ANATHEMA—THÁNA—ATHAMÉ

      “How are you holding up?”
      “Good evening, Burakh. Is that going to become your default phrase everytime we meet?”
      “Oynon, I’ve said it twice.”
      “Hey, I’m just joking.”

(He was, and that felt so foreign still that Burakh had no idea if it hid something darker. He feared a… resolution having brewed inside of the Bachelor.)

      “Do I get a reply?”
      “You do. I’m doing better, Burakh. I’m…”

Well, he was pondering. That, Burakh could see. He was at his desk, papers in front of him, juggling authorizations from the families, notes, scribbles that… Burakh could guess were depicting people or things but… Well, the Bachelor was no Picasso, let’s put it that way.

      “I’m reflecting. I’m organizing my thoughts. I’m… coming to terms with the fact that I lived.” (He marked there a pause to honor the “... whereas many others didn’t get to” that, even if not said, echoed loud and clear in the attic.) “Thanks to you. Again, Burakh. Thank you.”

Burakh could get used to that. It fanned the flames of inklings of pride — the first of which he had felt brewing his first panacea. The circumstances were… of vastly differing importances, objectively. But to him… Oh, forget about it .

      “I wasn’t going to let you die on me. We need you there.” (He had said that already, hadn’t he? He thought he had.) Dankovsky’s heavy-lidded (because tired — because… (because Burakh was looking.)) black marbles of eyes were on him. The past few days seemed to have taught his gaze a sort of unwieldy, ghostly patience. “You know I don’t… necessarily agree with some of your methods, oynon, but I couldn’t let your position at the Theater stay unfilled, now could I?”

Dankovsky didn’t quite laugh, but came close enough to it that he scraped hints of it, peppered his voice with sprinkles of amusement. Oh, he fell back dead serious soon enough.

      “How many of these.. elixirs of yours did you need to pull me out of it? Was it worth it?”

Oh, we’re nooot going that route again. Nuh-uh-uh.

      “I’ve weighed my options long enough, oynon. Between how many people I could cure with what I’ve given you, and how many people you could cure with your expertise—”
      “Have you made calculations?”
      “I’ve made my choice, and I believe it to be the right one.”

The Bachelor raised a bushy eyebrow, pouted an unconvinced pout, before shrugging and seemingly putting his… if not trust, at least not-suspicion onto Burakh.

      “Are you staying?”
      “I’d love to, oynon.”
      “So, no.”
      “You’re starting to know me well.”
      “It’s only fair, after you’ve gotten a head start.”
      “Try to rest, erdem. You didn’t look too good these past few days.”
      “Don’t you dare flatter me, Burakh, it is highly unprofessional.”

Burakh barked out a laugh — a real one, powerful, drumming, thunderous. He caught how Dankovsky looked amused too. 

      “I’ve met the Commander, Burakh,” Dankovsky eventually said.
      Burakh tensed. “... Well?”
      “I’ve told him what I thought of you.”
      “Oh,” Burakh chuckled, “that sounds like a threat.”
      “It is not, and you know it,” Dankovsky scoffed, audibly piqued. “Still, I am not sure I could… truly change his mind. I think he needs to meet you.” He sunk deeper into his seat. “Let me mediate your first encounter, but until then… keep clear from him and his men.”
      “Such is my plan.”
      “It might be harder than believed, Burakh — they’ve set barricades everywhere. Most districts now have blockades; and they’ll keep making more until the illness is eradicated.”
      “Shit.”
      “You said it, Burakh. Shit.”

Burakh thought of the restless soldiers he had been lucky to avoid so far. He imagined they were pretty trigger-happy. (He wondered if he knew any of them — if any of them bore stitches he himself sewed.)

      Dankovsky interrupted his daydreaming: “As always, Burakh…”

He gestured at the attic, at the empty bed and agape bathroom door. 

      “Are you offering to hide me out?” Burakh asked, a smile involuntarily toying with his chapped lips. 
      “Far from me to harbor a fugitive,” Dankovsky replied, theatrically magnanimous, “but I believe I’ve made a good impression on the Commander, and he would stay away from here.” He looked at Burakh, and Burakh looked at him. His cheeks were pinker than the last time he had seen him, not long ago — good; that was good. “I’ve told you already you could always come and sleep here. It still stands.”
      “Thank you, oynon. I won’t forget it.”

Burakh went out the door.
He settled back at the lair, picking brews from the alembic, leaving them to cool. His eyes darted to the clock. 
The hour was coming. It was crawling and slow — he crawled to the bed and waited for it to come. It didn’t, and it did. It did, and it didn’t. Time was waiting for him to sink so it could swallow him whole.

_____________

THE SERPENT:
(curled against THE HARUSPEX’S shoulders, its head in the neckline of his sweater) I shan't... I will not... tempt you. (with a bitter, yet profoundly relieved smile) I do not think you can be tempted. 

THE HARUSPEX:
(trying to be jovial, but a core nervousness seeps through) Now, what the hell could that mean!

THE SERPENT:
The apple... doesn't quite seem your type of fruit. 

THE HARUSPEX:
(after shrugging) I don't know why you'd say that. I love them, quite a lot. Do you know what we nicknamed our friend group when we were younger? 

THE SERPENT:
... Do tell...

THE HARUSPEX:
The "apple basket gang". (with a nostalgic laugh) Quite the title! 

THE SERPENT:
(hesitating) Quite... but... um... Well. I don't know how long this metaphor could go on... 

THE HARUSPEX:
(chuckling) There's a metaphor? 

THE SERPENT:
(a little irritated) Come on, Haruspex... of course there is... I wouldn't... discuss it openly. 

THE HARUSPEX:
Do you have this much to hide? 

THE SERPENT:
I do. You know I do. I wish you didn't know I do.

(THE SERPENT slowly, slowly comes into a coil. It bites its tail, but doesn’t eat.)

THE HARUSPEX:
(after a small laugh devoid of all mockery) Isn’t this motif a bit too on-the-nose?

THE SERPENT:
I don’t want to be a motif. I want to be alive.

