ANATHEMA—THÁNA—ATHAMÉ

      The dawn air was busy, buzzing, electric — already.
The red-rags-sister’s (Aspity, as was her name, as was fricative like ruffle in tall grass) house was swollen with light, with silhouettes and whispers; all bled in and out of it. Nobody budged when Burakh made his way through: he was welcomed in. What a blissful change of pace from the day before, he thought. 

The day really started when he was given a coin from a man, a quest from him too, and a necklace of strung words-beads that hung heavy from his neck — its weight alone could make him stumble. 
The question matters, not the answer; to the listener, not the speaker — yeah, well, he still would like his answer to matter. He’d still like his answer to matter — he remembered Dankovsky telling him he had answered Rubin’s. Burakh thought he would like to check. 
He made his way to Lara. 

Following the Gullet up the Hindquarters, it struck him: the town was bulging, blistering with red clots in the crevices of brick and mortar; it sprawled like blood through gauze on the soot-grey walls. 
A pestilential fetor rose from the soil like mephitis. It filled the air with the thickness of ash.
Pestilential was just right. 
Shit. Shit. Shit.  
He started hearing them — groans of fever and ache from behind the ulcerated walls. He turned on his heels and ran for the southern Gullet bridge, dashing through the Warehouses. 

She made the offer first — a reunion. 
Burakh knew this could be the last day they were… safe enough to gather — the disease, whatever it was, had already outgrown the Crude Sprawl; and was growing some more. Its putrid breath had spread north; from the other side of the tributary, Burakh could see how the houses had reddened, as if covered in rashes. He wondered: did it hop rivers? Did it follow man, child, beast? Could the boat carry it, like Charon does the dead? (Could the dead carry it?)
He promised Lara he would try his best to reunite them all. 

Then for what felt like hours, he tried, he did try. From now on, he would have to wait for midnight. (He waited for midnight.)

(He waited for midnight, and my fucking god, he thought, he didn’t have time to get bored. They threw him around from Lump to Crucible to Skinners—

the Skinners are clouded in soot. 
They’re swarming with red things, mushed berry-like blood clot-like, clay- and ruby- and spleen-slice-like.

He is given a cloak and a mask — he sees himself in the Orderly that puts the weight of them on his arms like something else to carry. “Bachelor’s orders.” Ah, then.
—to Fortress, where Notkin fights his own gaze to be hard, composed and mature in the face of fear — and fails — to Stillwater to—)

The bell tolled. Its languishing, stirring peals tore through him. The Tragedians had walked out; they were now perched on walls, on pillars, on stairs like white-faced crows, and they all pointed to the Town Hall. Clouds were rising from across the Gullet. 
No one in the Town Hall was happy to see each other — especially not Rubin who, when Burakh tried to elbow him into joining them at midnight, groaned and cursed. 
The Bachelor was somber. His head was high, his pacing strides measured. His voice, as he slowly, meticulously (and with a hint of authoritative arrogance) explained what was known of the situation, was clear. It broke once in a hint of discomposure, and it struck Burakh that he was a foreigner — in this town, in this power struggle, in the face of his illness, for all he knew. 
(None of them fared any better. At least the Bachelor could talk — he hadn’t lied, he did it well. Burakh wondered how much of his time he spent in the Capital just blabbering about things, and what things.
It also struck him that the Bachelor was… knowledgeable. As much as it hurt Burakh to yield this to him, he was. His mouth was full of details and precisions that Burakh could only blink at so he didn’t look too lost. Still, he thought — he would keep himself from addressing him with too high of titles. For fun — as it was shaping itself to grow painfully scarce very soon.)
Burakh learned of the Fund, and his throat began to ache with hunger; with the thought of food this money could buy. (He was soon to find the prices had soared. He would find that and his stomach would turn on itself like a cornered, furious animal.)

      “We will need all the common sense and help we can get.”

He threw a glance at Burakh. 
Shit, the tinctures — so he meant it…

(—to the peculiar house where the now-doyen Kain sent him. Through the thick miasma the illness puked in the snaking streets, the place smelled potently of twyrine, turpentine and carraway.
Don’t be weird to me, Burakh thought as he pushed the downstairs door open. He found the man—the Architect who, shoulders low and eyes bloodshot, sent him—
—to another damn house, fine, he’d go to another fucking house.
Burakh still had the time to realize how familiar his eyes were. In the darkness of his attic, they looked so distinctively bright against the black canvas of a reclusive, paint-stained corner.)

