2019-10-03 - The Road to Ruin

It was difficult, truth was, to take a full breath of air with the degree of humidity that welcomed them after departing the bookstore. And yet, however clogged, it was nothing compared to the suffocating dust inside of the building. Air, Marion would find, wasn't exactly what Nadir wanted at the time. No, he reached through a cut in the buttoned front of his sublimely fuzzy jacket and fetched a packet of cigarettes, the front labeled 'Weyland', and he patted its bottom squaring to force a wrapped bundle out. He caught it with his mouth, and deftly traded the packet after pocketing it with an old, dingy zippo. As they begun walking, they'd hear the snapping, and that desperation for him to garner flames out the lighter until fire did indeed rise, and lit the front of his road to an early grave.

In a way, he always hoped it'd be cancer instead of a bullet, truth was. "So, why the fuck my trailer?" he finally complained, yet only after a long drag and equally absurd release of grey smoke out his nostrils. Nadir had a way to be derisive, throwing out a lazy arm to the side that was meant to question Marion's decision - or discard it - in clear disagreement.

"I'm going to warn you right now, it ain't shit. Just the console, a bed couch, portable stove. A bathroom I never use-- yeah, I rather shit outdoors. I don't like the smell staying in the house."

Air is exactly what Marion needs. They hop onto a parking curb and stretch upward, taking a deep breath, before walking alongside Nasir, child-like, balancing on the curb and hopping from one to the other with every break that comes their way. The strong winds of the oncoming storm send their hair flying wildly about. "Honestly, I wanted to see if you're living in a place more like yesterday or more like today. Plus, I have to kick your ass at Mario Kart."

They pause for a moment, eyeing a particularly large gap from curb to old building foundation.

Marion springs from their low lying perch, catching a substantial amount of air, before landing gracefully on the higher ground. They don't even wobble.

"Also, we need to talk about magic."

There was an attempt, there, from Nadir not to stare; to watch them go back and forth in deer-like frolick, but he looked regardless. He tried to loosen at the sight, force a smile in the playfulness, but there was only bitterness. And so he looked away, sparing Marion the mood-wrecking expression and abusing the height difference - and poor lighting - to keep it so. He'd find it was easier to pretend amusement in voice than it was to make one's countenance appear so, and borrowed from the wisdom then; "Fat chance. With those clumsy fingers of yours? You'd be lucky if you don't break my controller. You always broke my shit then, it's not going to be any different now," Nadir reasoned, the memory easing some strain to bring forth an equally brief smile.

One promptly executed by the word 'magic'. He'd sigh deeply, his walking steps slowed down to better fixate on the feeling of numbness the prospect brought to his train of thought; "I really hope you didn't get bit by the bug too. They're just a bunch of little shitheads with an obsession for the unknown. Can't we be adults, and just talk about real things? I originally wanted your help, for real shit; I'm having an interview at the Pawnshop tonight, or tomorrow, and I've never been in one. I'm scared shitless, to be honest."

Marion looks at Nadir with a worried frown, but shrugs. They hop off the foundation and walk up to Nasir. "You'll be fine. You were interviewed when you signed up, weren't you? Plus, you're a vet. Come in looking like that, and you'll get the job for sure. And you always were tinkering with things--you even fixed all the controllers I broke. It was like ma--astery. Of repair. You are a master of repair."

"But of course you'll have my help. Whatever you need."

Whatever re-assurance he looked for in Marion wasn't found. Even the successful memories of jury rigging indeed those dingy controllers back together with duct tape and toothpaste that now ran through his head did little to appease him just then. He held out his palm briefly, motioning for them to keep up, as he walked. Jumping around, standing on foundations and sequestering their time as tarry from their intended location wasn't something he was in the mood for, and it showed. Stress had a strange way to ruin the fun out of everything, it seemed; "It's not the same. Guy who worked the Pawnshop, Hank, remember him? A drunk shit, had a scene with the cops every other day, and was a rat as they come," a beat.

