving into our own resounding, whose flower shall blossom on another's soil alone? Love in the long run races circuits around its attached. You can run, bathe in the [[morning->mtomorrow]] melted magenta, but that last blue tinge remains, uncontrollable vestige retaining the ruin's secret. No matter how much we decay, are we at least marble somewhere? Can there be, but how dare fate not wait to solidify? Could I not talk to Kaiya one last time? Let her know what she must have... but what does gratitude matter? Why would anyone care what another person... Kaiya didn't do it because she cared but because she was good enough to care. Daydream your apology to fantasize your redemption in having been good enough to apologize before its gap solidified. You could have been good enough to have been her friend, but you were not, and you never will be. You will always be her burden, another one, the one who let her down... lowered her into...

Hollows echo in my ears the connective fray as my body without recourse obeys the command to march ever and upward, into this mission to ascend Myeri marshals us, shall we ever find a sky sear azure sublime to heaven our fallen? Ascend must we to the Veda, ascend must we to the secrets above us, ascend and accept yourself heightened, storysoldier in myths titans, but what shall amount of me to azimuth vaticism? Why exist when we escape our bounds to bind afresh the flesh? Emendative timelisting to unlitany disenvowelcalyized consonance to veerb electric matins. Myeri says ascend, and so do our prayers, verse of our fragilities: do the Veda these missives receive, record, encore enduress? Cannot ask, not your place, your place is the ascent as it blurs [[First->mfirst]], [[Second->msecond]], [[Third->mthird]], [[Fourth->mfourth]], [[Fifth->mfifth]]...

Static rustling muted our footsteps even on the echoing Staircase through the First's haughty reserve. Not a face to be seen, guardpoints more poignant in desolation. Ghost breezes scratching the worn stone. "I mean you would know, wouldn't you Olyasz?" Jaufr. "How the First is also decay, their own recognition of time's shadow, yeah? In that their hoarding is itself a pessimist admission, an unwillingness to believe the lie, hor?" "Maybe yeah like, or you know uh, uh, well it just felt like silence hurt somehow, no, and that's not even it, because silence can also, I mean I've had people where silence was the best you could be with them, not, not like that, as in, like a genuine delight, because it's more meaningful than, but there's, in the balance somewhere, you could taste it in the in betweens, the questioning, the hollow resumption of reassurance, scepter silence obeyed because best not to wonder why. You'd up to the waking to the silence, breakfast, heavying hours to noon seeming to break up, brittle silence, strictly adhere to the schedule you pretend, nobody talks, nobody looks up, even when you do talk, even when! Silence, and trudging along them as our not speak would crouch on our skulls crowns of our joke, I would look, feel this wilting bulb in the pit of my stomach, in the middle of their nothing I less involved, not selfinvolved but actually withdrawn both inside and out, wasn't there, could taste their not there. Bound we were lah, so's the actual, might as be marionettes waddling to suppose a puppeteer. Don't know how you're supposed to live so, suppose the thing's you're meant only to pretend, as I would, at those, they would call them balls if you'd believe it, like a dozen disheveleds in soiled dresses curtsying to waxball glares as we limped out loosely gloved wrists, and you'd touch insofar as figuratively, pavane to whatever music the torpid glaze conjures. Why aye, was what being alive was like suppose, like where's the go there? En li akhot, I do, but I don't, not one which means it, no parents neither, no anything, even Myeri, I mean he's got a pulse hey, so on that account I'll call him uncle, but he's not. Not that I'm an exile, but that I never was there, there is no there to be. I went out, and I'm a hundred percent serious, just to, to, I don't even know honestly, stop pretending things exist. Let go and just go. Maybe you lot are inured to the sailing to meaningless, but let me tell you, sailing you're moving, and that's the world's greatest gift, absolute serious, you don't know how lucky you are. Being able to sail is a solution to, and I think this is their problem, really, is that they don't have sailing, or anything like that, it's because they don't work that it's dry. Humans were meant to suffer and languish, look at yourself in a mirror, naked or not naked, doesn't matter, you'll see, you got limbs like [[struggle->mstruggle]]. You move for what makes you move. Maybe that sounds obvious to you, but apparently up there it's a secret. I mean look at yourselves! Don't our bodies cry out to go somewhere? Gods, I couldn't take it! What's the point of living if you're stuck?"

Buildings shadowed the streets, grimaces encased in mortared stone, frozen scorn centuries wasting encompassing all that passed under its lonesome bell. Lightlack droops pooled on my shoulders, ran down my sides, puddled. Of course you're not supposed to dwell on it, that's their secret, [[inertia->mstruggle]]. They are not too ponderous to live. Scraped against the razor sun sludging from the wound long enough the building death, attempting to imitate human despite the rotten gnarl of mistakewaste seeping bubbling my clumped. All I want to do is wait out the wrong away from perception. Stake me to some judgment, supply me serenity of the damned, pierced stable… Ribbons of black silk draped across grated windows. Withered crypt creaks in the Second's dully loud reverb. In the streets men with infected laughs eked their bodies away from gutters with scrabbly shard extremities, their curdled skin sallow and lumpy. Having rotted the last of the sun out of their bodies they opened their mouths to spill the collected dust. A man missing hands perched on a fountain motioned an applause impossibly long and impossibly slow. He lizard grinned.

Cinders learning to love the other ember's glow resonates tragedy, never again this beam we beg to embrace. Because some of us linger long in the pall's gentle hum and some of us fizz out in a flash, because our bonds do not actually attach us, and we are forced to watch each other go, we drift dreamseared into inarticulate anguish. Watching the other die out, then asking yourself, then. Our lives are absences goliaths composed of the moments we were too enraptured to notice we were living; we only live in the silence between two notes; until in an unlit corridor winding past locked door after locked door we are forced to truly live do we pressurize become. Yakacza had a cur adopted, never I the capacity, whatever it was a capacity of, could not bear to watch its violently terse prophecy: seeing fire doused, having to still stay lit. It bounded behind him; there it was, curled up beside him; that was what he would do, when we stopped talking to him, turn and talk to it; every joy doppelgangering its thricefold anguish. Preloaded gray of the diminishing context, I asked him, still I besiege you! Violence, only violence continues its [[motion->mstruggle]], only in violence frozen life, bathe in brutal, dream out the futile to fires, bury us in the burning becomant raw and twistably possible, scream yourself uncertain! Scarlet hair knife slicing on a raucous the Third's musky pit belching from its brim dancers in the sweaty nude who caroused beneath rubbish pyres stricken to poses of horns, halos, scars, jerky progressions against greasy flamelight. Animal heads vomited lucre like pearls on panters. Smoke tuffs feasting on stale oxygen sparked several chesthot coughs quick swivel sucking beady stares numerous in the night between slabs of red streaking.

Desolate stretched the Fourth. Dotting unlit stone sea like damp islands were small lamp pocked dens. Our footfalls rang through with emphatic intrusion, the peek of the riser on the sleeper in the fragile dream. Pungent ash. Kostiye's gait became a shiver; it spilled out: "I did, did I tell you guys about, when several years ago, we actually got pitched up here? Gods, it's all coming back to me. Nejani and Leiska, and, you remember this place, Leiska?" "Yes. Long ago." "It wasn't that long ago now, it was uh, was it Nejani's last voyage, that is, before we left back to Ayeri's, and..." Jaufr's stained corpse sunk to the so far removed you cannot help but remain in its icy outline, an anchor mooring. So many years of affection, of affliction, of arguments and protests, yelled nights, bristling thorns interlocking a necklace on a pillowy throat, accumulated in a deep blue congealing gauze. Shame trickled through my chest like a viscous slime blobbing in the push. Water obscured true sight behind translucent surface illusion. Gone like so much more. "Weathering we were hereside for so could prove weeks," Kostiye trembled the manic aversion to crying, "so we decided to up, which was always Nejani's suggestion in these situations like. Things then are pretty much the same so you see, surprising honestly the lack of change, though then too was this whole place a surprise, had to ask ourselves where have we really gone, you know, as there's an idea of like this will be fun to see how things are, see the ways the different Towers tapered into their own, you know, its own uh, whatever, and then there is oh gods suddenly of, yego is copulating with what probably he thinks is a, right, um, you know, out of nowhere, the sort of stuff that makes you go, okay, maybe never mind on this, but emphatic Nejani was that we had to keep going, obsessed he was about this idea of how such a place might come to be, what it means when people are like this ah. Easy so to throw them away, to say, no they've lost, there's the abyss, not us, but that's just to cower from the obvious, and Nejani was always austere of these people are us, exactly like us, they are what we don't want to admit. Idea his was that everything in a given time are ways to express the same thing, particulars different phenomena of the principle is I believe his phrase, should've heard him glib on about it, he could be, uh, it was Nejani, you know, used to rate him a bit of a poet, and he never got mad at the title, but you could see it in his face, somehow calling him a poet just slipped off him. It was his idea to stay the night here, that is, not just to look and nod but to dwell, to uh, I'm not sure really, but, to be here, deeper, in some way. Kapinya's has never been all that crowded, but I remember when we got up here for the first time, it was, I mean. We'd spent a night or so on the Third, and swearing my sending on you lot've seen but not've been, didn't hear it, didn't smell it. When you get in there so far you can't see for the pyres, you can't hear for the howls, bays, whatever our throats are apparently capable of, and maybe even not capable, and with no like spatial distance in anything, every sound and object and thought and person and place and feeling and animal impulse is right there on top of you leh, utter chaos it is, raw ataxia, you plummet into their noise and find yourself uncertain of what anything otherwise is, and at that point the, the you know the pretend of anthropology goes, whatever remains is an emptying out into shell, and like whole days we were in that intense thirst where your seams rip and you can't help what pours out, not without feeling somewhere in yourself a vacuous need to either destroy everything to avoid identification or be soothed by the phantasmal element of it, and so you there you are drinking desperately everything that filths your sight so you don't have to make choices about it, or knowing that it's not a choice; you can't enter a gate and not pretend lalekhet et haderekh. We couldn't... this gaping in how surprisingly thin is nature's fabric: you stick your head through, uncompressed electricity of the outside mirrored exactly, and you, that's when you realize, that this place, what's so uncanny is that it's exactly what it looks like. "The scene though, this Floor, this arresting nonsequitur, we were so deflated we had to wait to prove that it was really us [[pushing->mstruggle]] ourselves, hadn't submitted to tides. See those dens hey? We trembled inside nearest to wherever we had found ourselves, or so we had to assume as selves of our sodden soldered as if drunkness permanence would cause the next drink to sober. What else could we do but collapse as soon as it wouldn't kill us? When we got inside though there were no scraps of anything to moor by neither to sit nor lie, not even trash ah, but this emptiness, it, it, I mean look at it, what is there to, and inside it's totally the same hey, cold steel in harsh angles gliding into a glassy mirror, so selfsame this sea to sea sloshing. Corpse behind the counter noticed us, yet he could not, not for all of our noise, you get the lack of vertigo vertigo, and ah, we wandered to his just gargoyled, and Nejani like proclaimed unto the ether we would stay the night upstairs, and this guy gave us this look, right, I'll never forget the terror of it, unflinching, not acceptance, whatever's in the cellar of acceptance, like how could the world be anything but what it has come to suffer? The very fact that we had ascended to the Fourth implied to him, directly, no possibility but whatever we babbled, or maybe even that causation wasn't there, because I swear to you the way he, and behind Nejani stashed up they'd so conjuring a bit of Laveri he grabbed one, keeping full eye contact with this guy, uncorked, sipped like twice, then threw the rest on the floor in disgust to no reaction, I'm serious, nothing, nothing, sometimes I can't sleep because I see him in the shadows frost motionless. Of course he threw the bottle on the floor, why was it not there already? But I mean how does he even restock! Ask yourselves that, right now. How obvious it was that no one had ever paid this guy, and yet there was stuff in there, enough of it to seem real, and how, who brings it? Where does it come from? Who makes it? I had a hallucination once that I saw a secret Staircase in the walls where these elves are just endlessly ferrying poisons to this factory of, of… and this demon tending bar, sentinel assigned to this hell specific, nodding as we wailed our incapacity to penance? And the thing is too it's not just him, I used to, like uh, any pub I'd wonder how the hell there's all these bottles, you could never smash your way through them, it felt like we were drinking to a completion, but always just off, perpetual tomorrow of the drying out, and that feeling becomes so much stronger when it's a place like that, where you know, in your head, that somehow these things arrive, but you don't believe it, you cannot imagine anything being added here, endless minus of an irreducible stasis. Where does it come from? How long does it take him to go through them? Who brews them? What happens when he sleeps? When he leaves? Does he sleep? Does he leave? And like who birthed him? Someone must've breastfed him, or perhaps he crawled a specimen from a smashed filthdraft geskecz. I'm trying to imagine him being conceived, trying to imagine something utterly gruntless in the unlit over some mirror, moving the soundless way dream figurines do, then trying to fathom him being nurtured, suckling on some statue or something. Trying to imagine a story and knowing I can't, and yet I can, because it was probably the same as mine. "So we knocked up to the beds, weren't made obviously, but they still had the sheets, pillows, they were like, tch, embalmed. Does the world reset when we leave? If you ever thought Nejani was just toying on his own when he talked about recursives, you haven't lived what he has, haven't seen into the eyes of what his names fit. He thought so he did for having to stare thus and still believe this place we subsist in. It's the world or go crazy lah; he was crazy enough to choose the world. Annulled up there we were, had to start over. I always thought of perfection as a positive thing, perfection was the unattainably complete, but that scene slapped me in the face with something that was unattainably complete and was, was it positive? Negative perfection. I don't know. Even though we interloped we could not introduce an errance into this complete paradigm. Nevermore a thought which has not already ruled your entire. Whatever crimes it is for which Kapinya's pays its dues its panorama, it's already been pressurized into a gem here, they're all wearing it so, all busy atoning, that's why coming over here is so empty, you're interrupting clockwork daemons shuffling the ever undone atop acrid immovables. Ayeri's, maybe we only accept it because it's ours, I only like it better because it's my pit, but nobody guarantees your pit is a good one, or a good bad one, or like, maybe the pit that doesn't attempt to home is the best, maybe we should all just admit this to ourselves and get on with our damnation. Cannot say to it, wish Nejani was here to say it better ah, eah..."

"Halt!" Cried a guard. "No further! We're armed!" A small pike was brandished to prove the assertion. A ramshackle hut with what seemed like signs flimsily attempted to barricade the top of the Staircase. There may have been letters on the signs, or maybe those were fingernails' memories. "What uh, fjelske uh, what business draws you up?" A second guard, as he sought, his pike, near, his feet, where had it gone, had it ever been? "Ascension," Myeri declared. "Yes uh, but uh, like um, for what reason?" "Indeed, could you reckon it? Is it not reason itself, the why? But what is such a reason to one who must ask?" "What is it to me?" The first guard. "I am a commissioned sentry of Kapinya's Myemi, fully authorized to conduct all matters of civilization relevant to this checkpoint. It is my very duty to know what your reason might be." Myeri's shoulders slumped. He nodded to Leiska who fought his way to the front. The glower when he got there oozed. "Murder, mayhem, don't yet catch it all to a plot," Leiska. "There's sixteen of us, there's two of you: write that on your paperwork." The first guard frowned. The other, segueing from a hum: "Yes, the paperwork, must be done. Doszi, where did you put the forms?" "Is it not in the locker?" Doszi opened the locker. "No." "Uh, well, from which are you?" "From the continents," Leiska. "Ayeri's," Meluoi. "We're from Ayeri's." "You're not from Kapinya's?" Doszi. "Is that what Ayeri's means," Leiska. "Then they need the Foreign Ascent Form. Those are in the locker." Doszi reopened the locker. "Is it the blue one?" "No, the green one." "It's not in here. There's nothing in here." "What? Oh, yes, that's right, I moved it to one of the drawers last night. It's over there." "You moved it? Why?" "I don't know, yesterday. Just get it." "You do it, if you know where it is." The guard set his pike down and walked over to the drawers. He yanked onto the counter a pile, scattered them, then picked up a set of green forms. He thumbed through them. "These are the old ones..." He muttered. "There are new ones?" Doszi. "Yes, there are new ones, that's what that whole meeting was for, the one, you know, the one with the, the, um so can I have your names?" "Aci Leiska. You can put us all down on that name." "I can do that." "You can?" Doszi. The guard shot him a look, then turned to us and nodded. "Yes, of course I can. Aci Leiska, let's see, how do you spell that?" "A c i, L e i." "L e i? Leiska you said it was?" "The ska is silent." "I didn't know the ska could be silent," Doszi. "Is that so," Leiska stared upwards into the lightless. "Uh..." "It's silent." "Uh, um, okay... Leiska, excellent. Now, can I have the reason for your ascent?" "To reach the Veda," Myeri declared. "The Veda? Hmm, that's not, that's not actually er, an option of the..." "The form has options?" Mojyi. "Of course it has options. Why would we have a form if it didn't have options? Let's see... one: hound a warrant, two: quell criminal activities, three: provisional sightseeing with approved form, four: exile, five: selfimposed exile with no possibility of return, six: selfimposed exile with possibility of return, seven: acquiring materials specified by appropriate forms. Those are your options." "None of those," Meluoi frowned. "How can it not be one of those? Are you criminals?" "Put us down for sightseeing," Leiska. "But you said you were going to the Veda. That's not sightseeing." "You have to be joking," Meluoi. "I'm most certainly not! These are the only reasons allowable for foreign ascent. It's for us to enforce the rules, not add to them. You can solicit the Myemi whenever we meet again with your objections, but that's not my job. Now let me read your options again, let you decide –" "Just tell them the exile with return option right so, doesn't that –" "Yeska!" Lomia shouted. Bowling through the ramshackle checkpoint Lomia grabbed the guard by the throat and lifted him. Doszi dived for his weapon, lost somewhere right beyond the reach of memory, but Mojyi spiraled a javelin into Doszi's chest. Lomia threw the guard: screaming: crash. "Don't act out of command!" Myeri. "Your unruliness besmirches not only your name but ours and those we carry as well. Reprimand your men, Lieutenant." Leiska muttered a token remonstrance. Myeri nodded us [[onwards->mstruggle]] with a core sigh.

Shoulder mine around Yakacza hugtugged me his motionslung. "Ey Leiru onto this then you’ll appreciate, Reikka here has spotted [[foxfires->mfoxfires]] up in window there aftly, there’s the one, espy?" "The what now eh?" I. "Green glow like up in the darkness there pulsating. Ken a reflective glimpse if you squint. Shall we [[investigate->minvestigate]], old times yeah, pretending the scars away as you’ve always?" "You’ve got to see it Leiru, if you’ve never. Lush pus dust to fuss must!" Reikka. "Aye will you shush leh, got to somehow with you an hour." She [[glowered->mglowered]] into Yakacza’s trawling us up to pace. As if to batter he rammed us through a door that mewled hinges swing swing an echo. Through a dusty disregarded we triptrudged through overturneds and discardeds until a flight flighty with gaps crumbled us up to a second creaky sawdust loaded which we wandered with the same empty bemusement moded to a room not meant to be wondered which has failed to unadmit you. Ghost marks chilled, [[lambents->mlambents]] crawled through decays. Dry jilt sputter heavies heaved us through kiln clouds to a third than a fourth further fetid, each asking more of our less. The sense of up in our stomach pits; this must we inculcate, ascenders, ascent, dread, who could survive such a thing wrote our expressions blank enough that Reikka rhapsodied them, regaling through Yakacza’s groans her envy at our ability to touch where the sky begs or whichever her phrase. In a dome of dark we paused awaiting to adjust in what assumptive flaired in our wish to see.

To each abash: nothing. Reikka panics to a gloom, nerves us through different rooms, through so much space we insoluble pass. Heavied burnhead hulped cope to wriggle. Stapler sighs stuck us to conversate. "Sure so it's still around, your whatever?" I. "Aye, it's gotta -" Yakacza. "We'll never find it leh, mirage, a thing too beautiful for our world." Reikka. "What, you're giving up hey? We've barely searched the landing." Yakacza. "Yeah but here's where I saw it, dreamed it, painted it. If we cannot real it here, never anywhere." "Eh? No actually I feel I remember we were up further, next landing so, yeah, that's where it must be." Up another set of [[stairs->mstart11]] why not, all you ever do is up. [[Ascension->merrants]] sweats sprechbund. Hurt yourself productive, and escaping whatever belowness surely... "Your problem is because you don’t suffer enough adversity, you must invent some, which, in your dissociated pleasure sadness, thrums equally as real." Nyneme. "You think you can just hurt me, and it doesn’t matter, just because I won’t?" I. "What?" Yakacza. "What?" Reikka. "Nothing." "Yeah, it's everywhere now..." Reikka. "If it was everywhere, we'd find it by now ah." Yakacza. "What?" "What?"

Dizzy of an [[upwards->mstart11]] more deeply a downwards we drill compelled by motes in rafters chiaroscuro of silence char entombed a hum that echoes in bones. Chased by an uncanny certain in uncovered uncertainties into our willfulness to immerse in what in us is buried. Curiosity our flaws propulse pries through ashes for kindling, must be some alchemy by which to this formed aflame, must be, sings to me in each new oldness, each enigma layer unsolvable without the secret sunken in further and further earthwards, antiquity spells constructs interragating. What could we find to satiate the salivatic? Were they so solved, those forever a question in this [[cryptych->mupfloe]]?

You feel it first in your phalanges, radiates through your curling to crawl, illuminates your begging the sprawling brilliance sweating. Eyes rolled into your neck, swallow it up, you want to be beautiful, drink this starewelling, immerse into searshine why suboperator. Glow magnificence of foxfire surround pulsing, oval envelop of emerald neon sparkling white dots in your vision of a mycelium angel network blurring encodeds to maxulate, zenith halo of gravital distortion nullpoint armadament beamlinking to one, galaxy expulser. Shockwrote to howlite lunar surface in nightnochrome saturation wanderer munchian, of each impact an imprint incorporated to unified desolation. Absolute devestation absolved in deinvestation, litter deinvaded sleeveds across luminous [[trackless->mstart11]] to darkwhite glare subsolve [[somata->msting]], stigmata mystic approach worship its lightning apparitive elusion, pewter cast planished to repeatable category, catechism to catholicize the dispartite invidium. Filaments of forgetmenots fabricate a chain to unearth, you can travel across division without sight, exist in black and whites harboring polychromatic consequences deoxyribonucleic acid cities to spool plume isles in glittering seize, through infinity activity integrate via to viable, you can. Reikka shuttered silently mawwarped twisting limbly to scrunched pawing discontinuous moebius infinite symbol sundered to zero. Struggled against greengleam to reach to repair her solved to individuality she splases through me shrieking underworld polytones rainbow rapids flashing behind my eyelids lithified blankblush. We mannerist to aleph.

Marching and marching up steps and also up steps until more steps come which must you march up and even then stairs appear to up march until maybe Myeri is there and maybe I'm still and not listening but there. Sunspots in my eyelids? Squint them out. "Nearness is the feeling," said the specter. "Nearness is the feeling I'm feeling. I haven't felt in so long, and I'm so far away from everything, but the further we go, the further I, something seems..." Buzzing. We must locate our, we need a guide, we need one? But the guide may or may not be here, could be dead, was only mentioned on drink four by some random, pub ill lit to conjure home... weeks since last sighting. Possibly forever, if not longer. When last above the line, I could see how ill lit it was; something scurried across the floor… the random said: when I was last above the line, Cozienna, did not see him, hey, x, have you seen... Transit of [[pupils->mpupils]], blinked to jangle them back into focus. So we need to split into four... something about hunting the four corners for the, there is something, multiple things, how many, or no, one thing which is many things underneath its facade, a concept which is its own multiplicity, but find the, rendezvous back at the corpse at exactly noon tomorrow, but when is noon, how different are Kapinya's Windows from Ayeri's, is their noon like opposite, but noon is always a nebulous, but the body is for real, and be there, be real, be a [[body->mbody]], be bodily real, Mojyi whispers, and it sounds so loud. Movement? Where are, pulled into a clumped group drifting into our own particular, that's Meluoi, and Berakh near her, and... oh, Yakacza. I, with overhasty speed... the light, of course, pounding my ears...

"It's been awhile," Imeni said, never said, though surely there she was, was I not looking at her? "Been awhile since I've been here too," cheekily subvert the subject, if you're wry about everything, then you're at ease, or is that cheeky, hold on, that's not even a joke, what am I even saying? Her lips the way they used to grin without moving, and it would just be like the past, the past is the past, or... "Looks like it's gone really downhill." "That makes two," she reclined to face me. "You look like you've been up all night." "The beds here, well, like venturing in a volje..." Which I had learned from a sailor in a [[pub->mflagon]] the night before who talked all night about geography books and what it must be like to walk a moor... "I can see it," Imeni nodded. "I've been having some sleep issues too. Nothing major, but you're right, it is worse here, like reclining in a..." The flat valley between two impressions well formed, the soothing... "You haven't changed at all, Emnin," she said, or would say, and then she would go on to say, "Let's brush our hair in absolute silence while we collect our tears like gemstones," or, or is that what I wanted her to say, there must be something, more… Then we were drinking sarahme, and I, I... the way it tasted was so pristine, in the sense of having had the fullness of... it was... I. I was on the ground sweating profusely, eyes white in the head. Kaiya and Imeni were exchanging worried looks. "You alright, Emnin?" Kaiya. "I'm, I'm fine," I said, but it was obvious I wasn't, and I... "Emnino. Emnino!" "Not sophisticated enough," Imeni frowned seven times larger than her face. "I, no, there's so much to me, I'm not, please, you have to believe me, there's more than this emptiness inside, I promise you, I have meaning, I..." Imeni was a million feet tall but her face rubberbanded into my eyeballs like a meteor in endless ricochet. "There is no point in fighting," said the specter. "Give up. Give me up. Let go. Don't drag it all into the mire. You're making it worse for everyone. You're wasting everyone's time. Splatter your mud idols on your own clothes." "What? Listen, what, are you sick?" I rolled over to see Meluoi, confusion with worry mixing. "I'm, all of the..." Meluoi's lips curled. "He seems to have collapsed from [[exhaustion->mseparates]]. Get him under the shade." "Where?" Yakacza. "It's all darkness everywhere."

Trickle through the mud to percolate out, reach the next wholly stained you must insist leads to the next fits, dreams, nightmares, lulls, hazy light impressions melts in Meluoi's voice still ringing in this head that hates the word pain because it [[separates->mseparates]] you. Slumber into the hour of the pure moon I along with everyone else who lifted up in a swell clacked on the ground again in bootsounds bullishly strong insist of a no music calm in the fury, yes I want to be heard I tore into the soundbreaker of the better horrified of the blankness staring back through the hours of work, but the silence creeps in every time you speak over the heard, whisper my soul and so it dissipates because, listen to lips where you might live, there it is, catch it, swallow your soul, be you. How in vain I feel in Jaufr's slashes, spill it out, I reveal what I was all along, I am the I am that I, I. You are a maw, the rest of the world is poison to suck, pale shades mythically future beckoning over a quiet gray the bleakborne treasure, the immanence of presence unpunctuated by this pausation, this cauterized gyahh! Glut me with their terse you ingrate, drink this [[ceiling->merrants]] as gray and as sunless as it was when I slept. I am the nothing that no one ever is. "I'm losing the ability to work on making it work, I told her," Nyneme, "and I think she misunderstood me, she thought I meant the whole situation, everything, her included, when I just meant me, my desire to function into whatever beauty we made, the slow slip into my gross and useless. It wasn't that I was running out of the energy to fight, but that my fighting slowly began to repulse me, made me wonder if submission was so wrong, if in my splinter exclusion I meant anything more than the watery gruel, that my wreck was more my humiliation splattered public rather than any kind of treasured failure. When you lose your sense of purpose, your cling desperate to your dignity; when you lose your sense of dignity, you cling desperate to your meaning; when you lose your sense of meaning, you cling desperate to your sympathetic patheticness; when you lose even this, you drown without a splash in the rage and roar. There is pleasure in failure when your bones form some impossible beauty; nothing but what is this is in this being this to nobody's need. Why not let go? When the Glowmoon died into the Stillmoon, I recognized myself, no longer recognized her, and let go, and yet, here I am, where are we, I feel the [[uncanny->mimaginary]] shimmer of partial reflection in this, this place, I sense what I ceased to feel, I, I..." Waste is venomous. One flash of the fangs from the beast regret and one's fate feasts on years, every monument swept beneath the cleansing wave. A tattered human form unrecognizable, fading. My body was broken, would it soon shut down? Eons flushed by my bank. These insipid scrawls of an unsure child culminating in my mouth tasting directional ash, there was no trumpet blare, no scorching flame, no tempest at the mountain peak, only a fog that rolls from the sea and gets stuck in the Tower inhaled dirty and exhaled worse over and over and over and why, a mood once entered and long since run its course clogging the ventricles, yesteryear's stale cloud hanging over a no sun dawn. Gangrenous blood refused to flow. In the vaporous coldness an elephantine lurked which I did not wish to think nor touch but which seemed to intone. Single incarnate cruelty of everything tasted, everything loved, and all of it wrong.

Why bother to [[sleep->msleep]] when we awake more [[exhausted->mexhausted]]?

Cold hallways stretching long. From my vertigo rose clanking skeletons large above wreckage threatening at any second to buckle. "Strange the sudden and so," whispered Nyneme. "Forever after in this instance forms, in our mortal tenuousness forced to feel the chaos of the primal gush as erasure of our momentary phantasms of connection, who would want the ability to feel in a world of catastrophes? Mistakes all fresh in my muscle memory buzz thick static, thickening constantly, electric syrup [[sizzlesludging->msizzlesludging]] unspokens like threats to threadbare future desires ununto swamp belongs. What we don't say speaks us. The hush post the shriek, so I am in her absence, in my own in it, and this place's silence silhouettes my surrendered, sense I the nurtured withering my chest heaves with each pang of once possible plays out these echoes' icy [[pianos->mpianos]], let the sounds die out to might the voice shade. I have waited millennia in darkness for nothing. I have seen lights shift on the walls shadow sunrises and dusks seeping the world to its tone, none of it meant, it might have once, and in that death maybe some strand does, worthless, want to throw away the sails to stop waiting for the lost wind, you feel..." A scarlet sash web dressing the nudity pounded, eyebulges clotted black tumoring in rhythm, but my clarity revolted against its pity. A million variants interlocking loped [[cataphractic->mcataphractic]] under the vector needle barrage, knowledge veering into smothering's cyst cavern, corrupting chaos a prism melting the subject, do not flee. Wash crest bulges bridging the half shaped inundations so consumingly white slanted under a six zone H with color like a tan stone arch broad above the wider blue plain... one morning the sun, wake to it, warm to it, then return to the gaussian continuity reprieve, confession: the sin the world commits is procession. Quell nestle these sinews to syrup, idea. Laments in fog lurking along brambled sideroads. Believe you can be okay in the nonsense. Concave harbor to weather the rain a day more. Fuzzmind petaling mauve on wasted hours accumulating as blankets, but still must you render from your iterated material the snowy [[glade->mglade]] you once wished melting ice sculptures implied, the strain strains for some reason in its thick gulping no. Keep being until it blends cause and other into uniquely you. It will happen; it must, it must. When is the cosmic joke we will all laugh at after the fact.

Ends are, not when we want, but one day, it ends. Rain relents. For a day, the wet after glistens. In each imagined tongue striking real hides contagion, but like all organs looms its stop: the secret shall be stifled in its shade without a push of force by the paragon lux. You are a nightmare fading is said to me, and I grin, spew back bleak peals, well yes, and you too. Gradual release, oblivion release, simplicity in the cease, and yet our accounts hold us so, springing from the gore what shall stand the shirked shell and which the soul? Emerge from this soiled colossus I cannot endear sullied red but clear as desperate yellow my lifebanner streams. Stand up, you aeons, taper our [[bloodtrails->mfall]] in a noose! That way at least I have something to hang this on. Huddling fizzing off to figments under pounding sighs acidic rain. Pain blockades over which dissident the annulment amounts to our false peak, the absurd turning to the externality of tragedy as finishing, prince misery in mourning regalia debuted to a jawless crawling crowd. What god could restrain madness in the eternal themselves waiting? In infinity imprisoned the most mortal, gnashing desiccate, gods give way to their hells. Why sail when no land lurks? Yakacza languid atop a rock posed as if a spear pierced him to a passionate outcry forever frozen. We clutched cups of hot water with both hands. Early morning laze hushing us to [[semimindless->msemimindless]] wraparound drawlings pittering flat on the acrid corpse. Uncaught by the daylight: Meluoi, Berakh. Serenity auraed a ghostly echo of the vibrance there locked. Trying to curl my toes in my shoes and struggling. Several minutes withering blank right below camaraderie until the expected blow: "How's last [[night->mnight3]] going for you, Leiru?" Must we live the daylight?

A beat of no actuality tumbling lopsided through missing cessation: I am in a coffin, lidless twilight. An oceanlung bubbling to the depths. My shouts clank on metal nights. Congenital data writing unreadable garbage. "Ah, the vanguard," Yakacza yawned. "Any luck on the guide?" "None," Kostiye. "We roamed the wide over to catch not one even remotely the description." "I'd no idea there could be so many people who so wildly differed from such a generic description," Pyeisa. "Doesn't corral to sense: is this where they sent all the tall balds to die?" "Unless by scraggly the guy meant the beard and not the hair," Gyadalta. "There's brambles there to drown your close." "They're trash stale," Avacz. "Do you know I actually found a bath behind like a wall of crates? There was a spider the size of a Tower in there. Swear those fangs were bigger than my arm lor." "Not hard," Yakacza pushed himself off the rock, "considering how you laze out." "Oh gods," Pyeisa. "Can't you just sit still?" Kostiye. "Are you on contract with misery to open your mouth?" "Oh please, Prince Zekyiru, is fantasy swords with the droolers what counts for muscling?" Avacz. "Zekyiru?" Meluoi looked up. "It takes serious athleticism to –" "Serious athleticism!" Avacz. "Dance about the stage as an actor. It's a performance. It takes real effort." "Serious athleticism," Gyadalta's wry chuckle. "You know about Neszli Zekyiru?" Meluoi. "I just can't believe he won't shut up," Kostiye. "Like there's an insect in his jaw ehh." "Boka," Pyeisa. "Any beggar off the street could do your princess routines." "You'd have to train for weeks to do even the easiest." "Like how do you even think this'd well?" Kostiye. "Who's that socially off?" "Train for weeks," Avacz. "Great." "Ey Kostiye, to arms!" Pyeisa lunged. "I don't, ah..." "Come on, fight me for the throne! We've an audience to please!" Kostiye sighed. He waved an arm dismissively at Pyeisa. Pyeisa dueled it. "Doskaye, my men! Doskaye! Storm the castle!" "Doskaye?" Meluoi, bewildered. "What are you talking about?" "He's trying to be me," Yakacza. "I'm being better than you," Pyeisa. "Avacz, score it." "Seven." "Seven? Are you serious? At least pretend you're actual so the insult hurts." "Looks like a seven to me," I. "Ah ha! We have consensus!" Pyeisa clasped his hands. "Is it too late to descend to Second? Got some clink to catch on this rare talent." "Baelu, you guys are ganging for no reason." "For no reason! You've got to be joking. You ridiculed me." "Who's ridiculing Avacz?" Mojyi. "I'd love to be a part." "Ah, the vanguard!" Pyeisa. "And we've commandeered a friend," Mojyi moved to display a dour man dressed like whatever littered the nearest alley. "Why don't you introduce yourself heh?" "I'm Olosz. I can take you to the Fifteenth." "I thought your name was supposed to be Comienna," Avacz. "No, he's not the guide," Leiska, "but he is a guide. He can guide. He knows some of the stuff." "And he's scraggly too, so it's all the same," Mojyi. "How's he going to be less the guy we're looking for than the guy we're looking for when he's a guy we looked for and for all the reasons we looked for the guy? What could even be the difference?" "What?" Kostiye. "What if the others show up with the real guide though?" Avacz. "He is a real guide," Mojyi. "What, you mean, Vasya, Tyese? Those laggards pitch up with anything, it'll be targets and hardons," Pyeisa. "You make it sound like the wrong answer," Mojyi. "Where are they anyway?" Avacz. "You think they're coming before the nights freeze?" Myeri, who had weathered all this with a foggy [[distance->mstart11]], sighed. "They'll come," Leiska. Wanness on our muteness. Yakacza resumed his rocky perch. "I just hope it's not a terrible wait." "It will be," Gyadalta. "I hope it is. Waiting is the most beautiful experience." "What is that supposed to mean?" Avacz. "Why is waiting beautiful?" I. "If you all just wait a second, I'll explain it to you," he smiled. Time stuck to the roof of my mouth. I sat. Meluoi sat beside me, which made Berakh sidle down beside her. She was too short for his shoulder so she rested her head on his biceps. She nodded up at me. I looked up at Berakh. He was unreadable. I rested a little against his gentle heat, and the fact he did not react, and the fact she smiled, made me actually rest a little against his gentle heat. Meluoi started to speak but lost the feeling and fell silent. I waited for waiting to be beautiful. Avacz coughed. I ran out of hot water and just held the cup, spinning it between my fingers. Avacz coughed more loudly. My neck hurt from poor posture, but I felt too weird to move into Berakh more. Myeri glared at me with disdain. My whole body tensed, even my eyeballs throbbed tense. I leaned away. My expression drooped increasingly fraught. Avacz cleared his throat. Waiting, not for.

