2019-11-04 - The Unicorn and the Moth

Not since the funeral of William "Billy the Ghoul" Gohl has fiddle music rung out from Steelhead Service Center. It's been long weeks stretching out into months and Itzhak hadn't touched his rental violin. But today, on a crisp early November morning, that music is back. Itzhak's playing again, standing in front of his music stand the way he used to, his bow singing across the strings.

Even though the fiddle music isn't what drew August to Steelhead in his Outback, the symmetry of it feels nice when he steps out of his car and hears the songs again. He parks out in the gravel area, in front of the concrete barricade he personally scarred, steps out and walk around to the open bay doors. He's in his black suede jacket, a dark red, close fit, wool sweater, denim jeans, and a pair of suede boots; the very picture of casual Pacific Northwest Urban Man.

He doesn't interrupt the music with speaking, just stands at the entrance to the garage bay, listening, smiling.

Itzhak is so into it he doesn't pick up that he's got a visitor. He's swaying and playing, eyes closed, fingers knowing just where to go, wrist flicking with swift precise strokes back and forth. The rental violin isn't different in any noticeable way from his own sacrificed instrument, at least not to the untrained eye and ear. It might be a little blonder in the wood, a little less rich in tone. A little newer, in other words, but it's almost impossible to tell. He's playing the section often called 'Storm' from Vivaldi's Four Seasons, rushing and dark and dramatic, and a real bear to play; Itzhak is laboring over it, face yearning and tight as he works at it.

He gets most of the way through it before the piece falls apart, and he lets his bow drop with a sigh. And then he sees August and jolts, startled, but grins at him and waves him in. "Hey, pal!" It's a little chilly in the garage, so Itzhak's wearing a scarf and fingerless gloves and a battered black hoodie with the GHPD logo on it, along with his usual jeans and boots. Lemondrop's enclosure has a thick blanket tossed over it.

August stands and listens, watching Itzhak play. The subtle differences in this instrument and the one gone to feed Billy the Ghoul's ghost are lost on him, but in a way he knows, as anyone with the Gift of matter might know, that it's not the same. The air doesn't move the same from it, the sounds don't have that signature. This means nothing to him artistically; it's a scientific difference, in effect. And yet he knows it's there.

He smiles a greeting when Itzhak notices him, steps the rest of the way into the bay. "Hey yourself." He spies the logo on the hoodie, arches a saucy eyebrow of 'not fucking him again, are we'. His gaze shifts to Lemondrop's tank; he gives her a gentle nudge of greeting, the lightest touch, like her tongue flicks at the air.

He moves stand by one of the two waiting chairs. "So. Was your weekend as, exciting, as mine? Because mine was pretty fucking crazy."

Lemondrop is coiled in a glossy heap half-buried in substrate, sluggish although she has enough heat. It's just that time of year; her internal calendar senses the cold and knows it's time to sleep. Her tongue slips out to flick at August, but she doesn't otherwise move. Her mind is slow, interested less in the world outside her plexiglass and more in finding a deep dark warm hole to slumber the winter away.

Itzhak, meanwhile, hikes his eyebrows ruefully as August gives him that look. He knows why he's getting it! Yeah yeah, he's wearing Ruiz's hoodie like a high school girl wears her boyfriend's letterman jacket. So sue him. "Yeah, pretty fuckin' crazy sums it up. You wanna go first or me?" It's a ritual between them by now, and one Itzhak cherishes. "Coffee? Siddown in the warm." He waves his bow at the oil heater quietly ticking next to the 'waiting area'.

August can sympathize with Lemondrop. This is the time of year he thinks long and hard about getting a hot tub (he never does because the maintenance is such a pain), about moving his bed closer to the wood stove pipe. A sigh that he can't join her in finding a nice, warm spot to wait for Spring.

Still, the oil heater will do. "Coffee would be excellent, thank you." He settles into the chair, sitting forward just slightly, not really sinking back all the way. "And, hell--you first." This is a ritual August holds near and dear to his heart, because it's the first time in his life he's been able to talk to someone about the whole scope of things. The Glimmer craziness, and the banal craziness too. (Like Finch's dad...but they'll get to that.) It's comforting to know he's not the only one going through this sort of thing, to have someone else tell him about their bizarre life.