"I liked him," he finished, yet only briefly. A deep breath followed, and he rose his right hand to his side with an intention to speak, and motion while doing so. His words, however, must've lost themselves somewhere on the way there, for it was only his palm going up and down in the conveying display without any words to back them up. Hesitant, he looked back and away from Marion then, eyeing the corner road warily as they turned, followed the sidewalk still, yet not for long. A promise of dirt paths was ahead.

"Right, erh, anyway-- Hank. Good guy, taught me a lot of shit, but he's not running the shop anymore. Asked around a bit, it's his daughter, Lilith. I don't know anything about her, other than word of mouth, and that word's that she's a fucking mess," the man soon elaborated, the "fucking mess" line sung grimly with his eyes staring up at the cloudy firmament, meeting it with a smile; a mocking smirk, as if defying his fate. "It almost makes too much sense."

Marion catches up, and though they have to move quickly to keep up with Nasir's long stride, it doesn't faze them. Marion's in surprisingly good shape. "I remember Hank," they say. "I knew he had a kid, but I don't remember anything about them. Lilith can't /actually/ be her name, right? Like... who names their kid Lilith? Other than those two girls back at the antique store. I can see them doing it."

There's a strong blast of wind, and Marion zips up their hoodie. "Going to be a cold winter," they say, darkly. "Climate change is fucking up all the ocean currents. Anyway--so she's a mess. Why does that bother you so much? Keep your head down, fix things--you're going to be invaluable."

Nadir kept on that long-legged walk of his. He was the kind to leave people behind, if they didn't match up to his speed- it was an obviously selfish thing, but it was just one of the many things that defined him as a person. At the hard gale that knocked into his form, he tightened some more buttons to a clip on his jacket's front and ensured no hole was left uncovered. Lastly, he dug his bare hands into his near skintight pants' pockets to hide them away from the smarting touch of ice. "You don't really believe in that climate change shit, right? I'm thinking it's all a hoax so scientists get paid more or something. Boys have been dry for recognition for a while," the Arab mused, chewing on the edge of his lower lip. He tried to appear serious on the retort, but there hid a tease. What was the tease? Who knew.

"And shit, why does it bother me? Well, you know, it's trouble. Problems. I know problems; I know them well. I'm in the blender myself, so everytime - you know - everytime I reach out and pluck these peoples into my lives, when they themselves are up the neck in shit, it's almost like I'm asking to get pulled deeper down. Just trying to be responsible, keep on a steady living; keep on trucking without the troubles. I returned home to find peace, I think anyone who ever did come back from Iraq only came back wanting nothing but that. Enough money to get by; enough not to need anything, and settle down. I just don't think that's a possibility in this place," he paused momentarily, casting a glance to the side; towards the weedy dirt road that pushed off the asphalt street.

"In fact, I'm almost certain it's impossible. Anyway, lets take a short-cut here. It'll take us through a little sanctuary of trees, we should be there in thirty minutes or so," Nadir instructed, finally going down the slope and into the thicket's embrace.

Marion follows without hesitation. "I don't know what to say," they confess. "I mean, I've read articles... but, I mean... maybe seeing someone would help? Not for PTSD," they add hurriedly. "Just for, you know... you're going through a rough time, yeah? With your family and everything. I spent some time with a counselor in Seattle figuring some things out." They shrug. "It helped me a lot. I think."

A branch moved away by Nasir flies back and thwaps Marion in the face. "Acktpth. This shortcut is built for giants like you."

However convincing the prospect of seeking help was - however healthy, and reasonable - his expression turned from Marion answered the opposite. There was a little corner of his mind that was still his own, and light came through it, as through a chink in the dark. It had to be light, for what else preserved his mind after the many happenings? It didn't matter. In all the deep of his thinking, he never lifted his gaze from the ground. There the green floor ran on into the sanctuary of trees, and formed a wide space like a hall's long stretch, roofed by the boughs of trees whom's leaves began to lose color and dwindle in autumn's embrace.

