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.