Itzhak sets his violin in its case, bow on the stand. Both are close, but not too close, to the heater. He rolls on over in his funny half-swagger to, oh, well, that's new. He has a sideboard now, bearing the coffee pot and the various things that go along with coffee pots. Like the furniture, this is clearly thrifted and well-dinged. Itzhak refills his mug ("I play violin so I don't CHOKE anyone!") and pours August a paper cup, too. "Okay, well, first off the garden looked fucking amazing. Then Bex and me and de la Vega and a couple other people fell into a Dream. I turned into a unicorn, that was..." He pauses, trying to think of how to describe it. "Baller," he settles on, and comes over to deliver the coffee and slump into one of the cushy armchairs. "There was a hunt. We fought 'em. And ran away, but also fought 'em." Important point! "So we got out of there okay, and the hunt was for an elk that...kinda reminded me of you for some reason, and we didn't let 'em have him. Because fuck 'em."

"June does great work. You ever want to fix up the outside of this place," a teasing note in August's voice makes this as much it as little of a joke as Itzhak would like, "look her up. She'll get it sorted."

So maybe it's not a surprise that the garden dragged a bunch of people into one of those constructs. Over There. That's about par for the course in Gray Harbor. Is something truly amazing or truly weird and creepy? Yep, it's going to attract Veil oddities.

He tries to decide which part of that to ask about first, because there's a lot. "You were turned into a unicorn?" He shakes his head, can't help but laugh. "Gotta be honest, it's sounding like that's your...not sure what you'd call it. Personal seal?Something like that." He accepts the cup with a murmur of thanks, wrapping his hands around it and having a sip. "What'd you look like?" He glances at the bow, thinking of Itzhak's description of Zayith.

"Patronus?" Itzhak offers, wryly. "Must be, since my spirit guide is a kleptomaniac raccoon." Who hasn't shown up in a while, and Itzhak surprises himself by suddenly worrying about her. Ugh, he's such a dork. He props an ankle on his knee in the figure 4 position. "Uh, I was big. Tall, long legs, you know? Like a really big deer. Black but kinda oilslick, in a way, except not rainbow but more like the mask I was wearing." He digs his phone out, swipes to the picture of himself Bex took, and shows August. The satyr mask is painted in greens, bronzes, and golds, with silver fawn spots. "Like that. With spots, even, I thought only baby deers had spots. Bex turned into a mountain lion." Itzhak is honestly impressed, eyebrows going up as he remembers. "She was gorgeous. De la Vega was a wolf, no surprise there. Also gorgeous." He clears his throat. He's not going to blush. "And some street kid was a tiny little brown fox with big ears, and there was a raven like the one on my logo." On Steelhead's logo, he means, the Pacific Northwest-style raven with a salmon in its belly. "And some lady I don't know, who didn't change for, I dunno, I have no idea why these things happen or don't. But I wasn't about to let her run around on dumb human legs so I carried her."

August leans over to have a look at the offered photo, grins to see it. "Oh, check you out, you two look fantastic." He tilts his head, studying Itzhak's mask, imagining that color on a deer-like unicorn. A barely suppressed, teasing smile for the not-blush; he's not surprised in the least to hear Ruiz was a wolf. "So you were all animals" he says, straightening. "...except the one woman. And there were hunters after you. And an elk. But it reminded your of me?" His tone makes that a question. Maybe that's not the weirdest possible thing, to be compared to something he hunts.

Itzhak tilts the hand back and forth. "Kinda? I dunno. He was beautiful, so obviously like you." Teasing, he half-smiles at August. "Black and grey, kinda like your hair. Had a lot of," he gestures in a wavy circle around his head, "vines and branches in his horns. Like a crown, like on your tattoo? So, he just reminded me of you. And he got shot down." The smile vanishes. "So I protected him from the hunter. We all did."

The memory flares in his fractal mindscape, easy for August to read should he care to reach out. A black unicorn, rearing and screaming defiance over the bloodied body of the bull elk. The woman is beside him, the wolf and the cougar prowl behind him, the raven perches in the branches above. ...And the fox decides to go bite the huntress' crotch. Twice. Oy vey.

August is more than curious enough to look, joining Itzhak in the link as easily as he leaned in to look at the phone. He pores over the visuals, considering them all in turn. He startles, laughs in a rustles of leaves in the wind when the fox just up and bites the bone-pale hunter in the groin. "That looks like it fucking hurt," he murmurs absently, grinning.

He turns his attention to others. Ruiz the wolf he's seen before; no surprise he got into a staring contest with the fox. Bex the cougar piques his curiosity, but also isn't a surprise. Isn't that the sort of person Itzhak would be drawn to? The woman he recognizes. <<That's Clarissa Robbins. Chairwoman of the Historical Society.>> There's a fragment of memory: a group of people in city hall, filling out a petition against the casino. Patrick Addington is there being a jackass. DeWitt is there being a slimy lawyer whose main client everyone knows.

