2019-12-19 - The Thickening Dark

It's maybe an hour or two until dark, which of course at this time of year means it's all of three in the afternoon. There's a minus four tide, exposing all manner of tide pools along the rock-strewn beach to the chill, near-winter air. August is undeterred; he hasn't come out to check for shells or beach glass in weeks, and he's feeling a need to do it. The gentle rush of the harbor's waves and the briney tang of the ocean help scrub away some of a very long, aching couple of weeks.

He's in a simple fleece shell, red Henley, denim jeans, and hiking boots. The thin edge of a waning crescent moon is just becoming visible in the sky. The wind shifts his hair as he crouches down along the shore, carefully pulls a shell out: a pale creamy yellow wentletrap.

A hint of violin melody on the wind: Itzhak's kythe, requesting connection. The tall, beaky guy himself is a good couple hundred yards away, just stepping on the sand from the parking lot, visible as a long streak of jeans and peacoat. A distance, but it's nothing to them. Not anymore. He strolls August's direction, unhurried, turning the collar of his coat up against the sharp afternoon sea wind.

August answers without looking up; the rush of a river, the wind in the trees. And something else: a large, dark shape moving in the forest at a stately pace, protected from prying eyes by the spread of red cedar and spruce.

He continues inspecting the shell, turning it over in his hands. When Itzhak's closer he offers it up, picks up a piece of sea glass, dark bronze rendered soft and pearly by the pounding waves. <<How're you doing?>> He holds the glass up against the sky. <<I keep feeling like there has to be a way to imbue things with the art. Set it down in them. Like the soup.>>

Itzhak takes the shell, turning it over in his calloused, tattooed fingers. <<That's pretty. Like a unicorn horn kinda.>> He rubs the ridges over the pad of his thumb, head down, looking at August sidelong while the wind ruffles his curls. <<I dunno. I feel weird. Almost like I got a fever, but I don't.>> His hand closes over the shell possessively. <<I guess I oughta tell you. De la Vega, well, he wants to try a for-real kinda thing.>> Itzhak's violin is restrained, not sure how August is going to react. <<So, that's good.>> Right? It's good. He thinks.

August looks up from the sea glass, stands. He arches an eyebrow and smiles; it's echoed in the link with another glimpse of the shape moving though the trees. Black and ash gray, feathers and fur. <<Oh did he.>> He doesn't bother to mask the echo of his own voice from earlier in the month: 'he's in it deeper than he wants to admit'.

But the knowing goes further than that. There's another layer to how he perceives Ruiz, subtle but there. <<Very good, since you're pretty taken with him.>> He offers over the glass too. Is he making Itzhak carry everything, or giving them to him? Hard to say.

Whichever it is, Itzhak takes the glass too, first slipping the wentletrap into a pocket. <<That's pretty too.>> His violin complexifies, becoming an entire symphony while he studies the bit of glass, bending his strength to it. Then it winds down to his single violin again, and he tucks the glass into a pocket with a satisfied little quirk of his mouth. <<Yeah,>> he admits, pleased. <<Yeah, I am. He's... yeah.>> In the kythe, he's noticed the dark shape moving among the trees, and he's curious enough to send over an investigative fractal tendril.

August studies Itzhak a second while he studies the glass and shell in turn. His attention shifts to a tidepool, and he moves towards it. The shape in the forest gradually approaches the fractal tendril, lit by it: a great elk bull, antlers woody and blooming with foxglove and helleborus, wound with bittersweet and sweetpea and brambles, trailing thready roots. Its coat is velvety ash gray and night black feathers by turns. A great yellow, black, and white orb weaver spins her web in the antler-branches; the hooves gleam dark hematite.

<<He has problems. But,>> the elk lifts its nose to the tendril; its eyes aren't actually black-brown, but a deep, dark green, <<I think they're the kind of thing you can help him with. And he can help you with yours, maybe.>>

Itzhak saunters along after August, boots rolling through the pebbly sand. Then he almost stumbles, kicking up sand, eyes popping wide. <<!!>> He halts, staggered. <<You! You're-->>

A shift in the kythe and a black unicorn, gleaming with green-bronze-gold highlights, spotted and dappled with white on its flanks, lands on the forest loam. It sways unsteadily, turning its fine head to look at itself. <<...this is new.>>

<<He was showing me something he saw. It was easier for him to show me like this.>> August is amused, also pleased. Another way of thinking of himself, within himself. And so they all taught one another new ways in the Art. The ravenelk tilts its head, flicks an ear in greeting to the unicorn.

