September Twenty-First



?What was it like,? he asked, picking at the dusty bed sheets, ?what was it like before you were sired??

Ambrose considered the question the same way he did everything else: in silent stoicism.

?Warm.?





He could very well have anyone he pleased. Sinjin Fai was not a fool: he had spent years building himself into a perfect caricature of human appeal. He knew how to craft a smile to make a person pay attention; he knew just where to set the focus of his eyes, or how and when to brush his hand across skin. He knew it all so well that it was uncommon for him to trick himself into believing that he did want someone, and forget his original intent altogether. He could have anyone he desired, and yet despite that, he found himself in the bed of a complete stranger who he had paid to be there.



The boy -- or perhaps not a boy, but having the affects of one -- was pretty, but not beautiful. He was a slender thing, of mostly-human descent, though Sinjin could not determine the mottled ends of his heritage. His cheekbones were high, his waist was narrow, but the focus of his eyes spoke years of knowledge that Sinjin didn't doubt for a moment. The boy gathered the blankets around himself like an opera cape as he sat himself on the older man's hips. The Spaniard found his weight pleasant. Their love-making was long since spent, but Sin had yet to cast him out; instead, he lit his second cigarette and watching him through the smoke.


"You're dead," the boy eventually commented. His well-practiced neutrality pleased Sin so much that he almost laughed, smoke spilling out from between his lips and into the air around him.


"Yes." He didn't lie. There was no point to it, not when his body was so chill to the touch and he hadn't the energy to even think of maintaining his glamour. He took another drag from his cigarette before offering it to the boy. "Does that bother you?"


The boy frowned and shook his head at the offering, turning his palms to splay his fingers over the sinner's scarred chest. "No," he said, slowly and carefully. "I don't think I've fucked a dead man before."


The Spaniard smiled, haphazardly propping his cigarette at the corner of his mouth. He reached, set his darker hands on the boy's hips, and dragged him closer. "I hope it was an educational experience," he rumbled, far more amused than he ever had the capacity to be offended. "I assure you, there are plenty more well-paying dead men that would enjoy your company as well as I did."


The boy allowed him to do it and resettled his weight over the sinner's waist. His narrow fingers traced the ugly burn scar that made the majority of Sinjin's chest. "Do you still feel?" He asked, and then rephrased his question as his eyes darted up to see if he had said something wrong. "Sex, I mean."


He supposed the question wasn't preposterous, but it still caused his grin to stretch so far at the edges that the cigarette almost tumbled from his mouth. "Yes. I do. Not the same as I did before, but yes."


Carefully, the boy reached and pulled the cigarette from Sinjin's mouth; his hands moved from the Spaniard's chest until his weight sat on his elbows on either side of the older man's ribcage. "Then why do you do it?"


Sin watched him -- the way he moved, the way he spoke. He admired the act as much as he did everything else. If he had been clever so young, perhaps he would still be alive after all. He looped his arms around the whore's back, muscles tensing as he pushed close enough to taste the boy's lips. "Because it's very nice to pretend," he said, and his kiss forced both of them into silence.


It suited him fine. It was worth a few more hours of payment to pretend a little bit longer.

perpetuam memoriam I




"Do you....express your interest independently?"
"Yes. Dependence is poison. Well-- that's unfair of me. It is apt for poisoning."
"It can be. You seem close to some."
"I am. It's no less a vulnerability, though one I have chosen."
"An interesting choice."


--


"Tell me something, Cane. Why do you trust me?"
"Trust is de most important t'ing ta me. I want... I want us ta be friends. I want ta love de people Sal loves. You's a part 'a him. I trust ya 'cause he trusts ya. It's de mos' important t'ing I could give ya."


--


"Always were the masochist."
"And you sing a siren's song."


--


"This place -- it has a particular way of drawing the best and the worst of you out. It breaks your will, crumbles you apart to your raw anatomy, but rebuilds you with the knowledge that there was something greater within the sum of those parts. There is a saying. One that, while I am not fond of, reminds me from time to time the truth of it. Everytime we choose safety, we reinforce fear -- whether that's fear of others, ourselves, or what may become."


--


"What interests you?"
"People. Alcohol. Violence. The particular angle the the body slopes between the neck and shoulder. My cat."
"And more specifically?"
"You."

perpetuam memoriam II




"Ya don' have ta carry dat by yerself anymore. We'll fig'r it out."
"I've been trying to not carry it at all. --I'm not afraid of sharing the burden. I just don't know what that burden is.?


--



?What is your weakness??
?If you haven?t been able to discover that in our short, blossoming relationship, I shall be disappointed.?
?Pride, perhaps, for the way you hide. Gluttony, for the want of things you cannot have. Lust, without a doubt. Though not just for carnal things, I think.?



--



?You?re different now.?
?I am trying. Failing, perhaps, but that has always been my way.?
?You?ve always worn your loneliness on your sleeve. Now it?s eating you alive.?
?And what will it feast on when I?m gone??

January Fifth



I am trying. I am trying. I hope he sees; I hope he understands.


I feel as if the distrust has grown so rampant that even when I expose the rawest parts of myself, they will never be enough. What else am I to do?

I think last evening helped.

The experiment was as much a success as something of that nature can be. It is most certainly Keythe that was bound to the bird, and although that tie was broken, I am uncertain how else he can maneuver himself here, nor am I certain how long it will be before he tries again. We learned little other than a confirmation of what was already suspected.

The real knowledge gained was with Salvador.


We fought, again. We found ourselves, again. It's not the first time this has happened in the litany of our lives -- good god, no -- but whenever we fight like this, we are always at our rawest, our most exposed. We can see the hurt in each other -- the hurt we've caused each other -- and it acts as a salve as much as it burns.

We fail -- I fail. And try again. I would do it forever, if I had to. I love that boy more than I love myself.

January Sixth


In the entirety of my conversation with Mesteno, I had forgotten the original intent in my wishing to speak with him. It was on the matter of the ring he imbued, though with Salvador's gift, perhaps that is no longer relevant -- even so, I'll keep the topic in the back of my mind should it be necessary to use. Given the nature of our talk, it's not surprising that it slipped my mind.


I've missed him.


He is suffering again, and in a way, we suffer together. He's never been able to hide his mood, and even less so when he's in his cups; one tends to drive the other. After an idle pair of hours with Salvador and Cane, I pried at Mesteno on the cold of the porch and discovered why Lexius held my friendship with Mesteno as a saving grace: they were together. Were together.

I don't know if that matter was reality when Lexius came to see me -- that would add a curious edge to his visit -- but given Mesteno's reaction, I've banished the thought from my mind as little more than an idle fascination and a temptation. Mesteno's ability to share emotional and physical intimacy has always been a sticking point. I don't remember when it happened. There was a time when things like that didn't matter to him, or me, but maybe we both thought less of ourselves then. In fact, I'm sure we did.