THE HARUSPEX:
… I am sorry I’m keeping you there. 

THE SERPENT:
Ah, I don’t mind too much.

THE HARUSPEX:
(with a laugh) Not in my company, huh?

(THE SERPENT does not respond. Slowly, it moves: still biting its own tail, it circles around THE HARUSPEX’s neck like a necklace, or a fallen halo. It surrounds him like rings do Saturn; like moons do the Earth, like the Earth does its own core.)

_____________

      It was past ten, closer to eleven maybe. Burakh had flung himself out of his lair the second he had woken up from a clammy, suffocating nap. (Sleeping in the lair again, not having to run to the Stillwater to check on the sick—the sick, the one sick, the one he tended to—felt foreign again. He had not slept well, he had struggled to catch rest; it kept escaping him, pushing him back into the anxious, jittery state of wait. His legs kept kicking his blanket off with the memory of running back and forth between here and the Atrium.) He followed a stretch of the Gullet first, inhaling the saline, persistently sweet scent that rose from the waters, unexplainable, plain weird—leaving a rusty aftertaste in his mouth. He went east — ran east, weaving through the growing games of light and shadow of burning stakes that the military used as outposts. He went east so he could go north, and so then he could make his way into the open maw — the Bulljaw. It welcomed him. He thought he felt a hot breath wash over him as he stepped in.
He had gone south (flanking the Gullet) so he could go east so he could go north, and now he would run down. 
Down.
So he could go white—pale in the face, heavy in the guts (that anchored him); 
so all of his blood went to his knees, and his lungs, and his hands — where it was needed. 
Burakh went east so he could go north so he could make his way into the open maw so he could run down—down—down( — down).
He was in the maw/that’s the jaw/that’s stuffy and yet cold like a great cavernous, empty intestine.
He weaved between columns of clay and basalt like wind through cypresses.
He took stairs — like steps — like graben stripes down and into. He felt light on the earth as everything closed on him.
He weaved between clay columns like wind through cypresses,
Burakh had gone east so he could go north so he could make his way into the open maw so he could run down—down—

down

( — down).

So he would meet Nara, crowned by her heavy, dense, dark hair, the two suns on her cheeks—bleeding softly.
Come forth, vivisector. Isn’t that what you do?

       You are still at the altar of the open chest,
       You still part ribs like fingers—you pry them open like a stubborn oyster.
       There’s no offerings—there’s her.
       There’s no milk however sour
       There’s no rainwater however thick with mud
       (with blood)
       (as you always bring.)
       Here are your own eyes and they’re wide closed, clamped open.
       Here are your hands and they’re red. 
       (except when they’re not, which is not often.)

The cut is precise and tensile. Scents of herbs rise as if from the bowels of the Earth it(her)self, swirl-smokes inhaled by Pythiae.
Narana’s foreign body, overflowing with boiling water (because her warm warm hot scorching heart heats her inside(s) and overspills), gives itself away under it like nothing but a paper sheet. Burakh’s blade follows the borders of her spleen like those of a garden plot, and one of the Brides standing by her side contorts sharply, a whine of pain wrung out of her. 

       There are no libations. There’s a wrongness that hangs above,
       sharp like your own blade. You come to the realization it’s not about your hands
       or your guts — which you still have, for now.

She gave kidneys and lungs in the way of the earth giving herbs, giving (back) souls as blades of yellow grass. (She didn’t give anything; the red lumps below her skin were shaped clay. She gave everything there was — the red clumps of her skin were shaped clay.) Her heart was yellow grass. Her heart was a tightly-bound bundle of herbs, her aorta the string that held it together. Flesh-earth, earth-flesh. 
Eat one, eat all. 
Tend to one, tend to all.
(No snake. No beetle. Nothing to crawl up Burakh’s moonflower-tendrils fingers to meet him — he sinks, he falls forth.)

Be khara, she says, but she doesn’t. Her eyes rolled back, slowly, as if she was doing nothing but observing the dome of basalt that hung over them, stretched like stomach leather carpeting the concave belly of a rusty church bell.

As she lay there — dead — alive — really warm even as he wasn’t touching her — colder than blade (a worse, way worse predicament than Dankovsky’s speaking corpse), she raised her arms over her head, drawing a halo around her intricate hair. Burakh plucked a spindle out of her like he could have relieved her flank of a pinewood splinter. When one of the Brides who had stood by reached for her hand, held it, (not in an attempt to immobilize her, to pin her down — reaching loosely in the ways of a friend, or a lover,) another, then the other followed. A deep, bellowing sound was heard, like one of gargling on blood pooling in the back of the throat, and the pathway came to be.

Khodo khara. Right through her, as if where she laid had dipped under her weight to open a well into the earth, Burakh sees his own face. Narana’s hands tighten in the holds of the Brides’, and her face seems to distort with some sort of… fondness. Of an almost-sour recognition. She whistles a sigh through gritted teeth.

Bi khareeb. She was. Bodozho baynam. She got on her feet and rose—standing, gutted, she balanced on the altar slick with her blood—that looked closer to sap. 

       There is no milk. There is no pitted pomegranate. Burakh is not going to kneel—he’s tense like a wire, like a fraying cello string. He doesn’t breathe. 
She levitates in the way of witches, a sin worse than most amongst Brides, and as the three others who stayed by her flayed sides reach for her ankles and knees, trying to keep her anchored, she speaks: 

      “No hard feelings, yargachin… ever.” She looked at him, she seemed to think. Her traits moved and shifted subtly, like rock chiseled by a stream. She smiled and squinted at the same time, as if she had seen through him — perhaps in the ways he could see through her. ”Bite kharaan. (At this, the other Brides tightened their hold around her, humming at her words in approval, coiling together like a pit of snakes.) It is… obvious. It is more obvious now than it was before. We know this about you, and we couldn’t have you any other way.”
      “... Know what about me, basaghan?”

One of the Brides spoke under her breath, humming again: “ you had her, and we’ll have you…” , and Burakh tensed, mildly horrified at the implications. Narana tilted her head back — in the darkness of the Abattoir, against the sooty dome of the ceiling, her pale face rose like the moon. 