As to what de la Vega was showing him... August pauses in the act of picking up a piece of shell. Silvery abalone gleams in the failing daylight. <<That bastard that killed James...he also caused all those deaths at the hospital. Alexander went to try and take care of him by himself.>>

In the link the elk grunts about that, flicks an ear, betraying August's tired annoyance with Alexander throwing himself in front of every on-coming train he can find. <<By some miracle all the asshole wanted to do was be a smarmy shithead at him, then let him go.>>

The unicorn carefully picks up its cloven feet to come closer, whuffle the elk's muzzle and lip at him. <<You're just like him. The one I saw on Halloween.>> The violin isn't gone, of course. Now it's just coming from the unicorn, somehow. <<The one they were hunting.>> The one Itzhak had defended with his life. The unicorn's absurdly long tasseled tail switches. Itzhak remembers how to walk again, mostly (walking on two legs outside and four legs inside is a challenge) and weaves after August. <<He what?>> the unicorn says, annoyed, and paws at the leafy ground. <<Oy, Sandushka. That creep is playing with his food, that's all.>>

As the violin still plays, so does the forest around them still have its sounds: the river over the rocks, the wind winding through the trees and blowing dust on the dead side of the volcano. The ravenelk noses the unicorn, curious. <<Tattoo,>> comes the pointed reminder.

He considers that, being hunted in a ritual. <<That was when Eleanor and I were on the boat. I wonder...>> Had some part of him been on the boat, and another hunted in a Dream? Perhaps. Who could say. But if anything could so finely divide the rivers of self up to act out their own parts in an odd little dance, surely it was the Veil.

The ravenelk blows out a breath, begins the follow the river to the volcano. <<I think he wanted to take on the burden of killing himself. Byron and I opted to let Isabella have that out with him. Still,>> an ear turns back towards Itzhak, <<keep an eye on de la Vega. If he's intent on harassing those of us at the wedding, he'll be on that list. The bastard's a strong mentalist.>> Which means he could do what they're doing, right now, from anywhere, at any time. Would he? Hard to say.

<<Tattoo. Maybe.>> The unicorn trails along after, almost as big as the elk itself, although more gracile. It snorts, and Itzhak snorts. <<That was fuckin' stupid of him and I'm gonna yell at him.>> Alexander in a rippling little lift of song. Itzhak's crush has tempered itself over the months, become a deep and abiding fondness. (Ruiz has had no small part in that, filling up the places in Itzhak that longed for a man.) <<Yeah, I'll keep an eye on de la Vega, not that I have any way to stop HIM doin' what he wants to do. Look, are you okay?>> he adds, suddenly. <<You don't seem okay.>>

There is, maybe for the first time, a suggestion of something August is not going to tell Itzhak. Something rippling through the river like a trout darting out of sight; a bird flickering away from scrutiny into the branches overhead; a vole skittering into the carpet of oak leaves. Something about Ruiz. <<You can't. But, he might come to de la Vega. He came after Isabella. And of all of us, de la Vega is the one who shot him.>> So he might have a bone to pick, is the suggestion here. (And there's more, something he's not going to tell Itzhak. Another reason de la Vega could be a target.)

As August opted to withhold his own lecture, he decides to allow Itzhak to take up that space, and makes no encouragement for him to hold back. One way or another Alexander was going to learn he was cared for and loved and could trust them. Whether he liked it or not.

The ravenelk stops at a small crevasse leading down into the caldera. August turns the abalone over in his hand, pockets it, stands up. He puts his hands in his pockets. <<He sent those flowers. To the funeral. I tried to read one and...>> He doesn't show it, but there's a sense of an aftershock, revulsion and horror and rage and pain. Familiar, in its ugly way. August does, however, show his reaction: all the flowers in the funeral home dying. Cracks in the plaster, running deeper, until Eleanor stops him dead in his tracks.

He sighs, leans over and picks up a rock, skips it into the oncoming waves. The ravenelk resumes its walk. <<It's getting harder. To...keep it in check, when I get upset.>> Another visual, that he doesn't explain: broken and shattered dishes in a cupboard.