While I've developed into realizing monogamy is hardly a fair course for myself, Mesteno went in the opposite direction. Given my (albeit brief) interactions with Lexius, I find it exceedingly unlikely that the man strayed course from Mesteno. But that doesn't matter. What matters is the cruelty of our own emotions, our own misgivings, and how they control us.

And that was the nature of our talk into the waning hours of the evening. For the first time, I feel like I've been able to tell someone how I have been coping, and not coping, with what's happened and that message was understood. That I wasn't judged for it, that my character and memory weren't tarnished. I don't know if I left the porch feeling any better, but it was good to be seen. Recognized, instead of treated like a shade.

I realized, over the course of our talk, that I lack the confidence I once had.

My old life was sex and debauchery and the charismatic draw that I knew -- I knew -- I was very good at. It was part of my skillset, my success. I can practice the motions now, and the techniques are still effective, but my heart isn't in it. It doesn't feel real. I don't feel real.

What an absurd and ill-fated time to return to issues of self-esteem.

I saw Bjorn, albeit briefly. I'm not sure if I'm imagining things -- really, I'm sure I'm not -- but something has changed within my acquaintances as a whole in my absence. I've never been particular public about my vampirism, but anyone who spends any amount of time with me will learn it eventually. That being said, no one ever treated me as less than a person -- as a threat, a danger, as something that shouldn't be trusted. But something has changed.

Something has made them look upon my kind with slight, and worse, I've been lumped in with it. That's something new.

From the brief conversation I overheard before I slipped away, Bjorn's problems have turned from the mundane into the extrodinary. I almost envy him. I'd rather deal with politics and wars than matters of the soul.

And that -- the whole of the experience, with Mesteno and Bjorn -- lead me to be far too introspective by the time I saw Salvador and Cane once again at the end of the evening. It's not a bad thing, I tried to explain to Mesteno. I'm not jealous of Cane. I'm jealous, envious of what was loss and what was once there. And I don't know how to fill that space.


If I'm being honest with myself, I don't know if I can.

When Tempest arrived at his door, looking as furious as he had ever seen the youth in their weeks together, Sinjin did not hesitate to let him in. Now that Lexius had found the place, it no longer mattered; the Deadwood was another amongst his litany of failures, though he dedicated himself to not wasting this one to ash. As much as he was in debt to Skid's kindness, he couldn't hide in Shady Lanes forever.


Bundled in a coat far larger than his narrow frame, Tempest stalked him inside; he didn't shut the door behind himself and Kavi darted down the stairs. "Are you bored of me?" The accusation in his tone was laced with a hurt that Sinjin recognized, almost painfully so.


"No." The Spaniard's voice was somewhere between gentle and flat. He had just arrived home from the Arena and the way he shrugged off his coat, hanging it on the wall without looking at the boy made him look callous. He was more than aware of it.


Tempest's brow barely furrowed in a rare sign of frustration at the sinner's lack of a real answer. Persistent, the boy followed in his wake. "You are bored of me," he went on, either trying to make jabs at the older man or convinced that was the real reason. "You cancelled all of your appointments. You haven't called or text, you--"


"Tempest." The sinner turned on his heel after hanging his tie with his jacket on the wall. The boy stalled when Sinjin's gaze finally alighted on him and the man took steps to draw himself closer. Sinjin looked at him -- really looked at him -- and weighed the feeling in his heart against the bitterness in his soul. Days later, Mesteno's voice was still ringing heavily in his ears: "Whores aren't bad people. You'n I know that better than most. What next though? The cliche of one fallin' for you and vice versa? The 'being saved' scenario? It doesn't work."


His expression was inscrutable, and the tone of his voice was no better. "There's nothing of myself I can ever give to you." There was honesty laced in his explanation, or at least as much as he was willing to give, but it still bit at a part of him that he couldn't entirely explain away. The sigh he breathed out was heavier than he meant it to be. "I'm sorry."


A silence reigned the apartment, only punctuated by the sound of little cat's feet as Kavi chased dust motes that no one else could see through the halls. Tempest, still as stone and clutching the pockets of his coat as if they were a shield, stared at the sinner with a wet-eyed gaze that was close to piercing. The boy eventually straightened and held his chin high, but his voice was thin and reedy. "Good," he said, and nothing more. For a moment he seemed to lean forward, as if he intended to take another step and toward Sinjin, but he turned away and left the same way he entered.


Sinjin remained there, tracing the space where the boy had stood with his eyes. The quiet that followed, creeping in without comfort or hope, defeated him like a hunter's lance through the heart.

January Twenty-Fifth


Tempest came back.


He arrived at my door in the early hours of Saturday evening. His timing was poor; I had just donned my suit like a second skin and was preparing to charm my way back to glory (I'll return to that in a moment) when I heard the knock and there he was. His face -- good gods, that boy has a poker face that would fool a card shark -- it was difficult for me to read, but I've spent enough time with him to know bits and pieces. The slight downward angle of his brow, the way his lip starts to curl down just so and his narrow fingers flex into his palms.. He was sorrowful, anger, petulant. I let him in.


We argued, if it could be called that. He accused me of cruelty and callousness, and seemed surprised when I accepted both in kind. It didn't stop the lance of painful words and raised voices. He didn't understand why I needed to leave just as much as he hated knowing that he cared. I don't want to put myself in a situation that frightens me, particularly when it could so easily become one closer to my heart. It's strange; Salvador and I rarely ever fought (or fight) like this. Our pain tends to be quieter, perhaps more deadly. But everything with Tempest is sharp and bright and real.


It's human. So very, very human.


I don't know when the fight became violent. He cannot even begin to match me in physical strength, but it didn't stop him from trying and I have the bruises and scratch marks to show for it. I don't know when the violence became sexual. I don't know when the heat of anger became passion. All I know is that one moment he was telling me I was the worst thing that's ever happened to him and the next I was holding him by the back of the neck, pressing his face into the table while I fucked him like I owned him. Rutted him like an animal, left my mark on him until he was singing my name like a siren. His blood (he can't be human, not entirely) tasted like ambrosia on my tongue. By the end of it, whatever ills were between us were all gone again and he kissed me like a lover.


It's the first time I haven't paid him for sex.


I wanted to linger, but I didn't. I buried my thoughts, buried the nagging, itching feeling in my heart and straightened my tie. I told him to clean himself up and then leave; I told him not to come back. He said nothing, and his face was quiet. There was a matter of business to attend to, even with the taste of blood still thick on my tongue sending a fire of want through my gut. I left him there.


Back to a previous thought: a suit like a second skin.


My kingdom rebuilds itself slowly. Slower than I've moved in years, but I suppose I am not the same person I was before I left. The riverboat is doing well enough that it's starting to move from the red and into the black and the dream of actually making a profit again is becoming closer to truth. I still haven't set foot on that ship; I doubt I will. It's a promise to myself, and to someone else. A statement of fact -- a warning, a reminder. There she is, the whole sum of my risks and my temptations. But I cannot resist my own nature. While the ship will remind me of my boundaries, it will not subdue them.