"I'm fine," he'd finally say, lifting a leg over a particularly hefty mound while working his way through the grass, once much taller, now preparing to die under the atmosphere's cold. "Hey, there was something I wanted to ask you," Nadir added, holding out his right arm before him to push some branches and shrubbery aside, shielding himself from any swats that'd smack him thusly with a careful shielding of his forearm. "What happened with you, while I was gone? You know, like- you dressed a lot different then. Hair was different, everything was different. I'm a bit confused."

Nadir hung on his words long, letting only the crunching of their feet pressing against loose and not so loose roots, branches and foliage be the only sound exchanged between them then, if silence was indeed the first thing Marion gave him. "No offense," he'd add, awkwardly.

Marion manages to avoid the branches that come their way. "You mean like how the weird Taiwanese girl pissed everyone off by dressing like a boy, muscling her way into varsity baseball, and dressing up as Mulan every chance she got?" they ask, with a wry smile. "Yeah. Man, it pissed me off when you'd say girls couldn't be good at video games. I just sort of... gave the whole thing up, in college. They don't really care in Seattle, you know? Guy, girl, whatever. It all seems like a lot of bullshit to me. Just feels better not to deal with any of it. I dunno. Everyone expects me to be, like, out there crusading at pride parades. I'd rather just be left alone."

From time to time, amidst their response, he looked back and forth. Forward at the beaten path, then back at the soul trailing after him. His expression was inscrutable, betraying little to nothing of what he thought on the matter, perhaps giving off the wrongful impression that somewhere in that silence he was making certain judgements of unfair nature towards Marion. Eventually, as they cleared into more open grounds and the sun dared shine its meek glow from behind the clouds it hid in upon them, he paused.

To their left, grass; to their right, grass. Green, luscious fields preserved by the town in a desire to keep some degree of contact with nature, perhaps, and it was a beautiful sight to see the wind lick the surfacing of every green blade and make them swing in harmonious tilt in one singular orchestra of direction. Taking in the view, feeling the breeze against his the scraggly beard of his face - strong enough to chink through into the roots of the steeled skin below - and tilting his head up to the sky, he'd finally reply;

"That's hell of a change. So you're not a girl anymore? I mean-- right, yeah; so you're not a 'she' anymore, spiritually, or whatever? A boy? I-.. I don't understand, must be some cultural changes and the sort that I was never necessarily made aware of while deployed. Just, whatever the answer is, don't tell my mother. She'd have a heart attack."

Marion lowers their hood and runs their hands through their hair. They look vaguely resigned. /This/ conversation again. "I'm just Marion," they say, with a shrug. "I don't really--it's just whatever, you know? I don't get why it's a big deal. It's not like I go around, you know, running into bathrooms or whatever." They look around. "This is a nice spot for a picnic. When the sky isn't about to open up on our heads. And yeah. Things have changed back here. You missed gay marriage, pot legalization, Trump getting elected... Life is weird. Not just in Gray Harbor."

There wasn't a chance for Nasir to lose the visible resignation on their friend's face, and it was that defeat that tugged at a cord dug and deeply-embedded into him. Or at least it must have, since it brought down the indifference on his face and frowned his lips in no brief, but lingering, compassion. "Hey," he'd add, with his left hand twitching lightly in a tempted search for Marion's shoulder, yet there was distance there; distance between the two, and he sought to make an organic approach of it. And all of that would go out the window if he made some awkward, stomped steps towards them, certainly.

"I know that, man. And I don't mean, like-- I don't mean it as in 'guy'; I call girls 'man' too. You know?" he explained, the elaboration made with some pauses; some hesitations, some worries. He looked searchingly at Marion then; at any lingering expression, or disfavour. Eventually, however, he did look away--away and closer to the center, where he promptly sat down cross-legged with his back towards the wind, which threw his hair into a messy rise over his head.

