aonair.

our words will be simple, our passages to the point.

The Neighborhood believes itself drifted into decay;

in the ‘burbs it goes about its business, quiet & neglected.

but today, we’ll be magnanimous for a moment

& mow the frost-tipped lawns,

giving brief attention the sagging rooftops above our red noses.

The Often Orphan & Sosh are at odds

& poor Charybdis just cowers in the corner,

willing the weedwhackers to a volume greater than the voices.

she’s a little liftoff-challenged these days.

Chimaera gets it

& picks her up in his shiny new somethingorother when the dulcet tones of discord dominate the sound waves at home.

many a night she hops in beside him

& speeds off to recreate that from which she’s fleeing.

& through this problem of nature vs nuture

the mowers drone on.

femtian.

the personal questionnaire is the hardest part of the interview.

she twirls the pen & wracks her brain

the recipe for believability is one part reality, two parts fill-in-the-blank

‘just try to be as honest as you can’

the words echo like an accusation in the hollows they’re trying to probe

easier said than done, guys.

unsolvable riddles are their favorite,

but she houses no hidden truths.

so, incapable of pleasing,

she bangs her wrists together in rhythm

keeping time with the beat of the mysteries’ multiplication rate.

seeing the name they’ve given her scrawled at the top of the page,

she smiles to herself.

aryah.

they’ve got a sense of humor, at least.

undertrykke.

The man with the mirror-fingers emits a low whistle.
“Boy, you really did the number on these babies, huh?”

Unsure whether a response is expected/required, Yvaine - or is it Charybdis? - grunts noncommittally.

“I haven’t seen a sitch like this since ’74.”

The disembodied mouth in his chair doesn’t seem amused.

“So, ah...what’s the story? Unfortunate encounter with a...jackhammer?”

His patient’s garbled gurglings are of the indecipherable variety.

“What was that?”

She spits out the gadgets & wipes the blood from her lips.
“It must’ve been the bullets.”

His eyebrows rocket to his hairline & his eyes slither to the floor.
“...ah.”

She shrugs.
“I bite things.”

erba.

The old man with the camera tries her patience & evades her understanding.
Why does he mark his presence & preserve his time spent here?
More to the point, why so fondly?

She grins derisively to herself.
Once a tour guide, always a cynic.

Skye vacations in parables.

With unseeing eyes, she considers the circular seal which represents her literal past & figurative future.

Casually, The GentleMan In the Suit leans against the railing to her right & reads aloud- he does enjoy brochures.
“Why stay in one place when you could be in four?”
Glance = bullet bra.
“Why stay in one piece when you could be in more?”

A scowl, a flick, a fold, a silence.
Hers, hers, his, theirs.

“You can’t live in four corners, you know.”
‘Terse-yet-offhanded’ is copyrighted & on her resume.

He grins like a jackal.
“You can pick one.”

Her shoulders heave.
“I like lightswitches.”

gyventi.

The uncertainty is palpable; the confusion is tangible.
It’s all drawn to a point, & now hangs on a zip line, mid-canyon.
We won’t say that it’s waiting for rescue, but,
We’ll whisper that it’s waiting for rescue.
Current status: in a holding pattern.

She used to be a hammer.
She used to be a piece of well-oiled machinery, accustomed to giving commands & seeing them obeyed.
But these days, there’s no follow-through; no one hears when she shouts into the wind.

Now, fallen into disrepair, she sits in her own little corner in her own little chair & listens to the calming cacophony of a cigarette’s crackle on chapped lips.

& she’ll just do it all again when, on the radio, she hears November Rain...

jeton.

It’s not always conscious.
These things do happen.
Accept & move on.

Justifications, all.
Correct, most.
Effective? Debatable.

The Unintentional Captor opens her hand repeatedly, peeling her fingers back from her palm in hopeful release.
Still they remain.
Whether their presence is a result of their own will or hers is a question enigmatic in nature.
If the answer was apparent, we wouldn’t be here, would we?

‘Tis an interesting concept-
destruction in the name of salvation.

They tear down in order to build up.
& the ants look on in wonder & confusion, shaking their small heads.
Consternation, utter.