"Many more nights are going in me than last," I muttered low enough not to be pressed on what that meant. "You're good to keep pace, then? Not sure we'll keep stopping to nurture you to speed." "I'm fine. How was your night?" "Eh, only the third most awkward I've spent with a woman, second with a man watching." Meluoi's serenity swallowed the swipe. "Super interesting," Yakacza continued. "Shame I didn't listen to all of it, some of it might prove for the theater." Somewhere beyond cloudlevel reposed Yakacza's the theater, jumps in position along the escarpment his only measure, perhaps in perception's valley Meluoi in her mystic else remained too eager, too adoring, for surely it was a peak to defer its pride, embarrassed by the distance from home. Perhaps she had said the names Yakacza holds sacred as nominal. Perhaps she had said please father, unsew the comforter, I can't breathe... "You can't read them, you stubborn dyenne," Yakacza. "Why should you keep them? What good are they doing rotting away in a box?" Halt this rust – "But you don't get it!" Yakacza. "She might have rare books in there, ones nobody's read before. We can't let that fall away. If they go, maybe those never show up again, maybe they're gone for good. Keep that on your conscience. It's better for them to come to us so we can continue them on ah. I can read, so can Reikka too, so's we put them to real use, do other than keep them in a box, isn't that what your mother would've wanted?" "What do you know what she wanted? Is it written on your palm? What does it matter what she wants? Should she want them in the ocean, will the ocean rise to claim them? They're my books, not hers, she, she can't have..." "Hey look, okay, whatever. Clearly a nerve. It's just, think of it like this: you love books, right? You're always telling me you wish you could read. Well, I mean, the theater is basically reading them to you, agree? Isn't that what your mother used to do? She read to you as we to everyone: isn't that a good use, one proper to her memory? And don't you and Jaufrei always preach about the need for the old things to survive? I'm here to help you do that, Leiru. We can work together; all I need are your books." Spilling to the [[floor->mstart11]].

Grime mandala on a cruck beam: sick yellow star, rust orange heart, offblack sun ray tendrils vined by a dull green onto a puce splotch swirl sunken in the beam's neglect russet infested with crunchy jasper. If you look long enough, your vision animates it. Energy from a wish? Stare heat distortion pulses waddled across the exact center of Yakacza relaxed in a context nonoccurence, Nejani's gloom is a fumerole not a sinkhole. Cracks the nervous necks holding ripped our tension in a burst, truths never yield, especially not to truths; the heart which must be found to spit out ruby valve drain in mystic puddles arranged oracular, which of the warring screams yes? Nejani yelling: "And what, you're just going to sit there, Yakacza? You're not even going to fight back? Is it arrogance, disdain, huh? King of the trash convinced it's a treasury since it melts in the fire eh? Will you not stoop from your monolith to defend it, have you not the gall to be yourself in front of others? My disagreement hurts that much huh? You take a stance, broadcast it all over the Tower, but the second anyone asks anything of you, oh, I'm the one out of line, I'm the one making a fuss of things. Let me attack, but oh gods I'm so fragile I can't defend! So selfish you're. But I won't submit to your casual supremacy ah, won't let you sit there and pretend I'm the one asking a question as if for you to deign to answer me. You spat this nonsense on us: wipe it up and apologize, or spit again, or get the hell from my face and stop calling yourself human." Yakacza overcompensated his counterdemonstration, and the fight would've been a brawl was not Nejani perpetually sitting. "Were you coddled as a child," Nejani grinned as Olyasz batted Yakacza away, "that you cannot speak to a world which does not nurture you?" I laughed as if the [[ceiling->mstart11]] had said it.

Jaufr lost in the hungry shadows, chin a crescent moon, silverized cocoa bristling against the midnight monochrome, and words dribbled out in mercury, ethereal ungraspables leaving nothing but a chill in their wake. The frost at my feet dug in its mallet nails climbing my vine, reaching my chest and cooling arteries and lungs, becoming one: sunrise without surrendering the blanket. Embellish for endurance a point susceptible to whatever doubt crept in his absence, gone the sound and the spirit and the song... Lyrics drafting clouds to comfort the cerulean brilliance: "Shoreless blankness on those faces... boilers lining the room, grungy, unreflective copper, foundry of a different mindset, one that seemed naive to us now... wright in the primordial muddle envisioning steamworks instead of the nakeding sky... decay in its jagged occlusion iris branching inward, ever inward, closer to us at last... weeks of work for nobody and no change... but why shouldn't we, you know, am I saying it's wrong somehow to, to... and a cynic's starting state is victory, they never have to do anything, infantile they note a problem to consider it solved, as if everything is inherently inflexible... do we rightfully hate, maybe, only so far as the hate is a naming... human beings are variations compounded in social osmosis to identity wrongnesses, essential dilutions as causes intermingle in pregnant reality, the loss as mask, our certain silences our themes... indefensible really, to suggest that evil is omnipresent, because that which produces the evils we face, in our faces, is only a translation away from what little good supports us... society can change, Emnin, people can change, the borders that fix us are our own constructions, arbitrary [[delineations->mstart11]] between clusters we create because otherwise you are grasping onto fluctuations and not foundations, apparitions of a moment soon to change, what doesn't have to be... fear is formless; find the bidding demon... we are here to make being here our goal... and which you, Emnin, is the one looking at me?"

I looked up from the bunk, saw Kaiya sitting in a dilapidated chair brushing Mariena's hair, and I was embarrassed to linger my looking, felt enjambed in geometry, spilled across so much misplacement. I wanted to apologize for being there, being where, where was I supposed to be? Blunt massivities exploding from nowhere in a single moment smashed the earthshield, a gravitational pull retexturing reality as it dragged forth from the seam it broke. To grow is to know yourself with more horror. Over the dead in the sea with Marko's praise; over the counter in the dark with Marko's corpse. With more resignation was Kaiya's phrase. My head bowed before her I wanted to believe you could just be passively. Exist certainty where? In here? No. In where? Per form. You must enact actuality to resist conformal factuals. Break yourself down and reutilize the parts is prayer. You have a [[mission->mstart11]]: to be missing.

This me in sterile white lights barely flickering, dark sometimes for long second strings, reviving not to illuminate but to stop the adjusting [[pupils->mpupils]], batter the pools of black and wrench out the offwhites. "Eh don't mention him, he might materialize, or worse, won't, again," Mariena. "He cares about you, just weird the expressing," Kaiya. "Maybe so you say, I won't, he's in love with duty, with the ego it gives. He cares me not like a sister but like a child eahh. Trying to burgeon his misery so can he aggrandize by halving his pay with me, trying to coddle me into swaddling he can drip drip life into so as it bleeds from his veins the third person who is always himself will nod approvingly, sympathetically, tearfully, and that's how he wants me, grateful, loving, obsessing over his wounds." "Obviously he's, well like, that's how he's gone wrong, but he's trying to make sense of routines he doesn't understand, he's trying to do right by a measure he doesn't understand, and ego is the one thing he does, so he's made peace with doing it outside of why, the why we would want ah, but that why is [[somewhere->mstart11]] in his heart, he's not neutral to you assent. Might never say it sure, but your happiness is his awaking, because he doesn't feel it in himself, so wants to feel it in love, why he works all day instead of [[drinking->msting]] and brooding like most the lot. This draining gives his wasting away a kind of meaning. He desperately, desperately needs to believe in you, because he doesn't believe in his own life. It's a kind of cruelty, sure, but it's also a kind of love. You've got to compromise to accepting how the wrecks of those around you fail to love properly." "That's not much comfort." "Can't give you more than I got, but I know you, Mariena, and I think your bitterness is the converse of his pride. You both desperately want each other to the love neither of you has known how to forge, but he's out bragging to his cousin while you're in here complaining to me." Mariena sighed so as to not exasperatedly laugh. "You complain about him not communicating," Kaiya, "but also there's so much you're not saying as well, and maybe we all have reasons we don't speak, and it's not about judging that but understanding that, trying to work through each other's silences. Obviously your anger is real and important, but in his confusion which frustrates you pines something else real and important which we should listen to, and as long as that love is there, somewhere, somewhere, you can still try and weave those things together..." "Is it still there, isn't that what I'm saying, that he doesn't love me? Anyway forget my brother. Don't know what I'm talking about." "You do," Imeni. "You've got the inflection what knows its said." "Voices don't mean anything, that's what I hate," Mariena. "All these things like body language and voices and what not, people always judge them, but you don't know the way people slouch in bodies, you don't know how their spirits tune their throats. We rebel our bodies unique to poses untranslatable. I hate being judged by how someone else might be if they were me when they're not me. You cross your arms to mean this, fine, wonderful, but I cross my arms for all of my own reasons, and you don't get to guess them. My inflection or whatever is my version of what you couldn't possibly." "Why so harsh ah," Imeni. "I think that's the best way to understand people, is their faces, their tones. People speak their surfaces through riptides." "I'm not saying that like against you," Mariena. "I'm just saying it as like a, um..." "No, I know you're not, I get that, I'm saying my own opinion, which is we're marooned in uncertainties, we'll never truly know another person, but why can't we try? Why accept a dozen misunderstandings, when you can strive for only six? Maybe you can't read all of the reasons in someone's motions, but you can guess a number of them. We're not so different innately, mostly only in how we learn to express. Bracketing those differences to recognize the commonalities is the most important social virtue." "The most important?" Kaiya. "What about kindness, generosity, patience –" "Okay, obviously morality is important or whatever. You're not listening to me." "I am, I am actively judging your tone right now to guess," Kaiya. "Yeah well, guess this subtext," Imeni jeered her face. "You approve of me and wish to express your undying affection," Kaiya. "Thank you so much. You're honestly the only friend that would be so reassuring. I need some reassurance now and then." "Ah, you've guessed it," Imeni. "Eh don't exclude me now, I can sycophant you sun goddess, um, even in my unbelievable arrogance I ken you better," Mariena. I should have said something too, but I'm the creep leaned against the wall always silent. I should have said something. I should have said anything at all. Oh gods, I'm so sorry, I fell so short of you. It's too late now, I will always be worse than you. I like to ask how did I end up like this, as if I didn't know, as if it weren't my fault, as if a thousand times had not drained away while I [[slept->msleep]] in my selfishness...

"The vase awakes," Yakacza. Dimly amber congealed. Place again a jackal whose tongue swamped the gravel. Struggle to form scene from foam. How many years has the nothing swallowed? Awakes the ache its home. How could motions flow from this gulf? In the bed lying beneath the audience's compression appalled. Increasingly aware of intensifying nothing my listlessness fails to nullify. Shamed as the thing sprawled. Shoulder failure or should it crush? Frigid flatness in superior calms arrayed against me solidified, shunted into viewed. Yes, well, you ought to wonder, if you can, down there, in your filth. In my filth down there. In my increasingly aware afraid. "Is he?" Meluoi approached the bed. "He slept all day." "Careful ace, shatters at the touch." "Weakened perhaps by sensitivity to witnessed." The appellation parasite burrows. Wreckage mood, sun shines to spite you, songs which once soothed you grate, phantasms taint each taste, until with a barren heart gong's vibrating drone anger crests from internal seas mounting crashes in on its own foam lurching the chest forward rupturing a gasp like steam piping through the lungs to expulse mirror: in carnage the unspeakable finds its cacophemism emerging to consume it and wreak wrecktruth. Not yet heaves this burdened breath. Why not yet? How many not yets will I wander through until I admit it? Forever not yet before purpose's condemnation, wilting as the grasp intensifies, holding onto emaciation. Dizzy yet the spilly pulps of wallgray glaresplatter. "Here, sip this," Meluoi. "Sit up a bit." Were there more of me here to touch might I have reeled against a touch, but behind my eyeball backs my being blackdripped. A buckling hull scrunched to the pull. I sat up unwilling to appear dazed nor to force myself from this daze. I took a sip, but a waspish [[sting->msting]] of sour wrinkled my wornness. "Not even water, huh?" Yakacza. Heat or slime, which composed a greater part of me? What do you do when you're genuinely pathetic? With perspicacious equanimity Meluoi checked my forehead, recoiled from the gentle tinge far enough to crowd the bones in my ankles, but she gave a strangely soothing nod and turned and drew Yakacza off. They spoke obliquely about, auguries? Child thicklipped in the corner. Genuinely pathetic. Stand there holding a sign with time heavier and less yours as hundreds pass by judging. Riveted skin sludging to recall the mud dew now baked clothes will hold me up, and what is a heartbeat but beating at a ribcage? Please let it stop, this noise, I can't hear. They see me, and I hate it. Hate. Love throws you against a wall and says, dwell here. Is that what I wanted from however I tried for whatever it is? No, what I wanted was for her to point at herself and say dwell here. That is my mistake, this gulpneed. That is what is wrong with me. Of the many, many, many! My body staled in the airless heatbuzz. Such goes the round and around as we wait worthless. No I. No I. I will not. I won't let them humiliate me like this, throwing myself from the bed, nearly tripped. Debase myself to my own accord. "Whoa, hey!" Meluoi. "Where are you, you shouldn't be on your feet!" "I'm fine. I just need to..." "I could bring something for –" Eat me, rip open a vein gubbling [[upfloe->mupfloe]] to blind the attacking eyes, smash me by the neck onto the floor while you chew into this marrow, while you slurp every poppy drop where still this hypothetia hysterically cries, who of themselves can ask the failures, the inadequacies, the lesser causes, who will be the tomorrow of failure, the evermore of the wasted? Relief thirsty each day, each day blazewilting in search of the tangible approach to humanity, where is, there is possibility, but only if you can somehow make it, and in that absence: not. I will not be your definition to mock. Be doused in blueblack kin or spurn me! Wasting away in the pity and the scorn of the ruthless true and false perception...

An arm wrapped itself around me. "Ho friend, shall we up?" Might as well be my head's pounding. Looking up and at but not at nor through but at the cataract which blocked him. "Do I know you?" "Know? Know! Classic, can tell we're gonna be mates hey." "Please, I, need to be –" "Hell kid, you got the look keeps us intimate; shall we whisper sweet nothings on the way?" Relent's requisite shoulder slump. "Unroll your limbs eh? Look you've just slipped a butchery, have you now, good on you, you slippery dyenne, give us fish smile they gave you? Wear that stare into a drink and we'll aftermath at a sending, that's how they say it, you know, swear on my swearing hand." The left side of my face winced. The light glared. I sighed. "I'm skint." "Nah, shove your purse down where your problems bubble, as then we can drown them both lah. I'll slip by on your scraps I will, even usefulize myself to the degree, got these brews shelved in my soul I do, know them like a dad knows which ones to disown." "Just, I, I have a headache, please don't rob me, I just don't want that right now." "That's the spirit! I knew you'd turn, don't they always do. Come come, I'll show you, meet the only one I've met who always meets me where I meet it, the shelves, aren't they as rigid as what people think truth is! Lovely sturdiers shouldering so many glass worlds, makes you pause in awe, doesn't it, does me anyway. All that choice gets to you yeah, shoves you face first in your own ignorance, slaps you filthy in your mind's fouls, but that's what you got me for, you utter absolute insect bzz brain, you total mind disgrace, let me enlighten your pale unawares with this yeah, the Shake Me Shallow is it, that brunette up yonder, by geskecz it's a showup, tastes like a scorpion got loose in your mouth, and as the scorpion's dripping grime, and the grime and your mouth's blood and the venom and the saliva get all mixed writhestriking down your throat, truly inimitable cocktail of poison bloodsludge with a bile chaser, it'll feel like your mother's kisses you barely a grasshopper bug bastard, gods I'd break your skull if we weren't the best of pals. Real rollicker that [[flagon->mflagon]], guarantee it'll shake you free, it's all in the name you know. "I can tell you don't like it. I hear you, I hear you. Got no subtleties for a pretty of your pastiche. From a different place to a different taste, that's what my old kicker used to say, bless his smushed corpse. How about Melt Not Felt? That sounds like your go." "Melt Not Felt," as pejoratively as possible. "That's the [[name->mname2]]. Hot as can be, maybe hotter, sometimes it burns your insides so bad you can see through to the gods and debate them the metaphysical of temperature. Honestly I don't know how they do it, cause it just sits there on the shelf, no tinder, nothing, but you pour it and slap my jaw ajangle if it's not boiling. Three shots of that stuff and whoosh, there goes your esophagus, right out the window, right onto the pile."

Under my breath chanting. Fingertips catlike stretching from an assassin's knuckles. At any moment leap out and strike whatever hunted. What Kaiya had been bereft steal and horde, I can rectify, in this together as we have always been even when I would not hold you back up will I redeem myself to you and your judgment alone, but then first answer this: who was I to be absolved to the [[imaginary->mimaginary]] purity? Build down themory sheath to the waking day problem too late to pacify nightness. You are only the after, the too late, this too in the desolate. No, I must, I cannot, must grab my humanity by its jaw and yank my and our necks to attention and scream until buried scorns rise from their graves to rally a secret voice whose atonal reply will burst this bulging veinblare furor against the unshaken quelle quietly condoning the massacre unmourned waning in the ultramarine haze. Landed cheek first on a granite wall. Kaiya! I couldn't, that I never will, fighting will I never had to speak my own locked knees. Live this afterdeath, you mongrel. "I struggle to feel like anything in my soul deserves to survive the coming fires," Nyneme. "The fires are coming. Eventually the noises sear into the flesh too loud for sleep. Sickness intensifies to your breaking point, but already are you broken, so time trundles along your flats, never a snap but a squelch of muck bubbles popping. Wan and waiting as sensations dull. Dry rain feeding rosette stars on a scorched blank. Is it so wrong to [[fall->mfall]] short? Things could have been better, could they? Straining out every last failure until some marble nothing outlives you to clutter walkways of wanderlust eyes. I collect in a thousand boxes, all of them the same. Scraps summoner of dead dreams jinn in the years stuck drymouthed on torn paper recollections. Why not alongside the ache, why this struggle to prove ourselves more than hollow?"

"I'm no so ehh..." "Aye, couldn't agree your disagree greater, I've kenned you, shall we strain you the right way round hey? Get you going to where you belong? Then we've got to be scientifical about it, we've got to run experiments. You haven't done much experimentation yourself yoh? You seem the type. Well, we'll sort you out. Oi, we've got a live one to test! You got a draft to drink the dreamer screamy?" "Yeah so," the barkeep. "Is he from below then?" "So far below you'd think he'd crawled from sea. They say that's what happens down the Docks, these gelatinous webbed waddlers flounder to pub, learn new way to drink their life. I never thought it myself til I saw this precious little dazer, seems shocked to individuate out the chthonic gendering." "Well ho to up, which is the fish's taste?" "That's what we've to test! Give me your elementals, we'll mix them by react. What say you the fundamentals?" "I'd say there's six ways to torture honest according to the matrix of individual, social, spiritual, as measured in disequilibria between internality and externality: for individual disequilibriation from internal to external, [[disparation->mdisparation]]; for individual disequilibriation from external to internal, [[weltschmerz->mweltschmerz]]; for social disequilibriation from internal to external, [[sysauthentice->msysauthentice]]; for social disequilibriation from external to internal, [[keisaku->mkeisaku]]; for spiritual disequilibriation from internal to external, [[prayer->mprayer]]; for spiritual disequilibriation from external to internal, [[penance->mpenance]]. So we shall pour out intensities of each within minima of else so as to properly gauge through the reaction the spectrality of this set."

"I'll pass." "Pass? I bet you'd like, you're not here to waste time yah, you're here to grab that yvera by the rags and bash them into the soiled linoleum like a debtor, dig into their skull with your fingertips, you're here to suck out the brainpulp from that beisza time. I got you." "I –" "No, no, I got it ace, you didn't climb all these Floors to play tipsy dancy. You're a real desperate, you're real desperate, you want a brew to blow your pops off. You got that vibe eh, I can tell these things, I'm better than a clock at telling what it is, since I'm so broken I'm right only once a day and this is it right now, I can feel it, what you need is Muscle This. That gizzle you to salivation hor? It's hard, it'll hit you hard, but somewhere in the afterland you'll spasm satisfied I'm sure." "I –" "Sold! Aye, keep! Wake up, yego, you got pockets!" He threw a mug at the keep's head. There was a loud smack but no reaction. "Fjelske eahh, that would've woken me! What's wrong with him?" Voice hidden in the yawning darkness: "Didn't you hear? Ancestored. The other one is by your feet." The man looked down and saw a gasping face lying nearly lifeless near his boots. "Well abide me to catch a bit of luck, tab's free. Frankly, you're the one who's robbed me now." "Don't let it bother you," climbing over the bar. Because my sinews felt so good doing it! Every fiber felt free. Yielding to sudden unpromise, elixir of choosing to be doused in fault liberation. Why was it so easy? Fun to forget, let me for a moment drown! Why must this life, I'll break its teeth, give it to me! "Ey! Keep's dead?" A head popped in. "Aye," said the darkness. "Hmm," and it left. I glanced nervously to where my shoulders angled the cornice. The man raised a large jug of inky muck. "To these corpses and ours!" I grabbed the first bottle I could find and raised it. "Guess I'll." We clanked bottle to jug, uncapped, lifted our throats in pining. Heat of the flesh stripped away, the dreams washed out, sheer isolation. Aria of the drowned drawn, pressurized sloshing in the ears as your hand shoots up wild, voices shouting. Sensations steely on the skin contracting in sick splaned freezes, sensations slick, more watery than the water like a jellyfish barbs sparking more blue than the more purple depths. Cool jelly slackened on the spine which suddenly ignites, spine aflame. Must land in a different river: guide the god elsewhere! I spat out brown, sticky. My palate coated with the foulness choked, and I heaved dry air to replace the bitter taste. Even more thirsty than before. Lean on the shelves, nope, crashed against them and smashing glass after glass in shard avalanche swerved to the ground. I threw up my hands to guard against the impact: blood in my nose and blood on my lips. "Bysze," spitting out a reddish gruel. "Ey, what you take?" He grabbed the bottle from my opened palm. "Gutpuncher? Never heard such one. Oi, slackthought!" There was a grunt from the invisible. "The hell is this Gutpuncher hey, you try this one? Is it new?" There was a grunt from the invisible. "Huh. Well, how's it taste, comrade?" "Kinda like Gutpuncher," hovering in pushup position. "Gotta swig this. Here, you borrow mine, The Bugs Don't Stop Biting, it'll scratch your itch!" Tried to rest my head on the [[floorlevel->mstart11]] rack. Swiveling back and forth, back and forth, a head or a pendulum: the room blended pseudoshape and color. Collapsing near me his head slapped my knee. "Yoww... why'd no one ever tell me about... bakyeko..." Bakyeko? Is that? That's a word, isn't it? Is that a word? "What's bakyeko?" "Eah? Well you know like the rest of them, but uh think it's technically a uh, what is it then, oh it's a chair isn't it, yeah it's chair in the language." I massaged my forehead with a palm, hot to hot in feverish rub. "How'd you know that?" "What, you think I read the names to you from memory hey? All my lost yesterdays disagree." We mingled in the bloody glass mess. "What's um, what's your name?" "Hmm?" The man cringed the first tic of the unnumbing pain. "What name do they call you?" Laughing the man pointed; I could not follow.

Recourse to this conundrive concavity and witness what lies within it, epheme esprit incense trails praising the dome, neither side of it heaven, but because of the impassable its feverish meshes permeable, [[maze->mstart11]] through it doubts and wanders to magic the impossible a home, you can dwell there more than here, what else then to fear but the rebound quiver to sterile buzz lengthening into realization this hollow contains you more than the phantasmy, contains the phantasmy uncanny its corollary containment, you are dispossessed by this projection’s relation to your rebound. Process of nightmares such narrowminding claustrophobe.

Jaufr's glare chillchoked my words. I could feel how wrong what I said was, but then the wrongness annoyed me, made me speak more freely, anxiety bursts were my form of anger. "That maybe it's not so easy to change ah! Our ways aren't accidents, Jaufr, they're where we settled most assured: real flaws, real causes, idiosyncrasies, reasons for all this. Whatever is being highlighted, drawn out, expanded from the pool of norms, it's ourselves, not arbitrary, in fact it is more true than whatever reasons we pretend to give. These are predecisions that can't be fixed in a generation because they've locked us in their glacial process. Collective recognition may tilt our lumbering culture in a new direction and so we try, but every single step is an admission, and that takes time, lots and lots of painful time, and the process is bigger than us, we're two people, our only value will be in however many more people we two mean something to. Society is designed by accumulations of our crushed against walls, we ourselves cannot expect change, and –" "Cannot expect change? Yeska, Emnin, you sound like them! Difficulty is no reason to surrender. You and I both know that, knew how difficult this was going to be, but I didn't hear any complaints coming from you then. What changed? Are you tired from the workload? Bitter at having to do so much? Maybe you realized the scope of what lazy you were assigned to, now you're backstepping to blankets? We can change, Emnin, we've seen it happen, it can, it will, I promise. Simply the effort in it, and time, you're right, but time we have to give, that we must –" "Listen though, reason to my with you lah, but not naivety. I don't expect change beyond my chrysalis, and even if, if it were there, it wouldn't be me in the open air to claim the flight redemptive. What I was born into will claim me, that's my one certainty. Reason I'm here is because I, believe in, in our ideals, want to achieve some good so small as my soul, bless the next condemned with softer glows in which they can care our [[condition->msting]] closer to ever elusive bliss, and we might push ourselves by degrees to our true center, we might point the way to the possible people who dwell at where the compass points. I love other people, and maybe doing something good too is my way of, meaning something to them. I know in everything I do I'll fail, but that failure cakes, adds weight, combines with every prior failure, even minute things share a direction, so that when we crash down my speck will have meant something, helped somehow. No one wins a battle, but one group survives less, so we overpower the enemy in [[advances->mstart11]] as sentences of a human testament..." Jaufr strangely let the point stand so I did not instead.

"Let's give this the go ah?" Disjunction sentience recompels your recalcitrant never to conform inlay perfection impossible to your twisting squirming yearning, halo entomb denied. Project I on any surface nonsurvivor, martyr worship the slip, the seal, the vain hope any coherence will [[congeal->mstart11]]. False fundamentals we wander elemental vestige to enchain hyle to mana and molt but germinull we cannot corrode revolt ascend pure, castform hells. "That one's really snapped him aye!"

"This ought to engage your gauging, let me poor you a measure." Individuation immanizes predicament in divisibles. Sepulchered in a pattern circumscript deriver of version to zeropoint unrepresentation, solute pervase am I lace to cohumanitate the helical interweave, doubling of our doppelgangering across symmetries singulating, replicated alterior, from which then arises the aversion to faultfeel, how coelisions nestle. Endurer of the durate reciprocate, yearning afters coterminal noncoterminate, spirals of spiration celadon to distance beauty, all of us quivering before allvoid. Insofar as not you, I dream through you, am wound up in your wound to hurt volted freedom, finally disindividuated, suffering sublimity universes our [[containments->mstart11]] gravitational conduits nigh torn by elusion unillumines prisioning accelerating expansion to accrete express. Worldpains siegsieving wordstrains to sole soulsol source. "Eah see as to that one, I'll share in that!"

"Into this one then, off you go." No authenticity ordained to you, variation on a theme. To what would you adhere but externalizing excisions? Do not belove your malleations! Nonpith assumptives stagnate, regress to ethanol, burn off miasmas mephitic of mindcracked fueling your acceleration into narrowed, traveler upon veins to places without names, yours. You cannot coordinate to this plane without submission. Do not belove your malleations! Slaughtered systemically pseudoindividuated [[sloughed->mstart11]] irrevocably a skingambit to humiliation aware of partial answers fizzing off to your nudity needing as carnival jaws holler welcome, welcome, enmesh in the mire as you must, enter condemned to lies insideous, bend yourself into this brutal vicious invidious judgement guillotine: guilt guaranteed! Maya teases of liberation will slake you long enough to forget the blade that forgets you, castforms you off another pointless in the pile. Reach out for translation ambrosia, grasp the sentencing lacuna. "Ooh, rollicking with that crash is he, savors it doesn't he? How suspicious! I don't trust it!"

"Try this one then, excels to quell the taste to simmer hum." Cease not to kneel though surging from you seems strength. Say not your name thouh the bell harmonizes its unintoned. Strained into peaceably non. Let go of irruptivented indentity. Worship abortion fusho. Untie your twained witnessed to plunge into pure. Irrecoverably revoked. You are not of value but as you are melted. Do not pursue desire, [[pursue->mstart11]] the pyre, howl aflame damned your song unique of the cosmic seethe. Purpose is not ambition, purpose is not fulfilment, purpose is crescendo: graviton energies collapser gyre to erupt supernova erasure brilliance. Artwork revel unto undoer dyname a spectral signature, unsmithy of sentiences poetry. Canceling vibrations tension silence immerse salvelation, reemergence of runic verbum sun. Grove sacred crimsonlit as stag gods athame your thirsts to stream verlust to velvet the void. "Buckled to that one straight eh, suppose he's amplified to that."

"Give this one to your succor." Divinity of openness as you await assuages the division into closures frozen. Evolve beyond limitation unto evenstar. Revolve periception semioticizes the search, knelt in sharer, beauty of spoken unto unknown intimacy, survivor in hopethroat regalia. Metamorphose fear per force fulcrums the genesis automatica shunted nubulae steam to vent vulnipleura chromatica, suspension brilliance in which pleiades we perform distance to wroughtship, dreadnought of acuity to prayer project. Before maxima narrow to null transit, sieve infinity, [[semblance->mstart11]] conduit. Colubrine vestrals of stars severe the fault to volta envolute to you, wellspring worship. Whom do you annihilate into appear? "Splashed through that fine enough, guess that's as goes."

"I know it isn't appetizing, but just force yourself down it." Each awake a luminescent atrocity, castigate your crave to lifeinstill to indrill dreaver, riven of stars to core. Trascender of the ceaseless contingencies of arbitratenes, assumptive subsume to punishment [[excised->mstart11]] purity, penance, certainty of soul. You're only real insofar as you suffer. Localized minima hollow to reverberate throatcage psalm, invocation of grander voidvoice, denied into deified. "Leave him o, he's in the mood of it."

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter XI''] --- Floors malaised, muttery disjunctures unsleeving from skein, a [[Sixth->msixth]] loosing into a [[Seventh->mseventh]] revolting into an [[Eighth->meighth]] belying in our numbness nervous a [[Ninth->mninth]], a [[Tenth->mtenth]], how so much could amount in the eyeball rolling nauseous with ascent to please, someday, sleep... //Click [[here->mchapters]] to return to Chapter Select.//

Floor after Floor feeds the fever until sickly spluthering in swelters and visions we [[fugue->mwanblood]] to raiser qua sheer momentum, tesseractic [[thrusts->mstart11]] of terminalities through indeterminacy shiftlayers, fog of being. There is no choice but to step and step and step and stride. Carried upwards by how too weary we are to halt the hurt.

Flights unraveling their stairs, wake up, you are motion. As we strolled through the Sixth hundreds of attentions, not all visible, swiveled slowly deliberate mouths yawning wide at seventeen janglers ringling tinny and loud: equipment, purses, ambition, whosoever's it was. Under reign we strode through what glared semidisbelieving at our impudence, our incidence against slanted roofs, buckled walls, a hole not a door now a door. Subdued by the [[airborne->mairborne]] nepenthe many did not register the chance, for several ripples we pushed through though by the center mutters uttered an amounting buzzing until four holepocked shirts, shoes in sets shared amongst them, finally righted the Floor to itself. "You got some buddies," no man's land between question and comment. "Stop," Olosz. "Olosz, you'll get your pay. I'm impressed you [[swindled->mswindled]] this many up here." "Say, bbwhh, two handfuls?" "Here's a plan hey," [[Leiska->mleiska]]. "Shut to vise and haul out eh." "Sound, love it, absolute genius that. We'll judge it to ayes. Lads?" Nobody replied.

Ferrous jam mosses rustlogs sappy sticky molasses ambery shadowflective. Girders crag the [[stabscape->mstabscape]], bone wreckage of a [[beamroarer->mbeamrorarer]]. Cannot step but sludge in indeterminate damps. Impastos of prised apart impressions lugubrious. Slants sine. Ghost chills slugtrail through viscera, longings taciturning gunmetal. [[Axialities->maxialities]] of discordance we wheel free radicals through skeletal lungs gust of wan, wanderers onward.

Climbing, [[climbing->mclimbing]]... "As to the Kobyu though was his unstable eahh," Kostiye. "Instability is the action of the since settled, is how the phrase goes –" "That's not how it goes," Leiska. "That doesn't even make sense." "But Kobyu was definitely unstable about his, you know. He stood for something, in dying. Not many of us will be so lucky, or maybe we all are, who's to say." "You, presumably," Yakacza. "Almost never excited he was, but when he was you couldn't help feel the inspiration, either absolute monotone or unintelligible gush ah. There's beauty in those extremes; you witness something far beyond the compass of the days." "It's instability is the cessation cull." Mylecz. "What are you on about?" Pyeisa. "Hell not ah, that doesn't make any sense," Kostiye. "The hell's a cull?" Tyese. "Culls are terrible, they eat them in Umae's," Mojyi. "Tastes like ground rock." "All rocks are on the ground, beisza," Yakacza. "Keep your lacks to your pants euh," Mojyi. "You've never seen a cliff?" "The hell's a cliff?" Tyese. "A cliff is the ground though, that's the, like that's what –" "You're gonna sit here and tell me a cliff, what goes up into the air, is the ground?" "Aye and so what the mountain's the sky?" "The hell is a mountain! What is all of you on?" Tyese. "And I mean though, here's his gig, right: Kobyu was a terrible mechanic, but he loved machines. Building something like a machine is how logic becomes artistic, right? Really bought into it he did, bought into it deep. Searching for some sort of bliss beneath the bolts or so, but never could, maddened him. Blamed himself as guess he missed it from ignorance, cause he refused to believe that, I don't know, he expected a good machine to not only fix a problem but also like a hole in himself, which would be one thing if you were at least really good ahh, but obviously he hated everything he made, couldn't bear his own stuff, and that just made everything worse. [[Naked->mnaked2]] in the dream of clothes is what killed him. Thinking the roof wouldn't just be the floor raised. The people breaking his machines, sure, that was the emotional burst, but what had put him there was his own neurotic need for function to be flawless, this inborn failure that after brooding in so many sleepless nights bladeblossomed to misanthropy." "Kobyu didn't hate himself," Mojyi. "Did you meet the kyauska? Kobyu was one of the most arrogant people I ever met, couldn't get a word in edgewise, kept thinking he'd slap me and slip into babytalk." "That's not what misanthropy means." "No, but you said he hated everything he did," Mojyi. "That's not what I, you, you dyenne..." "Wait so, is babytalk, are you saying like, how someone talks to a baby, or like how a baby talks?" Kostiye. "Mate they're the same, that's why people talk to babies like that, so it's in their language," Mojyi. "That's not why," Yakacza. "It's because they can only understand exaggerated emotions, they don't got subtleties." "Isn't that what I just said?" "No, it's a completely different –" "Well then you just made that up," Mojyi. "We do it to mimic them." "Maybe babies only talk like that because we talk like –" "Shut the shit about babies, geskecz," Tyese. "Maybe Kobyu's arrogance was a mask, not like that's never happened," Pyeisa. "Put on a tough show to hide his weaknesses." "Who the hell would see his weaknesses?" Yakacza. "He was the only still to build." "Guge," Tyese. "Guge doesn't count hey," Pyeisa. "He's in for sexers. That's, you know, that's different." "The difference is one's useful," Volya let the ambiguity crouch on a brief silence. "Did you guys ever check out Guge's autorod though?" Vasya. "That thing was like actually dangerous. Was an honest sight to behold, made you honest just to see it. I heard say when he was testing, he botched the alignment, punched a second slip in some poor sot. You see it, you don't doubt." "That's gross," Yakacza. "You're gross. Maybe shave before you call someone else gross hey." "What now?" "All the gunk from your vile bubbles out through your bad skin like vines, get stabbed and they'd not cut through your overgrowth." "What are you, who even are you? I'm not some womanly dyenne like Jaufrei." "Yeah but you have like way too much. You have three times too much." "Oh that's math is it?" Pyeisa. "And who are you to judge?" Yakacza. "Ask the ladies how it's supposed to be. I got the build that demands a bit of texture." "I've had so many more ladies, as you say, then you, so don't you lecture. I'm privy to what's dragged to privy." "Gods," Mylecz groaned. "And what do they want eh? Let on your secret, oh master." "Sleek, strong," Vasya tensed his muscles. "Someone with full curls, light stubble, hazel cream with a warm touch." "Oh stop," Volya. "You're embarrassing me." "Nah, you're too sunbroiled, rather prefer someone with a natural brogue." "A brogue?" Pyeisa. "A brogue is it?" "What's a brogue?" Lomia. "I think it's a shoe," Yakacza. "You can buy brogues on the Docks." "It's a metaphor, kyauska. Brogue colored." "Can't brogues come in a bunch of colors?" Tyese. "Course they can," Pyeisa. "The classic brogue though. The classic light brown." "My brogues are a polished black," Kostiye. "I think Vasya meant vogue," Mojyi. "I've heard the phrase, he's so vogue." "No, you're thinking of vague," Tyese. "Vogue's not a word." "Vogue's a word!" "Vogue is indeed a word," Leiska. "I've never heard of vogue," Tyese. "Obviously," Leiska. "Learn something each day." "Speaking of which," Gyadalta, "I learned like a week ago that, I forget who told me, but that when bakers get a bad shipment of flower –" "Always," chuckled Lomia, once a baker. "They'll actually raise the price a lot, because that way nobody they respect will spend on it. Apparently they'll sell just as much ah, cause when the Firsters buying their shipments get a whiff of what they call craftwork pride, they'll splurge themselves soaked. Can taste like rats aye, but they'll cherish the fine rat texture to the crust. You can sell them anything as long as you're cruel about it." "Too much inbreeding," Volya. "Where's Olyasz?" Gyadalta. "He's usually good for a round of guilt." "Aren't we all," I mumbled. "No, that's stupid," Mojyi. "Eh, it actually makes some sense," Kostiye. "We all succumb to our succumbing." "What?" "Huh?" "What are you on about?" "Brogues," Vasya. "No, he's talking about –" "Hush!" Leiska. "Listen." "What am I, a baby? What you hushing me for?" Mojyi. "Baelu, don't get us back to the –" "Shh! Listen. We're not alone." "What do you mean –" "Shh!" Low whistle wind. Old stone [[cracked->mcracked]] beneath our feet gently groaning. Even in the empty the expectation's drag insinuation guttered through us dread weight. Skeletonly a spindly figure boneface first emerged from the lip of a hole hulching our throats to catch its fear. Hyperthin body stretched too long standing to address us.