Then the elk. August seems to go still. <<You should see something. Well, two somethings.>> He draws back from the link enough to take out his own phone, pulls up the photos of himself and Eleanor from the boat tour which Ignacio took. The first one--before the glamour had taken hold--is Eleanor in her Cinderella dress and pale blue mask, and August in his, the Erica made for him. ...it's black, mostly, with branching antlers, raven feathers, bittersweet, and hops. But he doesn't linger on that photo, he swipes to the next one. In this one, the difference is stark: Eleanor isn't dressed as Cinderella, she is Cinderella, right down to the glass slippers, elegantly curled and coifed hair, and crystals sparkling in the dress. And August is, well, not just a man wearing a mask. Not by a long shot. More like a strange, fall forest spirit, come out to kidnap the princess away from her life in castles among princes for something a little less rote.

<<That happened on the boat tour. We sort of...became, what we were dressed as.>> An amused moment, then, because he's wondering if Itzhak would have become a satyr? Would Rebecca have become a dryad or a nymph?

Itzhak blushes fast, picking up August wondering if he and Bex would transform into satyr and nymph. <<We wouldn'ta got anything done if we did,>> he sends in a kind of rueful hilarity. The pictures he studies, fractal cogs turning in his mind. <<He had feathers too. The elk.>> But he doesn't know what conclusion to draw from that, and glances at August, eyebrows curious. <<That looks so much like you.>> One finger taps at the phone's screen. <<Like how you look inside...kind of, but not actually? God, words suck.>> His violin mewls in irritation. <<If I was gonna play what you feel like, it'd look like that.>>

Words really do suck. Itzhak makes a face. <<I don't think it's bad. Just a thing. Sometimes we can see each other better like that.>>

<<I'm sure more than a few of the side rooms and bathrooms got used like that,>> August comments, amused. Certainly not a lot of anything had gotten done at home once they got back, and August counted himself lucky they'd waited until then.

He's quiet a bit when Itzhak says that, thinks it over as he studies the picture. <<No, not bad,>> he agrees. A little strange, maybe, but hadn't they seen all those weird not-deer on the Other Side, as much plant as animal? Perhaps there was more to the Other Side and those who were sensitive to its presence than mere sensitivity.

He looks at the unicorn again, smiles. <<Would it be weird, to get yourself tattooed on you?>> Well, but what's he have on his back? Another thing that's not so weird when he looks at the bigger picture.

Itzhak rubs his cheek, knowing he's red. <<Get...me, as a unicorn, tattooed?>> He squints, trying to see it. <<I dunno. Maybe? Then again, nobody has to KNOW it's me. Can just be a badass unicorn.>> This is the benefit of being a queer guy. He can think unicorns are badass and even get one tattooed and not feel any untoward shrinkage of his masculinity. He glances at August, shy. <<You think I oughta?>>

August laughs, in the link and out loud. <<Why the hell not? I mean-->> He pauses, considers the picture of himself and Eleanor again. <<Here. The other thing I said I'd show you.>> He slips off jacket, then his sweater--he's actually wearing a thin cotton t-shirt under it, a throw-away sort meant for work use, discarded at the end of the a hard summer of work. Or fall, in this case. He half-turns so Itzhak can see his back as he takes the shirt off. Across his shoulders, at the top of his back, almost like a crown over the elk skull, is another tattoo.

It's almost certainly Lex's work. It runs along his shoulders, incorporating the two scars much the same way the spinal scar is the centerline of the elk skull. In this case, the white, heavy surgical cut which failed to heal well and the much more ragged and recent wound have been used to form the backbones of a series of vines: leafless, thorny bouganvillea with violet brachts and pale white flowers, brilliant green hops, heavy with golden bunches, and bittersweet, its brilliant red berries set in papery yellow sheaths on thicker, brown vines winding among the rest. At the center of the two lengths of vines is a brilliant ceanothus silkmoth, brick red and cream and dark brown with brilliant white markings.

<<Look familiar?>> He asks, tone dry, then continues, <<You looked gorgeous as a unicorn. Why not remember it? Like you said, no one will know it's you unless you want to tell them.>>

Itzhak sets the mug down on the table and slithers out of the chair, landing on his knees so he can get close. "Oh wow," he breathes in delight. He reaches, then snatches his hand back--don't touch the fresh tattoo, jerk. "Oh wow. Jesus Christ, Roen. This is blowing my damn mind." The colors, the grace with which the scars are integrated into the art, the moth with its stunning wings; Itzhak feels an atavistic urge to devour the sight, eat it in some way so it's part of him forever. He wants to play a song to this tattoo, to August, that would tell him how he feels, because words will never be good enough.