It’s no way to build an anthill.
...but if it gets the job done?

Why?

/Why not?

terbakar.

The Arsonist has quite a talent for pissing people off.
It might have something to do with the fires.
Bridge-burning is her specialty.

Wielding a flamethrower & an innocent smile, she torches all exits with an air of unconcerned oblivion.

There are those who would argue the title; Dodecahedron might be a more appropriate moniker, they’d say.
The lawyers love this line.
“It’s a question of intent,”they cry, pounding on their briefcases for emphasis. “We do not know what lies behind each of those doors!”
The judges usually remain unconvinced.

Whatever the epithet, the little trailblazer skips on, wind tunnels of smoldering flowers following in her wake.
The cases never close & the flames appear to be Gubraithian in nature.

Oh, pyromania.

surojas.

The taps in both rooms are running, & the sink basins are unwashed; kitchens are messy things by nature, & the laundry always needs done.

Rolling over, she listens to the sound of another life existing in the next room & momentarily laments its approaching absence.

:Yvaine speaks in parables & lives in rhetoric.

-beauty is true, love is real, & destruction is inevitable-
(they’re called universal truths)

Eurydice paints in red & relief- the bas variety.
(art snob reference for the win)
She’s damn good, too,
but hates her finished works.

‘In progress’is [her element/more her style].

The Rolling Thunder is apprehensive; Yvaine is catching.

...it’s all crazy etc etc...

lamtumire.

The movement stops.

“I think this is it.”

She blinks awake.

He sets her down gently, careful not to jar the splints.
They dither & dally, respectively, as is expected of them: she adjusts herself, he shoulders his pack.
Both finally run out of meaningless actions to carry out- the stage directions have failed to specify further business- so they stand facing one another.

This is where she’d shuffle her feet, if she could.

Seeing nothing to be done for it, she clears her throat & begins the scripted dialogue.

“So. The parting of the ways.”

He sniffs, looks to the west & inclines his head.

“Well. Jolly good, then.”

...and neither move.

“Listen,”she says, & there’s cotton around the edges, “I appreciate, you know, the sack-of-grain thing. Now that I’ve got me this here pair o’busted gams, I’ma have to army crawl the rest of the way. So. Saythankya.”

He smiles, & she catches whiffs of knowing exasperation, affection, & a barely-detectable hint of a strange sort of sorrow.

“Next time, try not to jump off of the prison wall. There are other ways down.”

“Who says there’s gonna be a next time?”

Silence.

“Yeah, alright.”

More implied foot-shuffling.
That poor bush.

“Well then. Okay.”

“Okay.”

They have to have killed the damn shrub by now.
It sits, oozing sap, in the background.

As his form paints itself into the distant scenery, she catches a soundbyte on the air.

“I saw a mountain, & I saw a city, steadily sinking but suspiciously calm; it wasn’t an end, it wasn’t a beginning, but a ceaseless stumbling on.”

Grinning, she shakes her head & shouts after him,

“Applicable upstaging. Classy.”

Pivot.
The movement resumes.

A ceaseless stumbling on, indeed.

vaha.

Yvaine leans against the mast & dances around the subject.

Her motion unsettles her companion.
This voyage was no brainchild of hers & lost what little sparkle it had previously possessed many a windblown league ago.

The exchange of azure waters for dry, dun-colored desert sand was not one she’d ever advocate or willingly uphold.
This pilgrimage, as it could only be called, to a once-great vessel, now landbound & choked with grit, registered as having a worth of zero in her estimation.

Any sentiment here has long since turned to sediment.

She squints up at the sun, calculating the amount of time before it would decide to finish the flesh-roasting process.
This is all so very banal; and, therefore, so very necessary.

To hell with the Gobi; long live Atlantis.

She stands, sweating.

Think like a camel.
Right.

taevalik.

Charybdis runs in place, pedaling her boot-clad feet belligerently but going nowhere.
Held by Sōsh’s invisible pinch, she’ll lash about to no avail.

One must pay one’s dues, intentional membership or no.

Yvaine steps over the cow patty & keeps walking.
She eyes up the tree stump lounging languorously in the center of her plot & raises her axe, muttering threats of destruction.