Where else then? Where else now? The town seemed to tighten around him. It swirled and billowed. As the evening breeze came on its sharp legs, the miasmas seemed to thin, to be dispersed by the bite of cold — to grow more agile, too; sifting around Burakh as he escaped the Crude Sprawl like butterflies of charcoal dust. 

Burakh hurried back to his workshop. He had just enough time to focus; blood-brown, brown-black, black-blood. The three tinctures the Bachelor had asked for (or, ah, crap, had he asked three of the same? Well, Burakh thought he would have to deal with the difference. He, too, was interested in what the doctor would find).

      “... It’s spreading fast,” Sticky said. He wanted his voice solemn — it came out fearful and croaky. 
      “Yes,” Burakh said. “It is. I’ll ask you to keep yourself out of trouble.”
      “Who are you going to heal with these?”
      “I’m not healing anybody.” Sticky squinted, almost accusatory. “I’m bringing them to the Bachelor. He wants to study them.” And, Burakh thought, he wanted him to. It wasn’t that Burakh didn’t… trust his father’s trade — but he thought maybe having these new, scientific eyes on it would convince him. Reassure him. (That, and he wanted the Bachelor to bite his tongue over the steppe matters comment. He wouldn’t lie; he wanted that too.)
      “The machine is slow to distill…”
      “It is. I need to… (He gave the copper of its round belly a few flicks.) repair it. I need to find something to repair it.”

And fucking fast, he thought. As if he heard that, Sticky nodded.

      "This won’t be enough to fight the disease,” Burakh breathed. “Might slow it down. Might win us some time.”

Sticky nodded again.

       “What’s your plan?”
       “Not even sure if I have one, kid.” (That was a lie. He did. Something both so fantastical, fickle, and yet unavoidable.)

Brewing didn’t feel… particularly solemn. The alembic was this old, sturdy thing; it made a rattling sound like it had a loose tooth. Burakh distilled two tinctures and had just the time to put the last one over the embers before he was to meet Lara, Stanislav and Grief (and he was fully ready to show up at any of their houses to drag them out by the scruff if he had to. But he really hoped he wouldn’t have to.)

_____________

      The air was cold; the fire was warm; sitting along the circle around it where the two met felt like being cleaved in half, and all three of them were trying to find their place in the divide. 
All three of them were trying to find their place. 
There’s not enough space to fit. There is too much of it to fathom. Emptiness stretches palpably between each of them, and around them, pushing them together. Rubin lets out a sigh — of relief, of longing; his breath rolls over the hills of the steppe like an eastern wind. Burakh’s lungs twitch with something akin to sorrow; he wishes Rubin would let himself see the steppe how it sees him. 

       “So you’ve been to the front?”
       “Medic,” Burakh spat like an expletive. “Were you conscripted?”

He realized quickly that was a… sore subject. Rubin’s eyes darkened, and his upper lips twitched with the itch of a sneer.

       “Went to the front,” he said, and Burakh noted he didn’t stay if he was conscripted.
       “Is that why you’re bald?” Burakh attempted to joke.
       Rubin didn’t find it funny one bit. With a glare, he replied: “Among other things.
       “Got my letter, didn’t show up, and nobody came to fetch me,” Grief answered at his turn. He pointed at the Tower, the glow of which pierced through the night like its breath. “Damn thing repels even the wickedest of conscription officials.”
       “Can we talk about something else?” Lara asked.

And they did.

Grief thinks the fires of the disease will burn the things-as-they-are, and will grow from the ashes the things-that-could-be. And the things-that-could-be are not pretty. Grief thinks he will feel right at home. (Burakh wishes he could feel at home.)
Lara thinks the fires of the disease will eat the ropes of bonds. (The thinks that, and she walks closer to the fire. She’s not afraid of being burned. She seeks warmth, and Burakh sees how Stakh and Grief, instinctively, come closer too.)
They think it’s the pest, the Sand Plague, that wildfire of a disease Rubin had mentioned to the Bachelor. (Well, Burakh knows he mentioned it to the Bachelor). Burakh kicks the soil of his shoe and it, dry, thin, pale, rises in swirls not dissimilar to smoke.   
Lara says it was not the plague that brought them together, but him. Burakh is not sure if he ought to savor these words — this perhaps last time he gets to be Cub, as the nickname slips past everyone else’s lips like they had never stopped calling him that. Cub, and not Burakh. Not Haruspex. Not whatever was in the weight of his father’s name. (He thinks about his father. It sours the mood.)