I have no desire to have any kind of stature in the kindred community again; there will be no elysium with my name attached, no den of villainy, no sanctuary. But I am too curious about what occurred here in my absence to abandon it entirely. There is an elysium in the business district set in a heated rooftop garden and my made my attendance there. I have been gone long enough that there are few who remember me and those who did kept their distance; no one wants to court the danger of associating with a fallen figure. It suits my purposes well enough. I remained there until close to sunrise, and as the crowds started to drift apart, I felt satisfied. In truth, I felt a little invigorated. There is nothing so wonderful as a room full of people who all want each other dead and are simply waiting for the chance to do it.


I will begin again here too. I will see where the pieces have moved on the chessboard while I have been gone. I will see how long it takes for them to notice a creeping rook across the board. I miss the feeling of crushing another life, political or otherwise, between my fingers.


The sun was crawling over the horizon when I arrived home at Deadwood. When I unlocked the door, I was not alone. When I walked past the gentle pitter-patter of little cat's feet, I found him: Tempest, tangled in the sheets of my bed as if it was his own, sleeping soundly. I admit that I stood there for a time and observed him, considering whether to draw him out right then and there, to cast him out my door and into the cold.


By the time my indecision had settled, I was already naked and in bed beside him. He stirred enough to coil up against him chest, his narrow hips aligned against mine, his heartbeat like a song in my ear. He is a bold, presumptuous, fool of a boy. I slept well beside him. I fucked him again when I woke up until the we were both spent all over again and I let my conflicts slide off of my skin. It wasn't until this morning that I read the book, only minutes after Tempest finally left.


Salvador is gone.


I should not feel as unsettled, concerned -- and yes, hurt, -- as I am.

December 6th, 2005


Augustine, mi coraz?n, mi alma, mi amor:



The snow fell this morning and I thought of you.

When I say 'this morning,' I mean I was out too late and wild beyond my wits. The sun was rising, my blood was dead with weight and careful snow flakes began to curl around my fingers and into my hair, patterned foot steps behind me; the snow always reminds me of you. In January, when we met, it was snowing then too. It was snowing and it caught in your hair and eyelashes, fell on your lips and melted. I am nostalgic tonight and perhaps alcohol is to blame, or maybe it is all the things you are doing to me. They are all, ultimately, good things.

My love, I ask forgiveness. I am a mistake machine and I am always at full production. This is me, this is Sinjin Fai, the mistake machine who's wires are a little faulty but still chugs along just as well as he used to. Again, I ask forgiveness: here I am, the mistake machine, and I am trying to fix what doesn't need to be fixed at all. I think I didn't realize that until this morning. You never needed to be fixed and it was me all along that needed the fixing.

I love you because you love all of me. Sometimes I think Tir didn't-- no. No, I know he didn't. He loved Sin, the masochistic, sexual predator. You love me fully and I love all of you. We both make mistakes, it's inevitable; what makes you and I able to function is that we accept each other's mistakes and embrace them.

I am not going to run this time.

Every time I've run, you've gone back and got me, slapped me in the face and said: "Here-- this is your life, take control of it." So I am. Augustine Gabriel, I am madly in love with you and I thought you ought to know. And even if you don't forgive my mistakes, if you run, I will chase after you, into hell and into heaven. We've been together for almost a year now, through the good, the bad, and the even worse. And now I will celebrate the years of our's to come.



-- Tohias Sanchez



--



May 11th, 2005


I am beginning to understand what love is like. It's a new-old feeling. When I was engaged, it was there too .. but not this fierce. Or maybe it was? I don't know. I've forgotten what it was like. But now .. things are changing.

I can smell him; when I wake up in the morning, the scent of his sin lingers on the sheets and when I get dressed, it's in my clothing. In my very skin ... maybe in my mind as well. When I close my eyes, I see his tilted onyx ones, and hear an alto murmur of husky tones that make me shiver. I find that I am now afraid to die, because there's something here I don't want to leave. And when I am actually with him, those little figments of him in my brain expand and become real. The way he talks, walks, acts ... he intoxicate me. I can't help but to tell him how fucking beautiful he is or how he makes me feel alive. When people stare at us, they do it for a reason. It's like ... everything sensual combined and shared between two people. Dangerous.

And beautiful. So so beautiful. I don't know why he's been on my mind so much lately. Maybe it's just because I love him. Hm. I like that word.

Love.



--




Have I changed at all?



Damn me, and damn my heart.

February First


Father,


I write this from above your resting place.


It is crowded with the dead and the damned, with bones so brittle that they cracked and turned to dust under my weight when I walked across them. I could not clear them all away to find a space to sit, but eventually found a layer that was little more than fragments. They stick to my clothing, in my hair and in my lungs, and from here I will carry them elsewhere to the waking world. It doesn't matter. They are dead there too, like you.


I have not been here in over a year, and while my conversations with She Who Tends the Dead have become sparser over the years, it is not because of her that I retreat. It is because of you, because of me, and because of the tree which has flourished in my absence. It has grown taller since I've been apart -- taller than me now, maybe double so -- and the throb at its core is not the same as the one I dedicated to my skin. It is different, like many things have become. Some part of me wonders how long it will even remain, or if it bears any significance now that Salvador has begun to (finally, finally) craft his own domain. It does not breathe with the same power as his mother's, but perhaps it never will. He is not his mother's son, after all. Not entirely.


Today I have not come seeking your advice or your misery. It has taken me over a decade to realize that you never truly had my best in mind -- not you, not Bastian. None of them. You were all cursed with the same fixation that I bear, and I was never more than another piece in an endless game of chess the both of you played. It was all a game to both of you. It was a game to me too, but now I've lost track of the pieces and in my frustration, I have finally broken the board. How foolish of me to assume I could be little more than a pawn.


I am no saint. I am no beggar prince. I am, and have always been, a sinner and little more, crawling at the feet of those who can forgive me, seeking a redemption that only fairy tales supply. There are parables of Jesus's followers who clutched at the bleached edges of his robes, who bathed his feet and held their bodies out to bridge his path from mud. He stepped on their backs and they praised him. I am not sure I was meant to be a saint at all, if that is the standard which is left for me to follow.


The standard which you left me to follow, and fall.


Did she ever tell you what she wrote on this headstone?


Here lies the Father
Loved once by the Mother
despised by those blind to truth
admired by those willing to see

time cannot have him
and he will never be forgot


I wonder now who you truly blinded and if you ever let anyone see beyond the facets of your vice. It has taken me years to reach past the layers of your machinations and pull the blinds away from my eyes, but now I know. You were right about everything, Father. You were right about me from the beginning; you were right about where I was, and who I would become.


I wish I had listened.



- Sinjin

February Eighth



I have begun the careful rebuilding of an empire.


I smiled, I fucked, I laughed, I whispered secrets. I slept in another man's bed. I did it all with sincerity and honesty.