"I heard about pot. I liked that."

"It's not a problem," Marion says. They take off their hoodie before sitting down, as a barrier between them and the damp grass. "Really. People not making a big deal out of it is what I like." And they're speaking honestly, it's obvious. Marion isn't the sort to get ruffled easily. They just look calm, like they normally do. They sit down, facing Nasir, mirroring his cross-legged position. Their hands rest easily in their lap, and they quirk a corner of their lips upward.

"Now we're the ones who look like we're about to perform a seance. Or meditate. Think of the four noble truths, the lotus unfolding, so on and so forth. Are you still practicing? Islam, I mean."

There wasn't much else for him to do other than follow through on their words with the bob of his re-affirming head, acknowledging it. He smiled, then; an appeased smile, and something about his expression re-assured that must've been a satisfactory conclusion to that particular topic. Nadir had only but recently stopped walking amongst landmines in Iraq, he certainly didn't want to return home to more minefields, and this one was the kind he wasn't exactly versed in disarming; "Islam? Before going off and back to Iraq, I remember, the last thing my father told me was that I was heading off on my Jihad. I thought it was fucking dumb, then- "my jihad"? Hadn't he learned a thing or two, about what happened when he kept that kind of talk? I hadn't read the thing-- the fucking; the thing, the book, then. The Quran. I wanted to be an American so badly then I never even considered what he meant, at the time I reasoned it was some "terrorist shit," and dismissed it. For a while, 'Islam' was a codeword for terrorist for me, and seeing my family practice it disgusted me," as he spoke, each elaboration was made with brief pauses. Each take towards his feelings then with disappointment, and such disgust gave him a need to reach down to the ground for little branches; little sticks he'd grab, split into two smaller sticks and then throw off into the grass, like skipping stones on a lake.

"But now.. I've thought about it; about understanding what he meant. Reading a bit into it-- I.. I've never been religious, but you know that. My religions' machines, and cogsworth, always has been. But.. Anyway, isn't that buddhist shit you're preaching at me? I'm telling you right away, not gonna happen."

Marion chuckles a little. "The advantage of Buddhism is that I don't need to preach Buddhism." But the smile fades. "I think your father was telling you he approved, in his own way. It's hard, for them. Your parents were first-generation too, right?"

Beneath Marion's chuckling, a little shrug. Subtle, and careless, with a somewhat of a toothy smile to meet that fading smirth on the Buddhists' expression. "Yeah, they were. I don't like talking about it, though, so lets stop- I've given it some thought. And, here," Nadir motioned to his sides, there, as he sat, letting his fingers trace quietly along the grass before they selectively clasped at each of his feet, holding the boots tightly on a hold. As tight as he'd want to keep the next words then, for Marion;

"We can talk about 'magic'. I know where you're coming from, too- weird shit happening, people seeing and doing unexplainable things. You throwing shit around in your room-- listen, I hear you, but the mind's one fucked up thing. It can make you believe all sort of terrible and not so terrible shit. Trust me, I know."

With the bid of trust, to better emphasize his point, Nasir reached into a backpocket of his pantaloons, manifesting his cellphone. Indeed, that eternally cracked and not-so-recently destroyed smartphone full of cracks. He didn't just show it to Marion, but rather offered it to them with an outstretched arm. "See this here? Two years ago, brand new, I had bought it with my savings, but I dropped it. Humvee ran it over, and it was separated in eight different pieces. Pieces that I could find, at least, some were so finite they never came back to the phone. Somehow, I put it together- I still have nightmares about it, about a fucking phone, can you believe it? It's just how the world is. It's strange."

"You could just get a Nokia, like me," Marion says, with an attempt at forced joviality. It's a bad attempt. They look at Nasir's face, then at their outstretched arm. At the phone in it. They take the phone gingerly. "Shit," they say, their slight smile fading. "Shit," they say again. They look at the phone in their hands, then place it in their lap. They place their hands on their knees, palms up. It looks like they're some statue of a monk in contemplation--though the effect is spoiled by the wind. Their breathing slows, becomes regular...