      “And you don’t remember the girl at all?” Grief asked. The warmth of the fire had bled into them, and the conversation had grown livelier. “A cousin you met once, maybe? An illegitimate sister? A forgotten girlfriend?”
      “I don’t even know my cousins,” Burakh replied. “And do not speak ill of my parents like that.”
      “I was joking.”
      “Didn’t laugh.”
      “And the girlfriend hypothesis?” Grief insisted. 
      “He never had a girlfriend in his life,” Rubin immisced himself in the conversation.
      “That’s right! I never did! Then what?”
      “Boys,” Lara interrupted, “are we fourteen again?” (She didn’t try to sound scolding, and she wouldn’t have succeeded anyways; her voice was soft, melancholic for days past. Burakh could hear she was trying to cherish the moment but slipped, slowly, into a dulled-edge nostalgia.) 
      “I have intimacy issues. Who cares? Do you care?”
      “Cub…”
      “He’s never had a girlfriend either!” Burakh pointed at Rubin.
      “... I also have intimacy issues,” he replied. (His pointed pause went right over Burakh’s head.)
      “See? Who cares.”

Burakh was not losing his temper, but the emphatic rise of his voice was not completely purposeful. Drunk on the feeling of coming together again, at least, at last, (maybe for the last time — until the illness burned itself out, if it didn’t burn them first,) Burakh had missed the apologetic shrug Rubin had offered to Lara, and the shushing motion he had made in her and Grief’s directions — he had also missed the compliant shrug they gave back.

      “Between that woman,” Burakh eventually continued as he calmed down, trying to force silence out of the group and indulge, just a little bit more, in pointless chatter, “and the kids who latched onto me like orphaned calves…”
      “What now?” Rubin interrupted.
      “If a cow loses her calf at birth and there is, in the herd, a calf that has lost its mother,” Burakh intently explained (the heat of the fire was starting to get to his head. If he was any more of bad faith; he’d blame the dregs of last night’s twyrine settling at the bottom of him), “you put the two together. Then, if you’re lucky, the orphaned calf will imprint on the mother cow, and the mother cow will imprint on the orphaned calf, and she will lick it dry and clean…”
      “Have you gone nuts?” Grief asked from across the fire.
      “I’m talking about cows. Cows.”

All but Burakh shared a glance. Tight smiles tickled the corners of their mouths, and Burakh knew they thought he couldn’t see it — and he would gladly say weirder stuff if that meant they could share a good moment, and not one torn by anxiety and sorrow. 

      “Your nerves are fraying,” Rubin said — as if his own were not.
      “Had a bad beginning of the week,” Burakh sobered. “Won’t lie to you, I've had a BAD beginning of the week. I wish I could go get a drink”
      “What's stopping you?”
      “I'm not going to the bar,” he scoffed, “the two… weirdos are gonna do telepathic tricks on me again.”

A rise of eyebrows coursed through the group. “Again?” Yes, again, and he didn’t want to elaborate.
Rubin shrugged

      “If you go there often enough, they start to merge with the walls.”
      “How do you know?” Burakh turned to him. “You go there often? Why?”
       Stanislav frowned. A deep cleft cut through his forehead, and his mouth soured. Should have shut my mouth, Burakh thought. “To drown my stress and grief. Evidently. (He turned to Filin.) Not you.”
      “I can swim.”

Burakh caught the pensive smile on Lara. 
Like the good old days, eh?  
Then, her mouth soured too. 
The wind shifted, and a mist, forward smell of soot and sickness followed the hills from the north. It got cold. 
Then they extinguished the fire, it felt like a funeral. (One more.
One of many.)

In the last sparks of light, they noticed something by the train tracks — something small and bipedal.
“That’s your Shabnak,” Grief snickered. “Shut up, will you?” Lara had immediately scolded him. “I’ve heard of a child living here. Yes, a tiny orphan thing, often wandering alone.”