I killed. I bathed in blood and felt the spark of fear that crawled across the evening, slowly at first, and now picking up fear. Purpose has begun to find its course again.


I turn the screws.


I feel nothing.


There is no such thing as new beginnings.

February Twelfth




Around him the trappings of his past were spread. A kite. A carefully preserved set of pages. A little car. Some marbles. They sat around him on a floor in a semi-circle, as if he were about to cast some enchantment that would set them all, and himself aflame. They all seemed placed around him with particular reverence, most of all the folded letter in his lap and the camcorder cradled in his hands.


He had watched the video a dozen times since collecting the package from Matadero. It had been a surprise; he had grown accustomed to checking on the place in Salvador's absence, perhaps feeling a sting of paranoia and knowing that Salvador's domain would show the first sign of trouble. Instead, he found this. Something that was much worse than the prospect of his lover diving headfirst into danger.


Madrid. Salvador went to Madrid. Moreover, Salvador went to Madrid and found his Ana, the precious flesh of his blood whose smile pained Sinjin to see in the absence of being able to see it himself. And worse -- worst of all -- was hearing the sound of Cane's laughter, tense and tight, in the background. Ana's smiling face as she said the word. That which bound him most of all.


His name.


He wanted to burn the recording as much as he wanted to watch it over and over again, intolerably and painfully drawn to the gentle and bright curve of his niece's smile, the way she lunged for a hug at Salvador and he could do nothing but imagine himself in the boy's place. Over and over again. And then the hurt, the pain, the anger -- over and over again. Trust and betrayal. Love and hurt. Secrecy and sorrow. Humanity and death. The artifacts of his life sat around him like a spell and the magic it cast over him was a deeper and darker place than he had been in for months before.


In the moment, he was certain that Tohias Sanchez was truly dead.

February Eighteenth



Home.


It was not an accurate sense of the word, nor even the definition; Madrid had not felt like home in a dog's age, but there were still elements within it that called to his soul in a way that he could not ignore. These were the streets where he grew up. Here was a sidewalk where he and his brother raced from the school and to their kitchen to see who would get fresh sweetbread; here was the field where they would hide away and watch the stars in the evening. It was the same field where their father told he and his siblings to hide when the men in black came for the first time. Sinjin was tempted to go investigate the decrepit old house as he walked by it, but he knew now that if there was anything of worth inside, Salvador would have collected it for him. Now it was a home for ghosts, and Sinjin had no mind for ghosts tonight.


The afternoon sun was still warm on his back as he turned the corner toward the more vibrant and occupied suburbs. The midday break was just about over and the patter of scuffed mary janes and screeching of childish voices had retreated back into classrooms again. It was a deliberate choice of timing, on his part. He knew Julia would not be pleased to see him, and moreover, he didn't want Ana to feel cornered when he presented her mother with the letter. He had no desire for his young niece to be guilty for her own feelings, but he would feel worse leaving Julia in the dark about them.


He was quiet when he approached his sister's home. The front door was open, but the screen door past it was still closed and he approached it with a note of hesitance in his step. He was dressed plainly -- the clothes he wore in Rhy'din wouldn't suit him here -- and his glamour covered most, if not all, his physical flaws so he wouldn't draw any more attention than he wished. He sucked in a breath as he paused near the door, reaching into his back pocket for the carefully folded letter and drawing it into his palm, as if begging for his purpose to give him strength before he knocked.


Sinjin rapped his knuckles on the screen door's wooden frame. Silence. He knocked again, more insistently this time, and frowned when he received no response. When he touched the handle, he found that it was unlocked. The faint curve of his mouth deepened as he pushed open the door, listening to it creak as he stepped inside, his voice echoing as he called out. "Julia?"


He could hear water coming from somewhere -- muffled. "Julia? It's me, S -- it's your brother." The Spaniard stepped lightly through the small foyer, glancing into the kitchen. A half-prepared meal, abandoned. No running water, though. He moved onward, stepping lightly down the hall. The bathroom door was shut. Perhaps the woman hadn't heard him entering at all. "Julia," he called out again. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to ba--"


A flurry of activity came from within, ending with the bathroom door flinging open. Behind it stood a woman with wide brown eyes, her dark hair in a tangle with her clothes disheveled and her shoulders drawn in a rigid line. It wasn't the fury or shock in her eyes that made him stop -- it was the bruises, still bright and fresh, crowded at her jaw. It was the swelling edge of her lip and the beads of blood that hadn't fully congealed.


It was the tears in her eyes.


The letter fell from his hand and drifted onto the floor, forgotten.

February Twenty-First



I've paid for Julia and Ana to move to a small apartment on the East side of Madrid. I tried to insist that the both of them come back with me to Rhy'din, if only for a little while, but she refused. To an extent, I can't blame her. If she thinks I'm a demon that walks the Earth, there are worst monsters in Rhy'din that would change her forever. Even when we moved to New York as children, she always wanted to go back to Madrid and she steadfastly has made this place her own. Her husband is trying to ruin it, but I won't let him. I can't.


Her husband didn't return while I was there. Perhaps he realized that I was waiting for him, or maybe the Spanish mafia has finally made a move to draw him in -- I don't know. In either case, by the time I settled Julia and Ana into their temporary home, he hadn't shown up, hadn't called or sent a message to her. I wish I had contacts in Madrid to keep a closer eye on her -- she refused to let me stay while I helped her -- but my network there has grown thin. Salvador might be able to help with that when he returns.


When I went to my apartment to write to him about what occurred, the book was -- different. Singed. The magic within it affects both books, no matter what occurs to them. I went looking for the other copy -- Salvador's copy -- but it wasn't at Matadero. Perhaps he brought it with him after all. Either something happened to it, and to him, or --


Or. The other consideration is not one I wish to consider because the truth of it burns me as badly as the book itself.


I will return to Madrid again on Friday. I know nothing about what the mafia there is like any more -- I never wanted to know, that was always too close to my father for me to wish it upon myself -- but now I need to learn as much as I can. It won't matter if I just kill Julia's husband. It won't matter if I destroy the whole mob because her name will still be connected. I want to rip each and every one of them asunder, but I don't want my rage to control me.


I suppose, at the very least, it is better to feel something than nothing at all.

February Twenty-third



come on skinny love just last the year,
pour a little salt we were never here.
my my my, my my my, my-my-my my-my--
staring at the sink of blood and crushed veneer.




The sheets of his bed were in a tangle around his body and Tempest; they smelled of sex and ever so faintly of blood. When Sinjin opened his eyes, the boy was sleeping soundly with his narrow hips pressed up against the Spaniard?s thigh and his face tucked warmly against the pillows. For a moment, Sinjin watched him, carefully trailing the lines of Tempest?s face with his eyes over and over again; not for the first time, he curiously wondered at the boy?s ancestry. He was not human ? he was sure of it now. The taste of blood in his mouth told him as much. With the rays of the sun straying so far into his windows, Sin guessed it was almost into the afternoon. He carefully twisted away from Tempest, letting the boy rest while he half-crawled out of the bed and Kavi mashed her face against his palm, insistent.