The unicorn rumbles, a sound not horse-or-deerlike at all. De la Vega shot this creep? Defiance flares in the kythe, in the way the unicorn stands at the edge of the caldera with its head lifted into the wind. An emblem of purity isn't very Itzhak, but a symbol of protection? That's him.

Nobody touches de la Vega without his say so. And he don't say so. Ruiz is his.

The kythe fills with August's images, of the flowers and then the way August made them wilt. And seemed well on his way to tearing the place down when Eleanor stopped him. A flicker of fondness for her, too; Itzhak appreciates a woman who can manage her man.

He stands over August's crouching form, squinting into the sea wind exactly like his internal unicorn is doing. <<Not so good, huh?>> Dry Yiddish understatement. <<Christ, you're strong now. It ain't no wonder you're having trouble controlling it. Like you been driving a Mustang all your life and suddenly you got dropped into a Lambo.>> No pity, never that, but...Itzhak knows what it feels like to scare yourself. <<Maybe it's like Alexander said. Need more practice. This is at least as hard as playing violin.>>

August's only regret is that Ruiz hadn't managed to kill the guy. He will be more than happy to give Ruiz another opportunity to finish the job. (Guilt accompanies that thought, a stirring in the still, dark waters of the caldera lake: while he's happy to assist in putting the guy in the ground--even Eleanor wanted that to happen--he's still not totally sure he could do it himself. Didn't that make him a hypocrit?) He's glad, then, to see Itzhak ready to keep an eye on Ruiz. He hopes, absently, that Ruiz is doing the same, because boy could Itzhak use it.

The description gives him pause. Well, that was true enough; before, getting upset hadn't meant compromised building structures or killing whole buildings of plants. He might break a plate. Wilt a flower. Bruise himself. Now the stakes were a lot higher.

<<At least, huh?>> That comment amuses him, pulls him a little further away from being sulky about it. (Who sulks about being more powerful anyways? August, apparently.) <<It's what they want, I know--for us to be unstable, out of control. So, more practice.>> The ravenelk blows out a breath; August picks up another rock and skips it. <<More meditation.>> He's been neglecting that; needs to get back to it.

A small smile for that thought about Eleanor. Twice now she'd stopped him like that. She shouldn't have to, and he didn't want her to have to, but was grateful she'd done it.

The unicorn stretches its long neck to nibble the feathers of the elk's ruff. <<Ten thousand hours until mastery, that's what they say. We got some time to put in.>> The long, long pearly-bronze horn dips and bobs through the branch-antlers, rustling. Itzhak doesn't know what to say about August's feeling that he might be a hypocrite about killing, but his presence in the kythe is warm and boisterous and trusting. Always got your back. If August killed, if August found himself unable to kill--Itzhak will still be here, violin song and fractals and unicorn and all.

He doesn't stoop to grab a rock; he just holds out his hand and one leaps to his palm. Itzhak pitches it southpaw and it skitters and bops and leaps a ridiculous length before giving up and sinking into the ocean. Anyone just looking at them would think two men are standing around doing nothing except staring at the ocean and occasionally throwing a rock at it. The scene would be poetic in its sparse visuals if someone was just looking at them.

<<...Hey,>> he sends, turning to glance at August in mock-annoyance. <<I heard that. De la Vega should keep an eye on me, huh?>>

The elk lets out a long, slow breath, grateful for the sense of the unicorn's presence; really, it doesn't need answers to those things right now, knows it might never need them. Or, if it does, it'll get them, one way or another. For now, it's enough for August to know Itzhak is there with him, no matter how that plays out. The orb weaver wanders her web over the horn, maybe in a subtle gesture of, 'Did you think you could just show up here with your horn and get in the way?'

August looks down at the rock in his hand. There's a quartz band running through it, milky white from beach sand, but it would polish up just fine. He glances sidelong at Itzhak. <<He can do things for you Isolde and Rebecca can't. Maybe...shouldn't.>> He's not sure how to articulate it, and the elk paws a hoof in annoyance over that. It's a bone-deep sense, a knowledge that there are things which will come for Itzhak that it would be wrong to ask Rebecca and Isolde to defend him from. But de la Vega's a man, a man with a position of power in their society, even. That's a good thing, even if the cop and ex-con situation is dicey. It doesn't have to be.