      “Do not worry about it. You do not have to know.”
      “... Be oylgono ugyb. How come you do?”
      “We’re told, of course.” (Her “we” was sprawling, invasive in the way of vine, tight with ivy knots. She pulled the three other Brides into her words, and they all nodded again, their faces pressed to her knees, her thighs, her open palms.)
      “By who?”
      “By she who says everything, of course.”

Burakh understood. Burakh was completely fucking lost. (This is the part where he stopped being sure he wasn’t dreaming.)

      "A Kindred One… Ah," Narana sighed, her piercing eyes on him with this pale, dawnlike comfort in them, "a two-fold Kin…"
      "Kindred One, yes, that's what you call each other." (A pause. It's restless, bellowing.) "That's what we call each other."
      "Oh…" She became pensive for a moment. Burakh could see thoughts rise and fall behind her gaze like a slow, composed breath. "Yes, khayaala I suppose, in that sense too…"
      "That sense? What did you mean the first time?"
      "You do not need to know. We know this for you… For you to come to soon. We'll keep it safe… Safe in the ways we keep the Lines under our feet for you to then trace… Later, later, yargachin."

They hummed, everything seemed to tremble and shake. To thrill like a played chord.

      “What else, basaghan?”
      “I have said everything, khөөrkhen. I know everything. Now is your turn. Go down. Go below. 
              Go under. 
                     Go within.
                            Go in.
                                          Go forth.
                                                               Go forward.”
      “Boleesh, stop, I get it. I will.”
      “No hard feelings,” she repeated. “We need you as you are.”
      “Yeah,” he nervously replied, “I need myself too.”
      “More than you know.”

Burakh went east so he could go north so he could make his way into the open maw so he could run down—down—down( — down) so he could cut a living woman (who was a dead woman (who was barely woman at all; who was a bundle of fragrant, foreign herbs he could make no sense of, yet approached with a reverence he offered to things he couldn’t quite mingle with.)) so he could—
punching his way through, tripping Odonghe into crevices he himself barely avoided, he collected bottles of which the glass was cracked, the silhouettes of the splits shaped like mosquitoes trapped in amber, a fingernail (which was a coin which was an earth-disk around a bullet hole) that made his hand grow sharp with the smell of copper, a candle that made his hand fall mushy and sweet with the scent of wax—
so he could collect the blood. So he could collect enough blood to fill a human person if he wanted to give life to it (which he didn’t, because he wasn’t interested in giving life—simply, now, in protecting it.) 
Burakh went east so he could go north so he could make his way into the open maw so he could go down—down—down( — down) so he could cut a living woman (who was a dead woman (who was barely woman at all; who was a bundle of fragrant, foreign herbs he could make no sense of, yet approached with a reverence he offered to things he couldn’t quite mingle with.)) so he could collect enough blood to fill a human person if he wanted to give life to it (which he didn’t, because he wasn’t interested in giving life—and that didn’t come as a realization, as he hadn’t realized, not yet—simply, now, in protecting it.) so he could be

here, 

at the altar etched with the trenches of a spine and five pairs of ribs.

So he could
brew
wax and copper and thread

(milk blood and pomegranate seeds)

into a living,
beating heart, 
which wasn’t his own until it was. 
(and he knew it was.)

Burakh wove into a tense, taut maze of caverns like a sensible needle; his thumping, erratic thoughts followed: the stitching thread. The caverns seemed to close behind him, or perhaps just tighten. To the touch, the walls were dry like bull hide; the ground however made wet, sickening sounds below each of his steps; he felt himself sink with each one of them.

He came to it. He came to see it. He came towards it. 

There are walls, there’s a ceiling — it is stuffy and hot like a chapel in flames. 

BEATS, RESTLESS AND UNEASY, MY ERRATIC HEART UNDER THE FLOORBOARDS OF MY RIBS. 

It was so loud Burakh thought it could burst out of him. It could tear through him like a lightning strike. Each thump punched his ribcage in and he thought all of his ribs would bend under the force. 
If he looks too long at the heart (that is a heart) (that is something else than a heart) (something more than a heart) he feels his skin slowly dripping off of him like hot wax. 
He can see — the vena cava, the aortic arch, both hooked to the ceiling of this stuffy, suffocating chapel, squirming with the weight of a loud, dense blood, hammering restlessly. 
                           the pulmonary vein and artery, sticking out of it like thorns out of a drying apple, open wide and hollow like empty eye sockets or toothless mouths.
                           the valves — pulmonary, aortic, mitral, tricuspid, all agitated, visible through the thin, sunset-red pericardium, flailing like birds, opening and closing and opening like they sought to speak, like they spoke to seek. Like they wanted to reach out and touch.
       Trying to… comprehend it feels like pulling the achenes off a strawberry; it is long; it is daunting; it is ultimately pointless; the flesh is so red, tangy, sweet, juicy; Burakh doesn’t know that; Burakh has never eaten a strawberry. (He’s never eaten a heart before either.) His mouth waters with the ghost of sugariness. His spit tastes rusty and bitter. He retches violently.
The unnaturally low light scratches the oil-like slick of blood with gold, shining nails. It’s everything. It’s everywhere. Burakh sees, Burakh sees well, the spear of Damocles that pierces through the epithelium of the smooth guts-walls that grow out of the chamber like roots; a finger pointing, almost accusatory, at the heart that tucks itself against the wall to avoid its touch. (For how long still?)
If he thinks too long about it — if he looks too long at it — if he lets his gaze stretch and pull and cloak the heart with teary eyes, the ekphrasis dawns on him, slowly at first, then all at once, swinging through him like a pickaxe, his canvas-skin left torn under its knife. The leaf-nervures of the veins move slowly, swayed by the pulse. 
It speaks. He speaks. 
It has spoken. 
Burakh runs. 