He stumbled out of the bedroom, muttering hoarse Spanish under his breath at the cat who danced around his heels all the way to the food dish until it was full again. He watched her too, purring as she ate until the mutual sound of feasting and pleasure reached a bizarre cacophony. It made the corner of his mouth twist up as he left her to her catly duties and moved toward the kitchen to start a pot of tea; Tempest hardly ever drank coffee. He set the kettle on the stove and turned on the heat before something on the table caught his eye: his cellphone. The staring match between him and the piece of technology left him nowhere except for a strange, anxious and sad little knot in his heart. The kettle was already steaming when he reached to pick it up.

The name caught his attention first and made his heart catch, but the words that followed made whatever hope he had turn tepid. For several long moments, his fingers remained poised over the keys as he thought of a dozen different ways to reply. He couldn?t guess which of them would be the right ones. ?None of them,? he said out loud, and the kettle hummed in response. The flat, dead feeling in his heart coiled into something darker. Sinjin shut off the heat underneath the tea pot, throwing his phone as he prowled back to the bedroom. The world could wait for him a little bit longer.

The cellphone hit the floor, bounced once, and was chased by the patter of cat?s feet.



--



Distraction. That?s what Cane had told him and the point had validity. He fucked Tempest again, bent him over the kitchen counter until the boy cried out his name and lay there, spent; he took a shower, even managed to dress himself before the sinking edges of depression began to clutch at him. Distraction. He left Tempest in his apartment; a brief visit to the inn only brought a look from Mesteno that hung heavy on his soul. Don?t do anything stupid. He retreated to expressions of concern pointed at his back. Distraction. You can?t go back. Sinjin found himself where he went every time he was truly lost: the seaside. He would get some work done on the house ? tear down more of the old one, scavenge materials for the new. The thick seaside air was cool and refreshing, but he felt his stomach tie in knots as he looked at what lay before him. The House of Ash, already beginning to be torn apart. The plans for the new in place. His and Salvador?s.

His lips peeled back from his teeth in a sharp, biting scowl. How could there be distraction when everything was tied so deeply into the past? Balling his fists in his pockets, Sinjin turned his back on the ocean. The trail of his footsteps lead him away from the sand and through the reeds that churned in the breeze, cracking under his feet as he headed into the fringe of the woodlands that remained there. Distraction. Don?t do anything stupid.

Night slowly descended as the forest thickened around him. He could see the twin moons of Rhy?din through the bare branches above him, sending pale beams of light onto the ground he walked on. He had no idea where he was; though he had spent many nights wandering these woods when he lived by the shore, it had changed without him and the taste of it felt unfamiliar. He could sense the presence of animal life around him, along with other, darker things that trailed in the shadows but he paid them no mind ? to them, he was only another predator, though he felt as vulnerable as a hare in a field. Just ahead of him, Sinjin could see the outline of a small cabin ? little more than a half-collapsed shack ? that the moonlight just barely exposed. He barely gave himself time to consider the consequences as he rounded toward it, peering past the frame where a door might?ve once been.

At one point someone had lived here ? there was a mat on the ground, though it was dusty and covered in debris. He touched the softening walls and, for the first time in his life, found himself envious of Salvador?s ability to peer into the past and see that which once was. He let the pads of his fingers trail across the old wood as he moved inside. Beyond the mat, there was a rusted-out stove, the remnants of a chair, perhaps a space where there would have been a window once. It was hard to say and growing harder as night left him little light to see by. He supposed it didn?t matter. De only t?ing dat matters is right now.

He dropped onto the mat, barely kicking aside the leaves and rotted pieces of wood. When he curled his arms underneath his head, his fingers brushed the ring on his opposite hand. Even when he had been apart and in his servitude, that ring had remained. He slid the edge of his thumb against the beaten silver, his eyes open and staring into the darkness. It was less effort than he expected when he slid it off ? like it had been ready to move the whole time he wore it. With a curious edge of morbidity, Sinjin felt the ring slide from his palm and onto the mat beneath him. His hand felt lighter for it. Everything will be okay in de end. If it ain? okay, den it ain? de end.

Sinjin closed his eyes, and the sound of the wild wrapped around him like a blanket.




who will love you?
who will fight?
and who will fall far behind?

February Twenty-Fourth



He dreamt of the sea; he tasted blood in his mouth, felt the soaring, high elation of hunt and the warmth and content of home. This was who he was. This was what he wanted, what he lost. And yet the entirety of it was tinged with a bitter edge as if he was observing the world through a dirty window. He knew, in his heart, it was not real. The sand under his feet was not real. The sense of his lover underneath him was not real. As soon as the reality of falsehoods took over his dreaming mind, he saw a blurred figure in front of him, slightly shorter than himself, and felt a cool hand settle on his throat. He did not know who it was, but the voice it spoke with clutched at his dead heart.


?Tohias.?




Sinjin awoke to the sounds of life around him.


The sun broke through the bare branches of the forest above him and the broken ceiling of the shack. His muscles ached from sleeping on what amounted to little more than a thin piece of wool and he was reluctant to open his eyes and face the consequences of day. He had only vague memories of the evening: a walk to the shore, the dark embrace of the woods after that, and then the sinking weight of his heart when he turned the corner into the little shack which made his temporary home. It took a handful of moments for him to realize that the ring was missing from his finger, and even longer to remember that he had taken it off. He huffed out a sigh into his arm, eyes still squinted shut as he groped underneath his arms for the ring. The little cool piece of silver wasn?t within immediate reach, and so he finally rolled upward enough to grope at the ground he?d been laying on. Nothing.


The first, bright hint of panic touched the back of Sinjin?s mind. He sat up abruptly, looking down at the now-crushed leaves and wool. He shifted through all of it, running his fingers through it for a bright shine of metal that should have been obvious. Should have, but wasn?t. ?No,? he whispered, just under his breath as he expanded his search. There were no floorboards for it to have slipped through, no way it could have rolled away. The house was completely bare except for a broken stove that hid little more than rust. ?No, no, no?? His breath hitched in his chest, eyes gone wide as he searched the same stretch of space again and again. It didn?t take long for panic to shift into reality and Sinjin sagged on his heels in the early morning sun that cracked through the frame of the shack. A vast, numb energy coursed through him and settled heavily through all his limbs, making itself at home as a permanent visitor. The ring. The ring from Salvador's mother. The ring that carried within it the protection and the history of all that which he cared for. The ring he wore unceasingly, ever day since the first he had gotten it from She Who Tends the Dead in an effort to protect him. The ring.



The ring was gone.

February Twenty-Eighth




He remembered his time in Madrid in singular moments, vaguely connected by a thread of intent.



