the pearly gates had some eloquent graffiti; else

[Caius]

when is a monster not a monster? oh, when you love it He dreams of her. Of course he does. Of course she haunts every inch of him because he is a creature who begs to be haunted, be possessed, be taken. He is weak and open and trembling to be invaded. He is made for ghosts, both the literal kind (the dead spirits who take delight in lurking at the corner of his vision, or his father, burnt and tragic and watching) and the more figurative (Else, always there and not-there, alive but seemingly beyond his grasp). He dreams of her and sometimes the dreams are sweet, like the way her skin smells. Like the way she listened while he spilled his heart out, telling her about father, telling her bits of how – what – mother was. (He cannot tell the whole story because it tastes like bile in his mouth and he doesn’t want to speak such vile things to her, doesn’t want her to know that a wretched part of him still loves mother so.) He dreams of her and sometimes they are not dreams, they are nightmares. He dreams he sees her and she is a ghost, she is dead because he could not protect her (he has never been a good warrior). The haunted boy is in the deserts. He almost always is. It’s his home, where he was once prince (not anymore, though, with Vanquish gone – now he is simply their failed solider, with bloodied wings and an eye for ghosts and little else). He hasn’t seen her in months. He misses her, and the ache is different than the ache of how he’d missed mother. It’s somewhere in his stomach, a strange lurching, like he’s not quite sure how to function without her. He dreams of her, because dreams are really all he has. c a i u s vanquish x chantale

[Else]

else

even angels have their wicked schemes

The anxiety left her hollowed out. Veins shrank and dried up, muscle and sinew unraveled and fell away through flayed skin. Bones since turned to dust just drifted through those cracks like sand through stone. She could feel the anxiety like a snake curling in her belly, cold and unwelcome, so heavy she wondered how it didn’t just fall through her stomach. Sometimes the snake unwound itself, slithering up to her chest and around her ribs, squeezing so hard she imagined stars bursting in her eye. It was a wonder her heart still had any room left to beat.

That single, glacial blue eye fell on the small shape of Elanor stretched out across the sand, and for a moment that anxiety seemed to loosen its grip. There was something about the slackness of the child’s face as she slept, a softness etched in the charcoal shadows, that eased Else’s worries. Even the corners of those twisted, frozen lips seemed to quiver with something that might’ve been a smile if not for the semi-paralysis that offered only frustrating half grimaces.

Darkness clung to the horizon as dusk settled over the desert. The sky at its highest seemed impossibly orange, small rivulets of slate grey pooling in the lower places. The world in this moment felt deceivingly safe- the color of a smile or a heartbeat if such things had colors to call their own. It did not feel of the moments just before dark, when chaos befell and nightmares came out to haunt. Her skin rippled at the thought, the quaking of her muscles opening fissures across her skin where the dark sank freely into her. For some, most, she thought with a twinge in her gut, this hour fell with the promise of quiet. But for Else, and certain other shattered souls, this was a time to find something to do, something that would squeeze the threat of sleep from her eyes, fill a mind struggling to bare itself for dreams. Nightmares.

Caius.

The thought plucked at a chord in her mind, endless and repetitive, and as the orange darkened first to red and then to black, and the dark bird-flecks turned into a spattering of twinkling stars, Else surrendered eagerly. Stepping forward she drew that twisted gray mouth across Elanor’s perfect, fragile skin, coaxing her awake.


Elanor woke slowly, those pale solemn eyes blinking slowly as she shook her head to loose the sand from the pewter of her delicate face. For a long moment she did nothing but lift her tiny chin and fix her eyes on a sky that seemed to stretch on forever. Then, with a small yawn, she rolled back to her feet and rose, unsteady for a few long seconds until feeling bled back into the muscle of her feathered legs. Comically, as all foals seem to be, she stretched her forelegs out in the sand and leaned back on her heels, arching like a kitten. Yawning one last time and turning those star-filled eyes on her mother’s faintly glowing silhouette, she opened her mouth to ask what was going on. But the question was answered before it even existed by the unusual stoicism carved out of the marble of Else’s gargoyle face.