...and the phone lifts itself up off of their lap and moves to a spot between the two people, where it hangs, suspended in the air, rotating slightly.

Shit indeed. And it was thankfully not Nasir's time to foul the conversation with his liberal usage of slurs, but Marion, for his mind; his thoughts and his perception of reality had been struck down as falsehoods right there and then, once that phone rose from the limb and chose to experience what taking flight was all about.

It all begun with his nostrils, and breathing that'd horribly intensify. They flared, God how they spread, inhaling so hard he looked about to puncture anything /punctureable/ inside that horribly crooked nose. Eyes widened, indeed, for those little, squinty little narrow things could indeed get bigger than they were from the naturally taciturn expression, and suddenly - once the phone came close enough - he yanked his body away with the whole force of his waist; he turned, he clawed at the ground and suddenly he was in World War Two, here there were trenches, and there he was crawling away from the phone as if it was the coming of the Devil itself. He made some distance amidst puffs and huffs, finally turning in disbelief - with a gasp to announce the tilt - to gaze at the phone again.

"What the fuck!" he cried out and aloud from away, all the sudden; all in aftershock. Each of his filthy palms rose to grasp at his hair. A shame, as he had washed it that very morning and given that he scarcely did, it must've been like killing a unicorn by all account.

"Bullshit," he announced after, with a beat to follow; "Bullshit," he repeated, furrowing his eyes; crunching his nostrils, tilting his chin upwards. There, ah, man's oldest weapon against the unknown; skepticism, doing its thing. "Some string or some other fuckery, stop that."

Marion jerks in surprise as Nasir yells--the man is /loud/--and looks at their friend with surprise. And of course, the phone drops, no longer under their precarious control. And promptly breaks into a bunch of little pieces. But the surprise is quickly replaced by Marion's usual, calm demeanor. "Oh, come on, Nasir. Don't tell me you don't see it around the other people. Or feel it, or whatever. The ones who are different."

Marion looks down at where the phone lies broken. "I'm not sorry," they say, voice placid. "Now you can prove it to yourself." A single finger points to the broken pile of electronics, surprisingly imperious.

There, at that distance, he stayed. However imperious and convincing Marion was, right there and then, they'd come to find fear was magnificent in making one inured to such bullshits. Mhm, there, anchored to the ground as if mother nature herself rooted him to the spot. There was a strange spasm to his hands as if the sight of the entirely shattered and sharded phone was a hurt that smarted every nerve end of his fingertips and it forced him eventually to clutch at his stomach, turning them to fists he squeezed in place, as if to control the involuntary movement. "Alright, fuck this town," he reasoned, his voice not his; his tone not his own. Away hence was the hard man from the desert storm, here there a child, quivering at the hard reality of surreality.

His breathing was his only weapon, then; a heart that shuddered pains and disbeliefs, rocking them through his body physically as sweat that acted as perspiration out every orifice on his body. He closed his eyes, once; he closed them twice, then, and thrice. It wasn't a blink, no- they were deliberate, separate actions, made with such enough surface they subscribed to the ancient rule that on the third, once they opened, all would be gone; all would end, and logic would reign again. But no- there, Marion, pointing at the cellphone.

All hope was lost.

"You--.. You; listen, you, you don't know what you're talking about," he accused, lifting a hand of unadulterated denial to point an equally accusing finger towards him. With the finger, as if weaving the string that actuated his legs, he pushed himself up and finally off the ground, feet shakey and knees buckled. "Sure, I see some people that stand out from time to time, but I've always been that way- it's shit, but we're all weird from time to time. And now you owe me a phone, with your chinese fucking tricks-- or Japanese, or whatever, Taiwanese."