Settling back on his heels, he just stares.

"Like it?" August grins, doesn't bother to hide how proud he is of it, nor how good it feels that this is Itzhak's reaction. "Lex does amazing work. If she ever needs a job in Portland, I know where to send her." Presumably to the same artist who did the elk skull, or at least that studio.

He lets Itzhak have a longer look while contemplating the scars on his abdomen. "I've been thinking of something for these, but not sure I want to keep up with shaving the," he pats his belly. "But the other two, maybe. Could do a...leaf, maybe, or something."

Another shrug, back to the kythe. <<It's you, claiming yourself, right? Think of it that way.>> But hey, he would try to argue for more. He seeks a middle ground. <<At the very least, get it drawn. Then you can think about a tattoo. While staring at it.>>

"Like it? I freakin' love it." Itzhak backs up, so he doesn't breathe any more on the fresh ink, and climbs into his armchair again. "Eh, why keep it shaved if you get somethin' on ya belly, lots of guys don't. Plus it'd look fuckin' hot. I gotta say though, scar tissue on your belly, that's gonna hurt worse than just about anything else not on, like, your inner elbow." He knocks back some coffee, Adam's apple bobbing in his long throat, and picks up the kythe. The image of the big, graceful deer-like unicorn he'd become soaks through the line as he thinks about getting a drawing. <<That kid who was there. He saw me, and he was doing this chalk art that was damn near photorealistic. Maybe I can track him down. He looks like he could use some cash.>>

"Look hot, hmmm?" Let it not be said August Roen isn't at least a little vain, for all that he might think of himself as a bit creaky and old to be considered worth physical consideration. He slips the plain tee back on, then the sweater. Jacket off for the moment, he's feeling plenty warm. "For sure will. Well I'll think about it, anyways." Maybe. He's just gotten one, that'll hold him for now.

He sips from the coffee, leans back a bit in the chair and looks over the unicorn again. <<Not a half-bad idea. Also he was there, so, hell have a good idea of what you mean, won't just be guessing.>> He swirls the coffee a bit, studying Itzhak. <<Thorne was kidnapped, for some sort of weird fucking ritual at his house. And that wedding I went to, got co-opted by some crazy asshole who kidnapped Isabella to use her for a ritual.>> He sighs. <<All of which means I'm due to get smacked around. Big time.>> He rubs at his eyes. <<How about you?>>

"I said fuckin' hot," Itzhak says, very firm on this point, lopsided smile appearing.

The kythe swells with how it felt to be that fabulous beast. Fast. Strong. Wild, with a wildness a mortal man simply couldn't achieve no matter how many strangers he banged while drunk. Best of all, somehow that deep urge Itzhak had to protect people was the unicorn. The shape of that feeling had taken literal form around him. And then he'd carried a woman on his back and slaughtered hunting hounds and stood defiantly over the elk that reminded him of August.

Perhaps justifiably, he's a little proud.

<<Sandushka told me about Thorne. Said he'd be okay.>> Itzhak finishes the coffee and stands up, restless. He stares across the garage bays at nothing. <<Didn't know about Isabella.>> A long pause, while his fractal constructs lock with each other and turn like gears. <<I oughta text him if that's the case.>> This is their lives now, checking up on friends after their SOs are kidnapped by cultists. Then, shrugging, he gets his violin out. (He's feeling a little more like it's 'his'.) <<Dias de los Muertos.>> Whatever he wants to say seethes around in his throat, as he bows his curly black head over the violin and plucks it like a guitar. <<...I saw my pop.>>

August is proud of Itzhak as well, but overlaying that is something else, a sort of relief, or maybe joy, to see Itzhak like that: free and full of purpose, choosing to take the fight on behalf of something or someone he didn't know, not really. Certainly the elk might've reminded him of August, but maybe that only makes it more relevant, at least to August. It's a good feeling, in the midst of all this bullshit they're learning to handle.

<<It was ugly,>> he says, of the wedding. In juxtaposition to that statement Itzhak briefly sees August and Eleanor in their outfits, hers an ephemeral bit of silver netting with red poppies embroidered into it over a silver sheath, and a matching silver filligree mask; him in his gray glen check suit with the red hilights, and a red and silver brocade vest, with a harvest crown of hops, bittersweet, dove and grouse feathers, and oak, aspen, and maple leaves. But then there's the ugliness. Someone playing at the piano, forcing everyone to do things like puppets. Ellie and Elias saving the bride and groom; the groomsmen turning on Eleanor and mobbing her. And August, utterly furious, a hair's breadth from doing something he's never done, only to have Eleanor turn his attention to blowing out the windows and destroying the piano. (Ruiz, trying to fight off Erin, and shooting the pianist; Alexander, trying to light up the pianist, counter-zapped for his efforts. Byron, finding Isabella bound in some sort of odd web that they freed her from.) It's all very brief, because August doesn't want to linger on how badly he wanted to tear apart those groomsmen attacking Eleanor, and had come close to doing so.