“Dad?” She had breathed the word like a question, her eyes widening and her tongue pushing uncertainly against the inside of her teeth. But it wasn’t a question, not really, she knew by the mask of calm her mother tried to hold in place – though even as she watched she could pick out hairline fractures betraying the underlying anxiety as it crackled across her face like a spider’s web. Elanor looked away for a moment, inhaling so hard she thought her ribs might burst, and then exhaled in a rushed whoosh of grassy breath. Flicking the curls of her short tail against her haunches, she quickly glued herself to Else’s side, doing her best to ignore the waves of anxiety rolling off her mother. This, at least, was nothing unusual.

They walked for what felt like eons as Elanor worried over the idea of finally meeting her father, a father, she guessed, who had no idea she even existed. Any time she had tried to ask her mother about it, Else had easily redirected the conversation to something different. She sighs, a shaky huff, resolving to leave the nervousness to her mother. Just as the resolution scrolled across her thoughts, a large black and winged stallion seemed to fall away from the shadows. She sucked in a loud breath, though she hadn’t meant to. Immediately those achingly blue eyes picked him apart piece by piece, memorizing him as though this might be the only chance she got. Even in the dark she could see the stickiness of blood matted into his wing joints and she glanced quickly to her mother, concerned, but quieted instantly by the expression on Else’s face. There was a soft affection there, something reserved for very few, and for a moment it seemed to overpower the anxious way her jaw clenched and her muscles twitched. Elanor felt a warm half smile tickling at the edges of her soft, charcoal lips.

Looking back at the tall stallion she noticed the thickness of his legs, and smiled again, because hers were very similar on a much smaller scale. She was refined and delicate as babies were, but not so fragile and bird boned as her haunted mother. It was hard to pick out too much more in the cloak of night, but she thought with some satisfaction that he had a strong face, a safe face, though she wondered if there wasn’t also some darkness there, some sad. It made sense, she thought, glancing between them. Feeling suddenly cowed by the silence stretching between them as wide as the desert floor, Elanor tucked tight against the warmth of her mother’s ribbed barrel. But try as she might, she couldn’t convince those wide glowing eyes to look anywhere but her father, his eyes, his face, those wings. “I don’t want him to disappear.” She breathed urgently, as though someone had asked.


Else meet Caius with a quiet face, though there was concern etched in the furrow of her brow and uncertainty in the tightness of her mouth. For a long moment, while Elanor had branded his image into her deepest thoughts, Else ached to push her mouth against his neck, to taste the salt of his skin and feel the clench of muscle beneath flesh so impossibly smooth. She wanted to press her ear to his chest to count the beats of his heart until the numbers filled her head and there was no room for the anxiety to settle. Too long, she thought with an unfixable ache tearing up her chest, too many months. She had forgotten how he settled her so. But still, she did not move – nor could she have with the way uncertainty left her feet leaden in the sand. “Caius,” she breathed his name, hitching slightly as that single eye fell onto his, “this is Elanor, our daughter.”

and you take that to new extremes

[Caius]

when is a monster not a monster? oh, when you love it His own father flickers at the edges of his vision. It is easier to control the visions, now that he has accepted this is not a symptom of a fatal disease but simply is, but they will still walk unbidden when he does not tamp them down. In moments of high emotions, or when he is just waking, suspended between sleep and wakefulness. Now he is a father and the word is strange in him because he doesn’t know how to be a father. His own was strong and indomitable, there like a dam when the oceans of madness that Chantale cradled began to spill. But Caius is not strong, he is a boy with bleeding wings who sees ghosts, a boy who is a solider but not a fighter, and he does not know how to be a father. (He doesn’t know how to be a lover, either, a partner – he knows he loves her, even if he hasn’t said the words to her, but he doesn’t know what it entails, because to him, love still seems to be a strange thing, for Chantale loved him with bruises and sour milk.) Hell, he’s even met the child, and surely that is a sign he is a terrible father. The anxiety is there, riding his muscles, as he waits. He doesn’t know what for, only that his legs feel leaden and that something insists in his mind, a chant: stay, stay, stay. He stays and then over a dune crests the scarred girl and at her side - oh. He can see himself in her, a certain thickness to her frame that her mother lacks. He sees Else in her, too, and that is the best thing. Joy is not a completely alien emotion to him, but it is certainly a foreign one. But joy is what comes over him now, to see them, here before him. “Hello,” he breathes, and his voice is too soft, like they are wild creatures he doesn’t want to startle, “hello, Elanor.” c a i u s vanquish x chantale