(Orphan thing, eh? 
Burakh wondered if people thought of him as wandering alone. Sure felt like it…)

_____________

      Burakh gathered the tinctures that had brewed, and hurried to the Stillwater. He had managed his time like utter shit, and his chances of catching the Bachelor awake had thinned to nothing. He’d wake him up if needed, he thought — and then thought about the sharpness he had in his eyes and how it would feel tearing through Burakh if he kept the Bachelor from getting his beauty sleep. 
Tough luck!
He shoved the vials in his pouch and pockets and hurried across the Gullet. 
The air was putrid and dense as the wind had turned; it carried black specks and twyre pollen in a thick, heavy amalgamation. West of the Warehouses, it thinned, grew closer to mist. Then, it seemed to dissipate entirely, and Burakh took a long, welcome breath. 

When he first spotted him, Burakh thought he was a crow. But it was — it was the Bachelor, brisk and brash and boldly cutting from a Marrow street and into the Spleen. 
Where the hell was he? Where the hell had he gone?
Burakh guessed he could have just left the Theater, but he seemed agitated. He decided to follow him at a distance — going back and forth, wondering whether he should call out his name or should stay way far. The answer came to him plainly when he saw: the Bachelor was wielding a knife. Met with the muggers already, I reckon. The blade was long and sharp. The handle fit for a hand. Burakh could guess he had bought it from Grief, and it almost made him snicker. 
Burakh followed him then, trying to keep a few houses between them at all times. Balancing being far enough as to not creep him out (and be out of knife throws’ reach) but close enough to make sure he didn’t run into more trouble (the vials started feeling damn heavy, and Burakh would like the Bachelor not to get mugged so he could dispose of them at once) shaped up to be harder than he expected: Jesus Christ, he Bachelor was damn fast on these thin legs of his. Fast, but unsteady: he walked with a dangerous list to the left, bent from the waist up with an arm pressed against it. 
A stitch in the side?
His strides got more and more unsteady as he approached the Atrium — when he finally reached the Stillwater, every two steps was missed. This is no stitch in the side.

Burakh waited to see a light in the attic before entering; and when he did, Eva, downstairs, didn’t flinch as hard as the first time. They could even exchange a gaze that didn’t make her recoil in fear. 

      “I think he’s wounded,” she said, her voice pale and panicked.
      “I think so too.” He made his way to the first few stairs. 
      “I’ll help him!” Eva called after him. 
      “No, you won’t. I’m a surgeon, I will.”

A sour pout crinkled her rouged lips. 

      “I could help!” she insisted. 
      “Stay out of my hands. I don't want to run a needle through your fingers.”

He scaled all of the stairs in brisk strides. Just before the door, he halted suddenly — he needed to appear collected, and not like he had chased the Bachelor from the other side of the Guzzle. He knocked, and his hits were still a little bit too violent. He didn’t hear an answer, and peeked through the door. 

      “Bachelor?” No reply still — he pushed in, and only the subdued light of an oil lamp on the desk greeted him. Something shifted on the bed; he heard the rustle of bedsheet and cover, and a grunt — a pained, breathless, hoarse scraping of the throat. Shit. “Oynon?” The word had escaped him — shit, again; he, in a blink, came to terms with it when he realized he had done well the job of catching the Bachelor’s attention, who was now staring at him. Staring from under sweat-wet brows, his dark eyes almost black as he heaved, face grown pale, lungs swelling with labored breaths. 

He saw Burakh. He looked at him for what felt like minutes, trying to inhale and exhale slowly, arm pressed against his side — Burakh noticed something growing red against his sleeve, darkening the burgundy of his vest. His jaw jutted as the realization set in.