Burakh ran down (or up) (or north or south), breathlessly, recklessly, frantically until there was only one heart — his own—beating so incredibly loud in his throat that he felt like he could throw it up, like he was going to. He retched; he tumbled forward; he crawled on all fours. 
His fingernails dug into the soil and the soil threw itself at him, closing around him like a punctured lung, clinging to his shoulders and sleeves until Burakh could see green scraps shedding off of him like burnt skin. The earth held onto him, plucking bits of his smock like feathers, like flower petals. Burakh hurried forward (which was up) (which made his head spin as if he was tumbling down) and felt himself climb. He was bared as if eaten, as if born, as if thrown out/up, naked-armed; he barely registered the limbs that flailed in front of his eye as his. He climbed and his shoulders were shot through by a powerful, biting twinge that almost made him lose his grasp—before he felt something round and hot slither down to his elbow like a pearl of melting wax. He wanted to pay it no mind but it came into his field of view: a slow, long trail of red that trickled from high on him — then lower: he saw his skin on his upper arm parting slowly, coming open a very bright burgundy, blood flowing into the open, thin, precise cut like a river coming alive. More appeared. More appeared. 
A cut for a cut and the world aligns, eh? Modny ish — khavirgan sar — golyn ereg — tolgod — the rest.
He looked away. 

He felt devoured. See? That’s what hunger is. He felt his skin scraped off of him cleanly, like meat off of bones. His ankles felt weak like chicken legs. Felt-felt-feeling-feeling nothing but it, nothing but that, but sensations swallowing him whole and rasping his red flesh. 
He clung to the dirt. Can’t eat the dirt when famine strikes, but the dirt can eat him. He bled on it like a leaf spilling dew drops. He tore at termite-bitten wood with his fingernails and the cold, fresh wind struck him across the face like the worst slap he could have gotten as a child (but never did). 
He emerged, shaking, breathless, his chest punching his diaphragm in with inhales he couldn’t control. In the sick, bile-yellow light of a lantern, the face of the Younger Vlad was staring at him, crouched in terror behind his bed. 
They stared at each other, each looking more like a deer looking down the barrel of a gun than the other. The Younger Vlad’s face crumpled, rippled with pain like the surface of a pond in which had been thrown a rock. 

      “You should have never gone in,” he heaved, and backed himself into a corner. “You should have never gotten out.”

Burakh didn’t wait any longer; he extracted himself from the well like one hauls up a corpse, his arms buckling once under his weight, and dashed out, running through the Maw and into the Warehouses. He had to get home. He had to get “home”. In front of the Soul-and-a-Half fortress, red coats clumped together like fire ants on a dead insect. The place was crawling with them, with the sound of their hammering boots and the barking of their orders — still, not louder than those of the Halves. 

Burakh caught Notkin’s face between two soldiers, apparently interrogating him. From where he crouched behind a stone wall, the Haruspex saw the glance the kid threw on the side, out of the soldiers’ view, for him to read as: “get the fuck out of here!”. And so, Burakh got the fuck out of here.

He wouldn’t make it to Rubin’s hideout, or cross the Gullet to run to his apartment, without running into military. He wouldn’t make it to Lara’s without quite the same, and without—(he heaved deeply as he ran, and his legs bent sharply under his step, almost sending him tumbling down)—falling (he heaved) tripping and hitting his head. The baffling cuts on his shoulders and arms, that he could now feel on his flanks, stung along precise, drawn lines, as if he was trapped in a spiderweb. He wasn’t sure if they still bled, he wasn’t sure how much he had bled. His head was spinning. He had turned back and galloped through the Spleen, his own hurting with a mean stitch in his side as he struggled to breathe. 

He weaved through the cobblestone streets and limped into the Atrium. 

He barged into the Stillwater without knocking and shrunk himself into a corner. 
He crouched low enough that his head didn’t peek through the window and curled in on himself as exhaustion scythed him at the gut, snapping him in half. He fell forward and when he brought his arms forward to catch him, the pain shot through his wrists to his back like he had touched the wires of electric poles. Steps flew down the stairs. In the pitch-black hold of the Stillwater, Burakh caught the silver shine of a pointed revolver. 

      “Don’t shoot.” He tried to raise his hands up and only managed to pull out one. “Don’t shoot. Oynon, it’s me. Don’t shoot.” His voice was wrung thin with dry gasps that punched through him.
      “Burakh?!”

Burakh nodded. He flinched when Dankovsky ran towards him, before seeing him, out of the corner of his eye, pulling the curtains closed.

      “What happened? Where were you?”
      “Long story.” (It was.) “I can’t go anywhere else. Soldiers after me.” (They were.)
      “Are you wounded?” (Burakh was. When he didn’t manage to respond and instead let out a low, pained whine, Dankovsky urged him up.) “Go upstairs. Go upstairs, quickly.”

Burakh needed not to be asked twice. He plunged forward and scaled the stairs; he barely had time to catch a glimpse of the bloodstain he left behind. He tumbled into the attic. He lugged his weight to the small bathroom. As his hand smacked the faucets open, he dragged his arms and upper body into the basin of the shower, and waited for the blood to be washed off of him. The water was running a blinding, sharpened red. 

      “Burakh? Can I come in?”

Dankovsky was standing, cautiously leaning against the wall so as to not appear in the frame, by the door.

      “No,” Burakh croaked.

The needle of the cold water punctured through each of his cuts, and the sting trickled down into the drain.

      “What happened?”
      “I don’t know.” (Technically, not a lie.)

The water was running pink. The color thinned some more. The bite of the cold of the water washed over the bite of the wounds, a dull, blunt pain that froze Burakh’s arms and back solid, weighing him down, clinging to his strength and pulling it into the drain with it.

      “Can I come in?” Dankovsky asked again. 

This time, Burakh said yes.
The Bachelor approached him slowly — Burakh could see this out of the corner of his eye. He hesitated, then crouched next to Burakh’s collapsed body. 

      “Jesus Christ, Burakh,” he said. 

Burakh made a pathetic, pained gurle of a sound. He was shaking like a sick dog.

      “Who did this to you?”
      “I don’t know.” (A pathetic gurgle again as breath and spit fought to crawl out of him at the same time.) “I don’t know. I didn’t see anyone.”
      “They’re… incredibly precise. There had to be someone.”
      “I didn’t see anyone.”