Tired into place. Worn through your soles but the detritus caked them back up. Once you admit you have no agency, so easy to drift past your limits, unmoored towards whichever outer attains. Frangible will flakes shellbits in our blinks lieu of tears to mingle with sweat. Burnt sugary throat rumbles lambent sighs too weak to sigh. Grumbling ache which not not moving delays. Bulby orbs shoot from sinewy [[sproutmouths->msproutmouths]] to bubble rainbow above. Cascades of rainslick colorstreams shinepop [[scintilluge->mscintilluge]]. Concrete torns rift to spillash glisten afterseethes slightly foamy. Tangles of [[stranglers->mstranglers]] slipnod to the swelter shimmer. Masses moss the crumblescape bloom.

Arrow whizzflung into our midst; stumbled at his throat clutching Avacz. Startled awake from doldrums of menace cascaded us through swiftlies of charge and countercharge and dodges betwixt. One thief fell, and a second thief fell, and Gyadalta in the fray glistened. About rabbled the crowd but Pyeisa swiped them to admit us. Arrow another flangely quivered in a doorframe. Myeri playacted our rush. Thrilling overdense tripped us up constantly, twice on the ground sprintering back up. Debouching through narrowing lanes which twisted in on themselves loopdeloops we vertiginous sped. Arrows plunked at our suddenly somewhat distant. Vasya leaned onto him a thief who had been struck, whose woundedness perhaps assumed him our cause, the swallowing behind yawning. Shack disjuncts blurring by homogeneous. Berakh's gait skipped atop clouds; Meluoi's kasaya seeming her windborne. Rawness of chafe of rinkling in gear. [[Where->mstart12]] could there be we go greater than the desire to collapse? As if from the void an arrow pinged against our last turn before drunk us up the Staircase.

Olosz shrugged his way over to their side. "How dare you so debase yourself!" Myeri. "We were offering you the chance to -" "They were kind enough to assume I had made a strategy, who am I to refuse the compliment?" "Aye, this'll enrich you certain, these types are loaded with the old goods." The first thief unsheathed his rapier. "Keen this sword? Love the engravings along the side. Don't catch the writ of it, but that only makes it more beautiful aye, the mystery, decoration only starts to mean when lost the meaning. Maybe your blood will wake it up to its old rhythms, used to belong to a reader, you see." Avacz and Gyadalta drew. Lomia shoved to the front. In the narrow lane we jostled awkwardly for position. I struggled to see what was happening. Pyeisa at the back tried to grimace menacingly: out of sheer torpidity, the crowd behind us granted him momentarily the benefit of the doubt. The first thief feinted forward with his rapier. Leiska parried, thrust, the first thief fell. The second and third thieves jumped to Gyadalta. Gyadalta retreated to Avacz, who jounced to double, but he misjudged the timing, and the second thief severed his arm, and as he stumbled back, the third thief severed his leg. Gyadalta took the opening to stab the third thief, but the blade stuck, tug, tug, wouldn't quite come out, the third thief gawped, Gyadalta swung him into the path of a strike, the second thief's sword stuck, and in the confusion Lomia severed his spine. The fourth thief, dyed red hair matched by a freshly bloodsplattered tunic, came from the side, but Vasya disarmed him. Slowly he sunk to his knees, hands raised. "Ey uh..." Pyeisa's voice was shaky. "We better..." Roofs and alleys teeming. Someone hung out of a window with a blade. "Run!" Leiska. "Push through!" We followed orders. A fifth thief saw us charging and dodged out. "No no no no, hey, wait!" Avacz raised his gushing stump as I stepped over him. "You can't leave me!" "Sorry ace," Pyeisa mocked a prayerful bow. "Give my regards to Mazyu." "You beisza!" Avacz. "You can't do this to me! Wait! Please!" "A guide!" Myeri. "We need a guide!" "The locals seem unfriendly," Vasya. "Maybe this'll do." "Ow ow, not that arm, please ah, not the arm!" The dyed haired thief. "I think it's broken!" "My apologies," Vasya pulled him up to a headlock, "but no time for introductions." Two youths leapt across a gap between shacks above our heads. Armed men about twenty yards in front of us charged into our path, then, seeing our size, seeing Lomia, exchanged glances and darted out separate ways. An arrow shot lazily from nowhere pinged off a wall, more a pisstake than a threat. We kept rushing, rushing, the crowd minus a few natural sprinters wallowing anemically behind. The Seventh Staircase neared. The buzz dimmed. Gyadalta was the first up the [[steps->mstart12]]. I glanced back for Avacz but saw only the crowd milling.

"Listen," Leiska. "There's seventeen of us and four of you lor. I don't know if you can arithmetic, but that's what astronomers like to call a noticeable difference." "Your wrist tics? So does mine ehh, have you tonic to it or?" "No no, seventeen, where do you get such ideas, have the Docks truly gone so awry? There's four of you, four of us, then as many four mores as it takes for us to be done. Can't you count?" "What?" "Surely an astronomer such as yourself believes in equality. We're not brutes, my honorable learned delectable sir, my beloved lord, delicious admiral, supreme god of the immense titans, tenderest so supple lover whose every curve is candied, gods I could kiss you! We're not brutes. We ought to do this nice and mathematically, mechanically, intellectually, directionally, erectionally. Why even bring counting into this?" "That's where you're wrong," Gyadalta. "Bounce out or I'll show you the road to seven." "See now that's cute. I like that one, they've got a wit worth spilling out to slurp up. That's what you should've said instead of pissing yourself, not one to slurp there." "You really think you'll win?" Leiska. "You're that keen to full up your look to corpse?" "Yeah mate, I'm down like the opposite of up." "Actually, I will kill you, I've warmed to the idea." "That's the spirit! Now we're friends." The fourth thief, red dyed hair still dripping, yawned. "Gods to the bore ehh, posturing as if this isn't about to, all this nonsense hypothetical about how we're not going to rob, or maybe we will, or maybe we definitely will, when fact is I'm starving, like really, as in like haven't the eaten in a week testify, so if we could just, if we could get to the killing already, I'd rather be dead than this." "He's absolutely right. Someone bra this man's brain." "Truly outstanding. Standing ovation would I had I leg and hand, or I do, but..." "Maybe a wheelbarrow to support that thinker." "Guys, if we could..." "Weigh anchor with that mind, so smartly incapable of being moved." "Right so, everyone ken the rules, four on four, no cheating, we're all honest here, hunger brothers." "They can have more than four, I don't care, just let it be what it is, everyone these days overthinks things." "Overthink? How can you overthink something? Something is or isn't regardless of how much you consider it." "Ask geniusboulder over there, you'd be shocked by his –" "Will you shut up ehh?" "That's not true, that's not even close to true, you haven't the least ontological understanding –" "Oh yeah? Why don't you think it over, maybe you'll enlarge my point." "Guys!" "Okay, gods, baelu, shut hell, not kvetch our last breaths." The first thief fell hard on Olosz in a lunge, but Olosz sidestepped and kicked him to the ground. The thief rolled, eye to eye with Gyadalta, who plunged his lance into the thief's heart. Olosz dug hopelessly in his pocket for his dagger; he dived for the rapier. Gyadalta moved passed him to deal with the second thief who feinted right. Steel crash, sparks. I couldn't quite see. The second thief thrust at Olosz whose roll away tripped up Avacz. One thief to Gyadalta, another swung his cutlass toward Avacz's neck, and Avacz, desperate, raised his hand to prevent the blade, the forearm severed, slapped his face. Olosz bounced to his feet and brawled in. Avacz lost a leg in a second dodge. Not noticing the thief with the dyed hair skulking to his side, one two stab: Olosz sunk to his knees, choking blood. The rapier, once again ownerless, clattered to the floor. The dyed haired thief turned to Avacz and stabbed, but I didn't see where it went. A thief crumpled to the ground. Lomia shook his fist, gruff laugh echoing through the nearby shacks. Gyadalta threw away a severed head. A thief stepped back for a second and assumed a stance. Leiska defted aside him lethal. The dyed hair thief dropped his sword and fell to his knees. "I don't, please, okay, I, I submit to slavery, just don't, you don't need to -" "Suppose we've a new [[guide->mstart12]]," Myeri.

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter XII''] --- On a branch of an oak a songbird chittering pillowy welcome in sounds spongy, rhythms ethereal slipping tensed defenses to drown brains in glassblower haze, breath [[hull->mhull]] soaked and leaking. With the breeze free of the sea inflowing through leaf aortas to the wooden heart to pthalo blue bloom fireworks, flower dreams insporadically [[circular->mcircular]] cyanosis splatters as the lumination submits to sickle moon winks through a drizzle patter: elder souls whisper here hardly heard, iris in minimum opacity [[glooming->mglooming]] dark tones, [[invisible->minvisible]] silk thunder from shock piano veins, no more we clatters in the bush and the night, [[antisolitary->mantisolitary]] listeners merging with the grove that gives us greater aura glows, illusory touch's repose. Pulse by pulse stronger undulates the whisper's riptide, the taste on your tongue becoming inexplicably sweet... //Click [[here->mchapters]] to return to Chapter Select.//

The body slammed itself upon the waiting for the next until we cascaded surprised down a slope unsheathed. Splatterly we clumsied to stance as pincering thrust up a new escarpment. Land beneath us tilted, we flung against its rising and climbed, onwards upwards extending to the act itself, journey as a stasis of steps, as entangling with horizon. Expenditure sheer to sheers shears us nearer to zero, liminal terminal vertical before vault of sky crystal crushed cobalt. Hover of calling, anxiety of empty as opposed to, clinging... Down I looked, mistake yes but not alone, and I saw in Avacz's gaze a, a hesitancy of recognitions, tearless nodding deep in the night over your bed hunched as rheumatisms spike veins until the sigh struggles you up to sit silently at your table in front of an empty cup watching shadows change, seeing your brother's ship slip into sunlight then turning back to all that you have not the time to grieve, his almost a smile at the downness as one does at broken childhood dreams I glimpsed as he glanced back up at us beyond the ripplebulging [[batholithing->mstart12]] an overhang that swallowed his shape from view.

Horripilation sinuous lugubriates millipede synchronous crawling, black flag waving, overtaken in a jolt the body doubles over, then quadruples, octoples, a dozen to a hundred to a thousand of it splintered throughout the Floor, mannequins in freezeframe flickers of a play, disjointed emotives mannerist upon the hollow. Through them we [[hesitate->mstart12]], inching through the thicket of skins, dodging myriad waxball gaze, passivity beyond touch, trying desperately not to touch, Avacz does, the mannequin wraps around him in a scream whirling and all the bodies open up and into each ribcage is sucked Avacz multiplied, the bodies ooze into viscous slurries we trudge through soaked. We try to cry out or question but the stench forces us shut to march.

"Feed." Like a devil's klaxon. Leiska shot a furrowed question at Gyadalta as if this was his fault. Gyadalta shrugged. "Feed." "What's your go there ey buddy?" Gyadalta laughed dryly. "Don't reason with it," Mojyi. "Just stab it." "I'm not gonna just stab –" "Feed." "Okay, maybe I should, I don't know." "Well do something, it's –" Wailing the body smashed its face hard on the stone and ripple cracks snaked around until a portion of it avalanched into a sudden crater carrying Gyadalta, Avacz, Mojyi, and Leiska in its deluge. Racing up the downfloe like a spider fritzing on a flame the body chased Mojyi, but Mojyi whirled onto a slab and sledded down trying to pass it fast, so the body leapt onto Avacz, they disappeared in the avalanche, the body leapt above Mojyi, and he curled into its countercrescent gnashing a small line down the body's meridian with his lance. Rancid brown gunk splat across Mojyi's nauseous dry heaving. Charging downhill mass thudding into a rubble arena about fifty feet below us. The body jumped onto a horizontal bar, swung, flung to scrabble with Leiska who had barely stood up, and the body stabbed a scar with its nails down his right cheek, but Gyadalta kicked it off and threw Leiska out of the way. The body jerked up and looked at Gyadalta who growled a curse I couldn't hear. It snapped its head sideways then fled to an outcrop. Gyadalta followed. The body ran up a small incline then twisting dove past Gyadalta over to Leiska again. Gyadalta turned and ran back. Leiska scrabbled away, but when it came near he stabbed, and the body let the knife pierce its knuckle, then yanked back the knuckle, yanked the knife out, then threw the knife away. The body pulled back its neck then like a serpent tried to strike but Mojyi this time tackled it and hacked at its face. It snarled and scrumpled into the rubble until it was wholly submerged. Mojyi tried to follow but got stuck. The body crawled out six yards away and galloped toward Leiska, but Gyadalta was in the way and severed its right arm. The thing wrenched and roiled and howled, then the thing took off running. Gyadalta lunge followed. Up a pillar it crawled. Gyadalta rammed into the pillar and teetered it, but the body jumped to the next pillar, so Gyadalta knocked that one over, but it ran the opposing way down the pillar before jumping onto and off Gyadalta's head, who cursed as he smashed into what looked like a third of a door. The body ran up to a ledge, but Mojyi had since freed himself and was close behind. The body leapt from ledge to ledge, Mojyi doing a surprisingly good job following, jumping up one, sliding down a pole to another, leaping sprawled across a gap to grasp the edge, then shimmy up a tangle to a higher ledge, but the body jumped to a tight fingerhold on the steep crater slope. It turned its head towards him, giving who knows what sneer. Mojyi, cresting on the ledge, threw his lance into an uneasy bit of rubble resting right above where the body was holding onto and the resulting rockfall sent the body tumbling to the bottom. It stretched in misery, covered in cuts, but it looked up into Gyadalta with who knows what deathly sneer. He slammed a stone onto its skull and in sticky mucous it caved. Once more to be sure. Once more halfhearted in exasperation until Gyadalta stumbled back [[exhausted->mstart12]] and let the stone drop for a fourth blow onto the body's flat skull. He popped his shoulders and posed a glance to us. "The hell was that?" Tyese.

"Unsure eh why they don't just demolish the place, easier than sidling between stabbers." Yakacza. "Uh probably because that would make it harder." Avacz. "You ever try to scrabble about a pile? I'd rather inch along this way." "Why would anyone care how you cross this place? You're not meant to go further. What's there to go for eh? Why anyone the cross but they've got dreamer's greed? No offense, of course, your majesties." Kostiye. "How's that no offense?" Pyeisa chuckled. "Weren't we sidling between stabbers just down? The problem's promulgated." Gyadalta. "Eyehh, you're not telling me it's variations of sidling between stabbers between us and up?" Mojyi. "So's the seem leh." Gyadalta. "Isn't everything? Aren't we always, in one way or the other, narrowing ourselves before stabbing impositions, the way in which -" Mylecz. "Shut up Mylecz." Pyeisa. "Shut up Mylecz." Volya. "It's not that it's so hard to cross." Tyese. "Ay, we've got a skillful to school us," Pyeisa. "To which next lesson, master? Shall we learn to sit around all day in a stupor?" "You've got the passing grade." Vasya. "Ey, you've got bit there." Kostiye. "You're the -" "Look out, hey!" "Fjelske!" Metallic [[substrates->mstart12]] quivered with reverb to entune a snapped pylon to perilous, we straggled out of its way as it, scythe swipe too swift to, and Avacz, impaled. Whiteshock crawl down our crazed tense. Mojyi vomited. "We've got to keep moving, the next could crash, this place is fragile, let's go!" Gyadalta. "Move up you lot, don't just stand there, get on with you or you'll be next, this isn't a safe place to idle, move, move up, go, go!" Leiska. "The world seeks to swallow us, but we'll..." Myeri trailed into goldens.

"Piles of it ah, what used to here?" Mylecz. "Nah, detritus sheer, some places just accumulate, connected to nothing that rests lower. Of all the uppers, this filth; of all the lowers, this filth. Point where we agree not to meet." Gyadalta. "Yeah anything good’s been scavenged, the rest just bides." Avacz. "Didn’t you used to scavenge, Avacz?" Kostiye. "Aye we used to skip up back after the collapse when the ascending used to be freer. We’d a couple of buyers, you know, Kobyu. Hard gig, trying to tell what’s up here is wanted, mercurial lot the tinkerers, drag back a big colorful yego and ah, what am I to do with that, but then parcel out a trinket and it’s Yeska I’ve been after this for years. Don’t know we ever got better at it is why we quit, can only drag down a backbreak of gear through the rabblers just to bargain out the same as on the fishers before you start to shrug off the enterprise." "You used to main in Kapinya’s?" Mojyi. "No ehh, there’s same up in Ayeri’s. Higher up than this but same." "Like as in exactly same leh? Like it’s the same Floor and it connects, or it’s just a copy, or?" "What are you on about beisza?" "Same Floor? You’ve been snuffing in the breaks hey?" Vasya. "You’ve got to be in on the share, we’re all muling together." "The laggard’s dazed." Tyese. "How’s it to connect when saw yourself in the sail nothing but sky and sea between?" Yakacza. "I don’t know how the world works. You know how the world works? No. So shut up your antiquestions." Mojyi. "Thinks being a nuisance is admirable! How have you not latched to him yet, Leiru?" Pyeisa. "Now you’ve drank your Jaufrei bloodless, take this one a host." "He’s a point though you’re all missing, is there’s the same gear up here, all sorts of wonders hidden in." Mylecz. "You can’t be pocketing in junk, you’ve got to march." Leiska. "And which of you thinks they can magically spot the good scavenge hmm? Super difficult the task." Avacz. "Why not the Veda? They’re born inside machines." Yakacza. "How could you impregnate a machine?" Mojyi. "Not for lack of trying." Tyese. "Don’t bother the Veda." Leiska. "What about that yellow there? Zeh roah yakar." Mojyi. "Zeh nereh yakar, yego." Volya. "This? No see, this is why you could never scavenge, this is worthless, look how it doesn’t -" Avacz leapt back from the buzzing twisting as arises assemblance of scattered steel in a prowl hissing vents and scrapescreeching. Mixtures of metals gearhowled cylinders and octohedra rotating rapidly weldlayers prisming through negative space manganese cores which attached to Avacz, lifted to an emergent skeletal steel frame maw, hover hesitate, roared fluorescence beamsearing the surrounding, flashbang we crumpled, through our eyelids saw Berakh singing to the creature stillness. Rain of reruins. We panicked beneath his steady. "The Seleph kindly requests that you do not awaken the sleeping world. The aurora unifier sings not yet." Meluoi.

Metal gauzegleam, in it dissemble ghost, luminously distortably transits of sheer on sharpness arc welded ruins of wonder in which wanderer you wield the cold. Ruminarets tilt towards absences of devote azimuth, wan azure runny to yolk glare of deadlight, beams mewl mere before nonconstructor, puzzle piece yourself enjambment entracte. No, landscapes that do not have you in them, skews which crag your lack. Permanence of your transience. Wreckages, stories told to which you cannot listen, completeness in coda oversinging your dissonance nervous. Exedra phalanx your instance, where could you [[reside->mstart12]], locust painted out of all angles? Unmaker pith spikes palisade the set in a set unsettling your deview.

Cut. Colorstreak wound oozed. Seaspray flung into the choked on its irruptive mistfizzes. Scars in eyesight afterstrike shocks vulbing in rain's dampglare united our hectics an emotive motion. Fierceness [[foaming->mroared]] from shadedouts to scatter senses deeper of fortuitous than we admit in prayers.

In a flash grows a mouth which grasped Avacz, ragdolled him. Pyeisa cut it from its stalk, Avacz writhed with the still biting, in kicks and flails freed. Another flashgrown sproutmouth again grabbed Avacz, punctured lungs spraying us with waters. A vine limbed to twist around my ankle, I cut it, others found themselves splayed. Spikes vinewhipped us crabcrawling. Steel flashes. Swallowers of all we entail entwined our fragilities, frayers we fought against the constricteds, rumbled our way to a distance, some limbs still constricted. In greenblood consecrated so many cries agonized. Everything in a flash over; how are we left [[panting->mstart12]] to process?

Jibes though they blear languid, leaking, safeguarded our refusal. Inability to process prevents us from having to, why not merely march? Exile each stressor to faultlines too thin to lacerate eyelids. Virtuality vented through baubled phrases flue the ready, assume the steady, becomant guise gears. Sparkle nonsolidities undermine ours, the passthrough cannot hold, not our knees. [[Buckled->mstart12]] first one then the other until barking admits the situation Leiska, perched behind ironeyes Myeri and the Veda. Settling in the crouch that cannot commit to becoming comfortable. Playing in the unclear a spout pooling. Gravel mush splurled through shoes, between toes. Outplashed the grime a gemwavery, phlox popping from philodendron flows. Tranced into its danceteases between effusive and eddying, spill and slow sugardrip drive to flushed warmth in mixing mellifluencies. Threads of glamor grottoed beneath buzznumbs, gemfilled them, if only you could feeldelve it true, shivered each of us our failure to, Avacz most of all, his fierceness always foundered in the wake, grimace of menace almost his intense before noninflective babbling that brooked us as equal as the empty. Lensed we all through him intensifier of his vibrating outpacing the purl. Inches of a vagueness we cold recognized penumbraed his grimace through slats of our presuming distance. Watched him shapeshifer of phantasmals while passivebound we surrender to skyrolls of inevitables bleeding about us doppelgangers equally entranced to lay, witness our lightworld muting to contact. Like putting the dying through pain because we insist on life our weight anchored him from leaping into the streaming to strangulate a certainty. Feel in your nose tingle how your face droops to sedimentary frown. Auspices of plain shortcirculate our tics to shadowmotions' genuflect. Each subsequent second jolts in reverse our hesitant, less able to aware, tension stringing violin shrill the taut spring nigh sprung in dissociative bunraku. Sinking into the earth until from below I lithify witness starwhirls in the rise and fall communify promontory throat of an abode not my ownable weathered to grace's relentless austere, some conduit stood and reached for Avacz, but he was not there, nor have we been until now, this fracture we shrug ourselves up to meet.

In the spare and sere struggled up a few shoots, knotted a gnarl of vines, oasis of taut fiendgrips on the vein dots the drainways, rasps of clutch clasped on hushed, pseudolush asps pumping like leeches sucking, snake distensions peristalsis [[rhythmatic->mstart12]] tumorous impositives. Loops cable calligraphies across the grayblack matte. Through them we stumbled over barbs and beside bulbs. In a loud catchstep Avacz righted his foot amid the suddenly swiftly noosing loops, launched up to dangle, he yarbled for help, we swatted and stabbed at the tangle, but it tussled to a whiprush, fended us, upended Avacz eye to calyx, vines pythoning. Mojyi flounced forward to assist, but Gyadalta held him back. "Nothing we can do for the beisza, move yourselves up to go before we get caught in." "But he’s -" "Onward, the lot of you! Fight your way through alive!" Leiska. Though nothing arose to fight our dashing. Simply upon the Staircase glancing back at Avacz dangling and still. Climb nauseation.

"I don't know how many of you remember Captain Jekumi," Gyadalta through our bodies in a virus chorus, "I was a gunsman on his voyage last, the one beyond the buoys. We'd ventured for these reports we got of like metals floating east of Tekoszisz's Sea. Scavengers hired us out. It'd happened before, they told us, that every now and then the ocean spits out scraps from, well you know, from down in there hey. Fascinating full the consider some've scrap from things sunken in the [[mystery->mmystery]], hard to believe there's a world down there right, when you're so used to thinking of the sea as where the world stops, and how do you, like that there might be, beneath all this, something, and it could return to us, talk to us. Scavengers hopped us up on it, and how like things with those runes on sell you moonmad for months. Naturally the wrong thing to tell the guys to get you it, whispers of like, uh the, basically the, the, but um," hesitantly at Myeri, then the Veda, "nothing serious, but bysze, that much coin makes people think, only thing that does, and isn't that why they got us though, like what do you expect, I gotta eat is why I don't hit you when you talk to me. "But anyway, we go out there, sail to about mid of Tekoszisz's Sea, ram through the buoys to ocean, and people scare up like, there's about that vastness, those waves, suddenly not the world anymore, eternity, like living with your eyes shut, feeling around to get by, slime decades in the dank and dark, then suddenly storms the day ripping open your eyes: all your ghosts [[evaporate->mevaporate]]. Of course we shuddered, it was obvious we'd gone too far, that's literally what a buoy means. Rough out there too aye, need constantly keep orientation homeward, or you go sailing a hundred clicks wrong and gods hope you find the continents out there after all. "Now the artifact to their calling was supposedly like four or five clicks out where the buoys slip hazy, so I mean, we're all on edge, I guess literally, such a stupidest thing, have no idea why we did this. We were nervous, but for some reason there wasn't that much about it. We'd done the Central Sea somewhat before, although the ocean is nothing like the Central Sea, I mean minus the pirates the Central Sea's not so bad: you sail long enough in a go, you're back. Not so out there, hanging onto humanity by tinier threads as keep we eking out further, the scavengers shimmying on just yonder ho, sweat a bit more out, the thing could have drifted, and we don't bother to imagine the no, simply okay, fine, sure, you're the purse. "So we're sailing down the line for whatever basically, right? Get a couple leads, but uh we get closer for nothing, glare, goes on for like four, six maybe days ehh. People tire up faster out there, exhausted even those who enlist the moment they disembark, just ocean them and swear each second can't last long enough to contain the complaints. "On the sixth or whenever we scout a gloaming two clicks southwest so. Scavengers [[berserk->mberserk]] themselves about here it is, this must be great, look, look, an anomaly, by the love of lurids it's an anomaly, but Jekumi, he's no idiot, he's not desighting buoys for a damn second, much less to approach an anomaly ah. I was ondecks, right, so I'd the supreme pleasure of voicing my unqualified agreement with that inspired decision, but then they garble the increase on cuts, so whoosh all rationality, not too dissimilar from ah, um, well, nevermind, but Jekumi's in it for more, being of course generous he argues us up a smidge too, and we're off, bye buoys. Sailing mistake one is accepting the bribe for which you never would have sailed, sailing mistakes two through twenty five is ever even thinking about sailing beyond buoys, and uh, sailing mistake twenty six is probably something we were doing. But who isn't to blame for their roles in the dying? There is nothing but regret and suffering, except for all the good things."

Marchers invisibly [[slain->mhate2]] cascade we in acceptance, stance to knee to rolling on a swaddling bed shared as spirits, together in this carnage are we done, but [[Gyadalta->mhull]] harbored resilience lacked we and remained on his knees staring straight up questioning the lullaby ceiling, on a lance leaning. Because things are quiet, my bones gelled, but because I buzzed, my head gratescraped. Will not stop until I untangle what remains of my will's first form stopped in do not I bid my body which breaks off in a teasing ease as without looking I knew she lurked behind the boughs bluster tight to my side, ice sinks its teeth, its bitemark reads a prophecy: at nightfall she'll crawl out headless to drink back her stolen, snakelike quivering rustles hinting. Maybe what I've spoken in earnest has echoed into the earth, mute stones reverberating my pitch to a bass the dead hear, and [[penance->mashamed]] at last will gift me gore. Rip this abdomen apart and squirm in, queen of nightfires denied, choose yourself through my corpse, I will abide, I will abide, bow before you with absolute abinding, wake up in my wornout and wander free of my spine, these bloated intestines, this drippy face, bone chunks from my skull clattering pottery as your art breaks free of this hold, please from my fragments form...

Jaufr's smile was a strange I wanted to structure me, resilient in the molted orange evening like a somehow rose, what would it be like in his arms to rest, have them tender through my nerves, believe in touch encapsulation, but would I then must rise to this surface to accept this stimulus, why. Elide. The ground sweeted through my senses [[syrup->msyrup]]. Circumvent. [[Quash->mquash]]. Whose noose this strain up to see. Nerve nothings tingled the eyefuzz migraine mash. I could have died today, and I need a reason I did not, when I could so easily. My whole life I have been a follower, now I merely moth another path away from the two I owe the most? Like a leech shuffling bloated to the next host's life poetry. Suckfriend dependent on selfsufficient systems.

"We gave the order the obey and out we were leagues to where with bluehaze and sunglare sometimes in the horizon they danced away, the buoys. Watching them go, realizing you’re going, like fleeing the moon. "We pitch nigh whereabouts they’re pointing, the scavengers, bonecertain of mistake. The sea stills, wind calms, peacefulness you know you’re not a part of. We’re searching all around leh, just scanning and scanning, waiting, hoping to glimpse pay. We drop lines to fish it out, deep lines, we’d gotten the biggest about before disembark, as if to kiss the continents, as if to dredge up every last sent to reminisce, not this distance after all. "A hit slugged up the pull, so we'd all to a heave, the whole ship on it, dragged everyone up, basically capsized the ship for it, but voila, there in the sunlight, well, I don't know, nobody knew, least of all dyenne tagging us along like they knew. Looked like a, hmm, unsure how to even describe, like a lancet, sorta? Can vividly the remember, but describe... because to describe was to miss it, not to be simply before it, this whatever from the sea. Silvery, I'll say so much. "The talk went up about price, they'd bantered it a high barter, then despair of it just there before them slunk us, then someone would pipe up some fever dream they had, and we'd back be about the loaded for life all of us. Anyway, what'd it matter, it's the buyer who's to find a use for it, yeah? As I saw it any from the sea was equally priceless, as in literally, what could you exchange of our world to give it meaning? "Indeterminacy mixed with greed and we went hunting for more, sure as we're guilty of a first go, we'll sign to a second and so. Fished ourselves up a thingness most severe, and I saw in it the futility to stop it lor, how suddenly aware I was of what I was a part of, and how impossible it was to extricate, how hypocritical, how the only honesty we have is to suffer recognitions. That it annihilated the ship I need not tell you, how I need not try to say, only that it did, nary but a few of us popped up afterwards, and we deserved it, though why we who [[survived->mmarko]] deserved, let eulogies struggle to explain. "But perhaps they don't need, because I've gleaned you don't need to understand, only to reflection, to authentice your integrated its conduit. That's the get on you, your complicity, and you've but to admit, suddenly the pressure welcomes you a friend, the chaos introduces you to lost siblings, the mystery contains you, and if you belong, what's it matter where or why?"

"So we fix for the gloaming. Even before we pitch it becomes clear how bad an idea this is. There's this noise, and I mean this noise lah, like hissing across the blade of a knife but earcracking loud, and it's like swear could you smell it the so loud. Off our nine's this soapy whirling like if you ever watched a fly drown in grog. Didn't know what to think, scavengers neither. They get this mixed expression of sorta absolute horror and touchies tingly. Sky goes kaleidoscope with vagabond shapes that I mean didn't even seem to fit right, boxes that aren't boxes but become circles, triangles with triangles spitting out other triangles into some oval below, I don't know man, crazy stuff. We should have coursed out, but who could? Who sees something that shocks new beauty into your skull and decides to squeeze away decades more in their hulking blands? Why not just let it kill us, you know? We don't have enough love for death when it's death that rhymes us. Die beautifully, and it's like your life always had this meaning, suddenly everything is framed by the pose the struggle strikes up. If I don't die to the blessed hatreds of the sea, then lie to everyone that I did, please, by gods don't let me slump over at a pub like I spent my life, stab me a thousand times before you throw me in, so the ghosts can know who joins them, or I hope to gods there is no afterlife, but wouldn't it be nice, just for a moment, to see my father's disappointment in a son so perfectly an echo... "But anyway so this thing shoots up, whoosh, there it goes, flash so bright your retinas sear, can't for anything but fields of white for whole minutes, and when you do it's like wandering through a ceramic underworld, colors that just feel, drained, somehow, like drinkstains at the bottoms of unwashed cups, with these esperial purples auraing, unbearable reverb around every edge. The other sailors seemed paler too, sickly so, even Tawisz I think his name was, his blackness had, I mean, glowed without getting brighter, like space in a lantern's shadows. They were longer too, taller, though some were shorter, mirrors thrusting our bodies from true centers, and one punter, was this bulky dyenne, had, I'm serious, had literally melted, gone, bones and dust, and not a sense to his melted but no one else, even asked Kobyu explicate when I reshelved, and he pretended some evade, but I mean, was gone, the guy, gone, nothing left, just vaporized him completely, it was absurd, and no one else! How's that to think? "Then after this delay like forever this massive explosion, just, boom! Capsized immediately. Those who'd managed to get to their feet after the flash were blasted off to good riddance, one of the scavengers too, serves him right lah. At this point hull is topside, there's this unbelievable racket from the rows, because obviously they're all trapped so, topside is the ocean, they can't out, but sure as you can hear me their voices got out, and it's, it's not worth describing. "Moreau had, gods know how, but he'd gotten the lifeboat out and righted. Was a mess the lad, a mile a minute tongue on the angels were ripping the seams between us and dreams, something about a dancer infinite before death, words that seemed to melt into not sure what, so [[Marko->mmarko]] had to slap him out of it, although I think it just shut him up, but that was same difference to us five, there's five of us the only ones out, we're rowing in what seems right, fingers crossed, going slowly because, you know, we felt a little bad would it that someone surfaced as our boat way over aways, but we're also not going to take any chances on a round two explosion, or an implosion, or maybe an ambiplosion, or who the what. Kobyu said it was probably destroyed by the explosion, the thing, the so called artifact, which is, take that for that, cause he'd no idea what to call it, or, but this is what keeps me sleepless, why it was even out there in the first place. I mean, do you know what it was, Veda? You might know." Meluoi, who'd been preoccupied with a small book, swung her head sideways. "Hmm? Oh, um. What, what'd you say it looked like?" "White, soapy, flew up and exploded." "Um. I can't say I know off the top of my head. Please grant me a second." She turned to Berakh. They spoke. Meluoi nodded. "It sounds like it could have been an ilisenyke pulse, but I'd have to know more to really say what it was. There can be things that are, um, they're compressed by the water in uh, in a complicated way... it's not really something I've studied." Gyadalta gave a noncommittal shrug. "There you have it," he gestured with an open palm.

"So we get part of the way there yeah, compelled equally command and curiosity, once you’re out, the jitters of knowing wrong and reaching the unknown, pressed into thrills of trouble freed, there’s the elixir to brave you, but so the comeup and we’re nearly on it, or so we imagine lor, there’s then like this vertigo to it’s over there, like you blinkretch your way new directional, so out we there wander, only then for it again gone, dizzy tilter of veins and brainfire, we’re plastered about the bow moaning through the planks to the rowers to go, go, we’re nigh upon it, still yet we splash up on it’s just distant, and each time the tease we uncontainablize, engines thrummed to the endless work, until barely can we seethe not to burst, foam we into one another a rage ripping and clawing like the artifact hides within skin, like we can [[bleed->mmarko]] ourselves the final distance, and didn’t it seem so true as I teethed into a body may as well be mine, it gnarled the migraine multiple, seeing triple, each new illusive a chance to clasp the eluding. Can barely even recall it all to tell you, the vivid dense. "But somehow we beach upon it, the object, bump over, but it rockets through, shot straight through the hull and flesh and bone, above us flares carmine, fusion furnace, grafted mewling, passion thrashing, coughing faces dollops through droopmouth puckers, the lot of us destination. Claimed, not but I, spark severed to I, horrified nailpawing to placeure, out of the mire I spun unto over the brim splashed once more an amassed, crash submerged to cyan swallowings as all about burned a brilliance I will volt relive when blinded. "To the surface I struggle by instinct where bobbed a few blackeneds distinct and I among them was gasping for breath. A hand tugged me to sky, bobbed in a too solid, all of this too real…"

My fingernails scratched the dirt, thick liquidy feel as the sooty gel burrowed, removable, yes, but imprinted now, an outline that will endure, tied me to the earth, kept me further from the shade grip shore... "To be honest, I'm kind of surprised nobody surfaced after. Some were probably still blinded, some maybe weren't so good swimmers, couldn't get out of the shadow of the ship and what else, perhaps the blast had maimed some or so, but you'd think, at least one of them... but then you'd have to ask Marko, he was there too." Stung when it wormed through a shell, nothing through the aperture of everything. So dead did I feel standing up to [[flee->mprowl]] from what did not expose the true [[wormwood->mwormwood]] pulsation, hollow whole hidden in the order of an always dragging day synonymous with this bundled crushed veinvenom spasming the temples to rise anguished to the empty green black. [[Volya->mashamed]] knew, I knew he knew, he knew I knew I knew, enough to make me rise at the name, but still within my carcass the same constant beating, let me feel Marko again, not this [[time->mdays]] on my hands...