<<She'll be okay, I think.>> He frowns about Dias de los Muertos, seems to not know what to think. Then, <<As a spirit? An apparition?>>

Itzhak plays the violin pizzicato while 'listening', mental doors thrown wide to take in everything. His eyes get big as he remembers along with August. That scares him, the idea that August might step over such a line, though not for himself. For August, who has been so firm about what he will and won't do. Something he doesn't have words for. But he knows that if or when August crosses that line, Itzhak won't blame him for it. He'll understand, and really, it'll only be a matter of time before he goes there himself.

He's playing the opening riff to the Rush song 'Dreamline' idly while the kythe works in his head. Then he sighs, blowing out a breath. <<I don't know. Maybe?>> Something he's never shown August: the image of his father, a man not too much older than he is now, shorter, but with the same black curls and magnificent nose. The memory's old and worn, almost more photographs by this time than assembled from experience. Then the same man, whispering in a ghost's voice to Itzhak. Yiddish and English overlay each other: I'm proud of you, my darling boy.

The violin in Itzhak's hands goes silent. The violin in his head, the voice of his kythe, sings high and aching. 'Ave Maria.'

The list of people for whom August would do that is short. Itzhak's on it, that much is certain. And even though he knows he would, maybe even will some time soon now, he's scared of what comes after. Even if he doesn't actually kill someone, and simply hurts them--something he can reverse--what does it mean, to be able to do that?

He wants to hope they'll never find out, and yet knows that's not likely. But they don't have to think about that. Not right now.

August studies Itzhak's father, smiles at the likeness. <<Handsome man. Like father like son.>> He sighs, bittersweet, to see Itzhak hear those words. Had they been real? Had it just been imagined, the Glimmer giving him what he wanted? Maybe it didn't matter which it was. Itzhak's father had come and spoken to him, either way.

The music echoes over the river, the forest, the volcano crater and its aspen grove. The central tree, the one growing from the dome, shivers its brilliant gold leaves. It's as much a hug in the kythe as August can offer.

<<He died when I was a kid. In a car accident. They told us he was blackout drunk. I didn't even know he drank.>> Itzhak remembers that time mostly as a whirlwind of brutal grief and fury. He barely recalls sitting siva although he and his family did. He does remember refusing to attend shul for the Mourner's Kiddush, and his mother fighting bitterly with him over it and his sister crying in terror. Itzhak shuts that memory away before it can become too awful, but the acid of it steams below the surface of his kything.

One thing is clear enough. His father's death is what put Itzhak on the path that would lead him to prison and a life as an unemployed ex-con.

August puzzles over the car accident and the drinking. Well, plenty of kids found out about such things the same way. He'd grown up with all manner of friends and acquaintances in a similar situation, whose lives had taken similar turns to Itzhak's. That was life when you were living under the burden of debt and stress and illness and not making enough money. Things went hidden, until tragedy struck, and the delicate understandings of youth crumpled.

The violin music echoes, restrengthened by the wind and the river. No judgment for the anger and rage, even though it hurt loved ones. He's done that too, struck out at people who cared about him and didn't deserve it when he didn't know what he was grieving or how to grieve for it. <<I'm sorry. I wish you hadn't gone through all that.>> He doesn't just mean Itzhak's father's death, of course.

Itzhak's mouth flinches a little. He strums the violin a few times. <<Yeah.>> A construct almost too fragile to stand up under its own weight forms out of the feelings he has about the way he acted. He turned away from family and teachers and even his violin instructors, and towards people who recognized his mechanical genius and his grief as things they could exploit. He'd always had a temper. When his father died, he lost any ability to control it.

He knows he was just a kid, and he knows he was used by bad people, and yet he still feeds a fire of self-loathing at the core of his self.

All of which to say seeing his father come to tell him he was proud of the man he'd become had shaken a fault line open in the depths of his soul. Was it just something he subconsciously longed to see? Was it an echo tuned just for him? He doesn't know, and he is torn between believing what happened and not wanting to believe.