Burakh didn’t tell him how that confirmed what he feared. Oh, they were deliberate. If he focused, he could draw the map of the cuts on his body — and then, the pain blinded him. They didn’t want to be drawn. To be deciphered. 

      “Don’t move.”

He heard that, then the fiddling of hands with the showerhead. When the water started following the limp, heavy carcasses of his arms as they flanked his head, he understood the Bachelor had taken it and was rinsing his arms off—purposefully. He was slow, meticulous in a scared-shitless way; Burakh knew that because he heard how his breath hitched after he held it.

      “Do you remember anything? Anything at all?”

Burakh remembered. Burakh didn’t know shit besides the immediate, painful obvious. 
The water slowly turned a lighter, then lighter even, pink. Burakh’s entire body shivered. He felt something dry and warm on his back, following the drawing of a wound between his shoulder blades — he realized it was one of the Bachelor’s hands and shivered even more.

      “We need to have a look at this,” Burakh heard from far, far above. “Dry yourself off. Get out. Please, come.”

And with that, Dankovsky shut off the faucet and got up. Burakh expected him to leave, but his shoes crawled back into his faltering field of view, and he felt the weight of a towel being… not-quite laid and not-quite thrown on him.

When Burakh stumbled back into the attic bedroom, Dankovsky was standing, all tall, taut and pale, by the bed. He had lined it with more towels, his gaze insistent that Burakh get on it. His sleeves were wet. He was missing a glove. Burakh wasn’t sure if he was wearing his cravat when he first barged in, but it was gone now. He limped to the bed without asking one single question. He sat, one leg crossed in front of him.
He could now see—Jesus fucking Christ—the wounds. Wounds, meat red; he was red meat. Red meat in cuts. He shivered violently. He could see their purposefulness. The tight-lipedness that parted like they wanted bloody, grotesque kisses. Dankovsky touched his skin and his hand colliding with that last idea made Burakh recoil. Sigils. Sigils, all over! All over, all of them. His skin, paper, his pa—his paperskin—oh and his ink too—his thoughts spun violently and he curled in on himself, mimicking the forward-sprawl he had thrown himself in under the water. 

      “You have only one on your back. The… drawing is pretty simple so it won’t take long to suture.”
      “What does it look like?” Burakh croaked. 

When Dankovsky came back from the desk with his bag, he had also taken paper and pen. He scribbled — he was hurried but still meticulously, grimacing, apparently, at his lack of artistic sensibilities. 

      “Like this,” he showed Burakh.

And of course it was. Of course it would be. Branded, huh? Like cattle. Burakh thought he could pass out. The one branding. The one sigil. He crumpled the paper in his fist — his weakened hold, a pathetic fit of anger. 
Dankovsky sat by him, the bed dipping under his careful weight. He brought his ungloved hand to Burakh's skin — his fingers were unspeakably cold. (Burakh’s skin was unthinkably hot.)

      “Jesus Christ, Burakh, you’re burning up. You’re nursing an infection.”

He palpated Burakh’s arms, the pads of his shoulders, the painful brachioradialis. His fingers pressed lightly on the edges of the wounds, gauging their depth, their unnatural curves, making them spit a wine red trickle — venous, at least, Burakh’s dazed mind could make out of it. You lose some, you win some… (He hadn’t won today, at all.)

      “You’re going to need stitches. Give me the time to disinfect the tools.”

In the silent minutes — or could have been hours for all he fucking knew — that Dankovsky was downstairs, sanitizing needle and thread with boiling water, Burakh stayed still, silent, barely daring too loud of an exhale lest it tore through him and made him feel alit with spark-piercing pain again. He wasn’t sure he wasn’t bleeding out; he wasn’t sure of much. Pain was over him like a smothering cloak, dull and hard and sharp and mute and heavy and skirting around his shape like it toyed with him, all at the same time like it wanted to show him all of its faces and never be caught as one. The image was strong in his head, wasn’t it? His body, bent and twisted pathetically, head on the mattress, warm and limp in a pool of his own red — a pool that deepened. The image was strong. 

The Bachelor’s footsteps in the stairs were urgent, heavy with purpose. Out of the corner of his eye, Burakh watched him wash his hands — roll his sleeves up and wash his arms from the elbow down, plastering dark, algae-like hair to his skin; clean the back of his hands by pushing the fingers of one into the spaces between those of the other. Looking like a one-hand handhold. Burakh wanted to ask the Bachelor if he ever felt lonely; lonely enough to hold his own hand. He didn’t have the time to as he walked to, and sat next to him.

Dankovsky’s hands on him were warm, now. It could only mean Burakh’s skin had cooled. Only one was covered, seemingly with the only reusable glove still in the Bachelor’s possession; the warmth seeped through it like blood through gauze — a welcomed sensation, this time. A comfortable, comforting one, all in ways Burakh… wasn’t going to tell Dankovsky, but told himself. He let the thought linger, because he had pushed thoughts quite the same away for long enough that it felt more natural to let it in. The touch, too, felt natural. Dankovsky had been hesitant, reserved, almost, but he had emboldened — not emboldened enough to disregard Burakh’s comfort, and he was careful in his sutures. One of his hands pinched the skin lightly, loosely; it felt more like a gentle hold. Burakh thought, for a second he found funny, about the nature of the situation; and then sloppily, barely-intelligently brought it up:

      “This is deeply unprofessional, wouldn’t you think so, oynon?”
      “Oh Burakh, don’t start.” He was gritting his teeth — Burakh realized it was so he didn’t let out a chuckle, the situation not quite lending itself, to him, to pleasantries. Hey, his lips still twitched with something more than his usual, pulled, complacent smirk. “You initiated it when you barged in.”

Fair enough. There wasn’t anything in the job description that warned of, or warranted Burakh waltzing in, bare-chested and covered in blood.
Dankovsky had fallen into a delicate, deliberate rhythm. His hands were purposeful, firm without being painful. They had determined paths from Burakh’s shoulders to his wrists like many small, strong steps.
Pinch-prick-pull. Pinch-prick-pull. He walked Burakh through deep breaths to ease the pain with a voice that felt distant, distant, growing thin like rising morning mist. 