Marion takes out their Nokia and tosses it casually to Nasir. "It's Norwegian," they say, unruffled. Then they sigh. "Nasir, look--I'm not--" Marion shakes their head. "I wish you'd come to Seattle with me," they say sadly. "There were other people there, people who could do a better job of explaining... all this. But I don't know much. I don't really know anything."

Catching things? Breathing? Living? Foreign concepts right there and then, not affairs his body or nerves had any hand on. That Nokia could've very well been a brick, yet it's under the assumption Marion wasn't seeking to revive his days of baseball in the way he threw the thing at Nasir, it landing by his feet - within his lap - bouncing on a thigh before touching the floor. That accusing palm remained outstretched, that same finger a spear to ward off the evil that was Marion's presumed insanity.

"I don't want your poor person phone," he finally complained, stepping past it and towards his own. Or, well, the sixteen different parts of that phone that were now by his feet. He eyed them with longing, and how could Marion understand? It was more than a phone- the Glimmer made it so. If one could feel others' special touch with the veil, then one could most certainly sense items so endearingly manipulated by those who manifested power within it.

And that phone- that phone was Nasir. Or was, once- its extremely smashed, cracked screen; the sunken buttons on its sides that were impossible to press - and so the phone was perpetually muted and prone to opening the camera application - with the sting of marks and nicks on its back, but that time was over.

It brought a strange sadness to him- a nostalgia, the kind children face when giving away toys they never once used, until they were forced by good parenting to part ways with them. Suddenly it was the only thing in the world that mattered to them, and that was Nasir, with his palm held out towards the phone, open.

As if the ground faced a subtle earthquake, the many shards, cracks and pieces suddenly shuddered, and a puzzling affair ensued.

Reason fled. Realism took flight, and the remained only fantasy and the enemy of all reason. Like a core of sorts, the phone's three-sided battery suddenly SNAPPED together like a glove upon a handle's grip, mashing with the force of an industrial magnet. Another smack, then another, and the pieces furiously began mashing together and molding; transmuting viciously in a disturbing sight as plastic, metal and copper all mashed together like tumorous plasticine that breath and engorged together as it took form.

Soon, an elegant sheen of black followed, and a glassy surface manifested- a phone, again, just then. A thing beautifully new, made - no, remade - like its original creator intended it. No flaws; no nicks, no hits, and no rusted corners, but as the affair continued; as the deed ensued, emotion heaved off Nasir's chest, and just as he fixed; just as he nurtured the metallic piece's embodiment in sterling shape, a crack. A dent; a cut, a vicious lasceration of metal and its glassy ends, eventually remanded the phone to its former fate, returning it as viciously bashed as it had been when first handing it to Marion.

Nasir staggered back after the deed, gripping viciously and scoldingly at his right hand's wrist, his enemy which had begun the entirety of the affair, or so he thought. His mouth was ajar, for more reasons than just breathing, and he looked on not at Marion, but at the phone, in shock.

"...all right, then," says Marion, moving forward to collect the newly remade-and-broken phone, and then their own Nokia. "That is a level of psychological damage I am absolutely not equipped to handle." The wind picks up slightly, then goes utterly still. Marion looks around. "It's time to go," they announce. They put the phone into Nasir's hand, then grab the hand in question and begin pulling at it and the man attached. "Come on."

In the distance, thunder rumbles, and trees can be seen blowing fitfully in the distance. But here, in the grassy meadow, not a blade moves. No crickets can be heard, or birds, or anything. There's just utter stillness, and the heavy weight of an oncoming storm. "We need to go /now/," Marion says, pulling harder. "Come on."

Marion became his feet, then, by how they pulled. It was mere instinct, that made them stagger forward and with the briefest hint of coordination, if only to not have him drop. His eyes never quite fell from the phone in question and his feet often threatened to buckle and press together the longer they went. Still, they went; with the guiding palm, Nasir escaped the meadow under Marion's lead, and once the trees were left behind; one reasoning hit him again and the shellshock passed he finally tugged back at their arm, not quite yanking his wrist from their grip but prompting them to a sudden halt while lost in a coppice of trees that centered them in the middle of woodsy nowhere.