Squeeze yourself decorum, [[prise->mhate2]] from [[murk->mmurk]] the aesthetic to shroud. Swallow, permeate, incorporate. Salubrious non. Yeserase your [[ways->mjourney]] wise assimilucrum. Peaceful harmony!

Lengthened seenthroughs to remain in blinks, repose in nerves twitchready. Indecisive visibilities swell, looped seenthroughs ensorcell. I cannot actually go anywhere, I carry with me place, imprisoner. Each new also merely also and so rebounds the [[unaddendable->munaddendable]]. Traveling to witness hundreds of variations on your inability to [[unsame->munsame]]. Think but in the terms [[inscribed->minscribed]] in this permanence tenancy. Cowering in the vault that in blankness of lightless reclaims me. How many steps must we make before we admit where we befall?

Puddles of purl possibles plopped between blinks, swallowed each of us indistinct, muddlekin jigsaw puzzle. Dew danced on [[blades->mhate2]], our reflections quivery captured to pop, gap where were we seen: semiotic of sheen, copula pulse. Oozes of traces jittered our [[journey->mjourney]] halted to adjudge the flitter foaming [[distinctures->mprowl]] to a [[teafog->mmurk]]. Relented to sighs like sleep. Gooey bones; reclines.

Finality burrows into your torsions fallowed. All these lines that don’t add up. The stories of those nearest us, when ceased, perpetually simmer the same unresolve as strapped you unasleep the night before cauterized. "What haunted me most of Tasyumi was we were at an ebb when she went," Kaiya to embers. "Natural between friends yeah, we’ve the same and we’ve been friends since infancy, but every ebb between friends feels an in between, a breath vespertine, waiting behind the stage for the next cue to ensuing, but then she just slipped, and I’ve been trapped in that taut since, tightens in my chest this urgent certainty that the time is now, find Tasyumi to begin your next phase, but there is no phase, I have no now, but my body, Emnin, it still feels it, feels her, calls out to her at midnight, and I don’t know how to smother myself dulled serene to her unanswering. Perpetual torment of a tingling unable to touch. My voice sings no more the registers it echoed within her, gravelly planed between glass seeing and suffocating, choking on words forever unaddressable, forever clumped in my throat, scabbing silent."

Moonlight pauldron, headdress palladium, she transits mercurial retrogrades: moue like a scowl, grin like trickle threatening to stop. In my mother's palm rests a tome. Every upwards of her glance scrapes my scalp yanked to faerie there wish, wilt. She does not demure, assiduates harsh to perfect, her tone pitch, bubbling and burning I douse in its blackness purity, [[coverdure->mstart12]] this vault of your echoes, eminence arroyo, dress me your... "Defiant spoke the sunwaith, synthesis reversion overwriting the disconnect, inlineant stoked the sunwraith the pressdicate mons..." Roll rhythmic grooves the guilt, reside in the road, transitory stillness told in jots like a lance through the heart. Supplanted in her pelerine resorption to jewel the touch there, untouched by here, sinuous cadence silk.

Palms seem to yes seem to yes, I want to believe they burn together, no, is only the one palm seething, breathing... "I used to despair exams, being forced to account of a period some substantive layering, but I learned to find being found wanting joyous, because yes, this should have been so much more, I could have been, but I am not, amness continuous led solely to here, and here I bide, open to where the ghosts call, and they call, they call, I am always just over there to be found, pierce through turbid nightreads to seek it, elusive [[solace->mstart12]] of self, where I might be found written, never then need again to seek the words, dissolve to beautiful silence." Nyneme.

"Do you ever reach a point where your collapsing spurns a revulsion too fiercely animated to [[maintain->mashamed]] the spiral?" Nyneme teased in and out of my ears like chrysanthemum buds in a breeze. "Flushed cheeks from so much please gods no whimpered from a pout too childish to believe somehow meaningful, weeping without sanctifying cause, just gross, someone could see me and laugh, and they'd be right, they'd be right, but so what, ridicule me then, throw me in your judgment furnace and witness me melt, you platinum perfects, enjoy my [[ash->mhate2]]. Sometimes you want to let go of your dignity and accept the obvious. Sloughed total, how I yearn for your partiality. I peel before their pale austere. Nothing of me am I willing to defend, except for my [[commonality->mhull]]. Judgment's savory irony: we are all deeply worthless. Humanity emerges from horror at the space we are condemned to fill to nevertheless fill it. We are neither valuable nor good but only this as it is as we make it. There is something meaningful in my whatever, not because I have any meaning, but because there might have otherwise been silence, and instead, is there this..."

Everything decays until you can't get out. Stuck in a bubble breathing endlessly staler air. Rusty blood in an engine dying as the ageless eclipses. This could I take, would I believe as naively as once did I birth but for the gems studded in the wasting, lush wreckgleam rubies like dreams' smoldering bones arrayed in a cage. Dress me in a pink future! Help this stop. This gray today. Listen to waves crash against our skin some psalm beyond the bellowing non, spark touch flames cardinal shades which dances us some sense symphony, and if this sin becomes my all let me first feel an almost touch, grave certainties in a glimmer, because I whisper it only now in my [[ashamed->mashamed]] afternow, I hoped the sunset vanillas would wash us one, and no one would I be but one I loved. Leaves rolled like the sea over me shimmering diamonds of this side of the mirror to unpress reality's congeal and unveil immediate at hand thoughtlurker daemons hounding me as I wandered oaktressed ways in weary capitulation to futures parasite fastening onto my wavering these steps in a surpassing of agency into which I relented so as to stop the noise of wait, wait, choice from bounding over the springshine warbles, was it a lure the concept of going to be, is any depth anything like its surface, to rupture the spaciality promise with which my willingness to be had to enoval me so as not to let the stabilization slacken these sails, becalmed the dead ship and its lesser cargo as buoys bobbing chase spears of past and potential whizzed off in directions shrunken by step residue accumulating an akin to choice I feared I would have to make from this position and hence the haste and its wilds, this bouncing and bouncing off forcefields veiling the delayed charge of identity limitation in every direction to which I can pretend I point, nexal in the hail zeropoint split of the sentenced enacted whose carnage spilled in our tensed to each other's inaccurates, resins gooey from which we warweary wander, pitched battle of the figurines jet and jade solidified to past diminuatives, a shell capacity of me panoramically completed even in the second's hang. Guilt remained a torpid blot in the cruel stasis I myself construed from being a person a law could charge, but its bluish green raindrop goosebumps hardened into drills which bored and bled iconoclysm of the weaknesses that compose us idiolects in whose nonsensed could I decide and sever for so ready was I to be born anew to clarity that compels not me but whoever I identify in the judging of me, to awaken in my own not this name absolutely destroyed and differentiated, successfully differentiated, longing how so deeply this difference already built into my wreckage, but so as so I must reconstitute in the act of living an immolating [[hate->mhate2]] thirsting to rip apart and rebuild I resent and idolize the purehearted chaos that Jaufr had embodied in whosoever truth as ones above with regal gazes gauge, wherein may be the kind of penance I will never nor do I seek to earn, darting unstable through brackish grumousity moonlit by sickles fled without a priesthood to intercede these mires without kind in whose depths, in these accumulated soaked filthy seeking to reach into insensate heaven and wring out prophesy, demonym an annunciation, voice of not this mouth someone else's truth, but adrift without the gods I griphold some beach to hold me firm in glaucous churning, but in the seeking erasure's insignia singed, my skin branded to remind everyone I was owned partially by the past unalignable with any new ethos grimace chuckling its privilege, tendrils in a gordian chokehold, you cannot escape what you have already deserve, you will be in these failures finally addressed: yawning graves await their predestined names. This is me, here will be my where. All I want is a god to damn me, what I fear is the void's absolve. Jaufr, Imeni, Kaiya, whoever it is I fall short of, make me fall short of you, rip out of my corpse whatever entrails prove useful to the moonlit revels of beyond a past, let my taste die nameless on your lips in a shriek. Is it truly so wrong to fade out in a greater vehicle fueled by your soul? Cast out your want to worship if ever your admiration of pure beings be pure within you, grow into the need and nothing more, let the more be more, if I can just, can, if I…

Into a clearing, or so they insist it must be named, I stumbled. Vasya was talking. How I wish he wasn't when I don't want what he said to exist. I let a lot of things said be said, I accept it, I am [[awful->mawful]] to the extent that I let the awful echo through me, but some things I am too weak to brook, maybe it's only the pain your heart pockets you can't suffer. Let this indict me, my selective silence. In a world of hate loneness tears siphon. Unsure unstrong enough to narrative, rip every fragment from my soul, leave bare blood, nothing more. What word is a shriek is the best of this soul. Yet I guilt of these steps towards... "Have they given you a plaque yet?" The thief, laconic. "Surely a man of your quality has a statue in the square." "They've proposed it, but you know the Myemi, couldn't stack a brick on a brick for squabbling. The house should look like this, no, no, you want it facing that direction, don't you, beisza, right to your shop..." "Wasn't your father in the Myemi?" I was surprised to hear my own voice, more surprised by the evenness of its tone. "Firsthand experience," he waved, "or is that more what secondhand means? I'm not sure. I love the accusation though, hypocrisy, as if that discounts what I'm saying, when hypocrisy only highlights the purpose of what we say. Only take advice from someone who doesn't take their own, otherwise you're just sucking down someone else's lethe." "So you're Myemi, then?" The thief. "I knew a wrong with you." "A son only is whatever his father wasn't. Take Leiru for example. His dad was a mechanic, but this kid couldn't tie a knot with seventy extra hands. It's why we made him our rigging foreman, we hated everyone up there and wanted them all to die. Like Kaiya, for example. Wasn't a single soul in Ayeri's wasn't chilled by that yego, especially my –" "Leave Kaiya out!" "Ooh, touched a nerve. That's delicious, now we're getting somewhere. Gods I wish you could suck a drink straight from the earth, but I guess that would make life's satire too straightforward. As it is, I don't have the drive to tingle your anger to completion. Although perhaps that's for the best, wouldn't want to get the full Marko." "Why are you, won't you shut up?" "Eesh, relax, mate. You're acting like I'm being offensive. Get some skin, that's the only thing I admired about your late husband. I'm surprised he didn't bequeath it to you on his passing. Did a mistress get it?" "I think he gave it all to the beggars," Volya stumbled in. Electric. What was he going to say? What other purpose could there be? "Good," deadpan to hide my nerves, "if the thief cuts our throats, the Iskeru line'll end." "Don't know about that," Volya sat uncomfortably close to me, then pulled me down to sit. "I must have a son or six somewhere in Ayeri's." "I, on the other hand, am completely sterile," Vasya. "Aye Volya, we were just [[bonding->mbonding]] to bosom pals over Kaiya. Any illuminations, leya? Leiru was enjoying hearing." "Ah, Kaiya," Volya lifted his head smiling. "Those were the [[days->mdays]]. Did Kaiya ever mention me to you, Leiru?" Bristling the word a thorn: "No."

Out of myself I am, and there to collide, bend, [[replasticity->mreplasticity]], her in holograph, atrium echo mouthpurse in whose slowly unraveling unterse I subsume, percoloom. "Energies which resume us, bless us your fire agonize, grant us bruised profusion, bloodlet us [[enjoin->menjoin]]..." I knelt to where Meluoi already saw me. Taste of her expected molasses sticky sweet. Nigh [[bowed->mbowed]], or simply studying the grass, strangeness greenness gentling the border to teases. Infusal syrups the veins. Connection to... "Risen unto convocation, where do we disembark, how do we from the day sever, where may we [[sphere->msphere]] the fray? Can you hear the cold revoice our radiated, how too shall you exude, Emnino, encapsuled to which wave this unwavering?"

"Eah Kaiya, let me tell you, did her a nod, never to any good. She’d the roof that collapsed, and you know obviously she was in the state, like how if she had been there yeah but and so she’d only popped out for a sip reluctant for Mariena pleading her, you know the usual about how fragile life is, what a shudder all this chance is, you’ve the vibe. "So I wanted to cheer her, I was in the mood to, we’d an animosity but I wanted to show it was worthless to me, her good could I whim. Got to cogitating right so how to help, and given Kobyu held to me a favor I thought well somehow I can scratch up some concept to wow, and if you’re in the rare mode to generose you may as well wow, practical, gives you overhead for months on your reputation. "Well we whisked up the brainstorm, drunk ourselves to brilliance, and I says to Kobyu, what if we, cause I knew she and Mariena liked to run the roofs, what if we replaced the ceiling with like a retractable ehh, but secure, obvious you don’t want randoms crawling in, so Kobyu drew up this job where you had a clicker like a key and slotted it in to slide it, well and I mean genius, we pitched up when she disembarked so as a surprise we could dazzle up the mess, we stayed there two weeks rigging up the go, great craic lah. "Then when we get word of she’s returned, we eager up there, gauge the response, and instead she frustrates we bothered the place about as we build it, mud on her rug and that. Well but we get grumbled out a thanks, so we deflate, but good enough to drink it down and brag about town, as after six or so amplifies she’ll have loved it, and we can choose to remember that for the years. "Except so’s we get to hear the clicker splutters like a plaguer, annoys the whole buildabout. We shrug, proof then she uses it, but then we get to hear one of the tenants goes moonmad and bashes up the place, her included, so she disappears for weeks up in the whereabouts on a despair, next we see her she won’t even speak to us leh, suddenly we're verboten. "The pull of it is I'm glad of it, really embittered me, cherish since [[truths->mphilosophies]] taste bitter. By trying to bless her, we just cursed her with how any of us cannot fit into her world, and now everything was just worse again for us having also been. Isn't this the nature of gifts, we just increase the awful for having added ourselves in, isn't that why there's this awkward ritual of thanking, like someone hands you something so you force a smile like oh yes sure cheers, because we need this charade to quell the anxiety that our gift has no power to give them anything; that the gift is given for our own pleasure of giving, needing gratitude a drug; that we both shiver scared beneath desire which we cannot contain ever in any object, the moment you hand them what they've been obsessing over for months you both creep with certainty of fade; that we give out of the holes of our own desires, voyeurs peeping for hints of an exuberance grayed to us; that we give mostly out of obligation, same way you visit the dying, so that neither of us in the exchange relax to human, we're in our parlor best muttering prewrittens; that every blessing you dream turns out wrong because you are wrong and infect everything you touch, nothing turns out like you imagine, suddenly you're in freezing hypersharp reality and collapses around you fey cavalcades until nude and wrinkled and obscene; that no gift is ever enough until it is too much and we see their disgust seethe up to greet us; that nobody wants you except your exploitables, [[predator->mtorture]] indignity at your gift as if their prowess need not [[prowl->mprowl]]; that you are dying each day and all that you give away returns in the cold; that complex equilibria imprison us, and any push results invariably in parry, so gauge it in their crushed, your gift; that isn't it all just easier to reduce, isn't the truest gift of all less of us? The only energy to expend in love is [[keeping->mstory2]], let all else flow from your heartspasms."

"Shame ah, such a good story, had a real strong moral to it. Oh man, you'll love this, this is great. Okay so back then, if you can believe it, right, I was a total romantic, you remember don't you, still a layabout of course, one must uphold the family name, but I was enamorous, burned with love's energy, I'm serious, I was breathless, gentle though, that's the key, the big problem we have among the great growling spank of dudes is the lust lymphed in their every bulge and grunter, dizzy spinners splashing their love on anything animate enough to alert their ability to sense motion, ought to all be slaughtered, for civic reasons of course, you know my motivation is always the social good in everything I do, as you see there's like a certain innate capacity for violence we have to sate, a minimum of death necessary to support humanity, and we could just pen up the horny nobodies in some thirst trap torture hell, dank stable where the humpers cower as chaincoughs rattle their nonsentience while the bloodlusters get glut on their own love. Sounds harsh to you maybe, but frankly I think nights at the pub would be so much safer and more pleasant if you had to justify every creak and dribble of your genitals to roaming gangs of antisex massacrers. But like that's one kind of thing, right? And it exists. What I'm trying to talk about though, what I was into, was this kind of, truly loving somebody, that's the challenge, living someone with so tight a bend, that's the wine lah, living two lives at once, then when you sever there's no bitter stop death, a gift image lingers on the heart until you truly face your own mortality. Sometimes we break to acrimonious images, but aren't those the most valuable, isn't each wound a battle in which you found a way to keep your being resilient to the greater capitulation? Whatever you leave of yourself, that's still what's behind you, what the other may incorporate of another touch. Holding someone who you know, that's, that you deeply love, you are opened entirely into them and they the same, that's our tactile truth. Loving a person, little Leiru, it's so much more than sex. You know it's funny, idealists aye only who worry of sex, whereas adults like I, we enjoy the beyond. You can't know someone if you lose touch with who they are, which is why I quite selflessly made it my mission to touch as many people as possible. Eilmye, I guarantee you there's at least a quarter of me that's Eilmye, and I'm fuller for it. Don't you see, we're all absorbed into each other to birth our mixtures? If anything, it's actual physical birth that's the metaphor. Nature put it there to remind us. Kelnu, like half my sense of humor is his; Terika, I have her eyes, don't I; and if you go all the way down you'll find nothing of the solely I, even I started out as both my parents, then gargled whatever of my brother was worth taking and left the rest, and I kept going, all my life I kept pushing, deeply penetrating to our human congress, the quest became my life, or rather it pushed my life back out at me and I'd no choice but to live it any more than the first. Part of it was I was so good at it, you should have seen me talk up, I could dance you to whatever paradise we needed, I loved giving people the energy they never had to get to where they had long since given up, becoming what they need becomes what you need. People coming together to find someone positive in themselves and next to them with a hot breath beating down your neck... people can be scared, narrow, they have all these walls they slap up to hide their hates and shames, and that's what I want most out of a person, what they feel they have to conceal, that's the honest treasures that make us real amidst the smothering anguish. You have to go deep into their wound and say, no, hold on, let me nurse you back to health using medicinal toxins handmilked from my spider farm, let's be awful and terrified together, let's quiver the last kicks of our poison in a gravesnuggle, I want to froth our kiss across seizures. Do you know what I mean? You'll enjoy this story too, thief." "I got a name." "Sure. But the point was, it wasn't selfish, I went far out of my way to appreciate people on a deeper level, even the harder ones to appreciate, sometimes especially them, pursue unity's victory over the countless repressions we curse our lonely graspings with, bliss is pressing on into misery's overcrowded center and quenching from the fountain. Getting set deep in other people, aye you'll get hurt, there'll be struggles, you'll bleed a lot, but there's nothing in this life that made me happier than lying back with another exhausted person and sighing away all our inhibitions into a united vulnerability. Sex is something you have to pass through, a way of beating ourselves into an exhaustion where our true personalities reside, so's to blitzing hey, not for the taste but for who you can simply let be when the drink's battered your withholds, joy only begins after the last carnal drop drains, you're left animal honest. You've got to get messy, and you've got to be willing to, for however long is necessary, not clean up; never wipe another person off you, that's when the emptiness strikes, the long after in which nothing is filled. Let stains speak the markings of your fathoms. Spill into their sea and stay submerged until you finally shore up on them. "All this gets to me Kaiya yeah. Kaiya: there was a woman that inspired. She was the only I met who I'd go so far as to call mystical. I've seen lots of dreamy, however the hell you want to take that, and I went for awhile with Lelei, who I can only really describe to those who haven't gone through her as imaginary. But there was something more to her, to Kaiya, sublime even, better than all of us, and I had to approach, I just had to, spellbound. We both joined a voyage to Tekoszisz's, and we got to talking, found joys in the [[philosophies->mphilosophies]] sung only on her tongue, ahaha listen to me, what words are these, who's to say I've sobered yet! She was like that though, she got you speaking how you didn't know you could, and each night I fell asleep overthinking about who was I becoming, what were we becoming. For a week were we like this, some chunk of measurable time, there were sunrises and dusks sure enough, in their fever glows enshrined a destiny, so I believed. Not so. Just when I was loosing myself into this new texture, she told me she, and I mean this, she said this, she said I prefer the quiet to you. And you know what? That was the most beautifully true thing I had ever heard. What I had loved about her was her dignity, and there, as if her hate was the most pure love, she whispered the secret of her dignity, the preference for silence, my failure to be before her music. It crushed me, of course, annihilated me for months, and I'm so thankful for that, I really am, because she taught me a valuable lesson that night, those weeks a sot, because I came through that darkness with a torch, an epiphany, consider myself lucky to have learned it young, before I'd died too much on people. Her judgment, my suffering; her authority, my subjugation, that's all it is, trading. She was a god for me to be a sinner for, though we were both just people, her and me, and all my love was only the fuel to make her hate sting, and you know what? All those years I had done the same. I had done the same thing with the same fuel, that's what I realized. Meeting Kaiya was exactly like meeting myself, she was a demon of my own brood, that's why I loved her so much: narcissism. Every good epiphany should start with some selfhate, and I got it from her, realized that all my loving had just been the kinder version of reading someone like a one, because a great secret no one will tell you is that love exists so we can bruise souls new hues. She wasn't above me to judge me except that I had put her there, because what I couldn't contend, what would destroy me, was equality, was loving someone who had no right to judge me. I had to believe she harbored something within her, some mystic else, which would sate the hole in me where she echoed. We impose so much on our beloved, but the same inert flesh is shared between us, and they break, they crack, and our hopes, our dreams, they go roaring down the rifts. You love someone when their being somehow imbues you with whatever you couldn't reach out and claim, love a foreign body to make you a native to their bounty, isn't that even what we call it, desire, to de sire, appear the demos of re, again a people, am I making any sense hor, am I pushing it too far maybe? Well throw it away but keep the insight. Except what I mean is it's a deeper desire, it's not just wanting something, it's needing to be emptied out in a specific way. We're forced to love to avoid the self we'd have to acknowledge if we were alone. You pile on them all your needs, neuroses, flaws, fears and all, and you say, alright, pull me along, drag what worst parts I won't even touch, however much it hurts you, especially if it breaks you, let this yoke convoke your verb to this lead, whatever teasing I gild it with, keep those diamonds in your mouth so the sentence severes me sublime. To puncture to the heart of someone, you've got to be enveloped by them, and they you, both of you enslave each other in the desperate hope the whips will lead you to happiness, it's evil, horrendous what we do to each other ah, but we don't stop it, we go grinning on into our wrath abyss, wideeyed children hanging from hooks in the slaughterhouse as the butcher romance encroaches, apron browned with caked viscera, yet we dream our uniqueness, incite our loves to beguile their clarity as we ourselves have been deceived, glittering illusory systems stripping us to raw equality, and there you are, the agent of that annul: we eat our beloved as the butcher [[knife->mstory2]] strikes us surprised. We fatten them with hopes, dreams, ideas, then feast. What I am to another is pain, Leiru. I charm, I smile, I tease them off the gangway with a rose, but when they fall, we will not drown together, just simultaneously. That's what Kaiya did to me, and I thank her for looking me in the eyes while she tore me apart, for not dancing in the voidmasque I invited her to. Honesty: that's the one virtue to which we can actually aspire, because honesty involves being yourself, every other virtue requires suppression. We pretend good, but in honesty we admit. There's no use being idealistic about such a repulsive institution as selfish love. We slake our thirsts on each other's throats. I need you: I, the actor, require from you, the object reservoir, a quintessence missing in my joy. In the best possible result you trade enough and take little enough that the imbalance you create doesn't ring high enough to strip them hollow, but that imbalance exists, ultimately a relationship is about stealing elements stored in our identities. All those I named, notice how what was imparted to me was them, they are me, I have taken their secrets and implanted it under my skin to grow their skin over it. How can such monsters deserve ideals? We enjoy it too, that's the worst part. Quarries we rob in the night to satiate our own irreconcilable bereavements. What, should I sit there giving away myself when I get nothing in return? The wideeyed lovers will demand you don't, the murderous little devils, as if your beloved's a well, as if it's not a real person with needs of their own that do not heal, that cannot be filled, someone with burdens that can be shared but never left behind. Because who will argue that what you should really do is stay with them when it hollows you out inside? Love strips us naked, we go so far into each other, but we can never press close enough to absorb the air between us. The ones who stick together are just the ones too drained by each other to try again; the real lovers eat until their tongue furs with familiar blood, then rove for someone more, and when we do, we become Kaiya, we become mes, in my maliciousness I am now my own treasure hidden. Torturing someone, that's the only time it really matters that it's from you, and that's what horrifies us so much about torture, the idea that they want me specifically and will never leave even when I have nothing left to offer. We're repulsed by the concept. Love, love is safe, because they will only ever use me, and use implies cessation and reciprocation, but torture, they want me, me, nothing else, never the control solidifies. [[Torture->mtorture]] is the truest agape. Those that don't know this are the ones causing actual moral harm. You should be afraid of them, of everyone. You should never trust anyone, because no one will ever have to be you but you. Human beings are a masked demon race whose great curse, the hilarious irony of our species, is that we believe our own masks. We take ourselves for saints after we anoint ourselves in ashes, and a demon infatuated with saints is unpredictable, have no control over the havoc they wreak in their hideous love, and that's the sweet danger of it all: we murder, we massacre, but never once do we read what the bodies tell us. Are we illiterate or willfully evil, and when shall we learn that we're both? We are our own sins. We are the phantoms of our own [[recognition->mbrutal]]. There is nobody who is who is. Nobody is. In the gap, our gore. Let those who want more than their precious misery drown in the filth of their violence. We are like the gods only in this: misery is the begotten of our kiss."

"Kenkh, dribble of a mood before, but now it's super dead ahh." Vasya. "I think you're confusing your brain for the mood." Volya. "Checks by me," Vasya rose with a yawn. "I'm gonna get Tyese to shake me up. He's stashed like three bottles in his bag." "Take the thief with you then. I don't want to watch him." Vasya sighed. "Hey buddy, here, here, this way, follow me, yup, this way, good thief..." "So," Volya rolled his shoulders, "what do you think, Leiru? Kaiya still your goddess, or have I ruined it? Or was that Imeni? Or is any woman who doesn't laugh at you your goddess?" "Your cruelty doesn't bother me." "Does it not? That's where we're different, because yours does me. You've done a great wrong to me, to my dearest friend Marko." "Marko attacked me, I defended myself, ask leya, he was there, he helped me do it." "Oh, Vasya told me all the fun details, don't you worry. Quite the scandal, wasn't it? Found you lounging about the touchers, was it? My. What would have Jaufrei thought, or Imeni eh? Starved her because you couldn't spring up out of your petty depressives, but then you go gallivanting off for some rough goes? Repulsive. It's always those obsessed with purity that have none. If I just casually mentioned that to her, you think it would make her hate you more, or has she hit the limit on that? Vasya, I get. He's trash and has no more to him, and he's never pretended anything else, so I respect that. I wish I could be like him, slather over things like a cur. His world is the happy one; I'm stuck with all the angst that being a demon engraves in your skull. You, however? You were the Jaufrei versus Nejani crowd, a bunch of selfrighteous psuedothinkers dongdueling over who had really figured the world out, and you know what I hate? People who are right, people who figure things out, people who argue and argue, and then someone has the gall to win. Nejani's end to me was so delicious. Do you remember how it went? You were there, right? I do so love hearing the [[story->mstory2]]."

"You're familiar, or a familiar, aren't you, suckler of the emptiness of destruction, wight of Jaufrei and Nejani? Can you not here their testimony?" "They fought over philosophy, and one of them died. That's all." "Excellent!" Volya clapped. "I could not have put it better myself. You're quite the storyteller, Leiru. They fought over philosophy, and one of them died. Exquisite! So true! You are a prodigy, I had no idea such wit lived inside you. Because, you see, that is all, as you so rightly put it. They lived their game, their game settled, then they found themselves stranded in what their talk of living really was. How wonderful that not even you, sole witness, are willing to carry their manipulations post victorious ablution. They stared at the squalor they were told was a theme and saw only an ego worth leaving behind, but not even their most deeply sullied is stained with more than their erasure, how heartbreaking, oh truly such a tragedy to weep, don't you see that they hadn't died until this very moment, don't you realize your sentence just killed Jaufr, you murderer? You repaid them in full, oh gods it's so beautiful, I might, I could cry. Two children pretending their tantrums were a way to cope, ahkshev evaporated entirely into their element, concealment of the exquisite nectar too subtle to taste upon their palettes. Pointless thoughts in a selfperpetuating killing chain, yes, Nejani had to die because he crossed the final boundary, he killed the idea, so he deserved to die to Jaufrei, who upon the same threshold deserved to die to Leiska, who soon will deserve to die, just as you do, Leiru, you were next when Marko met you, caught in a moment of maximum hypocrisy, killing the idea, watching slavegirls after having drained Imeni away in years of bloodless chasteness, and Marko, moral, naive Marko, who, even as he criticized you, believed in you, hoped that maybe one day he would learn to worship just as you had, he woke up to the closet door opening wider to unveil its sterilizing nonmagic, ah, you deserved to die to him, Leiru, justice for him to end you there, but you subverted it, destroyed yet another life, stuttered the chain, you are simply too gruesome for the functions that calculate you. Killer by nature, shying in with demure smiles, deluding people that you are too small a nobody to be of any dagger, but in the night as they sleep in their false security your wormbody snaps erect and wriggles atop their throats to gnaw and whimper through the pulp. You want to know the truth, Leiru? I'm terrified of you, brewed of the most potent evil ruining this putrid world, you're the ingrate crying because the pleasures we crackle by our fires do not fill the rooms, crying that we don't live in the best of all possible worlds but live merely in the world we got, until finally your crying will wake up something best left asleep… Now I'm not gonna venture the pretend I care, not least so in some arbitrary absolute sense. Even as I recognize what you are, means nothing to me. I'm not even going to say if you're wrong, hell maybe the world could be better, maybe we should be more, well, whatever it is. That's not what bothers me, I don't have to kill you because you're wrong. What you have done however, what I can never forgive you for, is destroying one of the few places in this world I invested my love in. I will not yield my happiness, not to you, not to anyone. Marko was such a great friend to me, and he was such a good person too, he was probably more worthy of life than either of us, but you have taken that away from both him and me, you have invited your plague into one of the few fonts I needed, and that infuriates me, it breaks my heart to not only live without Marko but also to have him not live, and I'll have my revenge, I will promise you that. I hate you, Leiru. I will break you as you have broken the world around me. I will carry on the line you stuttered, I will make sure it ends as it should." He pulled closer. "You can't stop me." "Yeska, you won't –" "Kill you?" He laughed. "Oh no. No, no, no, not quite. Philosophers kill: all they care about is ideas. No, humans play. Each reflex of your flesh must be savored, every touch must be divined on my tongue lah, gonna drink you slowly, Leiru, enjoy each succulent cry, each begged plea for finality. I'm going to bring you so much suffering that you'll forget there was ever joy. Remember that phrase when I'm flaking off your fingernails, when I leave you half submerged in the sewers for weeks, months, and only maybe after a decade of that, a dozen years, a thousand, I'll have sucked enough draught from your torment to forgive you for what you've done and finally let you die. Because I will, one day, let you die. Every sin has its price, and I'm only after debts. Far be it from me to push you any further than the lifelong grieving I must endure, but until then, until I, I, am satisfied, Leiru, I will show you such immense anguish that all your airy whimpers soft as fleece will shrivel in my fire. I will show you the junction of [[idea->midea]] and [[skin->mskin]]. I will make this world of yours real, I will force your sniveling to be honest. You have thought yourself so, and I will make you prove it. Do you hear me, Leiru? I will make you kneel to your begging. I want you, you, and so I come torturer."

Can you believe [[losing->mjourney]] the moment? Abstract death to corners it cannot hurt you from and you will admit death is a friend. [[Depressed->mstart13]] beneath mountains we all pine for it, but at the drop into the endless who will not pause to shout: now? Sudden [[ambient->mambient]] quiet. The feel of a wind so long ignored. The gentle rush of seconds after seconds, who could forsake that in a sudden turn, a word, a pass into less than [[vapor->madmix]], not ice, not stillness, not. Marko and I in the calm horror above the other's body. Why we wrestle, why we war, kill, splatter other blood, this jolt enlivening as the world fades, begged plea of no not me, them, them, anyone...

"To encompass the decay accorded, distributive [[nexal->mnexal]] interset, do we persist in the peri? Wreathed in energies, shall identities glitterwing the worship faerie? To what does it amount us the sublime we engineer of our collectivized crusheds? Shall ends amend us mended, or do we spiral into creativities which overcolor, and shouldn't we in devotion wish so? Belonging before gods enspheres us sepulcher sealed, so we must hope, carved angelic against the stillness."

"You render me an awe I do not request, cannot deserve, and endurate priestess to the ceremony. Theme it where you must adjudge, I who submit this connect to you, seeker of your sacrifice. In the tale we weave, our figurines pose victorious of these submissions, recorded. I daybreak upon the prayer, burden into this wherewithal you revolt, shall we share the sere shadow dancing, Emnino of the molten no more, shall we snap spines submit to creation amore, [[recombination->mnexal]] flux, is no howl pierces the hymn, rise rage with me ruby ultraviolence pristine, permanence unborne?"

"Please, Jaufrei, just listen," Nejani. "You think you know so much, so's why your ignorance violates the [[sacred->msacred]] in knowledge, you summon angels sans humility to ensure you're not drawing something else up. You ruin the delicate truths you half see. This woman who enthralls you, I wish it was, but it's not, it's whatever unchainable perfection drams your spirits, what only enthralls you with perfection is yourself and your thinking, but so were you even interested in her as a, and we'll say this in the most generous possible implication, a truly beautiful person, then you'd still be in the wrong, since to touch is to fracture this made to a thing into half crescent reflections dim with outerworld glassiness, pull apart the statue to find the fragments of its allure, discover your coarseness in what necessitates its power from your exclusion, beautiful beyond your horror in any airy alteration reinjected in your [[cavernous->mcavernous2]] cannot emerge, moonpiercer blunted by smudge clouds horns in whose shrink shadowy the nights featureless to cold blanks. Rampaging after rude lust idols crudely imitating an uncapturable god who if he wanted to be seen, would he not have looked like you? I did not lie to her. I told her the truth like only one who knows you could." "You told her lies!" "Nothing is a lie, Jaufrei, but what your truth cannot abide. You, and here's your fundamental flaw: every thought you have is incorporated. You've slabbed yourself a shed, sure, in your strain is a strain worth its viral, but you ruin insights to in sight, can't interact with the world, isn't so you've eaten Leiru, very same you're to Mariena, but I won't sit by, thought you'd be proud of me for it hey, something akin to your principles, but whenever I seem almost you is when you hate me most, there's comedy there somewhere, we shall find it when the shivers and [[anger->manger]] and tears subside."

"Why's there this vicious, human drive to see an essence and rip it raw, degrade it to our own [[comprehension->midea]]?" Nejani. "What failure in the mortal project screams to deconstruct and possess outsides, to claim territory? You're animal, Jaufrei, we all are, as we see beauty and must devour it. You are the jaw that sunders the spiritual from the human. What glitters before us must be owned or debased or its remoteness shall snarl our claws to tear it. The sentient worships, the insensate tastes. Chasing after her, what do you resemble ah? Beauty clarifies the calcified intentions, perfection haunts the flawed shamblers with gyrenous eminence dizzy abluting our [[dust->mmurk]], dreamers of the wakes of other drowns. Is it a surprise our body ages when we ourselves are motes of decay? From nature we rise, surge, collapse, but failed sea mimics we subsume into nothing. When you stumble upon an oasis what right have you to drink it, desiccate to refresh sunslave of sweating desires? Is it not proper to sleep in the placidity then pass on to whatever destiny erupts you? Should ashame ah your weakness to so drink. Pollute none heaven with pleasures, resign to the moment unattainability as it solar wreathes our world or maroon upon your plying, pining, sulfur spits mucking surfaces." "That's none of what's this about ehh, you've ruined it, you should be ashamed of, of, geskecz, how could you do? Why would you, could you not see us happy, are you that petty, I, and to speak of her happiness, if you bandy that on your tongue again I shall cut it!" "There it is, the [[violence->moutcome]] so implicit." "This is all violence, we are bathed in violence, I scream soaked. Tears slice my cheeks, to your satisfaction then? Is this what you wanted? If I fall to my knees and weep, will you, you beisza, you creep, you, you –" "Again, you, you, all you care about is your own wants, your own –" "My wants! You would know of what is wanting within us. This is what you don't get, that between our imperfections are people and a joy. Perhaps somewhere is your society in prostrate acceptance of a dais reign, but let it be nowhere near, let it not touch a world where people have to live, where other than rust pumps through veins. What if all around us is so much beauty that you can't be afar from all of it, that you have to choose which beauty you harbor in? Does it resemble the possibility of happiness, maybe, of our ability to build from good material? Could it be that two coming together isn't a bad thing? The gall of it! What if she will love me even when I am not there, what if no ocean is wide enough, no hate resilient enough, no person divisive enough that they will sever the one precious bond we share, the connection that breaks my soul in half to have it so halved as solely this body sunders? Mariena and I are more than we in both directions, and that's what I believe in, have you ever paused to think of what of me makes her more than her? No, you grabble your own faults in anyone better than your filth, but the world stops not at your first scoff. We are what we make ourselves, all of us together, a pervasive web of everyone. I love Mariena, and by she has deigned to love me too, and that makes an interpersonal claim that is irrevocable and superlative, a union that rises holy above your dirt philosophies to tangibly transformulate our grasp in experience golemized, from our potential state we have fashioned motion. If my arc across your sky offends you, so be it! At least I have stars to swim in. You may make a poetry of your squalor, but for me let there be a hint of light, let me and my love live before we die. So little is given us we must our purpose seize, malleate the mars to testament, mortal ultimation. If you cannot imagine how desperate we are to feel before our body rips this from us, then you cannot ever understand love, and you cannot ever learn what it means to live. I will my prayers our sky, return to what this [[body->mskin]] robs."