The rain practically flooded the streets, a torrential downpour that made the air feel cooler than it was. Sinjin waited below the overhang in front of the apartment complex, a cigarette jittering nervously between two of his fingers. In his other hand was his cellphone, hovering over the green call button; the screen showed a blurry, candid photo of Canaan's face. His eyes traced the shape pixelated shape of his smile again and again, but Sinjin's brow remained furrow. The raw feeling of his own heart made every decision a trial. Every motion, every moment, was now a risk.

He hit the call button and brought the phone to the shell of his ear as he took a long, smoke-filled breath. "Hey. You -- you don't have to answer this at all..."



--



Home was not a place any more: it was a feeling, and he only held it in small, grasping moments like a fleeting beam of sunlight. It did not come all at once, but in small, drowsy waves that sunk around him and became infectious until for that moment -- that one small moment -- his sadness abated. It abated with the smell of smoke and the taste of alcohol on his tongue. The idle laughter that should not have existed, but did, and hung in the air for moments after while two men traded a guitar between each other. Empty bottles stacked up on the table, but the two of them sat on the floor for a lack of a real place to sit. Outside, the thunderstorm that rolled on seemed mute.




--



The bed was empty and the bathroom door was shut; sunlight was just barely beginning to crawl in through the shades after the storm parted. With the sheets tangled around Sinjin's hips, he tempered his heart as he reached for the book. The edges of it were curled and burned away, as were some of the pages within. One was missing entirely, but it was not because of any flame, the edge of it torn by more human hands. He did not read the old pages, like he had done for weeks before. He only turned to the most current one and read each line carefully.


Like before, he expected to be more hurt, or perhaps saddened, but he could feel the wall rebuilding around his heart to the extent that it was nearly a palpable thing. The cloak of numbness that protected him brought a flat, empty clarity that there was no room to deny. The only pain he felt was the distant pang of knowing that all he would see of Salvador was the jerky curve of his handwriting and they did nothing to convey the way the younger Spaniard smiled, or the shape of his eyes, the careful way he lifted his chin when he was paying attention. It was like speaking to a ghost of his own creation.


He heard Cane stirring in the bathroom and Sinjin picked up a pen. I'm sorry was not something you put in a book like this, but there were other things to say.



--



Blood.


It was warm and thick in his throat, practically caked across the front of his clothes. He could smell the scent of something burning, hear gurgling screams of that which would soon be silenced, and with it all came the ecstasy, the high of releasing all his mortal woes and shedding aside the care of men. Sinjin Fai was not a man. Sinjin Fai was a monster who wore a man's skin, whose cruelty would not be mistaken for anything but a vengeful, ugly strike against that which would dare to hurt what was his own.


He smiled more than he had in weeks, but the smile seemed to stretch for miles (wide and cheshire and white and red and sharp) as he tore through his prey with his little burning shadow alongside him. Everything was music and dancing red light; everything was beautiful when it was like this. Simple. Action, reaction. No misunderstanding. The temptation to remain clung to him like a collar on his throat.


The easy way out had never felt so real before.



--


She had his eyes -- maybe even in the literal sense now that his own were a dull, flat gray -- but her smile was something else. It was as bright as summer sunshine and it filled Sinjin's heart with an overflowing sense of joy that warmed him to the core. The little apartment she and her mother now shared wasn't as big as the house they once lived in, but the girl had a sense of adventure so welcoming that she was hardly discouraged by the change. She rambled on to him for hours while they sat on the balcony of the apartment, watching a faint rainbow cut through the stormy sky. When she flung her arms around his neck during their parting moments, the ferocity in her heart was reflected in the circle of her hug.


"?Me amar?s siempre?" She asked him, her face mashed into his shoulder.


"Siempre," he told her, and held her tight.


--


The Deadwood was empty, but it was not. There was a lingering something there which he could only identify as Salvador, and the fresher food and water in Kavi's bowl was a surer sign of it. Sinjin let the rucksack slide off of his shoulder and onto the table, but the book remained in his hands. He trailed through his apartment. When he sank into the couch, it was with a weighted sigh that spoke of three days worth of something -- what that something was, he really couldn't say in full. But his eyes drew toward a mural on the wall and he let the book slip from his fingers and onto the coffee table in front of him.


He understood now. He would seek the sun.

March Seventh








"What a life I lead in the summer,
what a life I lead in the spring;
what a life I lead when the wind, it breathes
What a life I lead in the spring.

What a life I lead when the sun breaks free
as a giant torn from the clouds.
What a life indeed when that ancient seed
is buried, watered and plowed."









"What a life --
what a life.
What a life --
what a life."







"What a life I lead in the summer,
what a life I lead in the spring;
what a life I lead when the wind, it breathes
What a life I lead in the spring."







"Have a better day, Canaan."






--




(Song found here!)

Give me your hand
And take what you will tonight, I'll give it as fast
And high as the flame will rise
Cinder and smoke
Some whispers around the trees
The juniper bends
As if you were listening


---


He loved Madrid. He loved its dirty corners and narrow side streets that spoke of a distant past; he loved the tall spires of the Catholic churches and the domed roofs of the temples, their echoed calls to prayer in the evening. Though he had only spent his childhood in Madrid, it had stamped something on his heart that could not be replaced, and if anyone followed the tangled branches of his life, the roots would always be Madrid.

He loved Madrid, but he was Rhy?din. Still smelling faintly of the soot from the fireplace with the taste of Jewell Ravenlock on his dry lips, Sinjin stepped away from the Red Dragon Inn and out into the city. To his luck and surprise, the only clothing in his room at the inn was a plain black suit with a deep red tie and he donned both after shedding the pieces of dust. Sliding on the jacket and knotting the tie were a ritual he had not forgotten and he felt like a different person once it was complete. Tohias Sanchez, a quiet man with a penchant for trouble, lived in Madrid. Sinjin Fai, the beggar king, wore his crown in the city?s ugly shadows. He pulled the last cigarette from a two year-old pack and pressed it between his teeth, blindly weaving his way through streets gone quiet; a light snow had begun to drive out the carts and their vendors from the marketplace and the shops were beginning to shutter their windows as the sky grew dark. Sinjin did not need to look, or even think about where he was going. His body knew the path all too well.

Flickering lamp lights grew dimmer, replaced with wide, tall windows that displayed their product past thick velvet curtains and red lights: whores. Some pressed their bodies against the frames, plying passer-bys, others simply waited without thought or recourse. The sidewalks and streets may be quiet, but inside each building was a house of pleasure for all shapes and types. Sin exhaled gray smoke toward the horizon, wishing for sunglasses -- he hated when they could see his face -- but his gaze never strayed far from his destination.