      “Burakh,” Dankovsky greeted him, forcing a sarcastic, wide smile from which tumbled a voice he wanted detached and poised — trying to look like he still had control.
      “What happened, oynon?” Burakh asked. He was starting to get an awfully clear picture in the dim attic room.
      “Your townspeople dislike me,” the Bachelor sneered, “and they show me.”
      “Muggers?”
      “I do not know, Burakh,” he huffed, “I didn’t stop to ask him. Had a knife, if that matters. Lunged at me.” He grimaced, and his face paled some more. “Had to kill him to save my skin.”
      “You did well. They’re hated for wielding blades. You can steal from their corpses if you find anything worth the trouble.”
      “Oh, Burakh, this is sick.” It didn’t escape them that they were both wielding blades.
      “They think they can get Kain money from you.”
      “Who the hell said anything about money?” the Bachelor barked. Burakh noticed he was letting him take steps forward. Maybe he could… “All I’ve gotten from them so far is errands to run and messages to relay across town. Do you people not have the telephone here?” he sighed, exasperated. 
      “Does this look like a town with the telephone?”
      “Telegraph?” the Bachelor asked, to which Burakh shook his head again. “Carrier pigeons?!” he asked again, louder.

They stared at each other. Dankovsky was starting to breathe more evenly, and Burakh could spot near his bed his full bag — he could probably find compresses and disinfectant in there. 

      “Well, we have pigeons, but no one can train them.”

Dankovsky shot him an irate gaze, a black arrow that broke swiftly as he croaked out a laugh well in spite of himself — then he grimaced again and contorted on his side, the pain stabbing him through the rib. 

      “Don’t make me laugh, Burakh, my guts are going to spill.”
       It struck Burakh that he was hurt, with no way around it. “ Let me see.”
       The Bachelor scoffed. “I can take care of myself. ”

Burakh saw how his hands shook. His wrist was red with the spilled blood, and his fingers struggled to open the buttons of his vest. 

      “Why should I?” Dankovsky asked — it felt more like he was giving Burakh a reason to convince him. 
      “I’m a surgeon. It’s my job to stitch people close.”

This seemed to do it. Dankovsky slowly, painstakingly, shrugged off his coat. When Burakh reached out to take it away, he waved it off swiftly. Burakh could now see how the blade had gone through the layers of cloth: the wool of the vest bore a horizontal slit, the lips of which looked damp with blood; the white shirt underneath had been cleanly cut through and threads of its interwoven cotton peeked through the vest like red cobweb. The stain was growing. 
Dankovsky managed to undo his vest; he chucked it off to the side with apparent difficulty. He worked at pulling the hem of his shirt out of his pants and it hit Burakh that damn, this had taken a turn. Both out of respect for the Bachelor’s privacy (what privacy? He had to undress to get a wound taken care of) and because the scene was awfully familiar to Burakh, searing the back of his eyes and of his throat with the persistent, haunting disgust of having had to do that before, he turned to the Bachelor’s bag and combed through his belongings for silk thread and suturing needle. 

The oil lamp had to be brought to the bedside; in the dim light, Burakh could finally see it.
The cut was sinuous and twisted, uneven as could be guessed where Dankovsky had suddenly shoved his attacker away; it followed the curve of the costal arch, where the skin was taut and thin — tauter and thinner as the Bachelor lay back, biting onto the thumb of his leather glove. The blood appeared black in the penumbra, wet, slick. Burakh cleaned it and gauged the depth of the cut — a surface wound. The Bachelor had been filthy lucky.

It felt unreal how composed the Bachelor was — was trying to show himself to be, even as Burakh pulled the two lips of his wound together with a curved needle. He forced himself to breathe deeply, to let his head fall on the pillow behind with an almost reprehensible amount of restraint. There was a collected elegance in the way he lay there and bit on his glove to not howl out in pain. It felt crass for him to have this much control on his breathing and, as twisted as it could make him, Burakh was proud when he heard him spit out a curse. Maybe the Bachelor was just a guy like the others, in the end. He had refused painkillers — which Burakh found both arrogant and… shockingly, for the type of guy he thought him to be, selfless. 

      “There. Well, try to not do anything too harsh that would tear those stitches open. I don’t know if I feel like redoing them.”
      “I’ll make sure to tell the muggers that doctor Burakh would be really mad if his hard work was desecrated,” Dankovsky snickered. “Do you mind?”

When Burakh raised his eyebrows, Dankovsky gestured at him to turn around; he then took off his shirt. Burakh hopped on his heels and walked to the center of the room. 

       “Well,” Burakh eventually said, “I actually had come to bring you the tinctures you had asked for.”

He heard the Bachelor stifle what sounded awfully like a sigh of relief or satisfaction. 