August watches that construct form. His heart aches for it; for Itzhak, for the resonance it creates. <<I wish there was a way to convince you not to hate yourself for that.>> To let the wound scar over, to let it cool and fade. Let the volcano become a crater. A reminder, certainly, but one that wouldn't continue to hurt so much, fault line or no.

How would he have felt to see Aunt Jess again? She'd never had a chance to see him after Bosnia. Would he have wanted her to? Her last memory of him was going off to Basic Training. How would it feel to know she'd seen all the rest in some after life--the parts he hated to remember, but the good parts too?

He sighs, though. He'd discussed something like this with Finch. In another context, but his answer remained the same. <<I don't know if it matters if it was real.>> He lets that sit a minute before elaborating. <<Was the Blight you pulled me out of real? Was you being a unicorn real? They happened to you--what does it matter if they happened here, or Over There, or in a place between? They still happened. That makes them real.>> Another pause, then, <<The only thing to be worried about would be, is someone trying to use a false illusion to manipulate you. The way the mind Gift can. But I think that couldn't be the case here. That's not what they'd show you. So whether you called him up, or he came to you, or the Song pulled him together for you, I don't think that's important. You loved him, and you're terrified you let him down, and something, somewhere--some part of you, or some part of something else--wanted to reassure you.>>

Itzhak tips his head and his eyebrows in that wry 'yeah, but whaddaya gonna do' gesture. He hates himself and that's how he lives his life. He doesn't know how to do anything else. But he listens, and he plays some more of 'Dreamline', quietly, while August sends him compassion and understanding. We're only at home when we're on the run...on the run...

<<You talk a lotta sense, Roen.>> Black feathers, blood, stag's horns, bougainvillea against a contrasting backdrop of heavy dark stormclouds. Roen. <<I guess it worries me that maybe it was Them tryin' to use him against me. But...nah. I don't think it was.>> A lot of other people had seen their beloved dead, too, and none of them had suffered for it. Except that poor guy with his crazy uncle waltzing him around. Itzhak smiles just a touch, thinking about it. <<Fincheleh, she even saw who must have been de la Vega's pop.>>

August grunts, not unfondly, at the notion that Itzhak doesn't know how to do other things. <<That's not true.>> Now's not the time to belabor the point, so there's only a flicker of ideas half-formed images: holding August in his arms in the face of the Blight, his tenderness with Isolde, following Finch into hell so she could seek out her origins. There and gone in a moment.

Wry amusement of his own. <<I try to be sensible, I'm too old to be dumb. It'll just get me killed these days.>> He contrasts that imagery of him with imagery of Itzhak: a unicorn, somewhat different than one Itzhak became, because its horn and hooves are gleaming metal, its fur has the texture of flame maple, its voice is a violin played bright and sharp and fierce. Itzhak.

<<It's not wrong to worry about that,>> August agrees. <<But I don't think it was. They'd...>> He falls quiet, thinks of himself and Ellie in the ruins of Gray Harbor. <<They'd do something uglier, than that. And if others saw their beloved dead, and were also treated gently, well. I think that means it was something else. Something kinder.>> He thinks of something he read once. <<'The mind sees what it needs to. The soul sees what it sees.'>>

Curiosity and surprise. <<Did she?>> A pause, then, <<How'd that go?>>

Itzhak laughs under his breath at the image of a ferocious violin-unicorn. His eyes crinkle up with how much he loves that. Maybe that's what he should get tattooed. August's quote, he replies to with, <<Only with the heart can one see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.>> A quote from The Little Prince. The book Ruiz had given him was an older, worn edition clearly loved by other hands.

<<He told her something. I dunno what it was. It was in Spanish.>> Itzhak picks up his bow, settles his violin under his chin, and begins to play Vivaldi. Sweet and melancholy, the sound of the violin harmonizes with the sound of his kythe. <<Iggy and me saw Marissa, his old girlfriend, and de la Vega...he must have seen his wife.>> Itzhak's heart hurts, in almost a good way, with how it had felt to see his friends and his lover encounter their own beloved dead. A memory rises up: he couldn't just let de la Vega stand there after his wife departed, so he had danced with him in front of half the town. And Ignacio had played his trumpet! That had also made Itzhak's heart hurt, too full, pulling on its scars.

Now it's clear that's why he finally picked up his rental violin. He had needed to make music with Iggy. It's the only way he knows to get some of those feelings out of him.

August mmmmms, low and thoughtful. He's pleased, though, that Finch had someone to come to her. Maybe even more so that it had been de la Vega's own father. It was assurance, a bit of truth to hold on to, strength given when she was at her most vulnerable. No, he's sure this hadn't been Them.