      “You know what…? Good, Burakh. Good. Sleep.”

(Burakh didn’t want to, Burakh really didn’t want to. He wasn’t sure what the Heart — mix his thoughts around, mix the letters around; e-a-r-t-h — had done to his mind, had done to his own, and the dreams that brewed felt squirming and angry.) Burakh fought against sleep for as long as he could. He twitched often, and Dankovsky had to hold him down so as to not miss a suture.

      “I don’t want to... philosophize anymore.”

Burakh’s voice had tugged Dankovsky out of his contemplative focus and he needed a second to register what was said — it didn’t help that Burakh was lying face down into rough, harsh towels.

      “No one is asking you to right now.”
      “Oynon, I’ve seen something so big tonight. I wish I could think—I could talk with big words. Like you. Like you do. But I don’t want to—not with big words. With big concepts. With things that are so much bigger than me.”
      “There is nothing in this room that is bigger than you. Well, except the room itself.”

(Burakh held this for a while before he spoke again.)

      “I just want to sleep…”
      “You will.”
      “Is that an order?” (He tried to be playful and the strength needed to bring light-heartedness to his voice tore through his dressed wounds and scratched them ablaze like a match.) 
      “It is… friendly advice.”
      “... Are we friends?”
      “Jesus Christ, Burakh.”

Dankovsky held silence. Burakh wasn’t sure if he had any plans to keep talking, if it was worth pushing him. He wanted to cling onto his voice a little longer, though — and he’d be lying if he wasn’t interested in the reply.

       “ … Yes, I’d say we’re friends. And if you don’t think we are, we’ll argue about it when you wake up.”
      “I love arguing with you. I cannot wait to argue about the nature of the Plague.”
      “You’re tired and delirious, Burakh. Sleep.”
      “I will… I am.”
      “Try to not move too much. There’s only so much I can do with the needles I have, so don’t burst your stitches twisting around on the bed.”

Burakh wasn’t reaped off his feet by sleep, he was more… gently tipped into its cold waters. He felt a… patronizing pat on the shoulder. In a last spark of consciousness, he realized as if it had been obvious in the gesture itself that it was not meant to be patronizing — that was Dankovsky’s default state, and the only way he had reliably shown to know to express concern. Almost instinctively, Burakh covered the Bachelor's hand with his. When he didn’t take it back swiftly under his loose hold, Burakh figured they had come to understand each other. (Burakh felt like he could laugh — understanding through touch was supposed to be his thing. Then, the thought was out of him powerfully, as if he had chased it himself.)
He dipped into sleep like one drowns.

_____________

Burakh: He is here with me.
Andrey: He is. It would be more accurate to say that you are here with him. 
Burakh: I haven’t… seen you two around a lot. 
Andrey: Can’t we keep to ourselves? 
Burakh: You can…
Peter: The Tower… is swinging on her base. A flower in the wind…
Andrey: He loves it… her. 
Burakh: … And yet still, he escapes you.
Peter: (laughing) It’s like he has a soul!
Andrey: Everything that has no soul, I/we can take. We can make. It’s all so… graspable.
Peter: Soul is a by-product.
Andrey: The soul is an excited appetite. It squirms in the vial of the chest like a restless animal. I can try to grab it. I can try to hold it down like a bull for branding.
Burakh: Why would you even do that?
Andrey: (continuing) One can live without his animalistic instincts… but should he?
Burakh: What are you asking of me?
Andrey: Of you, nothing.
Peter: He’s… a blank page.
Andrey: He’s an empty vial.
Peter: His soul wanders around and refuses to let itself settle in the hold of glass.
Andrey: Scared it would break.
Peter: Inward.
Andrey: Very sharp.
Peter: Piercing him all over.
Andrey: It’d leave scars.
Peter: It’d never be stitched shut.
Andrey: Mmmh… I can see that.
Burakh: Are you not going to let me talk? You’re sprawling all over the page.
Peter and Andrey (or vice-versa), at the same time: Like blood that spills.
Burakh: Come on now…
Peter: I don’t think his vial is broken.
Andrey: It will be if he stays longer.
Peter: Yes…
Andrey: It will sprawl all over.
Peter: His soul?
Andrey: Yes. Like the pestilence.
Peter: I can see that.
Andrey: It will sprawl…
Peter: It will reach my door…
Andrey: … my feet…
Peter: … my hands—
Andrey: —if I hold them like so.

(They extended their arms upwards, tall white cold columns that carried architraves of cupped palms.)

Peter and Andrey (or vice-versa) , at the same time: This should be the vial of the souls.
Burakh: Hands?
Peter and Andrey (or vice-versa) , at the same time: Yes. 
Burakh: Yours.

(There was a silence.)
(One of them laughed. Both of them laughed.)

Peter/Andrey/Peter and Andrey/vice-versa, at the same time/all alone: Why? Wish they were yours?

(It sounded more like Andrey. A little bit… derisive. Pulled in a tight, mocking smile.)

Burakh: ….
Peter: You cannot handle souls.
Andrey: You handle hearts.
Peter: Kidneys.
Andrey: Spleens.
Peter and Andrey (or vice-versa) , at the same time: You would crush him. You’d bleed him out of his essence.
Andrey: Like citrus fruits.
Peter: Like cicadas.
Burakh: What do the cicadas have to do with this?
Andrey: Your palms are made to handle dirt.
Peter: Clay.
Andrey: Blood, again.
Burakh: Will you let me talk?!
Peter: A Soul would stagnate in the hollow of your hands like rancid-stale water.
Andrey: It would become covered in parasites.
Peter: Your hands are made to cut.
Andrey: … In beautiful ways. Not in ours.
Peter: Crass.
Andrey: Raw.
Burakh: This has gone on for long enough. How many more jumps and capitals do you need?
Peter: Pulling a knife from rotten meat.
Andrey: Polishing it.
Peter: Silver…
Andrey: The handle is fit to my hands.
Peter: I am not in the business of cutting people besides myself.
Andrey: Ourselves.
Peter: Ourself.
Peter and Andrey (or vice-versa) , at the same time: Same thing, except when it isn’t, is it?