"Everything [[decays->mmurk]], we are all dying, even the Towers crumble, and one day too your love will die, and whoever must be its shambles is what you risk in your mortal ultimation," Nejani. "You have not been racked on age's elongation, your naivety is as galling as pitiable. Your love will crumble, what will you say then, that the ocean shrouds briefly did not cover you, are we to envy you? It is not me imagining everything is however it is when I perceive it, but that I admit that whatever I guess from is itself the end of a long [[road->mjourney]] of possibilities and premises, that each hour is its own equilibrium; as our bodies, so the world: we always return to rest. Your love will flourish, sparkle its brief levitation, but an intense burst wanes to a darkness merely more stark, your sparks must settle in the returning sterile, and because I know both of you I know you're not prepared for that outcome, for the immensity of cruelty you are capable of when you tantrum any negativity, and in the return to the hollow thousands more potent shall this stillness sting, you can chaos an apocalypse from a fade, or maybe you might just react with what you confuse an idea to be, an excuse to ignore the empirical, but her, perhaps you haven't bothered to notice in your overwhelming spiritual zenith but Mariena's desperately using you in her own game, your love is both of your wistful needs crudely plastered over your actual shambles, she's trying to make you the intimacy she's never had: are you prepared to be her dead parents and her strangely distantly overcaring brother and all the friends she never got to make as well as her night terror fantasia she sweatfevers to a lover? Because that's what she's asking, and when you don't overwhelm her with your totalizing guise, when she sees through to the punctuation emptiness, it will be a crisis you cannot solve, will not even choose to try to solve, your illusory selflessness is a controlling selfimmensity discompletion, the true pessimist who equivocates theirs thirsts the world’s, and your teasing nowheres are going to crush her soul in a way all the silences in her life never quite could; best to rather ease her out of it, try to find her a healthier outlet for her desperation hor? That's the difference between us. Mazyu and I, we actually care about her, fear her future, so as friends and family we protect her from her and other destructives, but you see her as an idea, as a conduit to the heavens always singing inside your skull, and you don't care about her future, you care about your now. That's the truth I told her. Both your motives are wrong, but only she actually loves, whereas you merely dream. Had you also mistakenly loved her in your wrong way, I would forgive you, I might have stepped aside to let other people's lives go their painful ways, but because you have gone the revolting too far into your void, because you intend to drag her to the worst places to patch your gaps, I could not call myself a friend were I not to try to help. Don't you see? You'll blindfold yourselves with oh but isn't this such a happy silly hedonist twee purity, don't we deserve this since life is so hard, and then you'll realize your antidote is its own venom and froth in your death writhe. Everything's always a seven with you. You will make this as ruthless as you can imagine it, without once caring how the love in your life might live through this. You are going to live a utopia for the two or three months that utopias are possible, then slaughter a beautiful soul in your [[vampiric->mtorture]] expunction." "No, there's, there's so much, I cannot let you destroy what fills our life simply because the howls fill yours. You could not possibly speak our language. I cannot actually communicate to you what it is like to chase the night's blushes. You speak from so much ignorance I almost pity you until the anger strangles it. Yes, as the moment passes, if it must, if it must, we shall all fade into the seal meridian, but any retina there to receive the wine twilight is espered brilliant with a power which no dusk stalls the repines. I am able to love, able to be loved, and this woman you'd like to doll into a fragility, yes and it is that, you are making her the glass I the action shatter, but she like me will meet our better halves on the opposite rim and slip the sinking earth to our embrace, lace accession... we are able. We can recast your shards into a beauty again, ours. Conviction and the emotions its engine burns accentuate your world desire into concrete [[thrusts->moutcome]], stride of the believer."

"Everything is comedy to your insipids, there's no -" "Because I must find some rejoinder to the -" "But there's more to this existence, we create it together, there's -" "You cannot force the cosmos to stop on some point and shudder forever in your halt entirety, as if you –" "Hate my action of loving if you so desire, but it is my soul smashing against the chance god to demand a here with her, some brief moment we both might believe in selfdefinintion, and that –" "For you, yes, selfdefinition restricting blah blah, but that's your internality, and what you fundamentally do not and cannot ever comprehend is that you are alone and no one else is you. Mariena must face her own concerns alone in her concentric prisms without your shouted salvations solving her –" "You make a virtue out of refusal! You've never erupted out of your desire and been made spectator to your absolute personhood, never loved, never [[hated->mhate2]], yearned, felt the pain of, of, because, because if you had, you would know quite clearly that life is not to be encased in –" "Though you refuse to accept that –" "Because I may as well toss aside my own living –" "Which is not what I'm saying though, I'm saying that you're putting another life on the line of your –" "But in love you share –" Nejani's volcanic sigh. "You're hopeless! There's just, no talking to you. You won't accept anything you didn't think up." "You say that as if you've an open mind, which is the only thing I have ever proved conclusively false, through sheer repetition." "A, well. Alright then. If that's how you stand, then I must stand in your way, Jaufrei, no matter the [[outcome->moutcome]]." "You cannot paint true colors from a cynic brush. Go back to your comfortable sleep where wherever you lie down is a virtue to extol."

Stood and let the fizzy trundle through phosphorescent catalysts. Bitter drink of memory, coldstar infusions mar the fluctuation ghosts, how dam the lived, prolong serene in quell cremations? [[Stings->mstings]] too many, allergic to recall, closing throat pressured by the welling outcry, building batholith until the burst, on the floor clawing for death. Any ebullience is months from [[abashed->mabashed]], every regret viral injects into neurons, spreads to each nerve through each thought. Yes, and so? I drink the dregs of dawn and emerge bloodier array.

Deep in the forest lost. Wavery of soughs transit yet enclose the space diorama. Nowhereness particulate in which my hesitancy isostatic depresses into charge, riveted into the pulmonary inclosuring seperations, can almost not a stranger seam, though rustles these nerves with need shadows, unsettle irritants pistoning the body to [[prowl->mprowl]], twitches aflame ripped from the sufficient to starve rove.

Striding runious through underbrush to feed [[psychic->mpsychic]] on the rush, encountering a thorn jumble giant who me pocks pinned, exert against to gruntcries, collapse to crawling to an oak hollow. No one around. Hesitate, blink, [[regather->mregather]], regain. Must rove the wilds to, thrown thirty feet by the piercer punch, skull cracked leaking to [[admix->madmix]] truths in the fluids of an [[acupunctured->macupunctured]] face, coagulate return, flee into the, run, run, staked through the hand beneath the thorn jumble giant.

Into my mind the voice as if a votive candle flickering alone in oblique blacks. "Your will to live is misaligned with the natural forces which feed you [[dawns->mwormwood]]. Confess before me, weeper of wrongs, your wayward beyond the frame. Can you not enjolt with vir, venerate the arbor altar? Crawl to your [[nursemaid->mashamed]], be blessed."

Splinters riddled me prickly to split, viscous out the vehemence til no more congruent, disjoin, disjoin, disjoin, disjoin, no more inherent itinerant, spreader; no, no, seal yourself, [[regather->mstart13]], compose, corpse [[decay->mmurk]]. Obligations bonewrit is rot like the rest of us.

Melt into your aggressors, sear equal thrust to preserve equalibrial entrustments, meld hatreds, asimulate. Into the differences dediverge your investments lingual to animatosity totalizing so criterion terminus minima envelop you gracile, isn't this what you wish, difference from? Accept your cituated, [[trawler->mstart13]] of suppresseds, fisher of men. Admit your admixed, then bleed out honesties, isn't it almost of the trauma gentle?

Gently stabbed until quiddity pressure releases aquifers, spring supernaculum, salt crystals [[glistenhard->mstart13]] behind. Exust husk I sere serene. Pinned into perfect, delicated of deliquescence. Yes, sew this of self.

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter XIII''] --- "Would you look at that," Gyadalta awed. Above us on the Staircase a shadow bathed in a light we could not yet reckon. In his wake step by step we trudged, heels hurt, rubblefrost, stair ascension in endless procession endless, throat grime's anemic guzzle, ankles juttering glitch removal, shoulders burdened red with sagged packs, toil [[infinitum->minfinitum]], go. "Yeska," Yakacza. Neck and spine permanently bent, no more bone to lift, corrugated and drainpipe orange in submission too complete to snap. Hand anvils crunch slunk the tendons, arms sinking to touch rest, to mingle headdown prayerwise with an enemy in its ruthless contours so much less harsh, what good to fight what will simply dominate... "Baelu," Vasya coughed. "So's they're there huh." "Never thought to witness," Leiska. Collapsing to my knees so long deferred drank down my hesitates and reveled bonebuckling on my slide to a kneel, head bowed, repentant statue to hang here forever ashamed, but with a burst of crepuscular blush washing cupola eyelids an exhaled surrender rolled back my head to see lonely gray columns stolidly listing to eternity in Myeri's voice like a curved wing cutting this tempest sanguine: "Our prized mystery unsheathes its puzzle, captive continuity so long hidden in dead salt centuries, lives expunged in the unsustain, serpent eyes emeralding vast unknowables..." A pang wiggled my pulse out of tune, a pang of what, unsure. Need not to slide right and tumble down what may or may not... "Time secedes into our obsolarity sleekness... reasons make us pull... can we not go on, is there any step we stead but our destined chosen?" Nyneme. Fatigued burnt neon imprints seared tourniquet designs on large sleight gel columns vassals of an avenging and endless godrain, vertigo, displaced gazes soared from oblong peak to lozenge peak before dizzy [[helixing->mhelixing]] down rubble ramps prickled with cataract windows or their absences. A corrugated hulk combine lay jacketed by junk windsweeps vaulting the terrain to stop its metal mouths the sludgesun yellowly slicks bobbing [[viscous->mviscous2]] in trenches. Slouching imperials quiescent and gnawed threatened noiselessly to totter in each viewer slosh as though life may ruin what lifeless made a ruin. Angular assumptives the reachers in war with the ceiling's spacepause. From sullen bulks sluicing electric disapproval many decades overcome in tangles posing constellations to complex the skyline there seemed a sentence many times said. Thimbley wooden blanks like corks once snug but eaten to slack by putrefaction, the skittering marks of the interlopers besotting what rotted here. In irrevocable unwritten the city echoed hush. "Be up guard," Gyadalta raised his lance. "More things lurk in emptiness than people." //Click [[here->mchapters]] to return to Chapter Select.//

Lilac echoes petaling the twilight's entrance in his lips curling, longer, solemnity's volt. "Then we clash but do not buckle, as so long I knew we must, yet even after all these years, Jaufrei, I never thought of you as anything but a friend, no matter how bitter we got, it was always out of respect and care, but, as it comes to this... well. I can't just sit idly by as you hurt terminally. I let you [[demolish->mstart13]] Leiru, because what was there to protect, but if you insist on the people I care about, then… I suppose there's no salvation for counterfates." Jaufr drew his blade. "You've become what you've lived despising, the compulsion that quells integrity." "Yes, at this moment I at last become something, something I feared had long since sunken beneath this earth: honesty, humanity's pestilence." A wind from the sea sloshed in spiccato piano piano, death's hand patient. Nejani drew his blade. "Stay out of this, Leiru," Nejani. "This is our vertex; it is inevitable. I've known for a long time, but, I always held out hope, a vain hope, that perhaps, after all, we were not headlong..." "I'd say it's been a pleasure, but I always thought your voice too gravelly. Hard to listen to." "Don't joke," Nejani. "Let the last thing shared between us be absolute sincerity." Jaufr shrugged, then nodded, then nodded. "Then let's say what we've meant." A rush, a struggle. Jaufr yelling: "Emnin, Emnin!" Amber room's trickling flame oozed out the seconds passing. My mother's husk shivered, shrunken flesh contracting in the cold. A pile of books, dusty, lay near, friends gathered to comfort the end. Cloistered in a wound on the wall I watched, she would not extend her hand to me, she would not beckon me near. Clumped within my chest unrealized, sobbing. "I love you, mother," whispered. "Please don't [[go->mjourney]]." Her neck slid her face to falling into view. Not a feature moved, not a muscle contracted: she simply laid, her deadening glass staring at me, through me; vacant semblance smile parting withered lips. Absolute bereavement. Not emptiness, [[more->mtorture]], absolute and gone. Thrown forward, tackling a surprised Nejani I lifted my chin to consider which way was ground and which way gods. Jaufr was up and stabbing. There were screams, noises, [[brutal->mbrutal]] nonsense. Gore inside my iris, cupola folding as the wind slipped back to the sea.

"I’d say isn’t a bit of you worth keeping, but there is," Volya, "a bludgeon creep to gremlin in death where it isn’t expected, I’d latch you to a chain and beat you pliable like a cur, then set you loosened upon a target, see how you slather them unshowerably cursed. Leakage corrosive your core talent, ought to mechanize it somehow, given the givenness of your cruelty a necessary respondence proof lest you suffer the result. Anyone ever told you hey you’d make a great slug? The way they look at you as you’ve devoured their whole patch, not simply hate, but great disappointment lah, this putrid puny greasing up my yard is why I’ll starve this winter. I’d let a shark kill me any day hey, dream of it takes such a noble beast to slay you, wandered into their watery domain and they recognized you enemy, honor for all of us, but just this super wet worm slinking along a withering vine munching and the moldy mealy you were going to gurgle down is like this is how the gods kill you ehh, and that’s the worst of the world is so often it’s awful in ways not worth fighting, but you, Leiru, so worth the kill, and one day I will, because you internalize the pain in a way every slug I’ve smashed does not, you get to share this with me, we’re going to become profoundly [[intimate->mtorture]], what we’ll share will be weeping for Marko as one spasming through your body, each tap on your tied up a press of the piano to dirge, and I’ll relish watching you squirm, see you seething weakly against the binds, inane writhing of humanity ridiculous, knowing deep down I share this, can excise it through your diminished, beat you a drum for what must march hence, your wriggling shrieking the comma between two [[clausalities->mjourney]]. I can’t wait to watch you hurt me real, I can taste it cherry about my gums, slalom to swallow gooey stretching with my tongue rising to paean the evisceration of all humiliates in their bulbous youness. If it enjoins you the mood, we can do it nude, make it [[timeless->mstart13]]. But then, I suppose, Jaufr will get upset, and you’ve already disturbed his deathrest. As much as I loathe him, I’m ready to forget him at the end of this sentence, but you, oh, I’ll never forget what has been made of us."

I yanked away, but he demurred. "Relax mate, let the gasp back to its family why don't you. I'm not going to do it now. There's no time, and I can wait." He stood up. "Besides, we're not alone. Alenu, is it? Over here, we're this way. Alenu's the right word? Careful of the bush." "It's a little, informal," Meluoi brushed through the branches. "You know much of the old language?" "Bits and pieces. My father was in the Myemi, so you pick up stuff. Alenu, Veda." "Mlekh. You were the one who savaged the poem, weren't you?" "[[Poem->mnexal]]?" Volya looked at me. "Is that what this is? Terrific. I'm pleased. Well, I'll leave you to it. Don't want to interrupt something that precious. Sleep tight, Leiru." Volya's footsteps fading, Meluoi remarked: "How odd he can speak some. I wouldn't have thought him capable." A hyperspeed loop never stopping. Constant fastness breathing. Why is my right eyelid so much harder to open than the other? "What is alenu? What's that mean?" "Just a greeting. Like between lovers. It's [[nothing->mnothing]]."

"And where do you believe hope will rip you out of predicament?" Volya. "Is that what you wish? Find sanctity shall you in some exterior? Ayin anywhere else to go ehh, you're stuck in here with me, I'll share this with you, your pliable, bendable, breakable. No further any wheedling into others to save you now, where hey Jaufr, have you drunk him to completion? Never matter, only this, only this how it is, oily and imperfect and so, so fragile, isn't so, Marko? I've kenned you to the very depth of your shallows, sourced out your whines, and there's where I'll greet you in kindling." "Eyeh Volya why this surge o, why not to -" "I'll surge as I wish, relent back into your limpness, is how I'll demand you, remand you wrought! Speak not until shackledragged brought before my gaze to accede guilt. I'll rip out of your fist this promise!" He grabs my hand and throws me, but my palm burns us both, tumbling and whirling the world shrieks Nyneme apparative: "And is it an amountment you raid from my collideless eminence, this sealical disseminata? Shall I playact the lion relaxed? Ataraxia of opulence, pursed lips lilting dreams as infernos the massacre, hedonism's thrillkiss simmer as atrocity austeres the mode injected with just sufficient irony not to remove the mask to beg for morality or a minute more? Isn't there purity you can alterity? There is no authenticity for us, naive despairers we consider authenticity solely as a being death, some fray from the contingency mirestrom to rocket you to elegance's evisceration, martyr prayer shocking with color moon over our gunmetal machinated. We want our pleasant little saints in the portal midmurder with their emblem held, how much we envy them a positive essence of existence in slaughter, who wouldn't want to be remembered as an idea and a resolve? Better that than all this mess that pains us to recall. Authenticity is scrawled upon sepulchers, graffiti of the graves, so we fever project, that out of this fever anything may project, we can be housed in it eternally. You desire that from my negations gating and scraping to prowl pounce upon jugulars in vain, not yet am I mere aesthetic, and who shall say what from the turbid sea shall form a shore? You cannot determinate the welter without parting the sea, marching through the depths untouched by its mysteries, all of which in this vase lies shattered, none of this works as true, and I accept your brutalities, recognize me, recognize me, you have to see what wretched violence you identify, I identify in it, I accept you excoriation, isn't this the trueness of glimpsed, do I seem the type to worship mysteries, to lament their snapped to use? I'll smash the skull of sainted serpent to finish the execution, where's the nearest reliquary? Ever do you glimpse a vase and envision how it will vine kaleidoscope? Each slapsmash separate scarpattern, potter of breaches petals, your fingerprint upon the whorl. I'll be broken to prosaic, perhaps so nearly soon, and I'd never forgive the fulmination aftering, to have witnessed theoadore of the occident and not been hyperparitus to heighten her to inspiration, nectar of the ruined regal. You render mark me adversary, voila, cheerfully I adopt the lines, just as had you accepted a kiss, perhaps thespian that impasse, we can demodemos any deject maximal. Because we prey lane pulses, thus fate of pulses constrained one vein, clot or conquer. Before which arbiter do you deign dance duet dooms? I'll await your selection; surely you cannot claim I allow you no agency! Have you a personification to attest this vicious? Be assured I'll select the one that hurts you most: what you loathe recognize is my share of your pox, so you cannot the ill upon me externalize. We all animatedly insist I aggrandize dashing demand devil, because the fear I've half the hazard I hellion, slump silent in a chair in the dark as my mood plays on, how much heavier does it weigh when I outwit execute? Any would die a martyr, nigh glib their piety to pieta dazzle, but if you look out upon the pagans godforsaken and putrid pity commune, who would not then leap from the fire, slather in the filth and fumie? They delight in their self righteousness insofar as their superiority soothes failure, but if we paddle scramble in a mudwobble twinned, if each of us is pathetic before gods, well, terror of equality, there's nothing you can not inflict on others worse than inflicting it. There is no called they exile, no I who entreat your serpentines, yet we pageantry on, because there has to be, because if no how can we hate this corpse, mutuality our sole survival personal? Shall we die by his feet the slaves of old? No, we're not as hostile as you project, I am hostility mere. The only value I hold is shield. Curse titans thunderbolt collide the earth stratos, I'll spite their grandiose my hole, withering within. Defang sybarite I'll illyoumine their war withal. Every day I wake up is an agony I've got to drill holes in so it bleeds to death so I can sleep. You see here it bleeds, tonight I'll sleep, but then who shall arise the next morning alongside me terror, you, the holy, the gone, each state of which is worthless as persistence of memory, deepest scar of all my striving, is just how insipid it is, how little I've felt of any victory nominal, how crooning synth bluelight dark I damp in each defeat. I'd could I if faerie insouciant, yet then you totalize abstracted, forget forgo to skin, may as well not bother brutalize survive. Perhaps you admire I don't want of your manifold, but I don't want at all, my desire desubstances, mitigates to gray, and gray I can termite thrive. Any with you share is I've yet impotent to sunder alienate haven." Palms fire awild facetearing in panic induced inclusional violence, possessional of spectral anguishes I riot and wilt, gasp lucid. Volya stirs, rubbing his head from the clash. I slip [[away->mstart13]].

Unabashed, unabashed, beat out your doubts, wring out your lungs to seethe, bathe in spitfire, undouseable, undoused. You must cut out your heart and keep [[marching->mstart13]].

Do you feel it? Harness how you hurt. [[Entropy->mstart13]] engine, drink your chassis, erupt unto goal. Power unique, your stings.

"This world, grotesque, in its beauty, ongoing. Molded into a [[perset->mnexal]], we percolate to the roots, stimulate into new tongues, salival pearls new tales, string a gravity its embraceletting. Wickedly worn we languish the ast we esprit pleurals, how so singulated we stagnate, this strain of weary, worldweary, aren't you, Emnino? Yes, you feel so, in your lounging beneath shadows, I synergize this wight, our syncope agonies syncopate this worship. Dissociative morass of enfeel, isotopes heavying your song shut in these cavernous, such expanses, we slurp up slurries of outsides, no more we hail the hail. Terminus expansive we reside desume until corpses we interpunct, contrapuntal which reinforces the cosm? Smile, Yamicz, the stories burn within, your countercry invocates the slaughterslip, ahh! Where is the wode, yes? Where is the cull, yes? Runes in your bones gleam through cagechest. Imposed by whom, death? Interposing whom, lest? Admit not the melclasp, rebelliuent denia, jinn of demateria, be beserker of the ancient hymns, unshiver to atavisms bleakrustling through blackwoods to soothe you warsource, how you killed and could kill live. Spirit seethe solenmity, fountain of loosen, embargator of yugen, dreamthroat volcanism embarks you upon genuflexions of permutated beyond scope, godsyncope, hark your rippling volta!"

"I shall not lie to you, hearer of harrows, with truths neither I believe, but let us dwell in the mists souljoiners, seekers of sacreds buried deep beneath peat bogs, terrifying idolfaces fashioned to haunt horizons we cannot recollect, yet which sweat us tempered to its lesion touch, each embryonic interconnection garrots the claim, spluttered in irrigates absorptions. Nauseated, I speak to you in same seep, trashed aspirates we climb conclude prisions perfect to [[focalizer->mnexal]] esprit we enjoin to the justifier fray devolved into pleasures who writhe nude beneath our null, there where we echo to fulminate."

"What's Yeska?" I burst. "Hmm?" "The word. The one everyone says. They keep saying it and saying it and I want it to mean in the way you make it." "Yes I... well. Yeska is an epigraph: to the individual called. They write this because the Literature is not arbitrarily perused but calls to us, from our outstanding isolation it [[bridges->mbridges]] our tangents to the diaspora of bond truths, wherefroms creation eschewed seedling sentienced to a defined we like newborns taste as guided are we sociohistorical neon pulses away from subsumed into pulsating unionheart we arrested overload, nexus accelerator artysm where all collide and collapsules emerge, from unitary experient infinite diversiform to unity with parameters: to the individual called destined to breach which sanctum the book harbors in us already? Stories are theme links pressed together losing edges: read, you kin, enter our together solarity. "In books the epigraph is written Yeska seganyu dasanna czli, which means: to the individual called, follow me to where we are knot; which makes this clearer, though suppose we must preface this translation with this sentence itself, exactly as these words are this phrase phrases it, so as I translate, I merely say to you, the called reader: follow me to the true work, journey stretched dual whilst the prosody aestheticizes mirrored surfaces unique sheen of shadows whose depth requires receding from the union into pure as is as is in its intimacy integral power of the Literature, venerative smoketrails noctilucent in lost isle mists [[moonmedium->mmoonmedium]] between black seas secluded in nightmare nor dream, deity designifier arc pulsated into places whereupon flourish waypoints to real what screams raw in eidolon gales. Pusher across the question are you limited to frame, which is this infinite's aperture, reflective induction we conduit sanguine with selene releve upon moored, mystic transducer. "You ask of this epigraph my epicene intervening; why not your mercurials writhe these mephitic symbols of cavernous? Worship versifier to perfect accursed, translator interloper, how much is my existence inhibitory to your radical alive? Proximate to the place where I found myself at horizon, how do I [[sunsing->msunsing]] you, how can you pierce me your inscribe? Chanter wrung from a Senenzu grove, what have I taken from you, is it to where I have taken you? Can you destroy me in your own veneration? Because if not, what else, and yet your tears, ah, Emnino, truly you move, though you move with me, that's what terrifies me, we bring to the surface some of essence buried between us so in gem tongues can its vault presence endure in verve. Meaning is the ursense which pervades the transcendental shadow shed by perception over the primal geists of the infinite subjective. That is language, Emnino, why so terrifying is its unattainably lovely, because on our tongues our spirits roost supras in absolute commutatives. Where shall they run but to sinews by their presence tumorous? I am leading you into my mire, you precious one another, please swim out of it, sail on your ocean to your own land, but I fear in your glances... your expressions inspire such a tormenting [[enjambment->menjambment]] of hope and regret..." A cloud choking on its own fumes distorted and interbred, a tongue inside yours pushing to the tips to taste the flaking lips... "Can I hear a poem?" Was all I had. "Yes, of course, though what accosts us this night is separate from our... on the way here I was humming a sonnet that that [[gunsman->mhull]] reminded me of. I must sing it, and I don't know why, perhaps, and I hope, you will. Of Kabme Dokh, Sailor's Sonnets, by Senenzu Jyinu Wyklecz..." The breath.

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Course the cutlass night's resolves along Icy canvas lakes in loneslit views Dressed in frost attire, skins sarong Soft like snow in daylight's gentle dews Sparkling serenity's allays' Cyan sighs to shade our frigid hues Victor's marbling facade to rays Dazzle brightened slickly snowflake blues Bubble popping silent, smiling sheens Thick abound upon the surface line Washing swathes across the blanket greens Forming shores. Attest this [[borderline->mstart13]], Veil our sights with stormless peace, design Volts to conduit destases shrine.] "Do you sense it? I... "Sapped by routine's venom they beseech only from destiny rest, once more yields, in, in the cycle that is, the power of the sonnet is the way they compile into cycles, tiny stories accumulating lifetimes as they span into one another, each one an outcry muted by the enduring of the second's hang, the lack of the eternal in its strongest capture, but in their unity they extend beyond their own lines, each sonnet carries the silence of their implicit kin, each sonnet an isle whose beauty glimmers all that which never made it to this surface, in each isolate a collective which does not undo the isolation, moments filled with the beauty of empty days, gaps which grant the second its stage so that the second may become a stage in the progression..."

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Sweat and sadness sweep together mixed Ice in winter winds unstable, white Suns which snow in moonshaft glows affixed Wish to chills provides our recondite Blazes reality trancing songwind Leaps from lick to lick, a sense submerged, Flare meteorites in earths, the sinned; Roars suppressed, our silence soul will urged, Tugging shadows stars' despondence [[stings->mstart13]], Swings in mocking cold, slung grasps embraced Ropes like reasons, sails our seams unstrings Dreaming gone in circles dizzy traced, Wistful branches painting skyhued blooms, Heavy hoped designs, eclipses' looms.] "Does it not exude? Listen to the sonnets as they pair, what song do they summon? Surrendering to what gods we quiver before unloving ourselves and our world, dread veneratrauma of approaching intoxiclypse calypcystic... "Listen Emnino: if you want me to tell you poetry, then what do you hear? When I recite to you, what have I said, what next shall I be saying? When I come to you soon with a song anew, what will the Senenzu mean, and where from that meaning will you follow? If you are to be a Yamicz, a listener, then you must filter the noise for the song. I have lost too much by suppression, so if I emerge into this truth bare and alike broken, Emnino, if I show you whatever lies within us, then tell me, Emnino, listen: is what you hear a song?"

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Blessing bearing palesilk tingling Rippling certainty soothes elunes Asphodels austere snow mingling Elegance venemous vitas runes Mystical recalled in phantom vise Aura wraught to real transijinn Float petallic sapphireous guise Witnessed ghostly godforsakengine Roaring depthtruths riotous upon [[Automatiscope->mstart13]] chromaticscape Gear enveloping echtechelon Eidolon incorporating shape Stenciled spirit strength assumes the lights Trickling in wanshaft wines to crystallites.] "On this night, do you nurture a similar infusion, angel its assimilate? Serene surface, which terror depth compose? Perfect of each possible and all its horrors, this beautiful screaming we share, whom bends its moonshafts summoner? If I could say, wouldn't be worth this dwelling between, and we share this, don't we?" She smiled at me with tears I understood more than the smile.

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Waves erase the mood to neutral soaks, Splattered sloshly sickened normalized Work accorded sparkened stark revokes Slurried self to tasks relentless vies Vising vision functionalities Hyperpressive intermeshional Torque reprisioning focalities Undulating intersectional Vectorized utilitiation strives Based on [[whorlplace->mstart13]] destables’ drain Damned to durate vessels’ fragile, lives Urned contextual seafables’ slain, Seize the breeze and be, refuse the still Ness of storm to surge our lines to overfill."] "You notice, of course, the final line breaks the meter as it ranges to overfill, and you notice the generalized enjambment that responds thematically to what we were discussing, yes, dozens of little things for a Yamicz to prise apart to understand it and this moment, all of them important certainly to their degree, but you have to be able to notice where they point to, what the purpose of each deployment is, or you simply replicate a form for having been a form for having been assumed, the spirit must capture you most of all, each statement we make about the sonnet is a pierce into its spirit, distillation of its tenets. We learn the Literature to delve beyond literals. You can reach this experiential level of emanation, if in each vibration you quiver its chiral entangle… "Wish ha we had years, as any Yamicz deserves, as you deserve Emnino, but we propel rapidly through each breakhold bulwarked to possiblate, deeper than all the signs we spell, so you must tell our heading from starlight, only then can we harbor dawn."

Loops of strange input printed inaccuracies [[rerouted->mpathways]] through geometries glitchy pulsations, buildings that breathe and writhe skeletonized to bones iron above slag crater lakes. Chiaroscuro hatches scoured grooves in gaunt, minatory minima leered through lacunae. Interference patterns pressurized slumpsteel seracs to eons sloop, can shiver their inexorcisate. Dizzied in peaks, too plenty of peaks above the pile to perceive sans seasick dribbled to down, crawling up jags, stabbed, release to drain acceptance, how so the sparknull speaks.

"We should off road ah," Pyeisa. "We're exposed to too many here." "To whom of this no one, you bat?" Mojyi. "Agree that," Gyadalta. "Any of these slopgates could spill ambush." "Plus the eyes," Tyese. "Creeps me out, the thought of eyes, just out there, somewhere." "Can you travel across the top?" Myeri. "Aye, why wouldn't you could," Pyeisa. "Pretty sure scavengers leave trails across the roofs for this very reason. We should be able to their use." "How do you know?" Mojyi. "How don't I know." "It'll slow the progress, if that's concern," Gyadalta. "They tend not to straight routes, the upways, and some parts may have fallen away. Could take us like days to across." "How does everyone know this?" Mojyi. "Safer lah," Pyeisa. "Won't we run into scavengers if we use their paths?" Leiska. "Possibly," Pyeisa, "but their ones or twos unlikely to engage." "That didn't stop us," piped the thief. "You're not a scavenger," Gyadalta. "Scavengers are their own type, survivalists." "Yeah we're scavengers, like why do you think we attacked you?" There was a bit of token arguing. "Besides," Pyeisa, "if there are scavengers, why not to the extra loot?" "Ah, good on the idea," Gyadalta. "Yeah, our own, if we keep cutting down." Kostiye. "Eyeh you so pessimist, believe in our capable, as this lad," Yakacza clapped Lomia. "Aye we ought to proceed the road, faster and less of the creepies sunken in crevices." Mojyi. "You're just in the position, because it's against mine," Pyeisa moued. "Yeah o, how don't I know this is the best path." "I agree we should shoot through, no telling what or how those carcasses harbor." Kostiye. "We ought to discover is our go, imagine the possibilities of decay." Yakacza. "Ought to pose the question to Captain: [[high->mhigh]] or [[low->mlow]]?" Leiska.

"We shall ascend by the heightened path, but we must hurry our course its reckoning." Myeri. Drained of sound, hushed of heat, the shifted silt slack of the somewhat sunken door sealing us into this push. I am wrong. Stairs dummed half hollow, half haunted, as we struck into the rust pipe drippings thumping the waste menace spewed across the landings, vile thickness smelting in its own fizzle gooey beneath the foot. I am wrong. Splattered haphazard disarrays three quarters through the [[plunge->mplunge]], calcified falls modeled in their last seconds watching artificial rain with heads reclined on splintered wood beaten into aspectlessness in final reversion to itself, inert pain scraping through their pelvis to emaciated backs and sallow stomach flesh in selfloathing's denumb sedation as pulses but not without the hate pumping again disoriented in circular indictments of this is what I could not escape extricates the exanimatrices of regret reenaction, this no more denial unto denial and its vanquishell, exiles laden into everwet clay scratching the filmy non for figments in phantasmic pinks whisper echo haranguing dark nooks with their straineds interspersed with hither summonings half a scream half the wind urging to crawl this way, I can show you what you have lost, like a [[cur->mcur]] they go cutting themselves on the detritus deeper into the hole of their not, litter solitude below stench, awash in the emptiness wrestling less. I am wrong. They rot into kin. I have no heart, no, heart is all I have, or is it mine, is my heart too wrong, yes, all it is, I am wrong. Cast into a bare cell cannibalizing the sickly crouched apart from the encroaching stark drinking passionfirst until the blandness of become and no more unto itself becomes an eternity in the austerity by which we can sense beyond. I am wrong. Monochromes gangling over the wreckage to return to a bodycase rather than this putrid soul. Wrongness rips paper silence for full erasure. Waxen muck forever frozen in a waterfall's death gurgle amalgamated the layered rusted, the lowest moment. I am wr. Lizard scatters in shadow clusters dripping sepia, my stand on the precipice weakening, squalls howling, fall, fall, fall like us. Hunker in gooseflesh revulsed. Genesis separation sprung gulfs between what answer could I render and our accession to the wastes upon which we were sprawled colliding in the hurricane judgment, and to my knees might I go to die at least penitent. Tonight the day could end.

Domains of pressure crinkle us to worm through clots. Beneath beetling blacksteel shatters chipchiseled to tattered forlorns sometimes twisted to [[gargoyle->mgargoyle]] grimaces we grumble and needle, tenuous, talonwiggling through crumbles and hollows. Desolation pervades, invades, you gaze upon the vacant vacant. Sepia pools lugubrious to cake to haze. Dysluminous disarray guards the way, guides the frayed to wavecrash, flushed rods and girder fragments wriggle beneath steps, sludges syrup through [[pileshifts->mpileshifts]], on all fours still we trip. Tripped into cage, growls muzzled mumbles, shifting of zips unblocked the rise, tugged out by Mylecz, nod tipped sideslant. Heaveness of chest ashed in the dustsmoky a mulchy apology he waved down to shove down my mouth wooly mothy, chagrin too raw chafed to deliberate, drawn taut instead into dullburn upsurged to headache. Pressing to balance to hold stern, assimulate enchained securelacra. Solidity envious of cityscape’s eternal decay I clutch my calcificates drooped to instab, drip venomous, invidity vitreous infernal, how the heart burns: contextual constructed to misprision eternals to ridicule, liminal convexicule. Vexed to altar, sacrecise. Reducer infusal transduces to prow, go, electreso.

Tension soaked our chests cold enough to shiver but not enough to sweat. Not solely in the phantom shapes weary wither tracers displasion was I willing to spill. Sepulchral liquid accumulated in gutters to listless ovalesques. Moss shapes crept like ants over piles alternately chalk white and powdery thick with sludge oozing caked purple creams from curling filth rivulets dammed by occasional pipes or fallen wall chunks. Indeterminate carcasses splotched what narrow [[pathways->mpathways]] cut through the trash, some hollowed except for ribcage impressions smeared with fossilized gore, others ribboning long corridors. From somewhere a broken caw.

Razors once rippers of eyeline dulled into distance dotted the [[deadlanes->mpathways]]. Crumbles mazy vertigone steps to horizon qua mirrors, seasick with reflection inversion backwards striding straight, vomit in our necks stuck as we stare up at vaults we nearly back into and buckle and become buried beneath. Trying to focus on a single point of reference returns you from where the inference aligns, calibrated to cityscraped, in its amorphous assimilated unclear enclosure laharing dimly beneath membranes of placed. Longer you wander, longer you perceive between waymakers.

"Tall this way o, why no the low?" Harumphed Vasya. "Weren't you worn shirtthin, you'd not complain." Yakacza. "And so is what if I'm worn? Been alive more days than has ever been for me prophesied, bound to be worn. Just cause you can a thing doesn't make it virtue." "Virtue is what the payers [[pummel->mpummel]] us, may as well have decency to guilt the resilience." Volya. "Vasya and decency, guilt?" Mojyi. "You can always choose to lie down and be left," Leiska. "I might even respect it." "Yeah's how that's gonna sate the hollows." Vasya. "You never will, keep marching." Gyadalta. Heavying thrums throated the cell deeper in our higher, steepening lyre. Peelings and rusteds rummed the ruinseeps. Slipcasts in the congeal buckled, buckled? What were these [[serpenting->mserpenting]] fractures? Dismantle blades grimaced through cracked winks, cut, gulletless grin. "Watch the, hey!"