The blade-thin slice of the moon is slowly growing brighter. The sun's down, but the light's not gone just yet. <<And...you can do things for him others couldn't, I think. If you two can find a good balance.>>

Itzhak performs one of those amusing little Yiddish gestures, shrugging with one shoulder, tipping his head to that side, and quirking his eyebrows. One of a thousand variations upon the theme of 'ehhhhh'. The unicorn snorts and very carefully slides its horn out from under the orb weaver. Weird how taking these concrete forms in the kythe results in tiny details like that.

His hands are in his pockets, playing with the wentletrap shell and piece of sea glass. <<I wouldn't ever ask 'em to,>> he murmurs, the sigh and surge of inner tide. <<Ain't their job. It ain't really his job either, but...>> But, August is right, and Itzhak doesn't know how to say it, either.

<<I guess I should tell you something else, too.>> Abruptly, the unicorn vanishes under the weight of shame that burdens the kythe. Itzhak can't envision himself as a beautiful creature while he's thinking about this. He stares fixedly out to the dark sea. <<I...wanted to tell you for a long time. But I been scared.>>

It's a strange thing, to know they can't ask things of some lovers but can of others. Such were the after-effects from what society had done to all of them, in denying them what they really were.

The elk wanders back into the forest when the unicorn vanishes, a subtle acknowledgment that August won't do what Itzhak can't bring himself to. The sky empties, granting space for the fractals to do what they would. The river empties into a small pool, a meager cousin to the lake in the crater. <<You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to. I'm not owed it. Don't think I feel like I am. I understand why you'd rather not.>> What August saw in the Dream, he means; that there are things about himself which Itzhak loathes, and would rather keep them from August, from Finch, from Ignacio.

A pause in the wind through the forest. <<But if you think it'll help you to tell me, I'll gladly listen.>>

<<Ain't about helping me.>> Itzhak's strings are brisk and scrapey. But his eyes close, stinging, and he doesn't send anything else for a long time. He only stands there, tall and thin, cheeks red from the cold wind, black curls frizzy from the wet air. With his tattoos hidden, bundled in his big old peacoat, he could be a man from any time in the past two hundred years, standing on a shore from the same.

In the kythe, his music grows tense, ready to swell with revelation. But.

But.

Then he backs off from the precipice of almost telling August, flushing redder in shame. <<...Yeah. Maybe you're right.>>

August waits, patient, unmoving save for his fingers running over the black and white-striped rock in his hand. There's no sense of expectation, just the quiet contemplation of a forest as night falls on the cusp of winter, the moon barely watching the darkness close in.

A little more sound works into the landscape. <<//It is about helping you. Me knowing something--that's not going to just be for me. Or, it shouldn't be. It should be for you too. Especially if it's something like this.>> Something that twists Itzhak up. Something like the prison. He doesn't move, out there on the beach, but there is a sense in the link that he would, in other circumstances, be taking Itzhak's face in his hands. <<If you're scared about how I'll react, about what I'll think of you--don't be. I know that's hard to believe. I know you think I'm wrong. But this is one thing I know, balls to bones, that I'm not wrong about. You're not a man who's done something that will make me hate him. You're just not. I'll keep saying that, and believing it for you, until you can believe it for yourself.>>

Itzhak sticks the toe of his boot into the damp sand, scuffling and crunching it up, while he listens. He lifts his head, eyes closing, as if he can feel August's hands on his face, hands as big and rough as his own. Cold ocean wind sighs in from the water, fluttering the collar of his peacoat, mussing his curls.

<<That's still not why I wanna tell you. It's so you can protect Nacio and Finch. Protect yourself.>> Itzhak opens his eyes to look at August, his eyebrows up. <<God, I wish I could believe you.>> The kythe is merely a whisper of strings. <<I'm sorry, Roen.>> And he is. He is truly sorry, that he can't believe him. He knows perfectly well August would never lie to him, especially not about such a thing, and yet...in the very core of his fear, it doesn't matter.

Grimacing, he looks away. <<I...I guess I'll head back.>>

Confusion mixed with concern makes the link ripple; the river froths, the trees shudder. Itzhak can feel it coming, a sudden wave of fierce protectiveness. It's not couched in protecting Ignacio (he has Finch) or Finch (who can August protect her from that she can't handle herself? almost no one). No...this is for Itzhak.