"Alright, hold on," he'd breath out, sighing out a deep, tired sigh. He threw the phone in the air to the left, where his left palm deftly caught it and pocketed it, it freed from Marion's hand. "We've got to have a conversation, and we're not going to have it while playing Mario Kart."

"Not going to have it at all if we don't move," Marion mutters. They look worried, which, given their normally unflappable exterior, means they're very close to panicking. "Come on. Let's keep going--shit." They're looking behind them, back towards the meadow. There's a fog rising there...but then the wind blows, and the fog is blasted away. The oppressive pressure goes away. Birds begin shrieking, and a flock of starlings erupts in cacophanous flight from the tree branches. The silence is broken, and in the noisy return of nature, honest peace returns.

Marion lets out a long breath of air. "Okay. You--" they say, pointing to Nasir. "You are a /dangerous/ son of a bitch. And you don't even know it. Shit. How--I guess it makes sense. Iraq. Okay. We're going to have this talk here, and hopefully it's gone."

Silence, but no peace; peace was a thing long ago robbed from him, turmoil was the rule of law in him, and turmoil then reined his every action. A step back, and another to the left; a step right, and another forward, a zig-zag that didn't zag, but only zigged him leftwards until a tree quite literally caught him, and he shouldered into it to hold himself in place. He had chosen it, perhaps, due to the freedom it gave him to eye Marion there, then, from the strangely fitting angle. With how he hunched, they almost matched in height then, a suitable thing for how little he felt then. Vulnerable.

"I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, but everything feels wrong. Nothing is right-- something ebbs at the back of my head, a gnawing feeling; a raking claw that scrapes at my fucking brain that begs me do it all again. What the fuck is it, Marion; why am I feeling like this?" he'd demand, pushing himself off the tree, his back straightening; his posture hardening.

He, too, looked back at the meadow, but the fear had then be traded by anger, and that cholera oozed off of him as all negative feelings do. 'Negative', the word itself, was an excellent way to describe him in general right there and then.

Marion just sits down again, cross-legged, calm faced. "All right. Take a breath. Or ten," they add dryly. "The good news is that neither of us is crazy," Marion says. "The bad news is, well. Gray Harbor is more than a little weird. Look, I can't explain it all. I don't understand it myself. When I--when I figured out who I was, and accepted that, that's when it happened to me. The people I met in Seattle told me it usually happens when you're stressed, or something important happens to you. I can move stuff around with my head, if I work really hard at it. You... can do a lot more. You've got a whole lot more juice in you than I do. I'm guessing something happened in Iraq. Something went pear-shaped, and you saw something that didn't make any sense at all. Not everyone can do it. But some people can. Those are the people you can feel, or see, or whatever."

Juice? Iraq? Pears? There, the fall. Insanity creeped upon on him, or the closest thing to it. His body crested loosely into the tree, and he held out a right palm; a palm out to Marion, a plea that he'd stop; a demand that the explanation would cease, for it tormented him. Truth hurt, it showed- the antidote to sweet ignorance was like a scalpel to the flesh, and the morbid consequence was those knees that fell into the tree, grinding him down to the floor, remanded to press his forehead against the hard bark.

Deep breathing ensued, deep clawing soon followed; clawing and nails that dug with a fury into the lifeblood of the tree, and even then; there then, in that grip, he felt the tree's life and its ebbing flow under his palm. It had always been like this, he realized then; it was, and wasn't, the only thing that stood between the truth was the realization of its manifestation. And there, in that little meadow; in that hall of trees and grass, it manifested thusly.

Like a broken clock, truly mad indeed, Nasir's head moved back, then forward, knocking his forehead into the tree.

.... And again, and again, and again.

"You're going to give yourself a concussion," Marion remarks placidly.