The building might have been a temple of prayer at one point, but whatever god once lived here was no longer praised. The cold stone exterior had no sign, no lights, but men and women alike would filter in and out all the same. The bouncer didn?t stop him when he stepped past the thick oak door, through a curtain that kept out the cold. Inside, the temple was thick with heat, the scent of burning myrrh and sage thick in the air to keep the smells of flesh at bay. Sinjin bowed his head, turning down a narrow hallway with a series of doors on one side. Once upon a time, priests and priestesses would find solitude behind these doors and commune with god; now the communions were of a different sort. When Sinjin placed his hand on the doorknob, he was almost surprised to find it unlocked. He stubbed out his cigarette against the wall as he opened it, a faint light spilling across the floor.

Inside was a bed, and on that bed was a boy, tangled in silk sheets: narrow-hipped, finely muscled on a frame that seemed like it was all limbs, and two eyes which, upon seeing the sinner, stared at him with a bright spark of anger. A pose that was meant to entice soon became rigid and only a moment passed before the boy picked up the closest thing to him -- a glass of water -- and flung it at the door. ?Get out--?

The Spaniard narrowly dodged it, though the water splashed onto his suit as the glass shattered against the door. He didn?t seem much surprised. He had expected this to be the nature of his first week in Rhy?din, but for this interaction he came prepared. Without saying a word, Sinjin reached into his pocket and tossed something on the bed that landed with a weighty thunk. A bag of gold Crowns, and a hefty one at that. Sinjin stared at Tempest and waited.

The boy had already reached for anything else to throw at the sinner when he heard the gold coins hit the bed. His eyes followed it and gave him pause, though his lips peeled back from his teeth with a sneer. He remained still for a long moment before he finally reached for the little satchel, tugged open the string and meticulously coined the coins within. When he was done, he carefully tied it again, stowing the bag underneath his pillow. ?You have fifteen minutes.? His tone was crisp. Well beyond his usual rate, or any rate a reasonable whore would dare to give.

Sinjin seemed satisfied with that nonetheless. Rather than sitting on the bed, he hooked one hand on the back of the small chair near the bedside table and dragged it to the other side of the room, unbuttoning his suit coat as he sat down. ?Hello, Tempest,? he murmured, his accent still thick as he adjusted to months without speaking common.

Tempest sneered all over again. ?Don?t hello, Tempest me, Sinjin,? he scoffed, coiling the sheets around himself as if he was suddenly exposed. ?What do you want?? His voice was petulant, his eyes firm on the man across the room from him. He was counting down those fifteen minutes second by second.

?I wanted to see you.? His reasonings were as simple as that. It hadn?t quite been two years away, but it was close. ?I was thinking about you,? he confessed plainly, resting his elbows against his knees as he leaned down, watching him. The level of fearlessness that the boy held had ever been an attraction for him.

?Oh, now you?re thinking about me. Charming.? Tempest?s eyes snapped away toward the windowless wall, though there was nothing to watch there. From the hallway, the sound of laughter echoed, stuttering down into a soft moan that was barely audible. It was several seconds before the boy spoke again. ?Where did you go??

Sinjin tilted his head, his hair falling askew and unkempt to one side. ?Home.? That made him pause. Was Madrid home? Was Rhy?din home? He hadn?t considered that yet, and the thought had some weight to it. ?I thought it might be best if I stayed there for a little while to--? He lifted one hand, gesturing uselessly.

Before Sinjin could finish the thought, Tempest?s sharp voice cut him off. ?--go somewhere where people don?t hate you? Did you come back because you wore their welcome out too? Did you find someone else out there, and left them without a word when you came here too?? The boy?s teeth clicked as he shut his mouth and a hot, searing flush crossed his face as the words spilled out of him. He hadn?t planned on giving himself away so quickly.

The Spaniard looked down at him, silent for a moment as he picked apart each sentence, unsure of which to act on. He thought about apologizing, and then about how useless apologizing would be. He had enough apologies for two lifetimes. ?Would you rather I left?? It was an honest question. It hadn?t been fifteen minutes, but even that had been a more generous offering than Sin expected.

?Yes,? Tempest snapped, lifting his chin -- haughty, petulant, righteously furious. ?Don?t come back. Don?t ever come back.? The boy looked away again, anger furrowing his brow as he wordlessly gestured the Spaniard toward the door, the blanket slipping off one edge of his shoulder. There was still a scar there -- the one Sinjin had given him.

It was impossible for Sinjin not to look at it, to trace it with his eyes over and over again, but it was equally impossible for him not to honor the boy?s request. Though his habits were notorious, Sinjin somehow managed to burn bridges ever time he left. Eventually, some of them would not and could not be rebuilt. He rose to his feet, rebuttoning his suit coat as he headed for the door. He felt Tempest?s eyes follow him the whole way. ?I won?t,? he replied, his voice quiet. He did not look back. ?But you know where I?ll be.? He would leave it at that.

Before Tempest could utter another disgusted response, the sinner slipped out and shut the door behind himself. He was gone and left nothing but a shadow of anger in his wake.


--


The sun was only beginning to pierce through the curtain of ivy that occupied the windows when Sinjin heard Kaavi?s incessant meowing over and over again. The sinner was tangled in the thick blankets and sheets of his bed, pillow crammed on top of his head. ?Why,? he whined into his bed. ?Why, why, why. I fed you last night.? But her gentle meowing did not stop and Sinjin reluctantly pried himself out of the bed and into the cold morning air. Still bleary-eyed, he stopped in the doorframe of his bedroom when he saw something he did not expect.

Tempest turned his head to look at the sinner from where he sat at the kitchen table, dressed in a sweater two sizes too big for him and a gray scarf around his throat. His eyes pierced the sinner, silent as the cat weaved in-between his legs over and over. He lifted his chin. ?I?m hungry,? he said quietly. The cat meowed, echoing the boy?s demands.

Sinjin looked at him for a long moment, as if debating something. And then, with a crooked smile, he headed for the kitchen.

Well, I don't feel better when I'm fucking around
And I don't write better when I'm stuck in the ground
So don't teach me a lesson 'cause I've already learned
Yeah, the sun will be shining and my children will burn

Oh, the heart beats in its cage





December Thirteenth



One. Canaan.


The man has changed -- or perhaps he has simply released more of himself, I am unsure. It was strange dichotomy to internally address: his anger, his second-hand (and maybe first-hand) heartache, the aggression that was all fixed on me, but here was a creature who seemed more whole now than before. The fire in his eyes and in his belly and the inhuman edges were beautiful. Were I in any other circumstance, it would have been attractive.

I was not surprised when he confronted me first. I spared him nothing. I have learned now that there is little I can say or do to change the effects of my past. I cannot offer apologies. I cannot offer explanations and seek understanding. The results are the same. What I gave him was an honesty that I had not provided before in whole; it wasn't that I was ever dishonest with him, but I held back. The reasons, whether they were good or bad, came at an expense. I am unsure if we ever truly knew each other, and though I consider him a friend insomuch as I would come to his aid if he ever required it, we are strangers.

I am a stranger, Canaan. And that's alright.

We traded blows and words and found a lacking silence. It will be filled later, perhaps.



Two. Jewell.