Ignacio seeing his lost girlfriend--more sadness mixed with relief. And Ignacio playing again, drawing Itzhak out of his grief to do the same. August regrets he hadn't been there, is so glad to get to see it in the link. (Definitely not Them. This was healing, done carefully, a little bit at a time. The only way, in August's opinion, it could ever be expected to hold.)

But Itzhak dancing with Ruiz in front of God and everyone, well. That gets a laugh out of him; the link gleams with it. <<Did it occur to you Ignacio and Finch might find that a little something something? Sure you have to tell them eventually but I expected you to wait a bit.>> He thinks it's funny that Itzhak's impulsiveness leads to these kinds of things; it's not an admonishment. <<Not going to keep fucking him indeed...>>

Inevitably Itzhak blushes, grinning lopsided as he plays through one of the good parts of 'Violin Concerto in F Minor'. He's rusty at it, but improving rapidly. <<Yeah yeah.>> Playing Vivaldi because Ruiz liked it, dancing with Ruiz at a townwide festival, wearing Ruiz's GHPD hoodie... August doesn't need to wield his interpersonal genius to figure out what's going on there. <<Uhhh it didn't. All I was thinking was I could do something. So I did.>>

He'd maybe a little bit stolen Ruiz from Erin for that dance, too. Ahem. Well, he gave him back!

<<I do gotta tell 'em,>> he agrees with a sigh. <<I ...dunno how the hell to do that. Tell them that I'm fucking Fincheleh's pop? Oy vey izt mir. Neither of 'em are gonna like that.>>

<<Someone's smitten.>> August thinks it's cute, though, to see Itzhak this way, even if he's mildly concerned that this entire situation is going to explode in a truly messy fashion. But he's given that warning, and until he has to scrape Itzhak off the pavement he might as well enjoy the better moments.

The river murmurs, a gentle rush in the forest. August is staring absently out across the garage. <<I'd wait until after Finch has her talk with de la Vega. See how that pans out. If it goes bad, wait. If not, tell her then. If it's not a good talk, telling them you're fucking him is going to sound like a defense against anything he does or says. And they'll get really pissed off if you do that.>>

<<I'd tell you this is weird for me and usually I don't get hung up on one night stands but I'd be fuckin' lying.>> Itzhak's resigned. The Ruiz train has left the station and it's not stopping until the tracks are bombed. <<Yeah. Yeah that sounds like a real solid plan.>>

One that he's going to completely ignore when Ignacio comes by later, furious over the way Ruiz acted when Finch told him what she had to tell him. Itzhak doesn't know it yet, but he's ending this day limping and drunk, with holes burned in his clothes.

<<Hey in good news, Bex wants to date for real now.>> So there's another one night stand Itzhak fell for! His record is terrible. <<We went on actual dates and everything. How'd I get into this situation, Roen?>> And how long until he learns he's the one who planted dynamite on the train tracks? <<Two girls I'm crazy about? I didn't think Bex ever would. A girl like her? But she said...>>

Smiling, Itzhak lowers his bow and looks at August. <<She said some pretty great stuff.>>

And August, well, he'll be helping Finch burn off her rage in the forest, and perform a feat of matter manipulation which would make Itzhak's eyes pop out of his head. And he'll be heartsore, because this is going to make strife with all three of them, and he's not going to be in much position to do anything but apply emotional bandaids and help them weather it. Well, at least he's good at that.

For now, though, the kythe stays bright with his amusement. <<It's because you're not having one night stands, for one thing.>> He can't help but be a smug jerk for finally getting to say that. <<Sure, you didn't wine and dine them first, but you got to know them. They got to know you. That's explicitly not how a one night stand works. It can be how a fling works. And since they were never one night stands to begin with, what you're really asking is, why are people into to me. I'm sure I've said this before, but it bears repeating I guess: it's because you're hot, and intelligent, and talented, and compassionate. What's not to be into?>> A soft chuckle of the river splashing. If Itzhak was hoping for a reassurance or shared amazement at his luck at obtaining lovers despite himself, he came to the wrong guy. (After all, it's not like August wouldn't have been one of them under different circumstances.)

He smiles, softly, about Bex. And notes that this is officially out of fling territory too. <<That's good. And, I'm not surprised. Look what you helped each other through, with Gohl. That's how relationships form. When you see one another through the bad shit.>> The addendum 'no one is coming out of that with a one night stand' is implied, if not specified.