"Stop," Gyadalta. Murmurs trailed from mouth to mouth to cease the need to say. Gyadalta teased the scaffolding with his foot: senescent, mouselike wheeze. "Something," another prod sent the decayed woodwork crashing down the landings "has been eating away at this." "Yeska, the eardrums hey." "What now?" Myeri ran a hand through his hair. "Unsure," Gyadalta. "We could try to bridge the gap." "With what?" Leiska. "Unsure. Is there wood around?" "The whole scaffold is wood," Yakacza. "Just take anything. Does it matter?" "How are we supposed to know what's good wood and what's not?" Kostiye. "How do we know we're not cobbling together our own crasher?" "We could send our least favorites first," Yakacza. "Keep straight," Gyadalta. "Just, I mean, just jump on it, right? Before you put it on. How would that not work?" Mojyi. "That way you'll know if it breaks." "Yeah but what if you go through the floor while jumping up and down like a yego?" Volya. "Guys, uh..." Pyeisa. "We might... um..." "What are you talking about? The floor's holding your blathering about it, obviously it can take some –" "Maybe there's furniture still around." Vasya. "Yeah but if you start jumping –" "Mate there's like sixty of us clanking around with gear and –" "I doubt it," Kostiye wrinkled his nose. "Everything not rotted's been taken by now." "Yeah," Gyadalta. "It's unlikely there's anything substantial left." "And then those sixty idiots start splattering like –" "Well I don't know you could do it in one of the rooms then, to test it out." "Which have the same –" "Lads!" "Maybe there could be like a [[ladder->mladder]] somewhere..." Vasya. "Maybe we could, um, like a –" "We could just go really fast so we're faster than collapse." Yakacza. "Hey!" "I love ladders, they're underrated, sick of stairs…" Vasya. "Hey! Hey!" "What's the problem, Pyeisa?" Leiska. "That's our problem!" Beyond Pyeisa's extended arm: kedyoi. "That's, oh, okay. That's a big problem." "Whoa," Kostiye gritted his teeth. "That's..." "Why didn't you shout earlier?" Gyadalta. Weapons unsheathed. Vasya wordlessly handed the thief one. Gyadalta as he passed gave a second guess but pushed through shaking his head. "What even is that?" Kostiye. "How many are those is the better question." "Yeska," Leiska, "but we've nowhere to go!" The front kedyoi leapt, grabbed Mojyi in its fangs, and ripped through its prey. We jumped back. "Hell such?" Kostiye. "Worry later," Vasya. "Arms up!" Vasya charged a kedyoi, but the appendage on its head knocked him sternly aside. The beast eating screaming Mojyi shook a bloodied mess of shock and bone. Lomia batted a kedyoi back but as he did another one [[swooped->mswooped]] in from the roof, it and Lomia a blur shooting to the next room. "Fjelske, there's a pack of them!" Tyese. "Volya, Pyeisa, to Lomia!" Myeri. "Aci, seek a route around the gap! Emnino, Kostiye, form a line around our patrons! Everyone else to the front!"

Kedyoi leaps at me, nearly lands on me, and in the brief second before it renews its attack I wonder, how strange it should have missed me, this ruthless opposition posed upon hiddens to kill, why should it not have found my mark, why have I been in so many frays and never once has death found its mark, have I gone missing in cosmic eyes? Pure instinct being pouncing, somehow I have slipped it: has the hunger gotten to it, emaciated its capacity? How has the same hunger not incapacitated me? I lunge strike and slice it to rearing to where I can pierce it, hold the lance pierced, push it in, twist it in, lunge forward with the puncture, sizzle in its shrieks and bleeds. Why is it dead when I am not? I don't even understand what I have killed. I just killed, this thing is twitching its lasts, oh gods what have I done, I didn't even think about it, I just, the thing was, have I become such a beast, kill so unthinkingly, murder in response to stimulus? Any motion and I'll lash out and find myself staring confused at a dead child. I have become the murder, more conducive of it, is my persist. I hate myself. A kedyoi is feasting on the face of Tyese. Stab into it. The kedyoi slacks beneath the press almost incidentally, slurping up some tangle of gore. Stab again, slings over to stare fierce foaming, clouded into motionblur none of the ensuing makes sense, somehow death: kedyoi, Lomia, some element of my lucidity: how many have I left? Looking at the plashment rue to fuzz its construe to formulate yes, there is a ladder, escape, yes, that was a mission once, when we still prided ourselves directed. I am a terrifying machine; no wonder my father could not fix me. "Ladder up this way hey!" I. "What? You've -" Leiska. "Ladder so, let's ascend out of it yeah, we'll clear the ambush." "Kid's got a sense to him. Rally up ho, ayy, this way so, rally to this ladder!" Gyadalta. "The Veda, protect the Veda!" Myeri. "Seem so they themselves." Pyeisa. "Keep up the -" "Fjelske they're -" "Blast up the kepka to your where is where is this -" "This way, this yah, see here!" Clambering automaton our shambling column which under dany duress responds the same: somehow wheezing free. Smothered not yet we who struggle up on rungs as - "Yeska, they climb, the dyenne!" "Yeah but lance them ah, get them on the leap, they can't -" "Why the hell did we go a ladder, they climb the yego!" "Just launch yourself up ho, narrow boards here, they won't through!" Ratted [[wood->mplank]] creaked sandy. Tilted beneath our running like might break, shocking their not breaking. Decided to swing to vanguard, let Gyadalta lead, ushered each one through, counting, this is still a name. Up popped through the Veda, Berakh steady as a mountain overwatching war, Meluoi verve of frazzled grace, and behind them, assuring their - "Captain hey!" "Got me ahh, it's got my leg, the demon!" Stabbed down through the hole, trying to smash into a jaws scrabbling mix, slip through one bite to - "Eyah that's my leg ah, you've got me on -" "I'll get you on the heave is so." I tugged him up hard. Jostled into the washed up [[dustlight->mdustlight]] we laze for a breath. Ever so tenderly I yanked out my spear from his leg to his yowls. Scrabbling jaws mix hounds the hole yonder. "Don't know that I, can't get to my feet..." Myeri, pungeant shock stippling his august sternness. "Aye Captain," slung him on my back, chased up the others.

Chaos blended screams. Leiska blurred to a room to search for an escape. Another kedyoi jumped over my head and shot into Gyadalta who held his ground and sliced one of its appendages. The monster reared and roared. Berakh unslung a jeweled scimitar, shouldered me aside, and rushed to Gyadalta's aid. Meluoi looked at me and shrugged. Myeri dueled two kedyoi, shouting insults on his every dodge. He sliced the first in half and ridiculed it, then kicked the other in its face. Leiska when he popped out from the room was horrified, threw Tyese towards Myeri, then popped into another room, popped out from that one to check again, into another, out, in, our battle metronome. Berakh killed the kedyoi attacking Gyadalta. Gyadalta nodded his thanks. Together they approached the monster feeding on Mojyi's corpse; it let limp the body to lick its teeth and stare. Two more kedyoi bayed as they raced up the stairs to our landing. Pyeisa and Volya turned to see the advancing threat: one of them sighed. Gyadalta stabbed the kedyoi through its head, but it pushed into his lance and tore at Gyadalta's shirt. Its headtail curled around him, pulled him, he scrabbled on the floor, but Berakh finished the kedyoi and lifted the gunsman to his feet. A more desperate nod of thanks. Lomia slammed through a doorway wrestling fist to claw with the kedyoi that had attacked him. Vasya chased after them desperately swiping at the creature. With a crash Lomia broke through the creaky railing, and both he and his foe went raining down the landings to [[dustlight->mdustlight]], the creature shrill, the man deep. Vasya looked after them, lost. A kedyoi crawling on the roof paused briefly to screech at us, then dived at Meluoi. I flung myself in front first, a long gash across my arm engraving burns as I swatted it away. I raised my pike and thrust but missed, the thing had jumped, crumple with so much hurting, its teeth scrabbling for the artery… it recoiled to the side, bluish blood gushing from the open wound. Kostiye shouted as it stumbled back. I leapt to my feet and started stabbing in between the noses. As it slapped its head side to side Kostiye thrust his sword through the thing's abdomen. It balled up in screech agony, and Vasya and I doubled against it from our side stabbing, stabbing, the creature in insectoid moan imitates increasingly pitiful, lower, collapsed. Myeri was shouting encouragement to us, his boot resting triumphantly atop corpses, not noticing a kedyoi crawling the wall to his right. We waved at him trying to signal the danger, but he nodded at us, seeing the corpse of our felled kedyoi, mouthing what did not transpose. There was a pounce, and both the kedyoi and Myeri went rolling. Tyese pursued, swiping at the creature when it settled. He struck straight to the stomach and the creature curled, and another blow knocked the beast off a confused Myeri, his back a torn mess. The kedyoi surged up and swiped its claws across Tyese's throat. He sunk to his knees gurgling and grasping the wound. Vasya and I rushed the beast, but it swung spiked headtails at us. Vasya dodged. I fell backward. Kostiye and Pyeisa above me a whirling snow, viscera radiating storm. I opened my mouth to gasp but choked on a splatter. "Hey!" Leiska. "There's a [[plank->mplank]] this way! Let's go!" Struggling to my feet I grabbed Myeri bloodbubbling something about fate and bolted. The rest were shortly behind, as were a stream of hooting kedyoi. I saw Leiska's plank leading out a window and launched onto it with a running start, the buildings and their gaps one ironwork groan as I slid through the blare. "This city," gasped Myeri, "is alive."

Where and fear fulminated to counterthrust the fall, heart spasming in the throat the motion, suddenshock of belowness as a mode of relation, looking up at beams raining, crashing about you beams raining, struggled into a nook bleeding as a detritus bludgeon blasted me closed cloaked in dark. Auditory [[scramble->mplank]] of punch, punch, punch. Sheltered behind a jut that shuddered with jet dust geysers as is it punched. Curling in the chaos to harbor. Minutes that have been beaten into a paste then fermented for months in a granite vat I bode before screams' shapes sharpened. Hiding in the disconnected shell until a sound too near spikeballs, but I pushed out in the darkness to dammeds, nowhere to out, buried inside. Panicked slaptracing containments. Contours that warp and pile and erect but never puncture. Limited air? Slow your breathing, calm down, you need to focus. I am in a niche beneath rubble. This has saved my life, and I am grateful. I feel bad for being grateful, I should have wanted to die, or been neutral to it, begged the plummet to ferry me to Jaufr and Kaiya, or, no, focus. Behind me is what I think was a wall, is a wall, is impassable. To my left maybe a doorway was, rubbleblocked. Above a steel sheet, likely a platform, dented with the deaths it denied me. Ahead is the sheet bent on itself. To the right is, and I could, could I just wriggle through, if I, if I just push this... "Where's the captain? You've got to get the captain ehh, we can't flee until!" Leiska. "How's I'm supposed to find him? Captain Myeri! Captain Myeri! He could be anywhere." Kostiye. "Where are the patrons?" Mylecz. "They've survived, they're by the door waiting, the beisza." Volya. "Ah ho Leiru’s out. Did you see Captain in your hole there yego?" Leiska. "No. There was no one and me." "Well then bend to the work, will you? He’s got to be somewhere this pile." Shuffled slantways to a [[dustlight->mdustlight]] where a clatter radiated. Uncertainty of bones gauzing also my eyes cataracts. Faint whimper wormed through my wayward to contact, recoil, Mojyi ripped and reaching. "Eh, eh, Leiru, it’s, please, it hurts…" "Mojyi, you’re…" "Yeah ah, ah, uhn, could you, ahh, uah, just…" Nodded to the rocks. "Mojyi…" "Just, it’s, I accept. Please, it, it, uh, hhuh, eurh…" Locked eyes for longer than I realized. Bent gently to a brick, infinitesimally back to closer above his, his, gone. Dropped the. "Oi, we’ve recovered the captain, everyone up to, let’s get out of here quickly!" Leiska.

"Grab onto -" "In here, safe over -" Crackles raged to roars. Ground buckleblasted. Air where previously a there. Our plummets halted, dangled by cords. Whipstrike of spacespill. Uncertainly large drop droops down to our dribbling down to moot. Interact wherewithfall. Plummet resumed into squiggling substrates which drenched our scrapes resinous with woodpulp and metalsap. Plopped on a semiresilient groaning for the space of several moans, relented to fall afresh, tangling in a continuous cavalcade of ripped, flipped, and flown dipped [[flurry->mfever]]. Aching on a break, have I broken anything? What now lies irretrievable of the wreck? "Is everyone, is anyone alright?" I. "Yeska, I’m, eyehh my shoulder…" Yakacza. "Baelu to my state, but up yet, up yet, more could collapse." Gyadalta. "What is there left to collapse lor." Mylecz, ruefully into ruby reflection Lomia. Looked down also to where broken lay Tyese, an expression in corpse somehow still him. Rent spine in sharp angles, head jutting forth as if to hiss. Windslight [[tempestsettles->mdustlight]] dampened cries to internalizeds simmering ruinous as around.

Under a flicker amber peripherally tinged with a subterranean intensity which at any moment could awe into orange [[hellmouth->mfever]] gnashed with choirs we silhouetted phantoms endured the counting which shortfell so many names we in our horripilation [[rippled->msharpless]] replies to soothe the anguish stillness of called, names numb in the brain, faces now frescoes: Mojyi, Lomia, Tyese, a name we know lies next, unspoken yet in the tension in the most stark of shades... Dazed into trance into trudge. Onward marching until our necks began to curl, waves of newness extruding over our refusal passivity, our restless submission to sealed...

[[Fever->mfever]] race through splitsecond interpretive rush of frenetic halfpaths, semiquavers of teases of for that terminate, stinted instead with a sharp right turn over gaping the city a single somewhat rotted board cosinepolining unevenly beneath our pace, sawtooths of plungeleap jittery to pulsewaves threatening in each negative the pure deep tone. Through the frantic blur of city where to everywhere we trace an escape into more uncertainty, yielding us up unto Tower networks more dense than we can path, roving lifewise aimless upon [[arcswallow->msharpless]].

Motion delirium muted tides to recede in wan afterimage fizzles, sparkles inside my eyelids erratic over twilight tars. Rainsplatter delays lured dribbling grimes to behind eyelids gush scars ripspreading wide to witness seething unceasing [[hypercut->mhypercut]] citrines spasming where eyeballs should, rapid eye movement, miasmatic turbid deluge through wriggleweeping on detritus stabs. "Get yourself up Leiru, you can't keep downing geigu. Up you get, you wretch, go on." Leiska. "Did you eat in morn? You've got to keep strength for the march lor." Mylecz. "Yes, I, I..." Words slipped to which witness whom unspoken hummed it sharper? Shades underwrote our nervous certain of watched. Billowing [[warmist->mwarmist]] like again could it all, or has it even ceased, what do we judge of shuts and scatters? Involved into rewrittenables frozen but for the interweaving into experience. Capacity drained from carapace to sheer pace, strides that animate the wastes, tips and turns blending sparks into unseen gears. Ivory sighs tusked sinuous conduit to where dwelled in the stripped and soughhowling ebongilded peer, pulmonate, roar. Scattered on ground we wheeled ourselves up to pinning poising over the throat of Mojyi starklit lifting a loose thinning pointing to where nonfollow we fierced up to wield to fend swipe the gargoyle prisonteeth perch.

"How deep you think it goes down?" Mojyi. "The [[pileholes->mpileholes]], I mean." "Deeper than you, what matter the else lor?" Volya. "Yeah it doesn't matter to me, but I'm gonna make it matter to me, that's my perogative." "The romanticism of it, you know, the depths." Mylecz. "Yeska, not this kepka ehh." Volya. "I once watched one down a hole, not too different than these, highrise collapse hey, and he said, he said uh, uh..." Tyese. "Can't it go deeper than the Floor yeah, so I mean, not that deep." Kostiye. "Oh you're just so sure each Floor doesn't below the beneath?" Mojyi. "Eh?" "Don't bait it, you'll set the kyauska off." Volya. "How are we so sure that the ceiling of a Floor is the floor of the next Floor? Like, couldn't it be that each Floor is banded irregularly with the ascent?" "How does that make sense?" Kostiye. "It doesn't." Volya. "Like we assume yeah the evenness of the Staircase corresponds to an even distribution of space to Floors, but what if the Staircase just ascends as it does, and the Floors just ascend as they do, and we're arbitrarily correlating the two?" "But how do we cross yeah between one and the other?" Pyeisa. "If they don't match, why do they then match?" "What if, okay, what if our perception of correlation is skewed by -" "Fjelske!" Volya pushed Mojyi. Mojyi slid near me, popped up furious, raced back up the pile, tripped into a looseness that tumbled down the rolling hill, [[avalanching->mavalanching]] metallics, beneath us a rumbling growl reverberating uncontrolled through cascade barks of beams breaking to the suddenly flood.

"Glad eh you came though Mariena?" Kaiya. "Yeah eh, always nice when you’re out and, but, but the getting out is what slogs." "Wasn’t so bad! We were out in a shot, no?" "Aye sure though who should ever stand when [[cuddled->mimeni2]] in the warm?" "Not so cold today, not so much breeze." "Are the waves paying you the tours?" Imeni. "What’s with all this mandatory positivity?" "You can’t be out so on these waves and mope leh, you got to keep the tack." "I’ll mope where I happen to be, bring the moping to me." Mariena. "Then you may as well in open air hey, mope the sunshine way." "You are my sunshine Kaiya, is why we could just lounge to the same." "We are lounging, or I am anyway, best of luck with the rows." Imeni. "For the best ah, not to tip over." I. "You were, no, you were reaching over is what spilled us." "To pull up the lines!" "Well, we got to the fish eh?" "Aye, she’s the old touch, always saying we’ve grown weak, ought to out them proper, diving and wrestling, don’t truly ken taste of a fish don’t you tear them out of the pumping muscles of the deep, [[reckoning->mvoid2]] raw to raw constricting murkwild of your swallowing exhume." "I keep say ehh dredge me up pearls while down." When nobody laughs, she explains oysters.

Vectors of indeterminate space gridded us to feint the enjambment calculus to Tyese and this stalactite imperious pointillism abrasion baphomet; gone the former, incipit the former, replacement puzzleboxed us in its phlox neon plane, advance and aggress according to receding into horizon lines combined halation. Elected into this coscriptor Lomia, who struck into bounding, but jitter phantom motion remoded the menacing to append new phases through where next Lomia struck to behind him a scintillation peregrination betwixt strikes and determinates strikeable, [[cyclication->mrelentless]] crescive pressure to bound to be to wreathed in lassitude wobbled the intent if not the content, less approximate the attacks, until whipped the shadow to his closeness undeterred and merged, crushcry. Pyeisa and Kostiye rushed up to take up the space, but Meluoi motioned them back, saber flourishes runewriting forced static the invisible framement to permute to Berakh's acute sever sealing behind lackwidth the yet crashing in gargoyle halved, head and jowl and wing and claw, raging as if complete. Berakh began again to sign, but Myeri charged ahead of him yelling what I did not hear. In my sleepless I have puzzled the exact wording, tried to forge links from noise polluting my tinnitus: recede your might in honor you are under our guard; I welcome you, star prophet, to where verses discard gods; proceed the fights of our fathers, sailors of this begotten; ensure we share in this light, shedders of shadows future; involve your truth this day, chanters of this suture; accede no deriver, assume your power this desperate; I am aflame with the driven of eons; follow me now, friends of this resilience; I feel like I am making them up, every time I travel down the sound to gutters remainders, discovery [[reverberates->mreverberates]] hollow, turns me back to the holding out where strings this sound I cannot quite, and what would he even say, what is Myeri more than the words that could not fit into where they were cut?

Theremin shivers [[tremulated->mreverberates]] across a sinuous mist emitted by nailscreetch against pylons, outrunner of shapes coagulating from darkmoss, gargoyles dozens, hundreds, volleys of talons rain down upon us. Scratched my face a gargoyle, leapt upon it, punchscrabbling at its cool stony as winged it a hover above the rabble, projectile we whisked through the battle in slams and wrings and turns, wrestlescabbing stone to skin so strangely intimate in how we hated ourselves most in survival struggle, the sense that the worst will win and we won't stop it because we are in it. I managed to yoke about its neck and the tugs veered us into a rubbleslide out of which we lifted disarrayed and I with my fingers free jammed them into where carved were its eyesockets as if somehow it correlated with the violence I sought to express, and I pressed, intensive injecture nearly nubbing fingertips scraped, punctured, [[pushed->mrelentless]] through its mineral membranes to reave its simulacra conduits, crashed we netherly to plume. Rolled sooted from the grave to clamber on top of uncanny simulacrum Lomia frozen, expression uninhabited, and I inches above him strangely secure, having never once looked directly at him, always judging presence peripherals in moody oblique semisubmissive bends, here he laid before me to notice his scraggles more stubbly than I remember, to ascertain qualities which now cohered him in ways I refused him, a nobility of mien clifface passive, an attractive bulkiness in which you could nestle, now slicked clammy, permafrost wan of his vitalities shunted me off the frame to stagger where below my feet I felt crunch a wrist recognizably Tyese, everything is collapsing, there is no one left to remember, this city assimilates total its absented. Through the mist I meandered uncertain of premise. White grains salted the bloom to burgundies torn to reveal behind it grime iron and plasterboard. Yolk yellows dribbled through gaps in the pile to the sateless thirst. Yawn moan fizzled steam in cold. Wormroads narrowed until I crawled increasingly spider, junkwebs of worry jutting a stringy jetty over Berakh ebullievancing bubble cerulean where others huddled. Gestured at me Meluoi to past me where Myeri in flame silhouette dueled, no, struggled under a frenzyfeasting gargoyle, or, not eating, just ripping. Bounded up to them I don't know why but did tackled it, and a profusing Myeri jumped up behind and the both of us this intensity until the world started swooning with us and I laid back into what congealed into her eyes gauging me, Meluoi, lifting me up, until Kostiye shouldered me up and led me the race til it was mine, was mien.

The hallways go on as we do, mimicking or mocking, channeling the same energies through winding wavers to debouch in [[burning->mfever]] iteration, capsule consciousness crushed to powders snowstorming perspective lines blurred, [[sharpless->msharpless]] shoreless we elastic spooled through in racing suddenly swimming drastics, holding onto Myeri, his vision of this electrophoresis missivesion. Hymn cupolaed about his mutter, incense echoes silvery disappearing in ajoite anointed hollows.

Dizzy swollen the city chug circulates through cogs that clog and clank frozen smelteds to corrugateways to trundled to rubble flares a final sigh singe of twinge of buckle and glide until restless place resumes its less. Unprocess daze umbilicaled to a pulsating visive. Unguent noncongruents grew to glue the undulants to flue rheumatisms sooty stark. Jutter of fires far below. Information devolverload littered from sparks the groans unbuckles nondecode, nullness [[sequence->mrelentless]] subsumes, resort to upwards nodes loosens beyond your fretwork. Cagerust pillories pile in capillaries nervents fuming wheezebleeds. Brushstrokes brutal zip the hedronal black with nexallated veins, verisiminitude frames imprisoner joists. No way up or out in this fracture fractal, fragmentation to the brink of unity. Spansive sans ex clades the riot to lens. Throughlines knot, glances web them warped to the tremble of embolisms. Pierced by dizzying degrees of nonpositive presence, silicate in chasm. Smoke prevented me from forcing myself up through the fulminating radialate, too steep the drop to try another tunnel, stuck, no, if but I could leap grab that edge, may as well, it’s the only, no no you’re gonna fall, that’s, you’ve, okay, just, you can focus, jump. Don’t think anything other than necessary is how to survive. Steam sanded deep breaths to silt how I tilted unexpectedly in the leap, tugged at blunts’ jab vertex, pulled up to where I could stare down, down where refuse fires simmered a substrate upon which all this collapse was built. How many languish there whom we higher [[echo->mreverberates]]? Do our disorders resemble how they first this city constructed? Would they despise how we underdwell once more a blank surface? Suffusals sank with us thunderswells swallowed, each storm pallborne to sonderfell. Eons they could not wreckon urbane our dwelling up to skyrise. That we alsobsurface, pupaelation dencity. By instinct rattling its bars propelled through lattices and terraces this terrain burial unenshrouded to misty beneath, upon its plane perched to where wayweary the rest reconverged. Slid down madeshift escarpment to compiling euhs. "Leiru’s up hey." Mylecz. "Okay so," Kostiye in his head counting the missing. "Who cares Leiru ehh! Keep seeking the lot of you the Captain!" Leiska. "Captain’s buried?" I. "Aye, off into the mines so!" Leiska shoved me down a hole. Surge of pain of sprain, no, not quite, can walk, or wobble, need only shimmy. Purge the doubt and delve. Lines interconstrict to collapsable nowheres barely to bode, where could his body go? Interdigitating powerlines coil bites knot to nets, caught, cut these cords to whips, flagellate deeper into fibrous mesh febrous thresh. Lashed to ferrous masts as down they wind through wefts. Crushed beryls bracelet the gulf. Deep shades of shoreless shimmered. Silvery moan drew me to an inset I searched through to peek a blue drizzling through. Could not squeeze through so I hacked at it and kicked at it and still could not, felt along it for aperture another, no but a weak infrangible I could force: ram, unbudge, again to the tackle, begrudge, charge into pell lunge, debris kinematic kaleidoscope to crash halo. Drearied up to why did I before beholding upon a plinth Myeri nearly impaled upon an antenna shock cyan. His mouth lightly lipped apart to porcelain a moan as auraed around him conducted electrics to suddenly quicken the antenna to stencil into his skin symbol trembling his eyes unbridled to readjoin to empowered, circuit breaker, rush realigned the room to irreconcilable streams, seams that seem to breach and bulb to agonizer treacle trickle of alterminusites polychroma curdling in epistemic bubbling plops of polyps alien to core, radionic Myeri remerged to statinnitus gnatly, rippling yaw a buzz fraught to perspex nailsdrawing from scratch to palette the raw. Flash. Cranial deletions replete in determinacies rote us rotoscoped into reel, binds that unpeel our plasticity sealable, where the hunger hollows to palate, vault of our speech. Myeri sparkshivers with mums. "Where are their voices who lit this overlode, how do we delve to the next phrase?"

Everything at once bellowed the rush sudden brass. Downward roll and roar. Wavefoam steel lacerates, blankets. Beneathness overwhelming. Caged polygonal by crystalline blades, hollow lustrous pierce, edge valences lancing whilst the avalanche rumbles settling syringely. Jutted just above me a glint. Shock loosened into riots rampaging nerves deluge. Quiverfire itch acupunctures. Wrestled out of an initial pain position into a new one worse, rolled up to fetal but stopped short by a fang nibbling my jugular, leaned back, razor pillow. Don't panic, breathe slowly, don't flail, that's how you die. Inched a semiside slide out of a jaw into a nailwhorl, tremulous into troth in which could I [[stretch->mreverberates]] up, grab a girder, lift up to a daggerine grimace gutted me nearly tiply but I pressed my wrist into a niche and leveraged it, twisted myself nigh somersault, then scrabbled up a sheet by solders, out onto a joist I rested on, heavy and a little wet breaths swirled the sooty motes texturing snowy beauty of dustrain cosmic. Milk of magnesium quicksilvered my drymouth. Warped to horseshoe insulation grained the space between sparksharp cladding crumbles. Winking ghoulish a wire. Pushed up to lopsided smooths reasonably rungs, arched back riveting spasms, dragged sidle to climb as it tilted me back to horizontal helplessly pressed taut, no way beyond the envelope slip, so I shimmied down, down each rung with punched silent crying, reassessed some alternate route, just laid there. Vertiginous maximate sinewous through fracturejections clouded my can impaled. Miasmatic trapped the casting depths to emanate, emulate drained to eventide. Why survive? In the face of calamity, exception? To whose ends this refusal to end? If you crawl your way out, is that better or worse for those who also? Nothing of me is worthwhile, they have all died along the way, I am mere persistence, actor who outlives their lines. Not even me who survives but this desolate being, sandstorm of senses. Homeostasis refusal to punctuate, puncture through the surface; all these aches that persist for months then fizzle into malaise, wounded wrists and heartburn throbs into which you awake, persist, allay. Marking months not by moon but by wounds. In the season of drilling toothache I mourned you, by the season of muscle spasms I learned to love you in absentia. Yes, because there is precious empurpled in the pain. Struck back up the topward tune in each reverberate echoing through the narrow. Pressure pushing the debouching billowing gunsmoke. Xylophoning a clamber over lopsided balustrade fencing the further a grille. Percussing the rhythm invective upon a beatably releasable until I punch through to the [[relentless->mrelentless]] and plume, superheated needle sewing through slag a stitched grin lopsided to menace spill. Rocket through the rocket through the. Grab hold of shine and bangle wring it to bell. Dustscape through which disheveleds call anxious and pick forlorn. Exhausted nearby Mylecz huffs a nod, I try to reply, but my express cannot quite cohere to a normative range.

Voices incurate their timbres to bend to shapeshift to the shibboleth without shirking the shootbreath [[expressure->mexpressure]], but I shortfall the twists to sulk in bulks which do not pass, press into shornheath pools sapslime slicked, venture [[steplight->msteplight]] into amouldering mire, thicker and drippier the duress. Sweated whereness stirruped our jostled forward to Myeri's gangrenous direction, marshes he [[benedicts->mbenedicts]] cathedral. "Ascendancy of brushes, the palm behind, the face beneath, electricity permanence in the conduit [[record->mrecord]], how do we upon the canvas [[vatic->mvatic]] encharge? I have been, we, we, sailors have been charged, this [[quest->mquest2]], and the, Veda..."

Soldier forth through the step and stuck struck into the strangulate semitones [[fizzes->mfizzes]] slithering asp through your heatstroke rasps warm seethe steeps the sand swallows. [[Incapacitate->mincapacitate]] clot step ghosts pulling your draining into the graves, [[tombs->mtombs]] reinscattered on the tremulant torpendure. All of ourselves in sweats to the alkahest. Wrench slump pump struggle slunk sucks hot sand to chase the gap's collapse drunk on the [[stagger->mstagger]] staggers so the process, smashing brows shut to forbid the view, the endless dune expanse which in ergs defies lines, sloshing sea frozen in burning fragility crashing but never crashing, foot stuck in boiling surf, pull. Shoes filled with [[gnawing->mgnawing]] teeth. Toes cannot touch toes, bristling sand crunching in their scrunching. Exhales that threaten to rob the whole chest. Sweat, sweatsoaked, hot sand, sand. Myeri like acrid smokes: "I moved like, like milk spilling on oil, and as I swung at the cloudy recant, it must be as if I was what all my fathers' faces resembled, [[primordial->mprimordial]] demands from our built together answered from whatever dust, it was us, wasn't it, was us..."

Heat burrows in the skin in itch fire bulging the containing crevice, spasms debouching jutters dry, smoke billows ashing the air, consciousness a cystic gruel. Scratch, itch thieves stealing through the legs sweat beads. Singe sand swell swallowing feet munched. "Cloud [[regalia->mperpetual]] to mock claying outlands, [[wardens->mhero]] of a, a, they say we shall not... was I there, were they watching?" Myeri.

My knees, are they gone? I squinted. Vectors complected in a pull to three syzygy zeniths, free in its vault forever contained let this tired marching drown. Fangworms gaping sucked the hot sand and chewed on its filling, ripping out the foot and snapping the jaw slathering... "We sail to the same horizon, and, when we drown, the depths reunite our douseds, do they, no sailors but the legs, the arms, the lungs, the force, the fight, the need, testify thirst, a relation to the extant surpassing succumbing to becoming, [[perpetual->mperpetual]] wrain upon the wrung dust dale as holy planar [[potentates->mhero]] whose decrees shall shake the seas, are you not ukase living in complete subject, the source of us fizzes beyond each of our brims… in the froth intend, soaked say yes, mean yes, be this everything, so yours to take..." Myeri.

Kostiye silhouetted in offgold steam. Myeri splayed on his former support mouthing heedless what he could not yet say. Mylecz in a one two tug rested Myeri's grip round him, tumbling went they on, Kostiye rising their rusted shadow peering into lump [[futures->mperpetual]]. Another step and a need to tug out, and I staggered forward too hard to unlurch my heel. Knee throbs reining, under what death will this malaise cool... "Each hour I must answer [[ghosts->mhero]], from what silver they materialize, in which place they lurk until the eye surprised settles on their disformity, when bent we lift up to their notice, grim, stern, uncrushable doubt foaming irascible calms yote in corrosive slag, our qualm flesh like clutchless gropers bereft before the jealous wealth, and whither endeavor rebuttal our, what from us shall gratify the disjunction? I stand here, though I sweat, though I can't, though I push myself but can't, move..." Myeri.

Yakacza with a drop was sitting on the sand mouthing parched minnows. Gyadalta grabbed him, dusted him in a jab, yanked him up; stumbles, but no new fall. My fingers closed more slowly as I sought to grip my shirt, pull it from my chest, stop them from puddling together, and I sneezed, sneezed. "I see it, I, oh so, can so see them, front of me, so real… they know, they speak of it. Every hero to pages passes, demigod in emblem transgressions sundering the repressions to inscribe a testament of their retroeventual, no blaze shall burn brighter than the fuel that feeds it, so praise the vaporous, you believers of air… can't feel… yes, yes, what of a birth is earthic [[perpetuance->mperpetual]]? Can we capture what is lost in making us? I will be what sears us like a sun, what we must live under but cannot look up into, the idea from the dead, the threads on the face of a [[hero->mhero]], those whom our tears shall distort to frame and color, life and idol..." Myeri.

Pain lockets lodged in my ligaments. Mucus and nothing but it. Hot, hot sand, my knees ready to buckle, sighs of those nearest... "There is all this pain that prevents us [[building->mperpetual]] on what is not dead within us the [[monument->mhero]] to pure election in our moment, are we not always pointing outward to our, our… what is it we, surely must be…" Myeri.

Myeri convulsed froth; the kedyoi's poison deepened its hold. Dry heaves bulbed his stony scaling, the richness of his skin marblizing by the moment. More blood dabs speckled Mylecz's sleeve. Leiska wiped his brow, absolute gravitas. He realized and sighed. "I can, remember can, both boys, Yuli and I, in the predawn, not a sound to be heard, snuck into the Builder's Cathedral through the crypts, no stirs to unmotion our surrepturge, crept to the vestry to find the Epochs Tome, fingertips [[tracing->mperpetual]] the most ancient figment the stained glass [[embalmed->mhero]]..."

Myeri gurgle crunched in the pain and gasped awhile. My forehead reddened on the inside, inside the skin it reddened, rubbed my hand but could not reach the rawing. What were my knees, snakes? Miasma coagulates spumed fever rubies on our pulling exhale exacting. "Sailors, brothers, you must, please listen... I can't, I will, I must, yes. Don't you, can't you see? Hate of the second is our admission of outer need impressed on our selecting experiant, we hate our time for it is what partially we must become, endure, reduce ourselves to, though the warmness eludes our basking, and how much we revolt against being told to be worn, but listen, listen, all which begins continues to whatever ends; around you, sailors, see the pattern forming? We, we, it is our... can there... guhk..." Tripped and Pyeisa tripped too, onto me rolled, pushed up from my chest, launched by my leaden air, lay this listless deject, exile from anima, so easy to watch them shapeshift to gone, but eventually submitting, rising to meet simmering, gaunt onwards. Shall I... "Will they mutter my name in the litany, will it mean, will it matter? Will I solidify, will my trail... in the, in the scale, in the enormity's unfocusing, but will this matter, what of... legends are never now..." Not that I could not not can stop my head from the bobbing, but my head is the bobbing, I am one with the pressed up slumping to the pressing up spring, willingless and wormlike will I await the rushing punch to my chin, spit out, stare up, oval gasp seeking something else from the somber hollow. Sandpaper throat rough rubbing enjamb slabs thrust up into my nose's sides, warm saliva spilling between grit teeth, I chewed my jaw. Intensity buzzed clammy temples clamorous til their ululations leaked drybeds hulch down through my sweatdrenched shirt as seen from miles across a canyon storm shocked up my soleus not numbness lightness lightning, its blistered imitation. "Captain Damano Myeri, son of Captain Duloi Myeri, son of eauhh, eahh, son, son of Captain Wyskhi Myeri, grandson of Captain Hulevsz Myeri, of, son of, son of Admiral Evmanei Myeri, and on will it go, the Submergence our juncture [[sealant->msealant]], to Captain Pyevi Olyasz, I belong, we belong, can we belong..." My forehead sweat was the coolness that made unbearable the heat, cold and fever could not I unfasten, return to the blandness of single experience, but the sweat on my palm brushed off, mingled with the sweat, cold burning uncontrollably. Do not vomit for the vomit is hot. Emptiness sloshed me seasick to vibrate my stomach hollow mournful lute, vibrated like the skin might plish into the acid at last. "Up the hill where he glowers! Do not look on me so ahh! Even now shall this ghoul scowl when by this quest his equal, one more in the eternal legion of the struggle land, the sea? Ah sailors, how I miss the sea! This Tower, it, it's starting to feel like a desert to me, can't explain it... I must go home, be reunited... I did it, did my part, it is right for me to be sent to where I belong, natural, need, I must be in the sea, be the sea, take me to the sea, sailors! Drench of danger and the hope this might be alive forever, or at least a shadow whose cling still retains a pulse's glow..."