       “Leave them by the microscope, then. I’m… quite awake. I’ll study them tonight. (Then, the rustling of something.) Once I’m done sewing these holes up.”
      “You’ve brought a… sewing kit?”
      “You ought to when you travel, Burakh. You ought to.” He sighed. “I had a… long trip there. The soles of my shoes could have fallen off. I could have worn through my socks.”
      “But you didn’t.”
      “But I didn’t. And now some maniacs have taken upon themselves to wear through my vest.”
      “I’ll leave you to it.”
      “Thank you, Burakh.” (Burakh met his eyes, and he realized he also meant it for the stitches.) “Good night.”
      “Good night.”
      “Don’t get shanked on your way home.”
      “I think they fear me more than they do you, oynon.”

Dankovsky crushed a stifled laugh against his palate, and he snorted. Burakh pointedly closed the door behind him when he left. Downstairs, Eva had been waiting nervously. 

      “How is he doing?”
      “He’ll live.”

Her face grew pale. 

      “He’s fine, ” corrected Burakh intently. “Don’t bother him too much. Stitches are fragile.”
      “I didn’t intend to.”

Burakh also pointedly closed the front door behind him when he left. 

Following the arterial road of the Atrium, he felt followed. Something, he thought, was trailing him—no, dawning on him, with all the weight of a sky; making him bend his spine under it. It was touching him; it was a graceful, delicate scratch; it was a cumbersome, aggressive caress. Its shadow walked before him, stretching even past the bridge; its light was lunar and opaline. 
It was the damn thing — the damn tower. Burakh picked up the pace, fearing it would take flight and land on his shoulder like the swarming crows that the sky seemed to puke on the town since early morning.

In the Warehouses, the pale glow of the tower ceded ground to the orange light of lanterns, and its ethereal lightness to the roughness of rust. Burakh sighed in relief. 
He made his way to the workshop — things didn’t quite look as he had left them, but he realized the kid had been here. Nothing to worry about. The place was still warm with the heat of distilled extracts. Burakh went to bed absolutely knackered.

_____________

      (So it was your brother then.)
Burakh recognized the eyes. Sharpened, needle-heads blue things with a wide black pupil for thread hole.
Andrey came to him. His step was nonchalant. Heavy. Loud. Aggressive. He moved through the fabric like scissor blades on silk.

(Where did you come from? Burakh thought, but didn’t ask. How did you come here? He thought again, but didn’t ask. He wasn’t even sure Andrey couldn’t read these thoughts as plainly as you do.
First your brother, and now you? How do you manage such things?)

How do you feel yourself thinking you fit? the Stamatin asked. His voice was cold and accusatory. How d’you think yourself feeling you fit? Are there still hollows to squeeze yourself into like wet clay?
Why the mean tone, buddy?
Are you welcome? Do you feel like you are welcome? Do you think you are welcome?

(He didn’t answer this.)

Have you seen her? The Stamatin gestured at — at nothing, at a pitch-black, amorphous ceiling. Still, Burakh knew what his fingertips itched to point. You haven’t seen her. You have looked at her, with these snide gazes of yours; with that boiling coldness at her escaping you. You detest things you don’t understand. Yes, you do. That is the burden of man.
Are we not men? 

(Andrey’s face contorted in a wicked, amused, mocking grimace.)

You unfinished stain of ink you. You bloated blood-shape on parchment hide. I barely trust you to be a witness. The blades of your eyes could tear the moment in two — they are tearing the moment in two.

(He pushed down something, anything — whatever it was, it scattered into shards in a horrible racket, and Burakh jumped back to avoid getting cut.)

And if your folk is born of clay… Why do you fear me being born of stone? No man remembers his birth—yet I remember coming alive to the screams of my brother. I was awake when you were not even breathing, I pulled myself into life when you were still cradled and smothered. When your soft wailing was drank by the earth, coursed through roots. I shan’t compare myself to you. You were born out of soil and I was born out of stone. Out of fine marble. I was carved and you were molded. I was chiseled out and you were stuck together. Haphazardly, may I add. I already see you crumbling at the joints. (He moved, he moved, he was unnaturally fast, he tore through the space like a shot arrow.) Water could dissolve you, and the sun could crack you open. I could carry the roof of the Erechtheion on my head, and your spine bends under the weight of the sky. Oh, you Atlas of pebbles and dirt! I carry the weight of the temple and you can barely carry your father’s name!

