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.