After years of almosts, I have grown tired of waiting and I imagine she felt the same. I took her in my arms; I took her to my home. I listened to her sing until the dawn. I have not pried too deeply into her condition and I expect that is why she is eager for my company, but I can smell it on her. Illness and death come for us all and immortality is a fool's lie. She is still resplendent, but instead of the bright rays of dawn, she becomes the crowning of sunsets. She has asked nothing of me and I have asked nothing of her. Instead, it is simply in that moment what we are able to give.

If I have my way, there will be more of it.



Three. Salvador.


Salvador.

It's strange how no plan or wish can prepare me for seeing him again. It doesn't matter who we become or how far apart we have been, there is nothing in my world like the sight of him. There is, and perhaps always will be, so much left to be untangled between us. I know now that what we had will never be again, and there may remain some wounds until time sees to both of our deaths, but with it also comes the inverse. I will always love him. He will always be the sun in my world. While I cannot make predictions for my future, I have no desire to replace what he was in my life or find something new. Perhaps these little moments, still tangible and warm even past the anger and hurt, are enough.

I told him I would tell him what I could give. I have been thinking upon this very deeply, without knowing what he would ask of me -- if he would, at all.

t is easy, and perhaps automatic, to say what I cannot give because the hurt is real. I cannot give promises for my time. I cannot live with you. I cannot remain a permanent figure in the world you have woven for yourself. I cannot promise to be always kind, always there, always perfect. I hold little bitterness for this; it?s simply what the nature of my life is now, and what I must accept. I am done giving my word for things I thought I could keep, only to find myself wanting.

What can I give?

My love, fully. The rest, only in pieces.

December Twenty Eighth

Twice now I?ve woken up clawing at the dark and dreaming of gravedirt. The first time Tempest was there and I frightened myself -- I thought I might kill him as he was, if I hadn?t woken up from the void. The second time I was alone, and I came awake in the woods behind my home. I was naked and there was a dead rabbit in my hands and the taste of blood and fur in my mouth. Sometimes I must remind myself that I am not human, that there are animal parts within me that respond to fear, desperation, discontent. I remained there for awhile in the cold like that. I listened to the wind and snow. I shook, though not from the temperature. I closed my eyes and tried to feel the fear within me, see it for what it was and what it asked of me. I am not sure I found peace or resolution, but it has been over a week since it occurred and it has not happened again since. I can only hope.

It is a common phrase in my life at the moment. I can only hope that Canaan any I eventually find some middle ground. I am in this strange space where I would speak with him, and wish to, but having made the offer I am not sure there?s any desire for reciprocation. I cannot blame him, nor would I; I have been in his place before, and it?s one full of anger and discontent. I?ve elected to simply exist around him for the time being, as I had before, and wait to see if a moment or time comes when we can repair. I don?t believe that can happen until Salvador and I find some sort of solace.

I can hope that he and I find that solace, though it is not the only thing I can do. After seeing him twice now, I felt comfortable enough to extend a hand. It?s not out of fear of rejection that I hadn?t before, but it felt wrong to impose myself, or force him to make a choice. I have hurt him and that is irrevocable. It may very well be better for him to maintain some degree of separation there and I wanted to give him the space to do decide that, although I am unsure if that has been interpreted as being without care. We are in this place where we cannot read each other, we cannot know what is in the other?s mind as we once could, and the tendency for misinterpretation will create for further hurt. It is strange how all at once everything can be as delicate and temporary as a spider?s web, but yet there is still this immutable and unchanging foundation of love beneath it. I have no doubt there. He is my soul. You cannot lose your soul, but the body is always changing.

I can hope that Jewell finds peace. I don?t inquire much into the deeper parts of her life; I don?t think that?s what she wants or what she needs. I try and give her comfort and levity and connection. There is a tinge of sadness to her now that shows no sign of disappearing, but beneath it is a vibrant woman who still has fire to breathe upon the world. To my surprise, I am not scared for her. I think she will find a way and she will rekindle what I can already see within her. And if all she needs is an occasional shadow to take her hand and let her know she is not alone, it is a piece of myself and my time I can easily give to her. She is a nightingale; she must remember how to sing again.

I can also hope that all the mussing about I?ve been doing amongst the kindred is causing a stir, but -- for some reason I have a feeling I needn?t worry about that.

January Fourth



?Are y?sure??

Icarus Marcotte stood before him, clad in a neatly-fitting suit that accommodated the bronze wings tucked against his back. He changed in the time Sin hadn?t seen him, which was admittedly long. The horns that curved from his skull were capped in delicately carved gold, adorned with gems and filigree that the kindred did not recognize; the faint pattern of scales on his skin left an uncanny brightness to his skin, making him appear almost ethereal in his resplendence ? a perfectly draconian thing to do. He had a glamour, the same as Sinjin did, but chose to cast it aside in this moment of pride that he could leverage the sinner. Leaning against his cane amid a myriad of assets and treasures, the half-dragon?s expression wasn?t necessarily one of concern ? but he wasn?t so callous to point out when a man was setting himself up for hurt. He?d certainly made some fool choices in the past for love.

Sinjin swayed on his heels, hands laced behind his back. ?Positive,? he replied. ?I promise you, my intentions are purely based in functionality.? The Spaniard had changed too, it seemed.

Icarus grinned all the same. ?Yer a shit lair, Fai.? And despite that, he turned and plucked up a little box on the table behind him. Amid the dragon?s hoard ? a small warehouse of treasures, artifacts, and ancient history ? the plane wooden container seemed like nothing. He offered it out to Sinjin, who seemed surprised when he accepted it and found it surprisingly light. ?Y?owe me for this one, too. And if y?don?t bring it back in one piece, I?ll take y?head myself, aye??

Sinjin turned the box in his palm, only just larger than the size both hands put together. ?Please don?t,? he drawled, looking back up at the half-dragon?s cat-like pupils. ?My head is my favorite part.?

He snorted. ?Aye, but which head?? Icarus pushed up from the lean against his cane, waving it at him. ?Off with y?.?

With a vaguely sketched half-bow, Sinjin tucked the box into the pocket of his trench coat and turned away, his footsteps echoing as he left the warehouse. Icarus watched the other man, shaking his head as he did. ?Idiot,? he huffed.


?


The woods were cold and empty this close to the shore at the dead of winter and provided him no comfort. Sinjin stood alone on the precipice of indecision, his thumb sliding over the latch that kept the box shut. He knew in his heart he could never correct his mistakes ? that years of trying had always failed him, and his only option was to push forward. But some memories stuck to his heart like a disease and these were things that time could not soothe.


When Sinjin flicked open the latch and opened the box, there was only darkness inside ? then two pale eyes in the mass of shadow looked back at him and into him: Finder-Keeper. He formed the image of what he desired in his mind and it ate the thought like a delicate morsel. Without a moment of hesitation, the shadow slithered from the box like liquid and shot off into the night until it escaped from sight.

This, perhaps, was a thing Sinjin could try to fix.