His eyes closed, so hard that the bags that hung from below them creased with wrinkles. He smiled a whining smile, and looked up the three with a tilt of his chin, revealing the shrubbery he had brutally embedded on his forehead with his lackluster attempt at mimicking a carpenter bird with his head.

Soon, each of his palms loosened that vicious hold, and all nail from pinky to thumb without a single spared was mucky with resin and blood both as he raked up to his full feet, borrowing the tormented tree's shafting for an eased stand. Once that 'giant's' height was reached, much as they had mentioned, he finally turned and looked down at the headmaster of all things obvious an arm's length shy from his head.

"You're shit at this, you know that?"

Marion shrugs. "You're a first grader asking a second grader for help in math, Nasir. I know a little bit more than you, but not much. There's magic. That's real. It involves some weird sort of alternate dimension, which I'm told is a shitty place. And in that alternate dimension are a lot of bad things that like to eat people who do magic. Like us. It's easier to do magic in certain places. I don't know why. Gray Harbor is one of those places. I don't know why about that, either."

As Marion spoke, opportunity manifested. It wasn't exactly opportunistic the way he displayed himself, however, but more-so a lazy sleight of hand as each of the aforementioned rose to grip the flap of their hoody at the end of the hood's neck. He'd lift it up, and lean down into Marion's shoulder, using the cloth to wipe at the grub on his forehead roughly. He'd clear it away, leaving behind cuts and grazes on the flesh, and thereafter his nails. Each he scrubbed quietly, finishing somewhere at the end of the uncertain monologuing.

"Alright," Nasir finally muttered, running a much clearer palm down the drop of his jacket to push and smooth failingly what horribly wrinkled lines now perforated into the felt's hide. He'd be forced to make use of his nails again, even, to work some more of the little twigs and buried indentations of dirt off of it. All was a mere distraction- he knew his turn was there; he knew he had to speak and elevate them beyond the uncertainty of the moment, but his tongue was caught in a tie and his heart raced yet again. He had to cool, he knew; downtime was needed in his body, and he did his best to surrender his shoulders' broad stiffness and hunch into a calmer, eased stance.

With his left palm he reached up, gripping his neck, and gave it a brief squeeze before he suddenly began walking again, into the path beaten for direction out of the woods. "I don't know what it means, I don't know what to do, and I'm not sure if I want to learn more, second grader-- also, juice? What; how the fuck do you even quantify this shit together, where are you drawing your conclusions from; where's the formulae that put your ones, twos and threes together for this assumption you're putting on me?"

Marion unzips their hoodie and stands up, taking off the sweater and tying it around their waist. "You just sort of see it. You're a bit more... uh. People see it differently. To me, it looks like how the air gets when it's hot--all wavery, like liquid. You've got more of it than I do." They pause. "Less than the girls back at the antique store. And like I said, I met people in Seattle. They knew how to do things."

A fire in Nasir wanted to lash back at Marion, but the flame was held at bay within what little worry the dogmatic tone from the matter-of-factly Buddhist there was. Every other step away from that meadow became heavier, he noticed, and there was a need for him to turn back; to return and see that shadow in its eye; to make time turn back and succumb to that sweet, gentle sin. It had left a feeling of finality on him- a feeling of final rest, and this walking away; this retreating, it was the burden. This escapade - this retreat - was the hard choice.

His swagger became less coordinated, and it wasn't until they finally hit the other end of the woods and happened upon a sea of trailers that the hypothetical weight was only but briefly lifted off his shoulders. There was a slope, a very steep one at that, and once he himself clambered to the top he offered Marion a hand down for longer reach to help them into taking to the top alongside him, if he'd choose to take it.

Going past a fence door, through some trailers and a long road of dirt, the distance revealed even more trailers, and it'd be perhaps a few more minutes because they reached their destination. Still, somewhere along the mostly silent way, Nasir finally made his wishes clear;

"Will you please fuck off about Seattle?"