Oh, me, oh, my. Oh, my. Oh, my. Oh, mine.

_____________

This, Burakh didn’t know, but as exhaustion and delirium coiled around and inside of him, he started speaking in his sleep. He was face down on a pillow that Dankovsky had had to slide under his head, between his red cheek and blood-stained towel. The words pulled the Bachelor out of his silent watch, his vaguely-there meditation; he didn’t understand them. 
He didn’t understand, but he listened — and it was perhaps better for Burakh to be asleep then, as he would have teased him relentlessly for finally doing so.

_____________

(THE HARUSPEX lies on his side, with one arm bent under his head. [BURAKH IS VAGUELY AWARE HE SLEEPS IN THE SAME POSITION IN THIS BED, IN THE STILLWATER.] The other is over his body, hand close to his face. THE SERPENT is wrapped around this arm, from wrist to shoulder. THE SERPENT'S face rests against THE HARUSPEX’S cheek.) 

THE SERPENT:
... I don't usually hold people. When I do... I tighten around them in my embrace. I crush them without even thinking about it... I suffocate them while my mind wanders... this is all I'm good at, really. Destruction. When I love, I kill. 

THE HARUSPEX:
(voice a little because oh, how he is sleepy) You're doing fine. You're holding me tight, but you're not crushing me. 

THE SERPENT:
... Well... usually... 

THE HARUSPEX:
But usually, you don't hold people, do you? I've been told you just do not. 

THE SERPENT:
…

THE HARUSPEX:
So... Do you not hold because you know you will crush as it has happened before, or do you not hold because you think you will crush... you feel like you will crush... you never let yourself hold because you've always been too afraid you would hurt people?

THE SERPENT:
... 

THE HARUSPEX:
I take it that's the second one. 

THE SERPENT:
I've always been told I would crush. That's what I do, I would do. 

THE HARUSPEX:
But it's not what you're doing right now.

THE SERPENT:
That is not what I am doing right now…

(THE DREAM is SLOWLY SLIPPING, or maybe SLOWLY SPILLING, SEEPING, hey now, eyes on the play, feet on the stage, you’re trying to avoid looking at it dead-on, aren’t you? come on! don’t speak of fear, you’ve crawled through—THROUGH THE PLAYWRIGHT’S HANDS to MORPH INTO into a

new one, another one, an… almost familiar one — and when Burakh registers the scene, he almost slaps himself awake for having thought of it as “familiar”. Dankovsky’s head is resting on Burakh’s upper arm as he sleeps on his side; his cheek, stubbly in a comfortably (uncomfortably, Burakh immediately corrects himself, uncomfortably, and he stifles a nervous laugh) domestic way, pressed into the hollow where the pad of the shoulder meets the bicep. He seems to sleep. Burakh doesn’t dare to move, but still ends up shaking him awake, and Dankovsky’s eyes on him are a very warm, stratified jaspilite brown. 

      “It’s pretty unusual for me to have more than one or two dreams like those per night, you know?”
      “I do not know. You don’t tell me about them.”
      “You’re right, I don’t.”

Burakh held his silence like he was looking for more words to come to him — they didn’t. They fell right out of his mind like fleeting leaves when he brought his eyes on Dankovsky, on Dankovsky’s, who was still looking at him, cheek and neck against Burakh’s shoulder and arm. 

      “I’ve seen your friends in one tonight. Well, seen them again .”
      “My friends?”
      “The Architect and the… slightly more violent architect.”
      “I am not surprised. They come when they’re invited, do they not?”

Burakh really wants to say “ I’m not inviting them”.

      “What, like vampires?”

He then laughs at his own joke. Dankovsky doesn’t, and Burakh feels himself pale (as if he could, as if the dream cared). The waning ghostliness of the twins’ fanged, hollowed faces comes to him. He swallows thickly.

      “... Alright, show me your teeth.”

And to his surprise, Dankovsky does. He pulls his mouth open in a carnivorous, and yet shockingly casual display of them. Burakh’s heart sinks a little with the thought that he would have liked to see them for the first time in a smile, a real smile, in real life, before telling himself that’s just his dream-belief talking; and then some more when he sees how his canines, flanking already-sharp outer incisors, graze his lower lips like two proding blades. 
Oh. Ah. Oh, come on…
Burakh nods. He cannot bring himself to be scared. He cannot bring himself to be… anything but weirdly, deeply comforted. Relieved. He doesn’t explain it. It is a thing — the one thing — that makes sense.
Dankovsky closes his mouth and settles his cheek back on Burakh’s arm. 
Burakh is vaguely aware of the Bachelor’s arms not-quite-wrapped around him, more hazily, ambiguously flanking his sleeping body, as if to guard him. Then, Dankovsky opens his mouth again and, after having settled the tips of his fangs on Burakh’s skin, he digs them into his shoulder in one sharp, puncturing motion. Burakh lets out a yelp, more surprised than anything, — he woke up. 

      He woke up and he was staring at Dankovsky right in the face, his own bulgy, wide confused eyes meeting the Bachelor’s — following the line of his arms, then hands in the still-dark attic, he found them busy reworking a suture on his shoulder, the paleness of waning night catching itself on the needle. Seeing the blood, Burakh felt himself faint, and he let out an almost-comical moan of disgust. 

      “Sorry,” Dankovsky said, holding his arm in place. “I told you to not move too much while you slept.”
      “I’m even surprised you managed to prick me without waking me up.”
      “You were deep asleep. I called you, shook you and you didn’t budge. I’m almost finished with it, you slept through the whole thing.”
      “Look at that… Velvet-hands oynon who can stitch someone back up with no painkillers.”
      “Enough. I don’t know what the hell happened to you yesterday, but it exhausted you enough that you weren’t woken up by stitches. Pretty impressive if you ask me.” 
      “Finally my chance to catch a good night of rest,” Burakh cynically laughed.
      “You weren’t unconscious for very long. You should try to get some more sleep.”
      “I should, eh?”