The image is kodak:
She lifts her arms as the buildings breed mushroom clouds-
Laughs.
Dancing to nothing but the hope of an opus that hasn’t yet been enchanted by paper, she’s all summer smiles & sunshine; nuclear winter be damned.

Oh, Skye.

There may be a new contender in the ring; news is still a mixed bag of jumbled & mum.
Placement: firm pro.

And so the celestial bodies turn.
Meteor showers bring fallout, but goddamn are they a sight to behold.
Sign the mailing list & watch the Stars fall.

end transmission.

trui.

In a room saturated with stolen images & found objects, she will watch her fate take the shape of a sweater, poorly knit, on the loom before her like so many of her foremothers.

‘The gift of premonition’: an oxymoron.
These days it’s more commonly known as intuition.
Largely a device of the Sisters.

Pushing her chair back, she sighs & sips her coffee.
The heat feels good on her massacred fingertips.
Twine burn sucks almost as much as burlap cuts.

She rubs her hands together & fantasizes about higher-quality material.

It’s not in the cards.
There are no cards.

Damn this.
Goddamn this.

She will curse her ancestors.
And then she will go back to work.

The daily grind.

The daily weave.

koerant.

Honora: a success story.

Liege: visible, cloak gone.

Chimaera: present, always, but forgiven.

Skeeter: was here, is gone- chased out of the room by M.P.’s better half.

Grier: in town.

Coggs: discovering the joys of collaboration.

The Often Orphan: appears from time to time; watches, silently; disappears.
Fractal follows suit, doppelganger in tow.
It’s not a big deal.

Albertina & The Rolling Thunder resolve their differences, Resolve themselves.

The Banshee has screamed off elsewhere.
Her ghost will haunt, but will no longer hurt.

The Mistress leaves her mess on the table.

Yvaine wears the boots.

Dr. Physician: The Mistress is reflected in his every diagnosis.
She sure is an intimidating act to follow.

The Man With the Blood-Red Eyes dogs her steps & marrs her nights.
When she shivers, it has little to do with the cold.


Day in, day out...

parandama.

Yvaine is replacing The Repair Man.
Yvaine is The Repair Man.
And if there’s one thing her mother gave her, it’s work ethic.
She does not shirk.
She does her job.

Commencing re-storation: now.

Having never seen a single episode of This Old House, she’s Brand New to this.
It’s obvious that the foundation is the first order of business.
Vital organs & all that.

The contractors will hear the news & wait for calls that aren’t coming.

This is her project.
She’s quite determined.
No matter how many times she hits her thumb with the hammer or how often the nail gun turns on her.

The journey begins at the local Barnes & Noble.
Settling into an armchair with her latte, she pulls out Step 1:
The Idiot’s Guide to Home Repair.

belyse.

Yvaine’s headscarf blows in the wind when she drives.
It’s a picture.

The sweat smudges her makeup, but not her brilliance;
She glows.
Hammer in hand, she bangs away at her anvil like The Repairman whose role she’s adopted.
No one in the village believed she could build this forge, much less get it operational.

A little bit of starshine goes a long way.

Mère Lune lights her way, with Père Soleil’s support, while her sisters whisper instructions in her ear.
Ultimately, it shall be her own heart that will be called Guidemaster.

All watch her progress without the use of eyes, beaming their approval.
A worked-stained grease monkey, reeking of tribulation & hard labor, she’s never been more radiant.

Smiling, nodding.

Things are coming along nicely.

ungeist.

He stares, but they won’t see it.
He plans, but they don’t know it.
He’s quick, but he doesn’t look it.
He’s cruel, but they can’t prove it.
He’s smart, but they’ll never admire it.
He’s strong, but they don’t appreciate it.
He’s talented, but they don’t like it.
He’s a secret, but they can’t tell it.
He didn’t say it, but they hear it.
He scars, but they will not show it.
He breaks his toys, but they’ll fake it.
He’s not invincible, but they don’t believe it.
He’s a monster, but he can hide it.

The Man With the Blood-Red Eyes has no soul.