Itzhak barks a startled laugh and stuffs his red face into the crook of his elbow. "Jesus, Roen! Why do you gotta call me out like this." Surfacing, he shoots him a highly amused look. <<Always with the good opinion of me.>>

Something hidden stirs in his psyche. Maybe there is one thing Itzhak keeps from August. A thing he is not ready to tell him, might not ever be ready, a thing that resonantes between past and present and future. A big thing. A bad thing. Itzhak is pretty sure August wouldn't think so well of him if he knew. Not August, not Bex, not Isolde. (Yet, there is the faintest, quickest suggestion that de la Vega wouldn't mind. Isn't that odd.) It's like a swell from a far-off hurricane, and it flattens almost as soon as it causes a reaction in Itzhak.

He shakes his head, still grinning. <<So did you come here just to embarrass me?>>

"I speak only truths," August says, hovering his face in the coffee before taking another sip. He gives Itzhak one of those fake, prim and proper looks of his. It doesn't work on a face like his; he's too worn, too gray and white, for stateliness. <<Of course with the good opinion.>>

He sees that swell, studies it with a pause. Lets Itzhak see that he's noticed it, but says nothing about it. That's Itzhak's to tell, or not. There are things about August which Itzhak doesn't know, maybe never will. Everyone has things in their past which remain there. It's the ability to trust one another with bringing it up in one's own time that matters to August, not that he's not being told. It's okay, or maybe it's not okay, but August has no judgement for that. He does it himself. It's just how things are.

<<Mostly. It's fun, after all, and you blush, so I know it's working.>> He leans his side into the chair, since he can't lean his back. <<Portland. I was thinking of going in a couple of weeks, to ask around about our problem.>> The doors closing, he means. <<Did you want to come with?>>

<<Portland, huh? Yeah. Love to. Think Isolde or Bex could come along?>> Itzhak doesn't dare wonder about the topic of both his girls going on a trip with him. That would be too awesome, can't think about it.

As always, the kythe ripples with his singing gratitude that August accepts him just like he is. He doesn't let it sing long. Too risky, with what he's hiding. He turns the kythe back to the technical challenge of what the hell they're going to do about all the doors shut in their faces. <<You got something in mind?>>

<<Absolutely.>> A few visuals of the city drift by: the bridges over the Williamette River at dusk, lights marking their shapes and the passage of boats on the water; Powell's, a truly mind-boggling collection of books; Mount Hood, a bold white triangle in the distance; the railroad yard near the trailer park August grew up in on the banks of the river; the Shanghai Tunnels that riddle Old Town Chinatown. That last bit is the most relevant: though the memories are faded and worn, the recollections of a child who had no idea what was really happening, Itzhak can see bits of the Song in them. Strange creatures August would chase. Odd plants he'd find. Weird people he'd converse with and have to run from. None of this struck him as truly out of the ordinary--he'd grown up in a trailer park on a riverbank by a rail yard. Of course he'd seen odd and dangerous characters and had run ins with animals and such. Now, though, they both know better.

<<We'll see who all can make it. Mostly I want to talk to some old acquaintances. Check the tunnels, see if it's the same as it is here--with our reach diminished. Ask around.>> A pause, then, <<Maybe go Over There, look around. If you want.>>

Oh! Itzhak's attention is really caught by those memories. He gives the impression that he'd love to dig his fingers into them and spread them out for a better look. Of course, he doesn't, because that's not how this works. But August can feel the ballooning curiosity that drives Itzhak to shove that big nose of his into everything.

<<Man, it looks like you got a lot to show us. I kinda can't wait.>> He bounces his bow off the strings a few times, spang spang spang. <<Wonder if it's as blocked up there as it is here? Is it everywhere? All over the world? Or is it just here?>>

There's a lot there; 18 years, plus the one he spent recovering after Bosnia, before he went to college. Numerous faces from school--oh yeah, August got into a lot of scraps as a kid. He was big for his age, he could afford to get in someone's face if they tried to fuck with him or his sisters. All of that ended when he came back, but before then, the memories are ripe with it.

<<It's a great city. I miss it a lot, even though I can't really bear to live in it anymore. Can't wait to show you guys everything there.>> His attention returns to the tunnels. Like the old sawmill, they're a nexus for the Veil. <<That's what I want to find out. See if some of the people I grew up with know anything. See if it changed down there too. I figure, we'll know right away. It won't take long. Couple of days, tops. Hannah's guy can get us a discount at a hotel. He helps manage some B&B's.>> So at least lodging won't be an issue. Is there an ulterior motive here, to inflict his family on his friends, maybe introduce Eleanor to his parents? Possibly. (Yes.)

<<I'll let you guys know once I've got some dates nailed down.>> A soft sigh. He's tired; the nightmares are heavy right now. They'll come for him soon, to take Their share.