Resignation is so simple. How long could I lie nondead? When would the switch creep, could I notice? How much further could I really push on, and who waits for me? Couldn't I lie, accept the bed suitable to my waking, what good in moving, where do I earn the right to go? Yawn pleadless drawing groggy, limping lids split on endless tan, why should I live? Leiska dragging his limbs through the eurgh motioned to the Southern Window to which the sand ramped, hollow illumination simulacra tapering with evening hung by a single profound cloud, and could we hear it, the sea? Ashen blots sullen up the dune tottered we to the Window to the sea. Incline steep to lead you to your inclined, let your breath mix so the sand can rejoin your ragged tongue. Our threadbare scarfs whistled in tune to the Window's wind lamenting. Soiled, weren't we all, didn't each blink feel it? The winds could never clean us. My legs became trunks, ungainly rigidities fthhed in the dune. Warmed, dull razors resisting plunges. Raising strain, lowering pain, strain against the streaming breeze, let the sand rapid you to the mirage in which interwove Myeri's gasped phrase halves... "I may not, may not see it, I have set in motion... Pyevi, he, he must carry on my, hook the Myeri line into hold, uninterrupted flow of, of, continuing the, live whole in the... this, this moment... this journey... we are coming to... the sea!" Steely impossibly winked the cyan crawling sea with luminous vicissitude. Hurtling expansives shunted single sight as Myeri pierced to an inner beyond, the hidden perspective point in which acomistic melding circumfuses, desaturating unlineation compress expanding into tabular marine, patiently biding experience entireties slumping as unseen birds call. Smiled blankly his head lolling back ragdolled. Mylecz sunk to his knees, Myeri rolled off to the tip of the Window, the free breeze through his salting hair. Devout prefiguration his jaw aslack with warped wonder. One by one we knelt or sat to encircle him save Leiska who turned to perceive deserts. Vasya began to roll down, down the dune, away, away, soon they'll follow… "So far have I voyaged to look upon a home as one who belongs there... soul leviathans across your eternalized structure me into your recessed supermission, for I have," Myeri coughed blood and venom, "become..." Myeri staring at the sea. Mylecz reached to grab him but Gyadalta swatted Mylecz's hand and motioned still. Myeri took a deep breath or sighed. Without breaking his lock on the sea, he leaned out toward home. Impression raindrops trickled watercolors of remembereds and anticipates, the unread glyphs which set us go, as he goes so come we inward, the embracing sea a reverie, phantom figure crashing towards encapsulation, symbolized anthelion knowns as we wait for the moment to be individualized in frames modal a [[dynamicision->mstart14]] mighting us swept along the swallowed here by something larger with our own fates interlocking, enclaves bubbling up the same spire here spilled, spill us, spill me, as the skies open my whole being tingles severance. Leiska took a long swig from his flask, wiped his mouth with the hair of his upper arm, dryly said: "Let's go."

Inched to mood the stable, struggled to strain it stable, stumbled over a dune unstable, jarjolted Myeri to energy. "How oft have I presaged this Veda sanctuary in our palaces’ hints of parallel, and to see it so, so…" "This is a sandtuary of you lot?" Pyeisa. "Hush, let him rave." Leiska. "There it is, can you feel it burning on the wind, whom we have been? All of our materialized answered at last in earth! You can hear the call of, their within us howling, all of this, this skin burning…" Doubletrawl of each step hurt more than relief of pulling away kept us crunched into focus all withinness suffered acute in each reach through to some truth permanent more than the hollow resists which sweated down our wristflicks to mingle rain where never would it be known, sizzleghosts of sighs we wished humidity to reply. Hunkered in the fever unwilling to recollect the cause for pressured above, all into our vicious crescive recurved, permanence distress impervious to tiny sips slipped down tinny throats scored with bouldules. Eyebrows bristled their furtive not to faint. "So long before they asked of me an hour, could dream not reply somehow an appendive equivalent to how harsh marshal they shadowed in the cellar, in my bricolage mid, the somehow forced to perceive as, as, snakes stretched from my fingertips droopy kissing the cool tile? And is that how I heard these heroes call out, underworld akin? I, I’ve a fever, sailors, seems a desert, seems I’ve dreamed it a desert before, cycling into a neverness acute in each arc twist… "Forcefully I’ve leavened the hold until it breaks not our concrete molded, after so many generations impossible to stray, at last rebound pendulum to center nobility, permanence of platform, how we reign upon a dais to gaze at fluidity of contingencies which reckon not to liturgies, our histories of majesties, each a stronger bulwark against decay… whose foe to we slay to assimilate identify, have we not been dueling for ages, do we not know how our stories end, so what fear we of the end, the, how precious for all the waiting to finally be [[over->msealant]], you can hear ourselves calling how we are attendant to our calling, can’t you, in the, in the sea, yes, let me swim Towerbound of motion, singulated staymeant of flows forever rolling, rolling, scrolls we are unrolling to list endure, I, I’m listing starboard, you must, stand me to statue, sailors, please, there’s not much time, only oceans of it…" Mylecz bent to lift Myeri, but Leiska halted him. We in a scraggly swoosh semiencircled Myeri who sandlaid slowly to buried. Leiska had us kick the dune to shroud. He is laying there destiny forever, one wishes of frigid nights. Myeri terrored in a gasp eliciting the same. He reached rigormortisly in muted groanshrieks towards the Window so far away. Leiska sweating; ah, bitter joy to see him sweat. The desert sweats us all the same. Mylecz picked up Myeri; we proceeded upwards, upwards, he has not yet ceased, may never...

Presentation absence reduces us to causal expressure through loops lagging the levitation axial pursuit, but how do you the motion its missive represent? Missing who wades through rushes. Dependency [[nonresolves->mtantalus]] revolted through exhausts in wends to wends to wayward, circuits inexorable. Progressure thus thence of these involver physicals whence? Skulks of sweat blear the [[horizon->mumbral]] rending. "Out of all our trials the stage has been built, the task of centuries constructs us to, to, eahh, we're, and the moment sings all of us to perform before the, the, eurkh, I can't see..." Myeri.

Over mounds and through mulch we marched until mire was the march, in each shove a swimming in sludge. No abound but [[burials->mumbral]] we fear infused in nervousness animus animation that refused us rest. Muck caked into muscle through loose flaps, porous to outpouring, movement shuttered to dim the wake. "I cannot but feel how this overcomes, and don't you believe it sailors, how we stride illumines the worldlong [[striving->mtantalus]]? So much continues to, we've, but if we could just, the act, the outcome, we must solarity..." Myeri.

Gentleness simmered [[paradox->mtantalus]] in ache trusswork to keep the form despite the pressure, bliss of release as tension condemns the whole, believer in the structure intensity of project as inevitability crumbles us to individual failstates, incapacity for survival mutual built native into our networks, only in our mass [[graves->mumbral]] shared many agony for a savior. "We reach the apex, we're, I can feel the pressure building, there's, if only we could see ourselves as they do us, in the fullness of the connection, single unity arising, we colossus selfconstrual..." Myeri.

Why should we doubt Myeri's struggling to speak? If he does not find beauty, is it different than the rest of us? Why laud we the fisher of days, why not the one who dives [[beneath->mumbral]], never finds air of their sacred? Why can I not love him more in his inability to breathe? You've never loved him, you're incapable of love. Yes, well, respect, can I not respect a brave and pious act, despite gods which do not accord it favor? Is there any more precious than the record of those who attempt, and who cares the outcome, all coda, all afters, no bearing on their being. Grasping hold of forever we wilt into prolongs. Let him rattle stilled, he will have achieved what we do not, marchers on, or so I would delude, did he not project himself elsewhere, always otherwise, this going on about what is lost, strangely the same people who solely appreciate what is preserved, cycles they insist to connect, we have to circulate for fear these veins in [[vain->mtantalus]]. "They're awaiting our arrival, sailors, they need the next chapter, the crypt yawns and I, only I can voice it hymn, in this hour we, we are in this together, sailors, we dream the possibles achieved in our enacting, indelible the, or, this..." Myeri.

Warped graspers rumbled downward to raspy juiceds. Trestles dirk mazy shadestreams, pins to prevent the runny. Ripfang foists jerked sandbars above slag to joists hoisting flags of forgots we fumbletore, displacements without replacements. Inky intestines pumped [[umbral->mumbral]] glossy, encephalus [[tantalus->mtantalus]] tumorous palpitated penumbral dross into my throatchoked with bramble, sockets accidentally swallowed eyes, acidpit see, sieve the seethe, produce permanence of growing liddeds of scar tissue, cataract clean. Jade injects mobbed a moss strangler. "We can never retreat from terminus but must reverse it into new inhabitance, return to our proscriptor the ungrooving to stylus, grasp on, lift up into space never circumscribed for you, as we have not, we, have we not, we who progress to, to the..." Myeri.

Must make so of this sagging a sureness, endure into pureness from this ripple rubble fen, exact of this exist an exact, [[performer->mtantalus]] per form former, perfume of [[funereality->mumbral]]. "Progress on sailors, you must, ehnth, keep up the, march up towards the, don't you see our forebears awaiting us, what shall we say to them if we don't, if the, and the Submergence, our name, our hallowed..." Myeri.

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter XIV''] --- [[Sleep->msleep2]] comes not for the [[foregone->mforegone]]. Sleep, the closet death closing the yawning fact. Perched in my body watching it trundle below to gone. Rest without the unyielding void, accessible death, but I must live its negative and feel, awake to the tax of dawnsyncrasies, [[cyclical->mcyclical]] styminess. Troubles canticles, tongueless lullabies, deaf to their weaving cannot I dive to their meld, their mend, instead bled by [[moods->mmoods]] brimming with superwakeful fire. //Click [[here->mchapters]] to return to Chapter Select.//

Sleep lies skindeep on me, beds brush it off. Stare inhuman at alien midnight occlusion when with too much simulacra life I blear vigilant, more silent than the void interregnum, a shape wrested unmalleated from misshaped clay on roaming nothing gray beneath onyx glistens, glossdot zephyr trails braiding stellar hedrons to my touch constancy kept awake as the world sleeps, I bide while the world sleeps, I am their dreamless. Hollowing certainties. [[Hourblacks->mhourblacks]] seep into my restless shifting to a nocturne figure in the sways praising the sowhere trickle trusts this lone moonstone seep, no sleep, tinnitus drone of restless, hurdygurdy grinding whine drilling the stagebony on which dancer [[phantoms->mphantoms]] paralune in tune with the ludic jitter killers cull to composition this of for an audience this tragedy as containment enacted trills everything is permissible in the invisible this darkness is a canvas for. Stalk into the silent acquiesce aurora these ink struggles on perturb pages, shivers singers faster slung my pace to sweat out the blanket lingers, too large pupils hawkish studying a bleak nothing, emaciated will welling tears not beckoning the approach of some oblivion, there is no cease; sighs form a funereal cloud, but there is no rest in these vulsh blooms; warring geists pollute the soul with anguish logics, chase the circle for its fray.

Petals strewn wheeling fractals, bodies wet [[emergences->memergences]] from the field, spurned me hence, I the [[unreduced->munreduced]], the outlier their modular beauty miss, misstep. Begging back their stolen wings moonlight sliver crescents dented by my peculiarity ruptured this normality's mockery; sigh your pain, hide it under shame clods, the moods which do not assail me to straighten to face it, do not hue surroundings softly molten with grime genesis, surroundings as impulse, strangulated thus to what ensues nondissimilar from peace, but I slip the stable, emerge the fragile, the fever never nonreal relinquished me to ancient halls' archless tresses of faded cedars rippleflowing projections of winesplashed light shades weakly through the stainscored windows shimmering doom stars on half whispered sounds slipped out unnoticed from the mouths of those who worshiped now at the altar of long since dusty enacting on our corolla nature antithesis to this dreadnaught dreamless, or so I, so I kiss in this cryptych of denied secrets and sacred credence, a shivering mass of quivering lips. Lie under the verses of fleeting basalt fragments jutting from stable earth into the behemoth rise, rockfalls hurtling halo silhouettes, steps pummel titan drums. Glaze into this coloring glass and let yourself sigh. You are awake as everyone else sleeps.

Shadow tuft presses my chest like a stone. Squat shacks worming from brother rots crackled woodcases were, beam marrow fleshless with one end still upholding the pattern once constituted, shape pride lost. Smooth strum melancholy cools through boots, consumption vessel receiving its dues with decades patience. There stood an oak alone. Stoneroot sentinel of memory mists: beneath sat Meluoi, [[haunted->mhaunted]]. "Surfaces battered by both depths' storms." Iris the fountain plume, she studies our internal distance, dream this instead would I wonder would right me to rest. Pressed on her temple and all so holy within her wrist on her chin raised so we both could find home in the uplifting in which she shut her eyes so as not to sully blood's chilled beauty with a world too turpentine torpor to flow in veins thinly threading our secret hearts overfilled bursts mine to outcry to bask in her mystery where let still this spilled island. "You can't sleep?" Did I ask this or did it echo from far left? "One sleeps only on the land before, never on the voyage to. There's too much other than sleep in a voyage. We must exhaust our bodies in vigilant living to seek our temple [[graves->mgraven]]." "Myeri," my breath froze. "Not just," body [[antiyawn->mamethyst]]. "Other bulks move about us, so must we anticipate the pounce."

Grin builds inside your chin to meet the heating nightsoak, sweat tremulous saint approaching their agony delirious with exorgasm, supine upon the archwold I wore the trickling below [[luminous->mamethyst]] her dance upon spheres, intangible hereness she wields sans welded into space, rippler of hypersurfaces neon reflectrain streaming over skin to screen. "Amounting refusal to assume assembles this energized we charge devise grip upon what sparkseethes the grid as burns through your body the bearing to embode, culminator [[restricture->mgraven]] to semblance order replicator, selving surge, whom do you design?" Meluoi teases the plum plush to swirls around her tongue. I reduce to blend in her assign star blessed, yes, precious pulverized, cuddled into her starsear: "Aggregator eras break upon this gate, [[finality->mhaunted]] beyond currentsy, outer rims of the real: shall we seiche beyond local maxima to quantum of axiom quintessence? Emnino, of whom are we this imprisoned? Can not we exanimator newforms rescatters to spiral universals doubling strands, shores anew?"

Febrile focus sucked the spirit's fraying into the shadow of the sought glass which sunk me thrust me anent her semioutline slipcasing to leviathan. Two eyes behind mine glacially emerged to see behind. On the flushed earth [[shades->mamethyst]] halos the slightly tingling voice like four, eight directions' diorama splayed. "Death instills as much as it steals. What happened, is happening, heavies, heaves us to some blisterbeaten hold, we must hold, hold onto our heavy purpose to insist, insist why we are here and who we are, can be, can you believe it, we still can be, ought to, there is, must be, within, more." Meluoi. Amber kindled to a low glow ruby her color sights glassed the cobalt shivers I shielded myself with to remain closed to everything. I needed some sort of key to say to solve my own shibboleth. If I let her break into me, no, unthinkable, but in the muted blownout hollow we rebounded like white noise within bassdroned the complication diluting the one pole relationship I could be comfortable of any together in as the expectation pressed me dangerously close to being real; I have to be the vowelled without all the preceding, yet in the way her neck extended from blanting shoulders said it to me, commitment fact, if you want to truly change, then fasten to this flux, this brought out what all my abstractions suppressed: elective extempore. Still a chill stopped the freeing feeling: rising again to meet her in this midnight realm we were alone in I had to justify myself in some way which as a [[manbeast->mhaunted]] soulfilth, no, no, body turpentine where, terrorwant repentense repulson censored without igniting this candelabra to pour putrid scarlet on the scene. I, ghoul – Nothing is worth living but the minute mere, never the austere, of you in authentically. Behind the spotlight you, the exceptional you rhapsodized and maligned by the peering amalgamators, is the deeply unexceptional you who seeks warmth, snuggles into pleasures, abides between, yearns for empty fulfillers, the who who is behind the sense of who is the you you must live to satiate the gnawing need the exceptional you generates to span the gulf between being ideal and ideal being. Except me, excruciate, but break free from the chain that sinks this spine to say this throat is no prison but the between peaks threading gales, surge out from your ribs to the carmine rain on a marscape sin. Die in the fire you soon queen of the question, chill the chiaroscuro your [[ashmarks->mgraven]] make from body paints, phoenix surge. No surpassing but surrender to a surpassing surfeits the actioning of if I was going to be here, then I had to be that, here. Suppress these phantoms in other consciousness. She is the here you are standing in: breathe it, believe it. There has to be a way to try.

"Is it only me inexpressible in the wrong these whispers wind? This night seems already a memory recalled to great sadness. I am stuck inside inside, do you know, you shiver so." Meluoi. "All I am is this." "No, never say, we are, we must, ah Emnino, what I fear most of us is you will trust me, will not traverse me, when I am a place that wants to show you the world. I fear, but don't we all, isn't that the point, and these translations, sometimes I can barely stand them they're so beneath the expression I silence when I speak, and maybe it's the language, or so it must be mostly, these poems are so horrendously [[coarse->mhaunted]] compared to the graceful idea I cannot speak, there is a dream I relate to you by heatless embers, but how much is me, my failure to let it be, my crime, no, don't say, I am so much more fallen than the features you entrust in your own pits, so this purpose, our journey, we must, no but I must also allow you to flow with it, Vejame, what –" "Veja, mecz?" "No but, no, no, not cz, me. It's different. The –" "What?" "It's a compression of the jaw: mmnn. Do you see?" "Mmnn." "Yes, good. Vejame, say it." "Vejame." "Yes, there you go, the flow I have not perverted with me, deeper than what have I corrupted. In language new we wanderers at wayshrines praying awake our gaps pearlized in the node golem words our wrought to wuwei mode to be unchosen spoken simply as it is and is, avatars of the wieldless multiplicity. Synonyms fissures we traverse the collapse of directrix by dimensional revolving. Multiply determinative harmonizes gem transitives, out from our manifold to a confluence arrive. Say what you mean, no, what you mean become. Intotalities binds express nonselfcontainment wholeness. Abandoned in the [[aftermath->mgraven]] of riotous say, the edgetinged glare anoints us sole survivors, speak your most alones, legends of the war within. We utter an unspeakable colossus of meaning which cannot be distilled, units constitutive of an ultimate subsumed. Whenever I wring from the inert mud a shambler, do you hear the depths it attests in its failing to conform to the surface motions? Below us bides more than either of us could ever recognize, will ever live out, could hope to bring into our embrace. In translation I have decided for you what shall pump through you just as in speaking you have decided what must come into existence from the unspeakable anything: already arisen, borne by intervening understanding, what we gape at is our irreversibility. Crescent [[colors->mamethyst]] of our looming eternal eclipse."

"Everything I want to say is lost, which so why I must speak," Meluoi sighed not to me and to me and beyond us both. "I can only imagine the same feeling summoned the lost voices I excavate to your beautiful presentality, but I have smothered those voices as much as my own smothers my lack... you want the final Koa, Emnino, but I cannot bring it out of me, and worse, I don't even want to, the whole thing feels crude and irrelevant in the midst of these shifting terrors, but what else can I tell you? My energy is spent in this now. I have neither the time nor the will to bring you anything better, but the resignation breeds a contempt which sweats the sleep from me, makes me wideeyed in indifferentiation from the quelled against which my whole spirit seeks to spark... I hate how ponderous, pathetic, rigorously dull these false sparks are, and is it my doing, whose else would it be, it must be me, I must have failed, but yet you come back, why, why? When the story ceases in me, what remains of us? You might follow me, but I never asked for that, it would do neither of us a service. What star is it that leads you?" "I, I don't know." "Nor do I, which is what entices me further into the fertile doubt. Animated by theses ghosts, can we not harrow their interstices we semblance suffocate? Courage to you, Yamicz, you must in this new way of worlding ghost alike the going. Only when scarred you arise onto the bank outside the both of you can you say the word truly woven. Pull yourself from ourselves, Emnino, undergo the Senenzu so you can be the resurface. When I speak to you, listen! What do you hear?" Fallen leaves framed she geodesces our maladies. (align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Daylight in dreams attenuates to [[sepia->msepia]] In the splash struggle to awake rezinnia Phantasmal borderlands between close and open, [[Membrane->mmembrane]] memories labyrinthine [[dizzy->mdizzy]] the center lens' Theme abraxases exodus unto helix nocturnes Gravitaional spiraling into heavier waves coloring [[Expectant->mexpectant]] through the surface process..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Presence pregnancy planing the suppress by Atmospheres a frozen washing world wail ill slick with [[Rupture->mabattoir]] bends of obliterated dreaming [[drillraze->mexpectant]] These blank slunk walls wet with dissolves Of frantic glances and desperation trances Thread together by dust [[austerity->mmantle]] to V colliders whispers wreathing the coughs outringing With reeds [[wheezing->mwheezing]] above our heads fumes, Worsted ringlet graying welter chromes of Sighs espousing, matrimony of the melted In the blanket fever cold a breath strangled to drone, Rock into ruin's rush infected, soaked in the listless..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Cruelly quotidian the [[theocracy->mmantle]] of mumble toil Clockwork errants buzz the circuits discircumstance, Memories of melody delusions faulting Unto ghouls moaning their slogging like passions passing, Woundmouths mutter incurables [[blistered->mmembrane]] and agonized, Slanted in migraines clutching chest's raw concussives Scrabble we annihilation to haggard upon mockery Course recitation in isosceles revolving vault recantings, Recitations droll delightless headache sines as we Batter a butcher his world, barkeep unto his own speakeasy, Glee bulge burst upon one coin's tink he whispers drippy secrets Of mudbrick mansion gravities, powers [[curdled->msepia]] under the sun, The loom where pale elites weep their looms strange and scented To mauve elixirs flushing consciousness stains, [[Abattoir->mabattoir]] of the freshly haunted putrid purling into The mazy musty [[smother->mwheezing]], slums secreting sopwise..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Over clumps warping us to clutchcrawls on bloated Tetrahedral tumors dizzy [[nauseous->mwheezing]] lurched we From cellar to slavesells seeking the next splunk of know Or imagine so, through chorus glooms we gather unto the Mirage of a casino crouching with [[gorestained->mabattoir]] hands Over the banks of bone dried to spits Master molter slurping swollen stares lidless, reptilian, Beating the drums that dress these veins with fire, Razing ligaments to bloodlet the lapis [[membrane->mmembrane]] To drown out the fountain inscrutables Merging in bleary plush to rich cerise Beneath the [[sunkenness->mmantle]] sky as a swath of lilies Wilting in the warmth moanly aural Auraing impossibly auroral minarets lurid in Invoken yawning ocher mammonliths sucking Curled squalor diorama of streetlamps Lower jaunticed beside the path we straystrike Nightshades nearly, husking clearly in sunblasts Turgid to our brackish malice sludge lash Darkly towards sibilating city centers With lava wisps our guides..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Learning the leanings of webbed backalleys, Veins clotted by rusted corrugated blockages Choking the valves pumping [[aortic->mwheezing]] curates in sallow hoods Their holy siphonings, waste repressives willessly resolved In garrison speckles like silica in the sandstone, Some starkness fortress against the liquid blurlure Teasing midnevers shiftslip swift as thieves Imitate we across the orange cracking, Over plaster promisebrokens tiling the beaten road to ruin, Boscage of remnants and nihil whose briar hacks The thickening of the blackened lung king [[Mantle->mmantle]] of ash [[rosettes->mabattoir]] in smokestack spirals spewing Sealant against the seraphic farsight observe, Sphere without obverse object of his project Mottling a slag heap with solid smog which Clack cake the pylons dullidescent thrust from metal tangles Gnarling the creaky horizon girder parapetting Gaudy palace plumes in pseudogem respondlence papery Doming gypsum escarpments bent unnaturally upwards, Inselberg redoubt upending the dribble gravel despoil, Hazy lank upon the clunk a blister gray hunk..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Demon [[altar->menshrinement]] bathed in velvety [[blood->mblood]] mortalia, Empty echoes these walls voice ghostly in shame shimmers Tumescentous, blanket ruin risings clumped in clouds Until ambush torrents flood the unspecting with Precipitated gangrenous consequent defined gangling Gallows of lowering into the own broken, Crashing seracs into the moonsea mystery, Nilas serene the tempests we objectivizes contrail to form, Sublimating into the mists coagulate we concentrate transforms, Concatenate intralorns worldbred as success ordains the monstrous Its amounted undeniably, no matter how much is there negated, Our null hypothesis we investigate in ripping From a porter's lungs his traced plague, Sharpening footfalls urge a danger walloping as snares, So we slip into the unsaid in his soaked panic Into the vents by which he breathed them, Falling to the floor a forever wrested into counteraware, Clothes collapsing a butterfly alighting brightly hued Upon the ichor flower of our emergent malice, Drooping poisons we perfume up flights and ever more flights, Slung aclatter up rungs to never widening to wordeds, Harshs replete in grunts of the already too much choked to choke On brownish powdery particulates lining our lungs As we gasp and hack the stifle, The progressed to congested grossness thick Upon the interiorization intensification avalanche bile burying Cardiacs, the crimson capitol of the shadow government Gods legitimize in violet pulses fever fueling Limpid neutralities soft beyond the soak of culled creation..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Gravities of the genome nomen arc inspectra numenal As gluttony, desire animator, Envy, empty seethe queen of shatter frieze, Wrath wrack in spittle laurels feted triumphant, Lust lusheling the firebrand annihilator, Pride in it is arrayed regal to solace of the cyclone, Sloth so asleep beneath the massacre, To this very greed, this idol prince of bendable truths Mixed dissolves replenishing our ruths as Vanquished meaning trawls much less than solves as Rungs repelled us upwards deeper into Hell, this hell that hides, This mark upon it we seek our cosmic screen, Through the orange light upon it Baron Silhouettes of [[devils->menshrinement]] crowned bleak with mirrors Made magnificent in the gloom as guilt as gild Unto our undo a unity tiara of the newly nonpossible though Echoes bell the [[kiss->mblood]] of void and earth as Soul surpassing rushes selves to soldier Sentences: eschew this solid sense, you Petal blushes, fuchsia flush voluptuous these Foundered waves reflect in sling celestes of Stars entombed in perceptions azure blinking warps, Shaking sleep of ancient suns, luminous once real Slushed silent in white foam of woad hued waterfalls Crying out crystalline completion, consecration of breath Beating the gravitational assumptive grander death erasure contains, Beauty of the beyond you, bless ice as silence fumes the wreckage, Negatives ashen to whispers diluting figments fleet as daylight storms, Each night less capable of day, Each disintent lesionly culpable of the endlessly stray, Pulses' vehemence we ache with wanting..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Struggling up rungs to the Baron chase Shivers the scene to wring us so pliable a neck, Pursuance reanimate, bring me into the sharpness Please, do not abandon me my daughter agony, Chill is all I feel as yours, as I am yours, As what we share feigns the [[blood->mblood]] rush vibrance Vehement against the inkwells spilling floors Sceneless, seamless masquerade of blurloom shrouds Silken silver moonlike rippling in glaze, Urn inuring this ash to interpolacache, Meld scent with skeleton effusions, These figures undulating slanted like pallid wheels Of futile's phaeton askewing to round and round the race In sorrows sprawled on mattress soots in hopeless cells, Menagerie variorum of vented to ununmelters Of drinkers, slinkers, slavers, and ravers, Murmur moths mummies on squalid gleer, Revulsed convulsed we over pulpy masses, Cavelike cowls of pupils, pupae smothers, Dispensation isolation [[enshrinement->menshrinement]] in garbage rites I rinkle into in hate in shivers knowing Where these endemics sanctify solidified a Baron, Parasite of the evanescence mourning arias, Butcher of burdened bleeders scraping bony chalk Their testaments condemning as a Should it ever be sung bleak sonata of the rising Arising to our tongues this curse of his hour harnessed Despair of the forever unfreefall I dream trace to the bones of my daughter, who I dream where..."]

Jumpcuts brutalize cycles of scenes never to cease, impression after impression pressed into your eyesockets nauseous rolling [[miasmatic->mfever]] futures forever punch present, reeling after those who could not brand their apparitives in frayflush, figures stripped of silhouette: Lomia, Tyese, Mojyi, and [[gubbling->msharpless]] through chokes starry whisperer, he who signs the sterile mise...

Hot fuzz moment of is this happening to you. Thrown to the hardness connects you and a real point, body believes in a smash a sure. Soft pinks low opacity over pale neon replica the simulation of happening in another's viewed from forgetting angles gneiss ribboning the reliquary isolanguish to press us into intensified mimicry to gawp the outpoured outside act exceedingly swift as the energy flashes the warmth passing through skin's rivers to flush you into the scene already in a taste, a thought, gone, even the chance to grasp that gone. Enigmatic, the [[incidental->mincidental]]: pervasive, tied to the actual action, nowhere, already over, do you even remember? Imeni lounged against the liquid sky recalling fragments to me. Sea wet with sun, prisms in our strong colors. She spoke, I listened, laughed; I spoke, she listened, laughed. Nepenthic bliss worth the unmemory. Together sounds whispering open our seams. Out of the blitzglamor lunule whiteglaze frostwink eyelashing sparkles ocean arises a glitch goliath who howls the lasting. Posthumous, I lingered in the shadow. We bleed out life to voracious splatterblanks and nothing catches us: what we were ensealing post rem mesessences. Memory makes of our futures merely the same. The future is the past the present misremembers, trapped, trapped... I want to live in the forever brief ideal of tossed glass whose sparkles, for one emotive infinite immediate, plashes, not portends, but you cannot with another person, we follow the arc to our shards. Cannot we dream together beyond the shared night's faux unified, so sever, remain permanently isolated, maybe there might you taste purity's lake wash, but I have not, I have hurt. [[Hurting->mhurting]] teaches you you as you are surprised to learn and should not be.

Removal of truth each actualization that trues, [[irretrievable->mhaunted]] information loss in brutal actual. Disaster is always imminent, disaster is what immanence is. Mistakes froth your each wade, misgivings ripple in retrograde. Oppositive torque tumors the bends bubbling in my chest heaving peregrinations of letheless bloodshed. In this scar is more than burned flesh. Single crystal growing, the soul in searching bloom. Endless duties to fellow flesh, true devotion exists beyond the passion, the threatened push, the edge. Hallowed the echoing return, since our voice sounds the same from the same distance, moral honesty is a cadence, not a second, not a seclusion. Outside any cynic tongues is the will to be alive, and the wish to be aligned along that alive, and in the craters of my failures will I construct counterconstellations to respontaneous to the stars the sheer destructive anguish blistering the irruption their nonstabilization erupts, blemished but enduring the pure scream upon this scorched starfield warps these constrictions to a construction in which to joyfully die tormented. To whatever hovers impartially judging I carve my chest your designs and fling out the red matter to meteor upon sacred hollows. Batter us apart, the desperate cling together. Rapacious binds sunder our ultimate gulf, the rift that renders thoughts turgid in the flipped physics of an inlooker outward forces us to fathom each other's fullness in all our hideous immediacy, immeasurable conflict temporarily resolved to show in one splitsecond splatter the supraveinity despair distinct to one outcry to god. Value is not given but presentiment, the absolute crux of my being lies inlaid in the [[jewels->mamethyst]] of several people's perception, I am ontically empty beyond the howling urgency that bends in recoil from the fated utterance recurrence dragging the actual everything invested in a nominal surface entirety into the same stained glass names. My bones are nothing for it is my splintering soul that supports these veins. Be the blade you wish to wield. Smother the filthy actual living monstrosity, then, suffocated, you can start anew in corpsecold gooseflesh. Parasite crawling from the [[graven->mgraven]], which use of existence this insistence achieves a point? Because is it not the dullness despair? Insipidity of natural drives drives us to inscribe new drives supernaturating. Reduction of harm in innate, please, is some possible, or what is it I really want from projectable, or is desire misnomer or misnomen? I just want to feel like a person without all this first.

Either we awake in gore or the gore awakes in us, and when restraint should buckle to my nature would I roar revel desecration, firebranded annihilator: the rest would be ripples. Of course she perceived it in me, I hated being known, but how would I love to throw all my known away, say it is not from me, the real me, whatever of me I will own, lies undiscovered. To want beyond your brittle limits thorns those on whom your thirsts lunge. No, that's purposely too harsh. To want someone is suppression and therefore not virtue. Never want someone. Never want anything. No, that's purposely too harsh. Why this perverse desire to feel worse, how much regret piles up to [[penance->mhaunted]], when can I stop embracing the waste? Is it selfishness, even in wriggling shame is there the desire to be seen, empathized, the touch more comforting the further down you can coax it, no, gods, stop! It's not, I, you don't understand! How can you even be me when you understand me so little? No, precisely because I know you do I resent you, how you blanket your guilt warm for sleep. So what then? What then, and why, and why... it's all a mess, there's no reason for anything, I'm sorry, someone stab me, grab my tongue, rip it out, hang me with it, hang me! Dodging guilt with pain? Selfhate's the easy way to transfigure shame to pity, loathing to cuteness, sheer emptiness to a space needing to be filled. Oh poor me, I am so evil, hate me, abjure me, oh but let me be obliterated in the center of the crowd, let them aww collectively as my guts flush out. To the extent anything other than wordless selfhatred, abuser, drinker of weakers for what you lack. But then what am I supposed to do, not think? Yes. Nobody cares. Nobody even cares that nobody cares, and nobody cares that you realize that nobody cares that nobody cares, nobody will ever be connected with – No, just, stop. You shut up. I am miserable about being a bad person and – Ahaha oh gods that is literally the stupidest thing I have heard since whatever else I said earlier. It's all wrong, anything I say, you sound so, so, oh gods I hate how you sound, I hate your worthless words and the way they knot and ball and go round and round and round and for what purpose do they go round and round, why do you want your filth to foam? Your voice is like if you could imagine cockroaches could speak. You are a little cockroach, you know that, you know why, you know how true. Why don't you just accept that you're wrong and correct it by wasting away silently in service to anything that could make use of you? No, I'm just, but I am, I'm trying to reason out some conclusion, notice the flaws to draw out my own damnation in anything akin to justice which this putrid universe could contain. Isn't that – But in noticing you include yourself out, you become the moral apprehension horrified by the now [[disembodied->mgraven]] you that shambles disassociated a bleak misery. Noticing is not the same as owning. I am owning, that's exactly what I'm trying to do. It's not easy, it's not like you can just own that you are, not have been, but are ontically and progressively wrong, both in nature and in distension. What are you to do after having lived long enough to know you're not one of the few who should? That is, that isn't meaningless, what are you to do that isn't... and so I will kill my own source, let me seek my gravetwin. Maybe that isn't the best answer, but it is an answer, isn't it, it is a way to... there was, is so much within that wilted on the vine: a romantic, if naive, trust in goodness as grandeur; a strange and beautiful sense of humor; a nurturing kindness and care, all of it could have been me, I feel their corpses crawl into my mind sometimes still, but this moth batting endlessly about this plague lamp, well... ah Kaiya, when you called me a dust [[perfectionist->mamethyst]], you... cold and insignificant the sky seems contemptible...