(He was growing erratic. His breath was echoing against the borders of the dream, bumping into them, tearing to tear through them. Burakh didn’t like that. Burakh didn’t like that one fucking bit.)

Witness. Witness, witness — I won’t tell you what she is made of. What she is shaped of. Shaped with. How I—we have shaped her. No—she has shaped herself. That’s what she does.
What shapes you, huh? What are your foundations? What holds your silhouette of stretched stomach-skin into the form of a man?

(He moved again. Burakh boiled — something overcame him. He swung his fist, and it hit Andrey in the chest — it hit him in the chest and pain tore through Burakh’s knuckles, wrists and arm to the neck with the force he opposed to the blow.)

Bones, Burakh. Bones, always. What will you do without them? My marble holds itself like the neck of a proud horse, my spine the column—the pedestal—proudly carrying my head. Your neck bends at the seventh cervical like a dying swan’s. You’re going to eat dirt, walking like something is pulling your face to the soil, like you want to kiss it. You can’t even look at me in the eyes. Look at your hands. What did you gain from trying to break me? Look at them. Your tools… Your precious tools. Throwing them away… Breaking them on my stomach, my entrails.

(Something escaped him; a laugh sharp and bitter like white whip.)
(He did look at his hands: he saw how the bruises grew on the back, reaching for his wrist from the knuckles down. The purple of the hematoma was bewitching, poisoned. His joints were kissed by a fine white dust; it was biting and cold.)

What were you trying to find? Did you want to cut me open and read me? Read my future? Do you think you’re an oracle? You can’t even see the present. I could gouge your eyes out, I could hold them above the sky that I’ve helped my brother reach and you would still be blind. I shan’t lift you. I shan’t tell you anything. I know who drilled the hole through my heart, and I know what passes through. I’m not even sure anyone could weave a thread through you in the hope of stitching this town back together. You cannot fit a string. You cannot fit a stitch. You cannot fit a drop of love in that crowded ribcage of yours. Do not lie—I live by my mistruths and refuse to hear yours—you have said it yourself.
How the fuck would you know?
Everywhere there is a window there is one of my eyes. Everywhere there is a door there is one of my ears. Tread lightly. You’re so loud. You’re going to wake everyone up. You make even the dead restless. 
Here we go. Here you go. This was easy, wasn't it? You’re so easy to light. Like a bale of dry hay…

(Burakh aimed for him again and missed. Andrey was growing more apathetic; more nonchalant again. He threw glances behind, and next to him. The walls were starting to close. He was fine with that.)

Do you know what they say about hooks? It is by them that the ancestors pull the souls of those who have achieved salvation towards the heavens. Imagine, will you? A hook… Do you think they get pierced like fishes? Torn upwards? The hook pressing itself against the soft palate… Where the meat is tender…

(He brought his index into his mouth, tracing a line from behind his teeth to the back of his throat.)

It would be right here… The metal would go through the skin like through the tendons of a cow… You know about this, right? Butcher…
I don’t. They butcher bulls in the Abattoir — I’ve never stepped a foot in there. 
Ah, I don’t think it matters… Burakh, do the dead bleed? Will the hook draw blood? Will their essence spray over the tender new grass?

(His index finger pushed against his soft palace and stabbed through it as it had become a curved blade that came through his face — like a fish. Burakh didn’t see it coming through his face: the horrible piercing noise shook him awake.)

      There were two options, really; either the twins had a hand in the shaping of these dreams, in which case they had a problem with him, or they didn’t and he had a problem with them.
One of these two warranted confrontation — he didn’t know which one, and he didn’t know which one would have him get out of the Broken Heart or the loft alive. (He had a bad feeling about these two and the whole… staying alive thing.)
Black velvet shreds clung at the corners of his vision as he slowly emerged, tense and heavy like he was nursing a bad hangover, and for a moment, he stilled. 
The walls of the lair seemed to swallow them at once, and Burakh stepped out of bed.

      “Are you awake?” Sticky called — his voice was thin and nervous. 
      “Yes. Why the ghost in your voice?”
      “Notkin is sick.”

Burakh’s eyes shut. 

      “Also, I know where I can get us the materials to repair the brewery.”

Burakh’s eyes opened. 

      “Well. I can get you the materials, I suppose,” Sticky pouted.