Dankovsky ordered him to sleep with a brush of his palm over the new stitches, as if to set them down like fresh plaster. Burakh felt himself shiver. He slid his arms under the pillow and buried himself in it. 
He didn’t sleep yet, he didn’t let himself; he wanted to prove a point, to show fortitude. Or maybe he wasn’t particularly excited at the thought that yet another dream would creep up on him — he’d had enough. 
He’d had enough of the cutting and sewing (and being cut and being sewn!), of piecing dreams together, or piecing all of the rest too. Enough of devouring (and, more rarely being devoured). He could use some sleep. He could use some sleep…

      “I like your tongue,” Dankovsky eventually said when silence had settled, and Burakh looked at him with huge eyes, suddenly awake, tearing up as held down a surprised cough (not that Dankovsky could see — he was head in his papers).
      “My? Sorry?”

Dankovsky turned to him, an eyebrow raised. 

      “Your tongue? Your mother tongue—well, I don’t know if you consider it your mother tongue. Your language. Your… Does it count as patois?”
      “Oh. Ooh, okay. No, I mean—I guess it’s more of a… disappearing language. And, um, I’m not very good at it. I grew up with it, but… I’ve forgotten most of it.”
      “Lack of practice?”
      “Yeah. Yeah, that.”

Dankovsky’s attention lifted from him — not out of disinterest, but a… courteous offer not to bother him anymore. 
His mind was on the Tower. Burakh could see his mind was on the Tower — he was writing about it, sketching it roughly on already-inked papers. He was weighing something on precarious scales in his mind, Burakh could see if in the glimpse he got of his furrowed, tense brows. His eyes darted to the window, to the Tower that witnessed him witnessing it. Burakh wished the damn window had curtains. 

      “I’ve found the source of the blood,” he spoke, and his voice came out croaky, woolen.
      “You have?”
      “Yes.”
      “... May I know?”

Burakh held back; just for a second. 
He had found the source of the blood — overseen by the Tower, pinned (literally, almost) by its spear, by its spine, by its colossal body. He’d found where the singular talon of that tall crystal magpie threatened it with a gaze — and with so much, too much more. 

      “... I need to… understand it better. I’ll tell you more later.” Burakh shifted on his side so he could catch Dankovsky’s gaze — it felt manipulating. It was. He understood damn well, and he knew the Bachelor would too, if he told him now. It felt like he was poisoning the waters of the disarming eagerness the Bachelor was offering him. Burakh’s heart sank through him, outside of him when Dankovsky’s eyes widened, the darkness of their depths catching flecks of the rising dawn and the lit candles as he asked: “Will you trust me to tell you more later?”
      “I will, Burakh. I do.”

Burakh smiled and nodded. His lips hurt as he pinched them. 
Dankovsky waved at him to go back to sleep, and Burakh didn’t need to be asked.

      There was no dream. Not even a dream about nothingness, about that suffocating black velvet that lined the bottom of nightmares like the silt of a bottomless, bedeviled pond. Burakh wouldn’t get to swim, wouldn’t get to drown for a third time this night. 

                   (Dankovsky was at his bedside — reserved, restrained, leaning over as if to check his breathing. He blew out the candles and covered the window with his coat when a streak of dawn slithered through, snaking over Burakh’s wounded shoulder and cheek.)

_____________

      He is not dreaming (be quiet! He is not), merely thinking. Didn’t get too much time for it these past few days, eh? He is thinking. It aaall comes back to so much, and so little still. 
Burakh thinks he still smells rust on his fingers, feels on his skin the sickly leech of viscous blood. He shakes his head as if that could push the nightmare out — because this is what it is about. 
This is what this is about, isn’t it?

Thanatica the Pale — Dome the Concave and Bright — Body the Concave and Pale — Eyes the Bright. 

Oh God, Burakh thinks, there’s also that goddamn Tower —
that tower the Pale and Bright and Concave (or is it convex? Gibbous like a horned moon—
moon horned like a Bride—
like a Bull.)

Burakh thinks, and it dawns on him that this is worse: he is not sure it was a nightmare. 
He is, in ways; his stomach churns, his ears ring with the sound of cruor and gore, his lids are branded with the red lumps of the unfathomable depths of the Bachelor’s thoracic cavity — but this is not what lingers. 
What lingers are his dark eyes on him, sickeningly alive, alit, placid; are the shivering birds of his lungs–spleen–stomach that huddled together; is the snake that slithered out, and that Burakh was sure would speak. 
What lingers is the warmth of an inside. 
What remains is Dankovsky’s hums as they rose to the ceiling, filling the air expansively like a sweet, tart scent. 
What remains are the red little wildfowls—the red little plums—Burakh wasn’t sure he hadn’t been hungry—Burakh wasn’t sure he wasn’t hungry—that sheltered under the dome of the Bachelor’s ribs and sternum. 
                            The memory of the cut — of having discovered and known, and of knowing nothing at all. 
Burakh kept that—keeps that to himself. 

      (This, Burakh wouldn’t admit, not even to himself; but I do not need his permission to do it in his place. His thoughts were a maelstrom of “don’t think about it”, and “don’t let yourself think about it”. And the more he didn’t let himself think about it, the more it punched its way out of the tangled knots of his thoughts, growing louder–bigger—sourer—sweeter—growing all sorts of things, growing for the sake of growing, of being witnessed. It swelled in his chest; a needy, inescapable clot in the vein Burakh stitched shut himself by fear it would burst.
He didn’t let himself think about the strained wrists, the white hands, their leaf-nervured backs, the black stipa hair that poked from apertures in the white shirt like snowpiercers in the spring. Not about the warm dry hand on his painful damp back; about the heavy, stubbly cheek against his shoulder. The inside/s he wasn’t to see. Not now, not yet.
Oh, he was starting to know what he was up against.

— No, it wasn’t against. There would be no struggle, he thought, he found.
Unfortunately, there wouldn’t.)