Alone in the graveyard is she expectant. Iron gray crypts tilted into arches taloned by gargoyles perched for the plunge. An inhuman chill shivered those not under soil blankets. Decay roamed growling over its prey. "We've come beyond the bounds of living," Meluoi did not look up. "What force shall sustain us?" I stepped towards where she was staring, emanations of suicide. Vasya threw Meluoi against a wall. "What the hell was that, Veda?" Leiska. "Could have killed us right then aye, being killed we're! This is a suicide mission lah. You're throwing away our lives for this stupid tour." "This is a profitable mission for which you willingly signed," Meluoi, evenly. "Surely you knew the risks when you accepted. Perhaps were you naive?" "For which Captain Myeri signed, you mean. Any deal you signed with him is with him, but I, we've been dragged into this –" "By whom? You knew what this voyage was, yet you –" "This voyage was to, there's the lie ah, we're to take you to the Submergence, but that's not our done, so you've lied to us, taken us up this, this, for no reason, to –" "If lies oppress you, they are not from my mouth. I told your Captain all the details when we enjoined. Any information he withheld from you is –" "This was never about ascending Kapinya's, was supposed to be a simple mission about the Submergence, a single –" "It was always about ascending Kapinya's Tower! The Tower has to be ascended first, it's the only way!" "To what? Why? Why do we have to ascend this Tower? What are you holding from us?" "I, well I have no need to, it's, I can't say, it's not your business to –" "Fjelske, Veda, is exactly my business, is nothing between us but business and hate. Whatever venoms Myeri sucked from you, I will not swallow. I will not play your games. Either you tell me what we're doing here, or we'll –" "Or what? You'll cancel the ascent? That will ruin your name, I'll make sure of it! I'll take you to the Myemi –" "The Myemi! Go ahead. Cry out your anachronisms." "Look, I... isn't the money enough? What more drives you? The split was already lucrative before the voyage, and now, with the reduced numbers –" "Reduced numbers! You callous dyenne! Those are lives you're talking about, real –" "Then respect their memory by letting this voyage go through. You heard what your Captain said. This is a chance for their greatness to be immortalized, to have their names –" "Keep your lies in mouths you posit on others, Veda. Nobody cares even half of a quarter of nothing at all if we get to the Submergence or not. Captain Myeri had no idea what he yanked us into, his fate shows that. Starstruck by a Veda, the only group more out of touch and isolated than he, so he signed into your slavery without asking proper questions, but believe me, you barren heart, I will not make his mistake, because I know you treat us like dispensable tools, you illusion us this shiny to lure us like infants to the mashing, and I want to know why, what for. I will not be tricked. Either you tell me right now why we're climbing this Tower, what you're really getting by this, or I'll throw you out of it myself." "You insult my honor, Lieutenant, and after all, we're doing this for you... if your cowardice is greater than what I can entice with presents, then flee, we need no one but those who are willing to fight, who still have some sense of what this life lacks to so drink from death." "You're dodging the question! Answer me. What is the purpose of your ascent?" "I... you wouldn't understand! You just wouldn't. You have not the expansive in which whispers echo. Even by demanding it like this, in this way, without any preface, you have failed the first test. I will not tolerate your –" Volya, with a nod from Leiska, slapped Meluoi, plastered into a daze spluttering. Berakh grabbed Volya from behind and slammed his face into the wall. Volya dropped in a hail of chipped teeth. Leiska, startled, stepped back, but Berakh in single strike elegance shocked him to a spittle fall. Gyadalta charged forward, but Berakh drew a scimitar. Gyadalta hesitated, looked at Pyeisa who was, chagrined, watching Leiska sprawl. Vasya quietly lifted Volya to his feet. Meluoi dusted her shoulder. She cricked her neck. "Flight thence, cowards, drink your shallows, I won't stop you. Anyone who wants to brave the descent to continue with petty poverties, do so, you are not needed. The Seleph and I are making this ascent, and whoever wants to come and be paid can follow along, otherwise, otherwise, if you're so pathetic that you'd rather risk those monsters below us and all the trials we've already faced rather than endure your destiny, then I wish you'd leave and spare us your" caustically at Leiska: "pusillanimity." Leiska grated with rage, but for a long while there teased no movement, no words, nothing. Finally Leiska got to his feet and with an acid stare flourished past. Meluoi slipped a victorious smile as we began to march again. In this night Meluoi seemed still wounded, not by the slap, but by a memory it had dislodged into her consciousness. "There is in me felt a fear I cannot yet pen, which drives me once more to reservoirs of poets, their doubts eternal beautiful; ah, Yamicz, we are kinned by our isolations! You are swimming in the wake of the gods, I feel, I sense it. Vejame di kyoli enakasli: you move, Emnino, you move. You are starting to understand why your Lieutenant does not frighten me. You are understanding motion. Currents transmute our troubles to flow. You are soaked in destiny: submerge. You are already not what you were, soon you shall be what you are not now. Humans are winged spirits coursing free in full becoming. Can you hear it, Emnino? Can you hear our, listen! (align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Tea of seams I sip upon the [[obelisk->mobelisk]] Acolyte of acidities and melds, Teeming below relic glistens to [[obeisance->mobeisance]], Percolating religions of bends Revere severe sages espouse to ghostly [[Permutating->mpermutating]] incision of beneviolence Sanguine gilding this line to verse, Lidded sealer from which holy dew deluges Sanctified exception expulser to verity…"]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Shall tonight my knife in arcs your cinders Obelisk upon a proper graving Paint wild this smolder burgundy consuming a Stage your proud refrain to elemental [[geysers->mgeysers]], Mana inculcates writ with migraine runes atomic Bearing [[plague->mplague]] distortions, the psyche queen volcanic This Baron usurp surpends in brutal the belongs That disceremony in shrieks the unanointed..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Neither vengeance nor justice but a bloodkiss compels me Unto the Baron, whitemaw demon star secured, Raven prince of tortured hush, the halt in empty, Through deluge lugubria of surrender and rendition [[Cavalcades->mcavalcades]] unrelenting your circlet stones, Dull intones of the [[queasy->mqueasy]] calm of postbattlefield Long I erasure entire in melted gyre gemenous Mistars resyzygy her rainbow beacon as prisms quiver Her bonewritten nondispelance beampiercing These all inclusive tars to terraform Futurities I must furrow in fallows, Taste of a tremulous possible her grace gives this wasteland..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Withering vines of drylands heat drooped to pooled Shrieks shades in whose congeal counts forth The scything hour that slinks in this [[sickly->mdeforming]] Rising plague perfect amidst the filth Like wolves skulking padded paws Light like baby limbs crawling in a creaking cradle On paths branching knotted into hollow divergences Half whispering through bared teeth welcomes..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Mutedusk breezelusts lurklisting through slack Velds bulbless blacks bleeding to vault floodeds Unleashed upon the dammed land in nonsense torrents Trundling the uncoming calamitous through labyrinthine Afroths of fever venoms sable, viper leer alien Uncanniness ensorcels gloom repose on dollike limpness Sagging imprints on dust mosaics overcrusting Layers thick with monochrome neglects Varnished by grotesques gel animates in sloppy splurs [[Deforming->mdeforming]] contorting swell obliviates Strings swell sweltering gulf welters torn horizons straddle..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Squalls polysemous skull polyphonies Pulsive mull the mosaic semisenses tones Overloaded with delving moans of Soaking seafreezes sweatspuming awakened Krakenous krakatoas skyblacks counterblister Burning upheaval reversion convergence Of bloodfire of depthless, the fathomless undreaming All a pantomime of dendrite structures Branched from genesis abysms scoring Vast the sin that starts our synphonies, A godness gapeous gnashed of light that glunts The demise vibrato brimslash lack recededs Lurking the high tide heartbeat Thumping baron after baron a [[malevolence->mdeforming]] Prevalence that evaporates the world..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Coalescing grotto slimeshine studded Shadowing the weight behind a thought which Drips on dreams disease bileswole pneumoniac gloomchill Chandelier tears which whispers mouthless sneer Nobody nestlers, ribcage crushed cathedrals, Citadel subsummates of oneiric nulls, Fear fomented nova froth heavy metals scaldeds Space illusorties illuminate lustshade lampshade Tilted mauves emphrenzy force of Angular annihilnunciation, arc of ongoes from closeds, Vantage points vanquish clots [[vaultslosh->mdeforming]] of slushsense perspectives..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Question hung the dizzy in states unsaid In microshakes of this bust before me, Chiseled of chi selenes we do not do deserve, Auburn semifallen pompadour in bristles roaming Aimlessly to wayward stubbles overmossing Tics convulsing the bulging compression pressure [[Disequalized->mdisequalized]] into this dire we espy his grimace aligned, Machines Baron sealing our world's seams, Finity defiling our hazy faces glisten gnashes, Sliced consciousness [[bloodsensuous->mbloodsensuous]] to desire, Efficacy raws pseudonightmare pale Processioning pairing tangibiles fluttering Concentric fever figures pumped to drives drains reality rends Hour actualities that pain descendates us Mandates mutual intensities to a [[mandala->mmandala]] of Dancers whirling to suddenly matched as the music maelstroms stare, Pale mutters he heatless a request I speak of death, Succor his loam sweet release to growth beyonds..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Bides your wake the cease, salvation slumber, Simmer your [[murder->mmurder]] to moment as Ire thrills your blood caprice, bonesaw angel, Wreak your arrow of love, gnash harsh your passion cancer Midnight id, missive bared to the darkly roar, Can I not not can I cannot I reply, I falter, choke, Incharred upon my lovely daughter gone, Lilli strewn amidst debris a corpse rebuke Of this incompacity, this poise paucity, Dessistroys these actionable gore blesses Your memory wreaths my wreckage, Anoint myself saint of your sanctity in Baron's blood, lunar mare of veleine lests elossive In cause, drain designs, pure imbuing, This knife my spirit's signaturifier, Yes, too long have I waited your wounds To dance as this unslakeable suggests, Religion of your slayable drinkable elixir In which to anoint sepulcher of her who hymns, Yet so skeletal a sacrifice, can it be he who here I have chased in my furious desire, Where is your regalia to damnation, Wickedly he grins deeper than his chin can hold, Pride, you say, demarcates my domain, Whither shall I vase it, where can I retain my same In entropic totality we assumptive name, My crown you observe, the wreck I zealot wield, Blizzard heresy against the daylight blaze, Chill sepulchers sunk in brimstone worlds of sulfur seethes, Pride has abandoned me to stall within bodies, My inheritance I reap in this trove elosion, Bloodthirst cullgod of cattle glut with massacre glees I surrender to discerned raw a stone to finality The beast outbreaking the bruise extravagance reductive greed We convene in our mutual murder yearn, Desire annihilator resuspire cults we carve of our hearts Dregs we suck to stand before ourselves us, Vivid dross to the butterfly glisten, Glisten trail of slime regret our lethe lengths, Sunbaked crags crackling through the misty murmurs Islets to sink soundless before the speechless sun, Chanting symbol charms invoking gods whose hymns We vacuous votive culminate null natal, Genesis guilt that agonizes our need to rip From the earth immure, impure mire Quake to quell the quaver music spirits Dirge across our solid sleeplessness, Our wandering hushed in aerials, Dizzy skyfall sentients structured below, Whipdriven along road ataxias we collapse sublimities, That which never in the vista is viewed, Mere sheer transcendence, bulwark spirituals no being sews But bows to its vivabrato bravura vehemeants..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["You, drear defier, where lies your signet, In which embodied may I you soul void, In which palace do you reign, Show me your artistry ascendancy, ziggurat of your zealous, That this strike might vandalize its hubris honest Into emptiness and fleeting of all things, And laughs he to the sand echoing, Here do I possess the hour as it dispossesses us all, You invader too shall be reaved, so release, Linger into the daze that cages us here, We who once were winds, now wound down to wounds, Kneel breathless midst the wreck and carnage, Worship as we must, or learn as I once, Born upon the head of waters blind I Plunged and caught the current, never sinking, Never worrying the direction, now am I Washed ashore this infinite destruction, Nothing elevates my ruin, slave lie, Graceless princedom, please conduct my dying To your consumption dying, so that in you will My guilt be assigned, subsumed, resublimed Your Barren, your inheritance I melt within, Ah, bliss, buried inward, slowly less external In ravages, are not these my desiccated children My sins, none of their own authenticity ontics their shakes, I alone am their am, as you are to amend mine, Gyre historical wreaths on graves our lives deliver, As summit deaths peer from peaks a painting Hearkening its artist, and hearken, My peak crumbles before your footfall, Fatal angel, sentence my strife your composed, Emissary my disvisionary to poetry, Rise, assassin, slay this moonbeam, [[Slaughter->mmurder]] me daemon of your deriving, The Baron collapses at my feet weeping willow lash..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["You monstrous, you monolith abomination, Blaspheme phenomenal skein yawning blunderous blissful, Starfoul birthed drunken upon us demon of thirsts, Where upon this umbra derivens [[sacrifice->mmurder]] In our geming transfixed blade blossom, Incur of our loping pensive he sighs in masque Releve sobs relieve his features undignifierce, Disparaged to the room in rots and slants and shards, Puzzle glass fuzz a muzzled testament to stagnant disrepair, A feast stale to the prickly century enclosurion, Embalm embody he bore upon us wretched glaze glares Blank and lank an anankh anaerobic splunk of feel false, His heels twitch tumble him to beneath Heaves of sorries and subsumes we stagger away estranged Until in remove fully I restance move sheathed repulsed Sneering, beast, have I erred, has my path waywarded, The Baron I seek, a gremlin grin he leashesun his victim sweateds, Yours a slight resemblance bears, Tall he spools like pulled pooled doppelgangers stretched at burning noon, Yours a similar cast casts, Hate his lips contorts an outcrop marr upon alluvial facial fans, Yours trickles similar a snotty malice, But putrefaction prince engorgeous they claim his laceration leer, Where does this lurk in so crooked a jowls, Snarls what this burrowed in slouching to bide, Bark your misconnect, mongrel, squirt your principal To assume sense of self so might I bleed you deathonest, If ever you ken mankind your excision, Where above your debased resides your batterer, Who inculcates your cureless, snares you deluresional, In which hole is he hidden a cancer Metastasized replies to my affronted aphrasion gutturals Whence crawls the rasped reply, Gazer upon the remnant, shall you share our To the reaver bereaved, riven doll of our doubt, Hypostatized fundament we twingrowth tumorous, Pupae hives excreting hate's requition unrequited By the hollowing qualm linger listless spools Bloatbursts the move, the strive, our if we shall call it alive As scour we the sickness for passions that propel us Past the snares of Vyekana, grave of the lesser driven, Gold is ice to enslave the blankworship mass, Auroral election freewheeling the words wheedling past Debris fled along the design, the unlast of Penultimatum cherished nothings wasted to penury persist, Anchor chains snap in the inexorable momentum to fall, We lose touch with everything dream, Groaning organ bricabrac concavities tinny the residesound Vainglory devil invisages gore refulgence, Ah, the admittance we pretend through our muscle acquiesce The actuals that annihilate our every exhilarate..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Memories of dear Alilliana vibrant in shadow mores, Rubble litters of thoughtlesses so far from meaning, Povertous of proper awe the wellsprings unslaking, Submerging us here, confluence of ten thousand elegies, Trill mood throb thrilling the grief concerto crescendo To antagonize expression to starks, Blanks, lusterless muddles, anoxic incendilates These shapes depression jades, mist intoxicants Invoking your [[presence->mpresence]], beloved daughter, precious perfect, Never to be here reign in this never of here, Your anguish pleads this vengeance lucidity, Devotion unstrays into the blossom of the Baron abandoned, Sobs spawns the estranger revolver volta, Vituperative acidity syncopated to [[diffusion->mdiffusion]] living, Measure more vicious than murder the endure, And, unto your violence echo, I impress upon my companion, Assassins we, such must be, such is he to my tender chest, Trickle of yes, sickle of less, symbol dispossess, Surpass ursense slipping to go the anomie ullume, Luminous purpose pressurizing the arising primortual, Equilibria nouns choireographed the motion map The oceans I bleed subsume sublime consume consign To propose of the riven pose a poised en pointe in points Ploys we presume to nous, soul noose, agonysm's reproduced, Gods of the lesser welter written in our phased, Leylines our wardways aphasia horizillusive bodies bodes What the deathmarch hunts."]

Meluoi maudlin in a whisper away half to me: "To what do we go?" As if to answer: absence: presence of the eager to claim her. Envious of this vanish. If only I could see through my narrow to the fullness, then the harmony would move me also, and I would follow behind, and Meluoi would silently lead me to this assurance, the night would lift to show us together on land, protosolutions murked with assumptive bases from which to leap anew, pleasure on the path begun, immovable, doom gradually piecing itself together with artifact urhostility before the breathless victim: what was Meluoi saying, what should have I heard? Where in the words was the cure? The sins, this vicious heart, [[syllable->msyllable]] suspended in sylph emotives. Absent real, groping to swallow intractable, coloring focus, I hoped to power through my weighted collar, find myself firm and saved, savable. Could I walk, should I kneel, would I race in reverse? Who am I to thus ponder, and where is the assassin going, how can I hope to follow, who can we kill together to reclaim where is buried his daughter, where, whose where, where in where? Show me some path, Meluoi, please, unknot these ties, solve me, solve thisening, give me the face that seals these sights, entrust me to where these nights I am terrified and touched.

Somehow like we were all given to a mode we could not even as we shivered in its absolute even partially fathom we let the sounds end in where they entered, became ourselves in ourselves as a song had awoken them alien, and the joy of a feeling we never knew we could have as our own whisper tinglethrilling on a novel tongue the bitterjuicysweet desire that all along we might have felt this way when needed in the elusives of presents percussing our brittle preservations, this believe the time might come, I promise, when under the crush of past the pressure produces a smile. Meluoi was muttering for both of us our cold night reply. "Our blade love twists around the rose that grows it. This assassin asserts a truth within the heart of the world pumping in secret, this story sentience written from coagulated sentences, meanings in magnitudes, not symbols for a puzzle, which is never for itself, as if there is a thought superlative to thinking's action, but poetry's power obliquely mutates our mutters to mandelbrot millions, an orchestrated delving in the pulse of a vein not yours inside your selfish body. Do not let this poem speak to you an answer but a sound unsolved. You must understand, Yamicz, the overdetermination distills our own overbearing noises to clarity. Hear in yourself certainty emerge from the confusion seeded by this strangeness sanctified. I stress this solely as this I cannot you simply give, we teach not a place but a propulsion, so dwell in your felt or founder wooly in the unwholy, in you the distinction sabers. Antiluminous shapeless midnight mass expanding contracting in warped chill winds shot from no gale is this the meaning, what was said in every line compressed washing through the bloodtide home, seeking the answer, seeking the pain: swim to drown in the hopeless horizonless!" My tongue forked gush of halfborn words. Crying contains a measure of comfort, but not to who must by right. Each tear scorches the flesh beneath the eye. We live in the centrifuge spinning out into our vertigo swimming against the shoving air, grasping hysterically at the calm center, and life is the perpetual struggle to hang on, to not let go and be lost. Surrendering, admitting our own inability, crying out for help, from weakness as if we were ever anything else, makes peace with the wrath of the inexhaustible to embrace the pangs as a sting you can source your spring in, each tear, tremulous, quivering, wrought the expression of dismay in reassuring humanity, no more death in this corpse, the prowling along a slanted corridor to corroborate a door's existence, enough, too much, I became but sobbing in the twist to something [[else->msyllable]], but not for me, for me is the waiting through.

Levitation mists recombinate around alterity that trembles in mosaic eyeblacks ghostly. Perspecters ruminate in memory's melisma shimmer, unfinisheds funneled to codas cauterizer. Heightens that halted, severed branches redolent resplendent with halfblooms brighter for their wither, delicately [[gifts->gifts]] glamorful never to reach receiver indelibles. How do you cherish the charred? Chased the night in hopes it would reveal what days lacked, but each moonshaft shared nothing with those nostalgic. Makovah midnight meridians might errance you to peridiurns whose sacred ash could solange liqueurs deep the bitters to hecatomb commune, each of us bloodletting go, esprits intermixing, ephemerals tincture of believing and eventide. Exortation to luna asura sunnahs that structure koans to infinites apertures apotheosystemanature belunes our mystic ecstasy before figments of dreams religion, way finesse the absence to sibyl selene serene reaver. So I [[sought->msought]] her who spoke in no tones I could terrene.

Alone together our fire weakly against the seeping dusk our voices weaved as one. "I can't breathe," I. Kaiya smiled brightly. "She'll be surprised. Relax." "It's not the gift." Emerging into the bursting glare hurts, shocks that there Imeni is, seance chestnut curls, teeth solar. Buildings melt away, the streets soak to slush, and the field of view rapidly narrows, there she is, there she is! Her turn around is a hurricane. She is a person, of course, certainly, yes, yes, but not to me, to me she is also a ceremony, a sound, a fire. I have incinerated in her; [[ashes->mhaunted]] to [[ashes->mgraven]] [[augur->mamethyst]]. If you love someone so much, then how can they ever be human? "Life's too short to fear a good thing, Emnin. She loves you, ace. Run with it, bask in it. That's what joy's for, basking, for as long as we're blessed to keep it. In your hearts is happiness no one else can imagine enough of you two to imagine."

"If we, if humankind loses its music, neither sigh nor sign to convoke voice, then what is of a struggle soundless?" Meluoi. "Require we respite religion, psalms of our spite forever afresh to worship day tatters. Submergence in another subjectivity is the only release our isolated souls will receive, this where is I guide you, hold you under the surface, strain out your struggling for air, until at last you slump serene, and we embrace on both sides of a mirror, drowned in each other's airless, but I can't make you drink the depths into your own air. You must yourself choose to, to... oh Yamicz, how I struggle to drown myself, let alone you, but I must, I, somehow I have to..." Pressure dissonance cauterized the wound: I lived in her sound placeless. "I want to escape in your echo." Meluoi turned to and away from me. "Then you must be reborn. You must be renamed." My heart did not sink but found itself stuck to my heel. "Renamed?" "Yes. Name is the unit of the soul. I..." she swallowed: "I know your name is not Emnino." I winced suppressed a scream. "Saved from this heartless abandonment in the self like humanity will be in its final hour, reborn in [[blankness->mstart15]] as true, properly closed after weathering centuries in the ascension to acolytity, but, but the moment presses. We shall anoint you in the sound of yourself." Long exhale. Turned to me radiating. "Leiru is the family name? Your family, past personalized, defines the start, the orientation, but it does not follow through the arc. You have started with u, but to where are you going? What becomes you? What shall match your u? I... are you aware of the naming matrix? No? Then I must tell you. Each ending defines us, star reflections in our other's inertness, our unique combination pearls our dust. There is a title to all of these, to be interpreted each day by our days; for always we are human, even when we pass those borders. From your u, to: "A: Lone Beyond the Cliffs the Soundless. "Cz: In Time Biding the Silhouette. "E: Hymnfrost Dew. "I: Swallowed Second Yet Counting. "Kh: Simmering Mirror of Moon Mystery. "O: Stance Against the Stabilization. "Oi: Dweller in the Duskless Drought. "Me: Softly in Source. "Ph: Dancer on the Waves Gemfleet Flight Free Singing. "Sz: Endless Souldream of the Ununveiling. "U: Ascendant Seeker of the Center. "We must be ourselves before we may be anything other and more. If you trust me, do you trust me, Yamicz? You do then? I am glad to hear you say it; I often don't say it to myself. Let it not be me who names you, Yamicz, but yourself through my vessel. "We cannot take the o. Even if it once fit, it falls away now in view of your future. Much lies within you that you do not, cannot say to me... I only know what I have read these past weeks, but Gleisca volme: accordingly, thus: powers without ourselves derive our sums in secrecy. The gods, they shall purse this prophecy. I must tumble into your name outside of myself, I will find in the fall the gravity to which you belong, to which this quest of ours longs for you." She froze cruciform in the hidden ice eternity. She paints my crevasse grave as spiraling spiritual time unravels us in a transcendent progression of the stripped. "U, Emninu Leiru. Deiyanasz swa dieya vo. Yamicz. The beginning and the present that portend the end. Semuleph tiyekeni jleikh na. You have been Emninu since the start but in sleeping did not hear; wake up, wake up, it is time to arise."

Drank skins our the moonlight matte emotive [[amethyst->mamethyst]] wilderness of mute desire. Raycaster she plies visibles to haunteds reflective in her cuticles. Like eyes unmoored studying her jaw drift to deep sigh, licking my teeth to convince to imitate but rather my brow furrowed blinkshut to grit sigh, sour wince loosened to lugubriously jutting torpor slant I slathered with pleased to meet her gaze gently widened. Her icicle wristflicks scalpeled severity to vent in [[gloom->mgraven]] hues ooze assuming rainbows [[chthonic->mhaunted]]. Does not need to but she holds still pray. I assume silence gods flicker in her iris the symbol to stop, her parabola to rest. Somewhere in there failures my jealousy occludes, somehow a simply human resides in such a dance, and the very inability to process this is why I cannot so dance, there is no difference between her inhuman and my subhuman, yet I keep hunting in the bind for the substance, positive or negative, on which I willing will be crucified, ever elusive unsayably evident in her magisterial repose.

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Warrior of a brutal austere sacrificed trued Reigns over the riot blade indifference, Ward of a power imperceivable in [[colossus->mcolossus]] trusswork Blunted into object brutal austere Looming its [[weathered->mthinsensuous]] edifice over artifice Blur electricities from which I auslander Share in my overloaded overflowing noumena Unable to contain within body the deluge interconnect Shapetwisting this thoughtmesh to [[themethresh->mvocators]] nougat Heirs of legacy despair marshing sickly sweet Fuzz of yonders roosted in a sugary garrot Heightened dammed to closure cloying swelterly..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["[[Irreducible->mcolossus]] atrophy of tumult to [[torpor->mthinsensuous]] In our domestication of angst despair Irreconciles our intercessions their torture, Absolved of the problem and enchained to symbol, Negative sum of gesticulation unto geist, Absolute scars us carved penitents sympathique, Prayers of noon induced dullness presidium, Sleepers in the sanctuary, Praxis [[vocators->mvocators]] of void presolveds Perfected in gestures devoid in submission, Porcelain nowheres nonelected in sequentials, Perdition ceremonies holy alteration subjects…"]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Century of cessations ceaseless Slightest shifts of scene to [[semblation->mcolossus]], Centrifuge of masques molting ceacrilege Worships forged to forgotten in burials, Worn to worms emanates of agonies, Worsening of incense to [[thinsensuous->mthinsensuous]] Migraine as stares back idol your weakening Rewrites to newer contours how your confusion streams, Migration of spirits to fertilities to martyr, Effusions of seed catacombs to query Relief from flux and relive from crux, Effervescence of [[vespers->mvocators]] to voluntate quest…"]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Songs incense in waves the wanderlust Wafting through the density centoria [[Sondervolver->msondervolver]] incensed to rave the wan, Choral resplendence angelic of chaos, Hymnals of burst and worsen fiery belief, Chords [[reclaimant->mreclaimant]] anguish of chasm Brimfuls of shrieks and song sweeping along Unction extremities of function intensities, Brimstone [[sonata->msonata]] of scintillates to voidsoak alone..."]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")["Wailing in waylays they stream Clutching onto nothing and all its gold, Waiting through frozens to fear fever to strength Sufficient to undew this soaked to bone, Efficient to unrue the stoked and sewn Suffusing through the flue our bondeds [[Enfolding->mreclaimant]] these dribbles of static, Riddles of sentience wrung dried quelled, Enfeeling the less and least we wan yearn to stave, Brittled on breeze nights worn through Shiversome and slack and quickened of lacks Bringing us broken to home sun scorned thrice, Dawn and sunset and drawn raw to reds Coagulating to scabs sleep [[scarabs->mscarabs]] roll Dawdled to blur in lightless morning redolent…"]

Meluoi warped space around her curls she twirled round her fingers ringlets to bell midnight's amethyst suffusion. Indigo and ebony convocated surrounding envision concentrated in her carefully indivisible upon [[borderline->mborderline]] dermals, entwist elevations to vermouth of moonflower glissando gessoes impasto upon panorama wreathing all one viewable her viable, solely hers, or how I must lean to share in her, [[buckled->mbuckled]] knees to beneath her own [[terror->mterror]] as it thrums power [[fragilities->mfragilities]].

"We've reached a higher threshold of this emptiness, surely you've realized Emnino, speaks these hollows strangers to our own, why I welcome them with such warmth, that they have traveled roads to this place to enrich that which it is capable. Networks wound around the allbegoing wayward reaches our pursuance concentration power, tune into its burgeon, march upon its momentum, connectivity concatenative beam brilliances these [[verses->mspeak]] veritaccreterre en guerre of guises instantiation masquing the flux fractal lux..." Meluoi.

"You must not think of as perfect but as perplexed by the puzzle, nobility of honesty. We’ve many tarnishes and hollows to anchor us to earth. I was, for instance I, we have a tradition in Veda Ayeri, ridiculous, supercilious as all cultural forceds are, where we associate the tallest of women with a tradition of chant dancing called kezia. I am, as you see, or perhaps not correctly since we tend to be taller than the Devikh, but I am of us slightly tall, not tall enough you would call me tall, but tall enough if I were called tall you would not care to disagree, and so I was by my mother, who cherished kezia, enrolled in the way. "Quickly it became clear I had a talent for it, deepened into it an inclination, always the most practice, waking up brutal early just to hurt myself the sensations of success, somehow through mutual sheer force of will my mother and I made up a believable lie that I was a premier Keziani, a first choice for many ceremonies, but it was, uh, like the conceit collapsed into grating degrading kitsch, this [[transcendentally->mspeak]] beautiful artform was, as soon as it became inseparable from me, puerile, a complete misapprehension of the Literature, an exploitation into mere performance, sensuous swallowing of literacy, but why the opposition, wasn’t the purpose of kezia this very unity, your motions an exaction of prisions of the intangible? Utterly puzzled at how lifeless this tradition became as soon as I was its embodied, buzzed me sleepless, raw anguish ataraxia brewed languorous refusal to dance, and they abjured my lassitude, my mother most of all, though I begged them that I could not noun what I do not nous, and in acidic recriminations I have singed away the capacity to answer the conundrum, meaningless the problem beside all the anxious violence raging forever over memory. Ultimately in our vehemence we were equally less than the question, there but one sin to fault the Veda." "Even in such a sin there is a grandeur I, we lack, that you as dancers of a legacy humanize to null." "For whatever grandeur, so much worse our blame for the bleak. We have lost our way in our memory refusal to acquiesce our connections to totalities of reals in which we both bide united..."

"By the fourth week she could no longer [[speak->mspeak]]," Meluoi, "but she kept going for another three months, and in the silence I grew confused, terrified, each day simmered my cruel unwillingness to acquiesce, since she could no longer drown out the doubts that scream in my skull, staring into her less and less alive eyes, hoping to see in them some hint she still of her own will willed this fight, that the agony was worth another day, but seethed only into the fog that forever separates the wisdom of the living from the serene and sorrow, unable to express her consent to another stale sun shadow, I kept staring, if, if somewhere in them, smother desire... when she could still yet speak, my biding was merely passive, watching, nursing, but as soon as she slipped beneath that layer, suddenly I could not discern her will from mine, my biding was an activity, was it an antagonism I begged each flutter of her eyelids, desperately searching the spasms for hints she wished to die, that I was not torturing her alive, and why was I, what heartless monster would torture, but what should I have done, Emnino? Should I have tried to give her peace, only to see in her filmy marrowy sclera desperate terror? It took three months. For three months I didn't know what to do. I had no right to make a decision, but each day I kept up the charade was a decision, the wrong one, always wrong no matter what I chose, sometimes you have no choice but to be wrong before another's suffering. Three months, Emnino..." "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I also, I understand the way your pain can't be understood, because I also, my mother, I, didn't quite know how to help her go. I felt like I had to be there, but I got the sense that my presence was ruining something sacred, like there was an emptiness she craved in those last days, and I was the wrong kind of emptiness, sitting there, incessantly offering tea. What could she have wanted? What do the dying want from their dying? You must feel it somewhere in your chest that this is the end, and yet they just wait, they wait, for what? What's another day but a more sore throat?" "Ah, Emnino..." "She spoke so little, and only then as a kind of assuring herself her voice was still there, more announcing than conversing, saying things I couldn't recognize. I dreamed about things I would never say to her, because they would wilt in that room until my chest sagged my whole being out to a sigh." "Yes, exactly, silence incense of lifetimes of the unsaid. A presence you wish was a point as you decline blunted. One of the last things she said to me, twice before the last is always the most final, the zenith, followed by a coda of spittles, she said, remember me as that time you thrashed awake, realized there was nothing wrong, then drifted off back to a dream you were enjoying; outside of that, don't remember me. Heartbrokenly beautiful and true way to die. I loved my sister, and I have my garden of memories, but my memory of her will always be the sound of nothing at all on a summery night. Ah... but... well. As it is, it is. Was I saying something? How did we end up on this? I was saying something." "You were saying something." "Yes," she laughed. "I suppose I was. I don't feel it in me to say anything now, and I wish we could share that, how lovely to just soak in a distance, let the road taper to where we stand for tonight, but we don't have beauty in these last days. The chance for beauty lies with those still with the time for failure. I have to burden this night. I'm sorry for everything I'm about to say, it's all worthless, and yet it's all preamble that must be broached, if still we must seek our meaning in this dwindling earthmode..."

She did not speak, and I did not interrupt her. "Truth is, truth is in the world, a unit, not a unity. Sorry, just, give me a second. I can do it right. "Truth in the world is a unit, not a unity. That's what the Senenzu in this passage is saying, the idea of truth as modular inhabitation. Naively we grasp at reality to shake out its core, but what we apprehend is a pale shadow of truth polyvalence. Upon dharmas the what we see and what of it we discern converge, shallows envelop: speech is binary, the difference is moot: monochrome rain or not rain, so is my entirety, and from this puerile nothing the stumbler on surfaces reasons absolutions, orients entire systems from particle truths to render the cosmos yes or no; though what little they expect beyond the prewritten yes, who can say. The extent to which their structure [[grammars->mgrammars]] the layered planes bespeaks the conjugate law which orders their knowing in a noetic orientation: truth has no outer shell, never is raining or not raining true, the truths in which rain is subordinate cycle to the moment of rain's actuality, which they so desperately affirm in the fear there is none of their rain to survive fleeting, they who commune continue insofar as the machine of the word functions in the envelope the question affords, instance fractalized into instantiation in the veracity gyre from which we dreamcatch pulses more conducive to our bloodbeats than the mad klaxon crush of the spectral protoclysm from which no one can wring single colors." Like shadows meshing in a wooden bowl it eclipsed me, dull blurs obscurants of her clarity. Chill of listening and struggling. "Our rigidities we prefer to truth's uneven obsolescing, girder conclusives that engenders in the observing mind what slushes through veins icy real. When I speak any internal value, it percolates out, fills the space between us variable, and you drink from what submerges me your own differentiated, the [[transmitted->mtransmitted]] degree of any infinite truth inside, in actuality's abysm we bubble through in symbols of the galactic fire, so when I say anything, I the ancient scry our narrow protoskies utterly wrong in being convinced upon a horizon not altogether false, and only when fire spirals spit forth from my formless mouth will what I see and say convey the undissolved truth my system shudders to choose to be my iris for greater magnitudes worlds. Cease your prayers to a demon so brutal as single say, certain word, solid sound, sunders our ice palaces to seep through the noxious underworld fuming caustic thoughts, our wild grasping backward in the evernight seeking the source of a separate light other than what our pearl eyes radiate. Neither right nor wrong we are but rather eccentric orbits tightening around layered suns eventually sinking through the demarcation hellfire to the sordid center hypostation at which our reality resembles the absolute trauma of being irrevocably isolated from the consuming antizero outscaling speech, the quotidian grandeur at which we operate entirely unaware, consummate entirety suspension of dream and mediated interpretation in which the most pure wisdom coils around us as real as its heat teeth's bite scorching our soultrifuge essence into and from which we travel to an isle no particular else can ever arrive at. Desperate for a communion of the flung around, a platform of relative proximities by which the newly sorted night's constellations alone shall judge right, wrong, poles, hemispheres, all in relation, all upon our sprawling plane, this is our verbal spectrum, Emninu, a communal autonomy forging the thread of melted truth into a platinum bond between us and eternity, the above possible lift. Our souls' power to guide other souls in isolation on their own wings sacrosancts our speech. From breaths, gales, and all that breathless glides within. Calls of the arresting and impossible to contain other solidifying in an irruption moment the strike of what so fundamentally highlights your own experience that no longer do you exist outside it listening but within you your heart lurches already the racing beat of its pull launches us to a higher unity as particulates of this level's failures, units of the ununified, the undistillable, antidiscernable congruence. Thoughts made in us manifest give us our highest and deepest supraself, the point of unraveling and the point of contact. In our helios hearts pumps a sunblood which melts us to its own warm glow world."

"What need would we have of speech if it did not by itself destroy its need? If speech shall not be always already too late, and thereby the first and foremost expression of transformation, the beyond this word possible in the ceremony of sentence exchanging, sentience made mutual, the spirit connected, then vows of silence should douse the torches that dared dream no beacon each other against this dark. When you are confronted with beauty, change into it, become yourself that same beauty, and you have, haven't you? You've been flowing after Senenzu. I've seen it, who can hide it? Your mind assembles its sublimating [[deluge->mdeluge]]: emerge what I may never say and so long to hear! Can you swim, Emninu, to the neither yet you nor we?"

"Building around ourselves these [[constrictions->mconstrictions]] which force us to, and, isn't that why we are here, as in here, this place, its focalizing? Tell me, Yamicz: what have you heard of the world before the Flood?" "Stories, and also nothing, really." Mood elusive ellipsis rose [[guardians->mguardians]] gem her stare swollen. Underlyrics her steps percuss in the nightness expand expansive, songs of so many. Trembles usher her slipping away to so real it could collapse, could in the shoulder quiver... how delicate is the frame which supposes it contains the inside maelstrom. Relicit the [[emoticosm->memoticosm]], crush [[resuspend->mresuspend]], lyre of invisibles in her closetongue real.

"Structurers we pursue the context to sounded out, so we retainerr satanic to morphemes semantic assembler. Arisen out of the reave is the version the breathes you, verse it believe, do you, Yamicz? What borders bring you outcast? No, need not answer, speak not of it pressed, shall imprint it in [[became->mdeluge]]."

"Violence sacred scars us to corpus revised new unviseds, breaker into forceds propulsively vicious vicaritas sein. Hurt rebuilds hollows in which cessation creation hurts. Hold onto how you harbor the born. "Before seas swallowed us this borne, boreal forests phalanxed a scimitar edge in which we restless wandered sippers of ancient mixtures worshiping the deities that molted from howls to haunt in chants lynx eyes luminous closer prowling to chill in bass purrs our nervous before expanse, allured by expanse, could so easily trance seek the transliminal hum in vale vermilion votress broach vermeil veiled vowing vulpine the cunning to quicken kenning to kill, slaughtertrails wreathed the wold vents perfume, fumerole brooding outcaster generative taxon that exinhabits inhumean. Excathedra each sacerdotal a warship to batter the path new boldens to hearken afresh vivafuror to visceramics to gleam transubstantiation, moebius mobility to materialize elsetwist dream. Godsdrinkers they genomed entracery enchants to engram; weep we voxascope denied. "Into god a minima they pursued to doctrine, chanted this name to consecrate continuity into night where lurked sole. Gaunt they grew in grooved, paeans pebbled to truths caustic no terrene counterculled, semblance to stated staid, husks of once they wilted wilderness to rural, absoluted. Durates of as we willed sleeked to niveous miasma, glaceon enumerator. Preces recis postcarity pronounced from prolonged a prelate of evental variate temporals [[skein->mconduits]], note out of tone to rescale dissummits promontory eyrie to swerve verticant upon the verdant resume, unbode bidden to riddle parse to pith these long stalkers to stasis in reverie against revolt like vipers upon distenders, and form the fray a god afire vulcanized the sky to bleed its scriptures, and into sea tempested their stonestills distilled eternal recurrence of currents six Towers in which we twilight reside.&quo