He's poised on the edge of demanding some sort of clarification. Reassurance. Anything. 'Are you okay?' 'Please tell me what you need.' 'Whatever they need protecting from, you do too.' They hover, almost said. Almost.

The link calms. <<You don't have anything to apologize for. You'll tell me if, and when, you can. It's not a failing of yours. At least, not as far as I see it. I'd rather never know, than you hurt yourself telling me.>> He faces Itzhak, pockets the quartz-included rock. <<I hope one day you'll believe me. And in the mean time I'm going to keep saying it to you. So if you need me to shut up about it, you're just going to have to accept it.>>

A gentle request for Itzhak to hold up. <<I'll walk back with you.>> It's dim, now, on the shoreline. <<You need a hug?>>

Slow and graceful as if he moved underwater, Itzhak turns to August and wraps him in his long arms, presses his face to the other man's broad shoulder. The inner forest stirs and froths with August's need to protect him, and Itzhak basks in it, greedily, music winding up and down and twisting and luxuriating in that emotion. Yes, yes yes yes ...for him. For him and it's so good, and he hates himself for liking it so much, and he hates himself for all kinds of other things, too. God, what is wrong with him? Besides literally everything.

He nods, wordlessly, into August's fleece. Yes. Yes he needs a hug.

The great news is, as an older brother who got big early and thus had the self-assigned job of thumping on anyone messing with his friends or sisters, August is quite accustomed to giving the tight, protective hugs. He sighs, grips Itzhak firmly. The link trembles with sadness for all that self-loathing and how it cuts into Itzhak like a thousand thousand subtle knives with molecule-thin blades, tearing him to ribbons as fine as silk thread. And they're not weapons easily disarmed and cast aside, because Itzhak is the one forging them in his own personal furnace of something (or things), about himself he can't possibly let go of or forgive.

But if there's one thing August knows--having been here before--it's that no one can have Itzhak decide to open up about this wound inside him. Only he can do that. And in the mean time, August will wait. His family waited for him. He can wait for Itzhak. <<You need to be protected too, you know. Sometimes from yourself.>> He lacks the video game reference to make here, yet is sure there is one.

Itzhak laughs, once, silent, big ribcage jerking. <<Yeah. Yeah, I sure do.>> He won't deny it, or argue about it. The truth of it is as plain as the huge nose on his face. He rocks back and forth, just adoring being held by August in a way he usually does not indulge himself. Held, and felt protective about, and heard. Itzhak is the big brother in his family. He's used to doing this for someone, but having it done for him? Not so much.

That August needs it too is something he's aware of, but seems unimportant in the moment.

He can't argue with the way he's cutting himself up, either, a form of inner wounding he can't manage to control. Within, he acknowledges that, but, <<I don't know what'll be worse. Telling you or not telling you. Both seem pretty fuckin' bad.>>

Then he kisses August on the cheek and reluctantly pulls away.

<<Not telling me isn't as bad as you think it is. Don't you think there are things I haven't told you?>> There's a brief sense that August has told some people these things--a fleeting image of Alexander with tears in his eyes, Eleanor gripping his hand. <<As long as you can tell somone,>> he tilts his head, lifts his eyebrows, suggesting he means Itzhak's lovers, <<that'll be a start. Believe me. I know what it is to carry something around inside of you and think it's a failing, a fault with you. I also know that telling someone--even if it's not everyone you think should know--will help get you there. It's okay if that's not me.>> He smiles, wry and a touch rueful. <<It's okay for you and I to have boundaries, you know. That's not the end of the world. I definitely won't hold it against you.>>

He coughs a laugh, ducks his head away. <<Come on. I'll take you home. Or to whomever. Pick one.>>

He knows there's things August hasn't told him, and yet Itzhak classifies those things differently. Because of course it's different. It's okay for August to have those things, and not okay for him. That's how these wounds work; they tell him that, and he believes. In many ways he is a rich feast for the Unshaped.

There's a little blip of acknowledgement when August says someone, like Itzhak has in fact already told someone. A good bet would be de la Vega, but he doesn't say who.

He grins just a faint curve of a grin when August ducks away. <<Home. Please. I'm freezin' my beytzim off.>>